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

Great Debates
681

She had no baseline experience to judge from. You set the tone. You had the experience and control, yet you pretend that she’s the one that made it about “exploring” B&D. For her, ANY sex was exploring.

Bullied? In a bully situation, one person is in a position to exert pressure from a position of advantage. This is a forum. You can post as much or as little as you’d like, and I only respond when you post. But again, this is part of your game. Avoid the direct conflict and cry wolf to the bystanders so they’ll intercede.

You’re manipulative and self serving, and just about every lengthy post you make provides evidence of that.

I think it’s great if people are self-confident and engage others in social relationships. It’s ok if they have SOPs even.

You engage on a superficial level and encourage others to do so. In my opinion, this is a bad thing for society. You’re just a different stripe of fast talking con man that has prettied up the talk with an occasional reference to doing a little good here and there.

Everyone has a few of these tricks in their quiver. My criticism of what you espouse has NOTHING to do with them. This is particularly about you, your presentation of your SOPs and experience, and the advocacy of said system to the extent you’ve described here.

682

So you’re saying girls don’t have fantasies until they have a penis inside them for the first time? That people don’t have natural tendencies toward fetishes that are inherent in them from their youth, whether they’re bondage, roleplaying fantasies, exhibitionism/voyeurism, etc.? Have you read My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday? It’s a pretty big eye-opener.

Ignoring the rest of your post where you basically don’t like me as a person. At this point I’m more curious about your views of sex. :slight_smile:

  • TWTTWN
683

I’m saying you don’t start them off with fucksaws and goatse even if they’ve browed the internet and are curious. I’m not going to argue nature/nuture with you because you can’t even ante into that discussion.

You still get it wrong. I don’t know you as a person. I don’t like the profile I get from the posts you’ve made. You’re all about telling it like it is so that’s what I’m giving you.

And no, you’re not curious about my view of sex. As you’ve said many times, that’s just your SOP technique for getting a handle on someone so you can socially manipulate either them or the “audience”.

684

I didn’t bust out whips and chains the first night we hung out. We saw eachother for months and along the way we explored her fantasies. Like I say, this isn’t all about the one-night-stand “kick 'em out when I’m thru with 'em” stereotype.

I’m legitimately curious. You’re very secretive about your views, and it seems like it’s clearly the root of a lot of issue you take with what I’m saying. You may have fundamental beliefs that are 180 degrees opposite of mine, in which case I won’t bother to waste anyone’s time spending more posts trying to get you to understand my viewpoint.

  • TWTTWN
685

I don’t like taking people’s sides, but holy shit. AlienVessels is on a moral outrage rampage.

Can you please specify and show us where exactly the “con” is? I don’t see one. Please clarify, with references if possible.

This really isn’t about the content of the material he’s presenting, it’s about him, eh? If you don’t like the content, shoot the messenger…

Talk about excessive levels of paranoia…

686

If I’m secretive about my views, how can you possibly judge where they’re the cause of my issues with what you’ve been saying? My views aren’t relevant here, yours are.

I understand your viewpoint just fine. You’re a manipulator and you’d like it if society were more accepting of that behavior/mindset. I can certainly understand why someone might take that position, just as I would if a con man were to make analogous wishes that people would honor the “buyer beware” maxim more.

You won’t spend any more time trying to educate me, but you are practically compelled to post more about your beliefs in this particular area. All I have to do is keep pointing out the examples YOU give.

It’s not about you, it’s about what you’re saying and the picture it paints. Now, if that’s all there is to you, then I’ll admit it’s about you.

687

We’re talking about a guy that has told you that his manipulation game works everywhere. You really think he doesn’t play it on the forum as well?

That’s not paranoia, that’s simple observation.

688

What is his “manipulation” exactly? I think you’re seeing manipulation where there really isn’t very much at all.

Let me ask you one favour that would help tremendously: Tell us how you define “manipulation”, please.

How is someone learning to be self-confident and sociable any different than learning to use a new language?

