I do get some feeling of evangelism from his enthusiasm but you are going to get that from anyone who is communicating about something that they have spent a lot of time on because they think it is worthwhile. If you let me talk your ear off I would sound the same way talking about cycling or my favorite video games.
You obviously don’t know anything about cults (just like you don’t know anything about sociopaths.) There’s no cut and dry definition of a cult, but in general they have the following characteristics in common:
They ask members to make huge personal sacrifices
They demand that you place all your trust in a central deity-like leader
They make members isolate themselves from mainstream society and cut off their ties with their old friends and family
They discourage individual thought.
(I learned this in my senior history seminar at IU, which dealt with the topic. Prof. Ed Linenthal, if you’re reading this…Muck Fichigan!)
So that sums up the things that make a cult a cult. Pickup artist techniques have absolutely nothing in common with cults. Especially not what TWTTWN has posted, as he is not selling anything, not trying to recruit anyone, and not insisting that there’s one single rule that everyone has to follow.
Go back and reread his 3 part post.
Socially inept guy alienated from society. His “system” imparts special knowledge that lets him understand how things really are. If you approach someone and the encounter goes bad, it’s not you, it’s their perception of the tactic. The system replaces real time thinking with prepared tactics (i.e. discourages individual thought.) His cult leader is himself. He can’t do wrong. If he fails, it was just a bad combination of the “target” and the tactic he applied.
The sacrifice? That’s obvious.
You don’t have to know who L Ron is to pick up a Dianetics book and get hooked.
This sounds paranoid. Perhaps, like most people with pysch degrees, you are totally crazy. Part of what makes us human is the ability to share ideas through language. Do you realize that this particular criticism of yours could be applied to just about any non-fiction BOOK ever written?
What I read was that you go back later and analyze what happened, as in, what you did wrong. You just play it off in the moment like it’s on them to keep the rejection from crushing your ego and robbing you of your all important confidence.
The system as he has described it encourages combining a little bit of prepared tactics with a whole bunch of real time thinking. It sure doesn’t discourage individual thought.
Megalomania is what it would be if he were his own cult leader. There is plenty of megalomania around but not in TWTTWN’s posts.
No it isn’t. What sacrifice, sex? Before you answer remember that sex is, a great majority of the time, mutually beneficial.
Reread his 3 part post.
OBVIOUSLY the sacrifice is not sex. That’s his goal. Let me put it another way. What does he lose out on that is valuable from the perspective of that brainwashing society?
If you can’t get that from what he wrote, then the rest of this is moot.
Can you link to it or quote it? I have read the thread once I don’t really want to dig through it.
I appreciate TWTTWN’s contribution to this topic. It takes a bit of bravery, and his extremely tolerant and polite responses in the face of unfounded personal insults are commendable.
I’ve always had an easy time with women (and people in general), and I’ve always been very sociable. I’m also fairly driven, motivated, and up-front regarding who I am. I’m not rude nor in-your-face, but I’m confident about myself. One day a few years ago an acquaintance mentioned reading “The Game”, and since I’m fairly interested in social psychology I picked it up and read through it.
My initial reaction was that of being perplexed. I couldn’t understand how and why these guys made their lists and scripts and one-liners and put them into what effectively is a flow-chart of what-ifs. The depth and scope of this flow-chart was huge, and I found it somewhat amusing that this had even been attempted. Of course, I didn’t initially understand what was really going on, and I regret my initial disdain for them. I do have some points I’d like to contribute to this discussion:
I was stunned that the things they try to quantify and measure and implement, are nearly the exact same things that I slowly realized that I do naturally all the time. At times, I’ve been confused as to why women are atypically drawn to me, and why they appear to get infatuated and fall in love so easily – and reading up about PUAs kinda creeped me out.
I tried to understand what was going on with these men, and I came to a couple of opinions. These men lack basic social skills. For whatever reason, they just don’t know how to communicate, and relate to people (not just women), and they don’t know how to express their wants and desires to others. Additionally, they don’t seem to understand and accept who they are. All this scripting that they learn is a way of forcing them to socialize in the only way they initially can: by using scripts and the memorization of specific behaviours.
But then, over time, some of these men had something happen to them - they came to a great realization - They discovered that communicating with other people, even women, is not as difficult as it had initially seemed. By forcing themselves into social situations, and flirting, and expressing their desires for women, and by trying to find ways to just talk about everyday ordinary stuff, they overcame their confidence issues.
