# Is the "pick up artist" movement an inherently good or bad thing?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-pick-up-artist-movement-an-inherently-good-or-bad-thing/572932>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 23, 2018, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-pick-up-artist-movement-an-inherently-good-or-bad-thing/572932 "2018-04-23T20:52:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2018, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-the-pick-up-artist-movement-an-inherently-good-or-bad-thing/572932/637 "2018-05-21T02:12:46Z")

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> [@Hank\_Beecher](#):
>
> And if women would stop choosing the most aggressive guys for hundreds of thousands of years at a stretch we could leave the trouble making dudes in the lurch and get started with that world peace thing.

Well, pretty much. But since the PUA thing is apparently just a very detailed, very time-consuming way of answering “How high?” when a game-playing woman says “Jump,” I don’t really care if “No means no” has the dread repercussion of… some guys sometimes don’t get to have sex that night.

If a guy takes no for no, the worst that happens is he goes home alone.

If a guy takes no for yes, the worst that happens is a woman gets raped.

Given the stats on date rape, given the claims in this thread that especially when guys just get started down this path they have trouble “calibrating,” and given the rather persistent vibe that this isn’t about women as individuals but women as trophies, I think building a system around this type of game playing is dangerous as hell.

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