689

AlienVessels, you’re out of line for this forum and I’m giving you a formal warning. If you have a problem with TheWhoToTheWhatNow’s opinions and tactics, criticize those without repeatedly calling him shallow, manipulative, or a liar (calling another poster a liar is against the rules of Great Debates). The guiding principle here is ‘attack the argument, not the poster.’

690

This is only peripherally related to being a PUA, but I’d like to ask: I’ve never been a bar/club guy, except for a few after-work happy hours in my twenties; I’ve recently started to go to low-key bars once in a while with friends just to hang out, I’ve only been in a loudy, busy, party-atmosphere-type bar a couple of times in my life, and have never once been to an actual nightclub. When you talk about going out and being social, are you referring mainly to the typical bar/club scene most PUAs get into when they start really devoting time to it? If so, how much fun can that be, really? I mean, what is there to do there, other than 1) dance, or 2) drink and attempt to talk to people in an environment that’s so loud that you can’t hear each other? Frankly, those things don’t sound like any more adventurous than playing Cranium. (And that’s one of the reasons I’ve never tried to get into this PUA stuff: I haven’t felt up to spending 4 hours a night trying to shout at girls at the top of my lungs.)

691

As TWTTWN has written about numerous times, there is no reason at all why pickup has to be done in loud annoying bars. If you want to do it, you can do it anywhere. Most guys seem to start out doing it in bars because that’s where the highest concentration of single women is. But it need not be limited to the bar environment. The principles can work any place you can imagine.

692

I hear ya, I used to think the same way. I had never even been in a bar till I was 23-ish, let alone a nightclub.

The thing is most guys let the nightclub overwhelm them. It’s loud, chaotic, high-energy, etc. and it’s too much for a generally “normal” guy to overcome (until he’s had enough drinks in him to start being more outgoing but even then he ends up sloppy and drunk). Girls don’t have as much of a problem with this because they learn very early on not to care what other people think when they have their girl’s nights out…that’s why the first group on the dance floor is almost always a group of high-energy girls having a blast even though they’re the only ones dancing. Meanwhile guys stand at the side of the bar with a drink up at their chest terrified of the environment and the girl they thought was cute is getting hit on by some roided up jock douchebag, etc. etc.

So ya, it’s not very fun for a lot of guys, they don’t know how to have fun there.

But a PUA’s night goes very different. We learn to project our voices so we can talk over loud music (some guys take actual vocal training like singers use, I watched a vocal training DVD), and we learn to do some basic lip reading or just pull the girl into us to hear them (great excuse for kino!). We also take note of where in the club the quiet areas are (where are the speakers concentrated/facing, is there an upstairs/downstairs, a quiet booth/table/couch chilling area?) and we’ll chat people up in those areas or pull girls over to those areas to talk to them. Some clubs play ear-blowingly loud music especially right at the dance floor, but most of them you can find lots of places to have a conversation if you know what to look for.

This description of a night out is pieced together from random nights out where I regularly do the things I’m describing and girls regularly react the way I’m describing. It can be exhausting (I’ve had nights where I’ve had to duck into the bathroom to wipe off the sweat and just gather my head again halfway through the night), but it’s a blast. We call this “lording the club”. I’m piecing together a story with a start/end to give a “tag along” example of the fun potential that any night out can have if you approach with a good attitude and some basic game/confidence. A normal average night will probably have 1/3rd or 1/2 of stuff like in this description happen. And there are the occasional nights that are brutal and you walked in in a bad mental state and spend the night getting shot down or feeling too nervous to even approach anyone and go home kicking yourself. But there are also the nights where you’re hitting on all cylinders and you walk into a club solo with no one knowing you from a hole in the wall and by the end of the night the whole club knows you by name as you walk out of there with a gorgoeus girl on your arm. When you start out you have more of the shitty nights, but as you get more experience things become more consistent and you rarely have the horrible nights, and have nights like this more often.

I just want to stress that the night described below is NOT AN UNUSUAL/RARE NIGHT for a PUA…we go out for the specific purpose of chatting up strangers and bouncing around the club:

So ya. It’s pretty fun when you know what you’re doing. :smiley:

Some people would say “that sounds like a lot of work to get laid, pfft.” but 1) you don’t have to do ALL that just to get the girl, you can just go right for the girl and ignore everyone else if you want, but 2) when you take a genuine interest in the people you meet it’s really fun to chat people up and introduce them to eachother and discuss topics or learn new things (for example I spent an hour chatting with a flight attendant chick once and she told me all sorts of fun stuff about the job that I’d never have looked up on my own).