The criticism here is that their personalities are “fake”. And initially this may be true, but I think their exercises and practice give them the confidence to BE THEMSELVES AND NOT BE ASHAMED OF IT. Ultimately it’s this that is probably the biggest positive effect that the whole “PUA community” has had on them. You see, most kids learn social skills through growing up an ordinary childhood. While not everyone may become a “top alpha male”, they learn enough to be confident in themselves – which is all that’s really necessary. But some kids, for some reason, miss out on this early training and get left behind – and this antisocial mindset is self-reinforcing, and ultimately goes out of control. You get 40 year old men who are intelligent, good looking, motivated, but still single, or worse yet, a virgin who’s never been loved either physically or emotionally.
I think learning about PUA techniques gives them a crash course in being sociable. They’re not becoming secret agents or international spies or mind control experts – they’re not committing some terrible crime! They’re merely learning the social skills that most normal people have learned in childhood and now completely take for granted!
Now, I did browse some of their sites in addition to reading the book, and there does seem to be a bit of misogyny going around. My take on that is pretty simple, actually, and it doesn’t seem surprising in the context. In order to go through these programmed scripts and scenarios, you have to stop thinking of the women as people, but instead you must think of them as objects. If you try to think of them as people, your low self-esteem will sabotage you and you end up being the bumbling fool you’ve been all your life. In order to get through the first few stages of this ‘transformation’ you have to remove a bit of their humanity in order to make personal progress.
This is the same thing as how doctors don’t view patients as “people” because that might create dangerous attachments that might cloud their judgement, or in case of seriously poor diagnosis, might induce something other than pure honesty. If I view my patients as people, then it would also cause a huge burden on me when I can’t help them and they die premature and painful deaths from cancer, AIDS, or anything else. Same thing applies to the PUA-in-training! In effect, their behaviour reverts to that of childhood (in the sense of not treating everyone around you as “people” like yourself) when most people were first learning these skills!
But eventually many people who try to learn the PUA skills realize they want something a little more than meaningless sex (some only want meaningless sex and that’s okay, some want a long-term relationship, and some want marriage – though it’s usually the ones that want no-strings sex that are the most vocal about their “system”). But by this point they’ve found confidence in themselves, and are no longer afraid of their desires, and are no longer nervous in social situations, and have confidence in who they are. Overall, it’s helped them reach their goal through a process of “accelerated education” that might be a bit distasteful in the short-term, but ultimately quite an improvement in the long-term.
Men who are awkward are unattractive. These men are learning to not be awkward. Thus women find them more attractive. This isn’t some kind of psychic mind-control like some people are making it out to be… in my opinion it’s actually pretty simple.
I’d also like to add that an argument can be made that: This isn’t so much about CHANGING men, but more about getting men out of their shells and allowing them to be MORE of who they REALLY ARE! It’s removing their shame, guilt, fear, social anxiety, nervousness, excessive self-consciouness, awkwardess, etc.
Methinks AlienVessels needs to get laid.:dubious:
I would agree with Borzo. Even if you are a nice and personable guy, aproaching a woman for a date (or sex) isn’t something a lot of guys get a lot of practice at. Quite frankly a lot of guys don’t know how to approach a girl they like and they don’t know how to read the signs that a girl might like them. I think for guys like that, a little PUA knowledge can go a long way.
But honestly, the whole “PUA community” thing does sound a bit creepy and disingenuous. First of all, is there any magic jedi mind shit a female “6” can use to land a hot man? So why does the ugliest creepiest guy think he can land a “10” with the right combination of aviator goggles and “negs”?
Second, guys older than around age 25 conspiring about the best way to pick up women have a bit of a “holding on to / making up for my college and high school years” vibe. Sure, when I was younger, my friends and I would go out to bars and clubs and parties all the time and do our thang with the ladies. But as you get older (and realize you can get laid), that should tale on less importance.
Surely you don’t need to be told that men and women are psychologically different?
Women are attracted to abstract ideas. Men are attracted to tangible, physical properties. Generally.
Because the ugliest and creepiest guys can land 10s. Maybe not with peacocking and negs, but with social proof.
No, that’s the whole point. It’s 3 good sized posts with a ton of statements that form a pattern.
He rejects the idea of a committed monogamous relationship. He made the point that he’s having some level of difficulty explaining to the monogamous woman he’s having a relationship why his having sex with other women does not threaten that relationship.
That’s what he loses and what I think most people want for the long term.
There’s nothing wrong with playing the game if in fact nobody gets hurt. Somehow I think the understanding of the terms of the engagement are not as mutual as he makes out.
If somehow this were restricted to the meat market bar where there is a base level assumption about why many if not most singles are there, great. But he’s asserted that these techniques are legitimate in ANY venue and that since he “crested” in the program, they apply in all aspects of his social and business life.
I think it has to do with the fact that men usually put a lot of weight on a woman’s physical appearance. This is even more true when a man is simply looking for a non-emotional and non-intellectual but purely physical/sexual interaction.
