Hidden Mic Pickups - Entire Collection

UPDATE - December 2009: As a result of the review below, we have had an email exchange with the product creator, Christian Hudson, and he has decided to pull this product off the market. We commend him on doing the right thing. We have had good stuff to say about his latest product, Unbreakable (by Christian Hudson & Nick Sparks for The Social Man).

---

Live pick ups?

Listening to real, quality conversations is one of the most instructive things you can do when learning to attract women. It helps you a great deal to internalize the vibe and understand how it is done. So I was happy to check the Hidden Mic Pick Up recordings, from Christian Hudson, a guy whose advice I appreciated, having read his newsletter/blog a few times.

The website promised "hours of crystal-clear audio that will get your game rocking".

Unfortunately, I quickly understood the reason the audios are so clear - those "hidden mic" pick ups are fake. Staged. Scripted. Not real.

Crystal-clearly not real

The website also says "Every subsequent listen will get you closer to mastery, where your instincts will begin to evolve and become those of a natural", which is really ironic, because you must really be clueless (=have no instincts whatsoever) to not see this is fake as hell.

Voices are too clear. Tonalities are all wrong. Background music is never loud. All women sound like flirty porn stars. Most importantly, they all open straight away without reservation, helping the conversations like crazy, in other words, not acting realistically.

A newbie might not be able to tell, but if you have been in enough interactions, it is glaringly obvious within the first 30 seconds. Your alarm bells ring like crazy. You can just tell from the little subtleties of each exchange. These are fake. Every single one of them.

Off vibe

Now, it is quite simply dishonest to use actors and not tell people about it, and even worse to insist that it’s real, as the website does.

But beyond ethical issues, the staging completely undermines the teaching value here. See, this is not very well staged at all. To think some people might believe this is live, masterful seduction is scary. Newbies will get very confused if they try to imitate the voice tonality or general vibe of these conversations (which is exactly what they suggest you do – remember what I quoted earlier : “"Every subsequent listen will get you closer to mastery …” ).

Seriously, I don't enjoy shooting down a product in flames, but there is a lot of cringe-worthy stuff in here. Awkward laughs, badly timed silences….Mostly, this is just uncomfortable to listen to.

In fact, the bad acting remembers me of the Spanish lessons we were listening to in class when I was in high-school - you can even hear the actresses straining to get through it.

So-so conversations

So you might think, “well, at least the scripted conversations will be shining examples of masterful seduction, which will benefit me”. And unfortunately, that is not the case either. Most of the conversations are just not very good at all.

For example, on the Cocktail Party audios, he opens telling the girl to watch her alcohol intake - "you need to know your limits", etc etc. This sets him up in a serious, nerdy, fatherly frame - not the best frame to assume (see Beyond The Digits to understand why that is a common mistake). This is reinforced by the hesitant way in which he says his lines (a recurrent issue on most audios).

Then he asks her if she is a friend of the host. When she says a friend brought her there, he asks "how does it feel to tag along to a party?". Then he gets her name. Says her name is beautiful. And ask for the origins of the name.

I could go on, but you get the idea (and if you don’t get what’s wrong with the above, no worries, just go study some dating beginners’ material). While there is the occasional good line, overall the conversations are nothing special. The topics are borderline boring, and as explained earlier, the vibe is off. Hudson often sounds jumpy, nervous, and awkward – probably because he is playing a role instead of being normal. The irony is, I suspect he is way better in real life.

Unexpected disappointment

Christian Hudson's newsletter and posts are not bad. In those he seems to have common sense and good game. I honestly have no idea what he was thinking releasing this. I actually googled and read interviews from him at the launch of this product, to be double-extra-sure he claimed these were real - he did. The website still claims this is 100% real to this day.

Although some of the post-conversations analysis is interesting (which is why we still give it 3 stars in Effectiveness), we cannot recommend this to beginners, as these audios would set weird expectations for them and ultimately lead to more confusion.

For better (real) live conversations, check out Mehow's Get The Girl! Infield Exposed instead.