It’s hard to wrap my head around the appeal of order-in pizza and a DVD night with the same girl (who’s letting herself go a bit since you’ve been dating for a few years) who saves lingerie and her sexy dresses for “special occasions” like once a year on Valentine’s Day while the rest of the year you guys have fallen into boring routine one night a week sex and who won’t let you go out and do the stuff I described above because she gets jealous or insecure.

Like, I honestly can’t see the appeal in that lifestyle because that’s how biased it is in my head compared to the fun I have as a single guy with social skills, but I know a lot of people want to settle down and that’s their goal in life…more power to them, I hope they find whatever they’re looking for and live out happy lives that are exactly what they want…but THIS is the stuff that I love. Even if I don’t go home with a girl, I have a blast socializing.

I used to go out from like 8pm - 2am, pub/bar-hopping at the start and then hitting a nightclub around 10 - 11pm. I didn’t drink alcohol so I just ordered waters all night, and went to bars/clubs that didn’t have cover, so in the summer when I didn’t have to pay for coat check the whole night would cost me a grand total of $15 for a cab if I miss the last bus home and a few bucks for some after-bar food.

  • TWTTWN

P.S. I’m fully aware someone can go “Well you admit that’s a story pieced together so every Field Report by PUAs is completely made up by nerds who would otherwise write Star Wars fanfiction”. But remember I have 6+ years of proactively instigating nights like this, if you went out and socialized as much as I have, you’d see that nothing in this story is exaggerated.

693

Yeppers. Nightclubs are good because they’re full of a TON of chicks who will never remember you if you embarrass yourself, which is great when you’re starting out. And they’re a sexually charged environment which is a blast as you get better at escalating things sexually.

But I’ve caused a scene at pool parties, quiet practically empty lounges, street festivals, stores in the mall (I get everyone in the store involved when I’m clothes shopping haha from staff to customers to passers-by as I flag them down for opinions), hobbyist group gatherings, nerd conventions (booth babes, ahhh I love them), you name it. Hell I’ve sat with random people at food courts. The skills flow through your whole life…it’s a complete 180 from the hermit nerd lifestyle a lot of us grew up living.

  • TWTTWN
694

No, what I’m saying is that your techniques don’t appeal to me. There’s no problem with trying to shake a woman’s hand when you meet her, but if she doesn’t want to shake it, going all “whoa whoa whoa baby don’t be like that! I don’t bite! ;)” isn’t something I see myself doing, and I’d personally find it repulsive. She doesn’t want to shake your hand, you don’t push it, that’s what I’ve always heard. I’m curious to see what’d happen if you tried that on ZPG Zealot. :wink:

I guess you’ll tell me that I need to establish myself as an “alpha” male and push women into doing things they (pretend they) don’t want to do, in order to be seen as a suitable partner. It starts with handshakes and then goes further; I’ll have to get up to date in this thread (and since you don’t mind, I’ll be doing that and posting other responses), but much of what you’re saying seems to be that: women must pretend not to want anything to do with you, especially not sex, or else they’ll be seen as sluts. You have to allow them to offer token resistance but push it so that then they can agree while claiming that they didn’t want to. You may be right up to a point, but I don’t think it’s the rule that you claim it is. My first girlfriend, for one, is the one who had to tell me directly that she was interested in me. My second one I’m the one who made the move, but I don’t think I ever had to “push it”. I had to push my own mental defenses, of course, but she always seemed willing. Of course both these women didn’t have armies of female friends to control their behaviour. Or perhaps your “rule” is more of an American thing. I’ll see when I get further in the thread.

Oh, and I also really didn’t like your jokes about roofies earlier, that you say you make as part of your seduction process. I definitely wouldn’t make jokes about that, as I don’t think it’s anything funny. I guess like all humour it’s circumstantial; what makes it funny is a question of time, place, and who you’re talking to, but I’m curious to know what the women reading this thread think about that.