As a result, however, you do have women dressing up in ‘flattering’ clothing, and putting on makeup. As the previous PUA mentioned, women have a lot of support in this endeavour as can be proven by a casual visit to your local magazine rack. A 6 can probably get up to an 8 in terms of appearance - though you could argue this is of limited value since girls who are 8’s do the same and get up to being a 9.
Nonetheless, short of using drugs/alcohol on a man, or plastic surgury, a female 6 can do nothing to physically change her appearance into that of a 10 to attract the man of her dreams.
With men, however, studies and common knowledge would suggest that they’re not quite so locked into the 1-10 score that they were born with. Women value confidence (which is probably the one word that pretty much sums up every single little thing in PUA discussions). This can be faked, altered, or learned. Therefore, a guy can easily go from being a 4 to an 8 in a way no woman ever could. It’s not as simple as aviators and negs, it’s more complex… he basically has to fundamentally change how he feels and views himself.
This is why you see ugly - though NOT creepy - guys with supermodels all the time. Their confidence/attitude is so strong that it overshadows any failures they might have. (Okay, sometimes they pay for escorts, but not all do!) But you will never see an ugly girl on the arm of a guy who is a male 10, unless it’s his mother or sister.
Sadly, over time some men do go from being a 4 to an 8, and in the process dump their wives and pick up a new one. Women, on the other hand, usually only go down on the scale.
I think you have it backwards. Most people would probably love to be in a stable committed emotional/intellectual relationship and at the same time have the freedom to explore sexually with other people. But they can’t, because very few people are open minded enough to make that kind of relationship work.
You don’t see the contradiction in your own statement here? How can most people want open relationships if most people are too closed minded to be able to support open relationships? Or maybe they think they should be able to have the freedom to explore while their partner cannot?
Regardless, I don’t think most people would actually want the reality of what happens if everyone has open relationships.
What I’m saying is that people have a lot of social conditioning telling them what they should and shouldn’t be able to do with their sex lives. Whether this comes from religion, or just from what they’ve been told by their parents, depends on the person. But very often this social conditioning conflicts with the raw, biological sexual impulses inside peoples’ minds.
A man sees a beautiful woman and his instincts are telling him one thing: “mmm, I’d like to get it on with her.” But his social conditioning is telling him something else: “well, but it will mean that I don’t love my wife anymore, and I’ll feel guilty about it, and she’ll find out about it, and then she won’t love me anymore, and then she’ll leave me.” Or something along those lines. What if we could accept the idea that we want to have sex with many different people, but still be emotionally connected to just one person? Imagine how much less divorce, argument, strife would happen.
This is a difficult proposition. Most people do NOT want their emotional partners having sex with other people, they only want that benefit for themselves.
Their raw, instinctive, “evolutionarily-derived” drives, are leading men and women to WANT to have multiple partners… but those same drives lead them to want monogomous commitment from their partners!
While I haven’t read the PUAs posts in detail, he mentions he has sex with women other than his “partner”. Of course he does, because that’s what he wants, and he’s found a way to get away with it. But what if this “partner” were to share with him the news of her raw and passionate sex that she’s been having on weekends with several of her gangbang buddies. I’m sure he’d be less than pleased.
I don’t know. It’s a complicated subject. I hope it doesn’t sidetrack this thread too much. I think men can compartmentalize sexual desire and emotional connection to a much greater degree than women. A man is probably more likely to have an affair because he just wants to fuck a new and different woman (witness the Tiger Woods incident. “Oh my GOD, how could he cheat on her when she’s so HOT??!” Well duh. You can have filet mignon and lobster for dinner every night, but you’ll still want to have a burger, or fish, or tofu now and then.) Whereas a woman is probably more likely to cheat because she’s emotionally unfulfilled. Sex just seems to be much more closely tied to emotions in women than in men.
I’ve been out of the dating game for a long time so I don’t know much about the current situation. I do remember a book called* How to Pick Up Girls* that used to be advertised in every magazine that would appeal to young men. So the concept isn’t new. Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet back then, so the community was just guys talking to each other.
One thing I have seen a over the years is young men who aren’t exceptionally good looking, or exuding any sense of wealth, power, or status, but seem to attract many women who would rate higher than average with most men. A woman clued me in about this. They were attracting women who were interested in no strings attached flings. What they exuded was a ‘who gives a fuck’ attitude about life. The women could have some fun, and not worry about the guys trying to make the relationship serious.
It’s funny, certain people would have you believe that since there are ads for books or seminars teaching these techniques, that means the whole entire thing is a giant scam that’s just about making a few weasel hustlers rich. Nobody would ever think that because people write books about fishing or carpentry, and make money off of them, that means that you couldn’t possibly learn anything about those things from the books.
I have no idea if it’s a scam or really useful information. But if it’s a business selling books, it doesn’t matter, what matters is how many copies are sold.