In a thread on the report of Cliff’s List Seminar, a discussion about the upcoming television special on seduction began where some folks took pot shots at Ross Jeffries, suggesting he’s a bit of a wanker and will come off either as a goofball in the special or won’t be featured. This is significant as the ABC cameras took a lot of footage and seem to be doing a documentary that will promote the Neil Strauss book The Game : Undercover In The Secret Society Of Pick-up Artists (see recent posts here on influence for more – especially, the recent piece on picking up Britney Spears.

Ross replied that he had an inside track and is savvy about media exposure:

Look: anyone who questions my media savvy is just NUTS. I’ve been on dozens of TV shows since I started in the early 90’s. One thing I know how to do, without question, is handle the media, deliver up what they want ANd get my own message across.

To which one pundit replied:

And what does this exposure get you? You’re just a media oddity, a freak they trot out to ridicule so middle america can feel good about themselves

This has had some bit of truth to it in terms of a couple of the magazine interviews that Ross has done in the past . . . where he is portrayed as a middle aged letch . . . however, he’s also had some very good exposure in very mainstream places and seems to have learned a lot in recent years on presentation to better leverage final coverage. I would say that he’s much more savvy about how to present himself to the media now than in the past.

While I would suggest not counting chickens until the eggs are hatched regarding the Prime Time piece as a lot of folks have been burned in the past when it comes to media coverage (for instance the umpteen Penn & Teller Bullshit episodes that have featured folks who thought they were going to be portrayed as the "talking head good guy" when in fact they were the "mark") . . . we don’t get the program here so I’m hoping some kind soul back in the Beautiful Country (Meiguo = Beautiful+Country = America) will tape it and send it to me . . . hint, hint.

The exposure via Prime Time may present the various seduction guru types in good light as folks who are helping others gain valuable social skills or they may come off as broken dysfunctional jerks who are so terrified of comitment that they have to create a community to reinforce their lost and lonely lifestyles of desperation social cluelessness. We’ll see. BTW, both of these descriptors are true, depending upon which of these guys you are talking about. Oh, and I really find that word annoying as I don’t believe in the whole guru concept but prefer the concept behind mentoring or just plain teaching . . . guru just has a whole cultish aspect behind it and I for one certainly don’t want to be in any relationship with a colleague where they expect me to think of them as my guru, I’m too old to have a guru and too realistic to be one.

Ross came off very very well in the Louis Theroux piece on hypnosis and the like in Las Vegas from the BBC while the others interviewed came off as whackjobs and fruitcakes (Marshall Sylver came off very very poorly). Louis expressed concerns about the ethics and power of what he was doing during the walkups (with Ross inside his head via a radio earplug) but Ross really came off as completely congruent in what he does and as very effective.

Of course, the "seduction" market it more crowded now than ever and Ross has broken off relations with a number of his former associates and students (several of the current wave of hot trainers are former Jeffries speed seduction students).

If you were "media savvy" then why do you continually lose market share?

Where do you get your numbers to determine this? Is there a seduction market forecast blog somewhere where I could see this? 🙂

I suspect you are correct that Ross has indeed lost market share in recent years in that the "seduction pie" now has many more "trainers" or "gurus" out there than it had in the past. Naturally, as more folks enter the marketplace, the share for any individual trainer goes down. However, this does not mean that someone’s product is inferior. Nor does it mean that Ross has is losing money compared to when he was more "dominant" in the market (by virtue of being one of the few games in town).

While I for one disagree with statements that Ross is the "father" or "grandfather" or whatever of "seduction" . . . he is not . . . Cassanova and Don Juan and Rudolf Valentino and a whole slew of guys were doing this sort of stuff long before any of the current "masters" were even alive, looooonnnng before . . . besides, when we step past myth and into modern reality, those of us old enough to remember Eric Weber know better (or even Ugly George who really should have a shrine to him somewhere just for sheer balls) . . . see here for a blast from the 70s past . . . but he certainly is the major influence behind the evolution of the contemporary Seduction Community per se. Of course, as the community has grown, so should Ross and his approach . . . and there are vast differences between his current material and what he used to present (well, as far as I can see but then I haven’t seen everything he’s done and can’t quote from memory umpteen million tapes or videos from a multitude of different folks selling this or that . . . when it comes to that sort of thing I’m more of a punter than a professional, I suppose . . . while I’ve an academic interest in influence, my interest in seduction is more in the practical application of making someone feel good and sustaining longterm relationships and, of course, how to make someone feel really really really goooood using focused trance methods . . . see here for the really good stuff).