695

I’ve been reading this long thread and the linked material, and the other threads where PUA has been submitted, and I’m not trying to be insulting but I really do see how PUA could be, at least for some of it’s enthusiasts, both an escape from and a manifestation of Aspergers.

696

That’s totally fine. Lifting weights doesn’t appeal to me. But the appeal of it to me doesn’t affect that lifting weights will result in having a muscular physique.

Ya, I used to think guys who were forward/aggressive with a girl were assholes too. I was under the same social conditioning as every other Nice Guy. That was before I understood why girls find those things attractive (based on their actual reactions in the moment and not what they logically say they’d do when posed with the question).

You don’t follow her around night and day going “Why won’t you shake my hand!! SHAKE IT DAMN YOU!!!” but there’s nothing wrong with a little playful teasing with a charming smile.

Some people don’t like touching others (like Howie Mandell is a germophobe), and that’s fine. When you meet a lot of different people you learn to notice the signals of that (if their body language is closed off, you don’t tease them into shaking your hand, but if they’re otherwise outgoing socializing people, it’s fine to tease them). This comes down to social calibration which people who don’t interact with others much (computer nerds and such) haven’t developed…but CAN develop if they want to put in the work.

Don’t think of these as “rules”, think of them as “guidelines”. And down the road when you have solid social calibration you can break all sorts of “rules”.

But the reason they’re hoisted as adamant rules in PUA literature is you take a Nice Guy and tell him “Don’t buy a girl a drink.” because that’s one simple little rule and it’s easy for him to remember. I could write 2 pages worth of details on situations and circumstances where it’s totally okay, or even MORE attractive, TO buy a girl a drink…but I’m also very experienced, have excellent social calibration, and I understand those nuances inherently. If a Nice Guy newbie who’s trying to stop being in the friend zone with girls reads that 2 pages, he ends up getting “paralysis by analysis” where he’s too busy calculating stuff in his head to react well in the interaction or enjoy it.

So we say “The rule is: Don’t buy a girl a drink.” After you do it for a while, you gain the reference experiences of the nuances of where it’s okay to buy a girl a drink but telling you about those nuances at the start will just make you second guess yourself.

Where are you from, anyway? Like what culture were you raised in and are you a part of right now? Attraction works the same regardless of where you are, but the level of acceptance from the society depends on the culture. ie - only the Nice Guy “White Knights” will have a problem with me playfully teasing a girl here in North America, but if I flew to a foreign country that’s way more uptight about sexual relations and I did the same things, the attraction would still be there but the girls would be less able to act on it and the guys would be more aggressive/angry at witnessing it, so I’d have to adapt my approach to the culture.

You DEFINATELY shouldn’t, good god. Part of why newbie PUAs creep people out is they shoot further than their social calibration is at. So you get a guy who’s still super akward and has body language like Michael Cera or the kid who plays McLovin’ in Superbad trying to whisper dirty things in girl’s ears or drop innuendo and they can’t read what the girl is feeling so it completely freaks the girl out. Yet you take someone like Will Smith or Russell Brand and they can say totally outrageous things and get away with it because they’re socially competant and they know when and how to deliver those jokes.

Baby steps. :slight_smile: This is a loooong process.

Yep, this stuff can give people with Aspergers a structure to follow for interacting with others. But that doesn’t mean that PUAs all have Aspergers anymore than a 5 year old who doesn’t understand the unwritten rules of social interactions yet has Aspergers. A lot of well-adjusted normal fun guys who are decently successful with women already pick up PUA as a way to enhance their results or because they find it interesting.

The overwhelmingly common backstory for guys who end up studying PUA is simply that they didn’t put themselves in many social situations growing up and no one forced them to be in them. They were the kids who were happier playing with blocks on their own in kindergarten instead of with the other kids. They were the kids who hated gym class because they weren’t on any sports teams and didn’t know how to interact with other guys in a competitive/alpha situation. They were the teenagers who stayed in on weekends to read books or play videogames or pursue hobbies instead of going to house parties like other teenagers. They were the adults who ended up in male-dominated anti-social industries (like IT jobs, computer programmers, etc.) instead of working in mixed/female social industries (bartenders, restaraunts, general service/sales-industry jobs). They’re the guys who spend hours a day on the computer typing on message boards instead of arranging events with friends. They’re the guys who stayed in on weekends watching (socially-conditioned) movies about relationships and flirting instead of actually being out on dates learning what actually works.

I used to tease my best friend about how he basically only used his apartment to change clothes and nap before heading out to the next dinner, party, study-group, etc. He didn’t even have a TV or decent computer because he was never at home alone enough to use them, he was always on the go, a social butterfly.

There’s nothing wrong with the akward guy as a person, it’s just that he has way less experience in social interactions than his counterpart so in adulthood he comes across as having stunted social intuition which definately looks similar to Aspergers.

One of the key differences is that usually these guys will be totally normal when they’re around close friends that they’re comfortable with, it’s when you put them in social situations or in front of women that they freeze up and can’t understand what’s going on. I had no problem interacting with people once I got to know them, and I was always a bit alpha in my hobbies because I was good at them, but I had no experience interacting with women, especially ones that I was interested in or that were interested in me.

Naturals who are good with women didn’t just become that overnight, it was a lifetime of building up to it. Pickup is a method of compressing a lifetime of social interactions into a very short time (thus we go out so frequently and interact with as many people as possible) to catch up.

  • TWTTWN
697

Oh, I know that; I’ve been reading about this stuff for 2 1/2 years now. But it seems like every guy who really gets into this and gets good at it goes through a period where he’s practicing a lot in the bars and clubs just because you need that sheer volume to get good. Which raises a question–isn’t getting good at this kind of a full-time job in and of itself? I mean, when start out you have to memorize material, get a ton of practice, always be on your toes and self-analyzing in every social interaction, take the time to reflect on what you did right and wrong and maybe get your field reports critiqued when you get home… how can a guy who also has to deal with the pressures of a full-time, real job do this?

I definitely believe you, but I identify somewhat with what Hypnagogic Jerk is saying; namely, this sense that “I just can’t see myself doing that.” Not in the “oh, woe is me, I could never be cool enough” sense, but in the sense that I’m not sure I want to become that kind of person, that it would involve giving up too many other things in life that I value. I don’t really want to be a “life of the party” type of guy, you know? I just want to have my good books, my contemplative/slow-paced hobbies, my laid-back evenings with a few close friends–and companionship and intimacy with a physically attractive girl to go along with it. It just seems kind of unfair that to get a good-looking girl, you have to become a life-of-the-party type of guy. What of the more quiet, contemplative life I want to lead–wouldn’t the postive-thinking, self-confidence promoting PUA say I shouldn’t give up the things I hold dear?

698

It CAN be. I had a lot of fun learning it so I threw myself into it pretty hardcore. Now the skills are just something that goes on in the background. I can grab phone numbers from girls at the bus stop, walking to work, while shopping for groceries, etc. I like to go to clubs still just because I enjoy the environment as a whole, but I’m not going specifically to chat up 10 people a night like I was when I started. I don’t have to break down my night and analyze it because I already know where I went wrong or why I did well, and I don’t have to read or practice material because I’ve developed the instincts to be able to say whatever I want and make it work (thus why I can pull off telling girls I’m going to roofie them). And I don’t have to think about how I’m coming off in an interaction because it’s all just flowing in the background and comes across to me more as a general “vibe” than the specifics.

It all comes down to how dissatisfied with your social/sex life you are. That’s why guys who haven’t hit absolute rock-bottom can’t change, they still cling to a little bit of hope that they can do what they’ve always done and get different magical results and they see all the PUA stuff as work. You have to get to the point where you’re ready to do whatever it takes to turn things around and make significant changes in your life. It’s kind of like how people who don’t really care about their weight can’t stick to a diet, but when someone is told “you’re going to die if you don’t lose weight” by their doctor, that person has the motivation to stick to a diet.

You don’t have to be the life of the party to be attractive. That’s the route I go because I learned I enjoy all the chaos of it. But if you’re already a pretty confident guy who’s happy with his life and just doesn’t know how to get women to see him as an attractive guy, you just need to follow some basic guidelines. Stuff like not supplicating, being decisive, having standards of what behavior you’ll tolerate from other people, not being afraid to state or defend your opinions, being able to hold eye contact, not seeking rapport in a needy way, that it’s okay to flirt and playfully tease a girl, how to get a girl to see you sexually instead of just as a friend, etc.

A lot of those things, like holding eye contact, being decisive, having standards, etc. you might already do with your male friends or girls you aren’t attracted to…the vital part is being able to do those things with hot girls you ARE attracted to, when they’re standing in front of you looking you deep in the eyes, smiling all cute and batting their eyelashes which is when most guys turn to mush, stumble over their words, do whatever the girl asks, doesn’t call her out on bratty behavior, buys them drinks/presents/dinner/etc.

It’s just way faster/easier to learn those things when you’re out interacting with a lot of people at a time because you rack more reference experience up.

You may totally find some gorgeous girl. The problem is where are you going to find her? If you (not you specifically, but the hypothetical guy who wants to meet a good-looking quality girl) wake up in the morning in the apartment you live in by yourself, drive in your car by yourself to work where you work in a predominantly male office, go to the same little diner you always go to to buy your lunch, take it back to your desk to eat it there, drive home after work by yourself, then sit inside your apartment reading, contemplating, etc until Friday where you go for a beer with a few close friends at a half-empty pub full of old men and you sit at a table all night…where in there is a girl going to stumble into your life?

You could make little changes: try taking the bus or subway instead of driving. Try going to a different place to eat every day. Go for a walk at lunch and eat outside somewhere or in a food court. If you don’t care about your job in particular you could take a job in an environment where more women work. Stuff like that means there’s a chance you may stumble into that girl.

But even then, you have to hope that in the event of the fluke of some new girl showing up in your daily routine, that 1) she’s good-looking (if that’s what you want when you picture your ideal GF in your head), 2) she’s intelligent, has her shit together, etc. (personality-wise she’s your ideal), 3) she likes you back (even though you’re not putting in any effort to show her what a great guy you are since it’s too much effort to try), 4) she makes a move on you (since you’re too introverted to start a conversation, let alone a flirty one), and 5) she doesn’t have a bunch of problems (low self-esteem, bipolar disorder, baggage from childhood or past relationships, no motivation to do anything with her life, lack of a sex drive, etc.)

Like, it can happen, and it does happen, but that’s leaving a helluva lot up to chance. There are guys who end up in their 40s without having ever been in a relationship because they were waiting around for the universe to send them the perfect girl. That’s a long time to cling to hope, and some of those guys die alone.

Other guys just take what the universe gives them and put up with a crappy low-quality girl who’s rude to them, gets fat, cheats on them, etc. because they know they don’t have any other options…then backwards rationalize that she’s what they always wanted and convince themselves that “it’s not so bad” because they subconsciously know they’ll never have that amazing girl they used to dream about.

  • TWTTWN
699

The thing is, not everyone leads that sort of life- in fact, whilst I don’t doubt there are a lot of people who do, I’d argue it’s not typical. I have to agree with what a couple of other people have said earlier- not everyone wants to be the life of the party, and I’d further suggest that there’s going to be a significant percentage of people for whom PUA techniques Just Don’t Work anyway.

700

Like I say, lots of people live perfectly happy lives as-is, and that’s cool. As long as you’re happy with your life, that’s all it comes down to. It’s like lifting weights, not everyone wants to look like Schwartnegger. But if you do, that’s what the weights are there for.

The basic guidelines of pickup (how to generally be more alpha/confident/attractive) can be useful for a normal guy who just wants to improve his business relationships or marriage.

The in-depth stuff is for the guys who need a full overhaul or who like a lot of variety in their romantic/sex lives. :slight_smile:

Far as the techniques not working for some people, I’ve seen deaf PUAs, extremely short PUAs, old PUAs, fat PUAs, balding ones, ones with bad acne…it’s hard to say “well being confident just won’t work for a large percent of people” because, well, why wouldn’t it? Long as they put in the effort.

  • TWTTWN