Along those same lines is the “PUA” video for wheelchair users. :rolleyes: Fucking pathetic.
My opinion is that it’s scamming the men buying it, as in, literally paying cash money to be told “If you just follow these techniques and say these exact words, then you can make any woman in the world do your bidding” [bolding and emphasis mine]:
It’s a scam not because those methods don’t work, but because they only work for the people who are already smooth enough to pull them off. It’s like someone’s selling a line of books and seminars called “How to Win an Olympic Gold in Figure Skating: For Dummies”, and the advice is things like “Start off with a bang: quadruple toe-loop or quad salchow. Then you can back off a bit and display some artistry.” That’s all well and good if you already have the skills to actually perform those moves successfully, but if you do, you probably didn’t need that advice. And if you can’t even stay upright on skates, then yeah… you just got scammed. And worse, if you do try to pull of these moves right off the bat, you could injure yourself badly enough that you’ll never be able to skate. What you need - and you certainly don’t need to pay money to learn it - is to start small, and begin to get comfortable on the ice, and gradually learn to move around without falling down.
Or in other words, if you haven’t ever actually talked to a woman in a romantic context, don’t start off trying to neg the hottest woman in the bar into coming home with you tonight. You’ll only do yourself more harm than good. Maybe try something like saying “Hi” to a woman, with the goal being to ultimately have a five minute conversation with her. That’s it. Then practice, practice, practice until you could pull off a quadruple salchow in your sleep, but whatevs, you don’t even have to.
Now, the fact that many PUA methods could be fairly described as creepy, unsavory, misogynistic, dehumanizing, sociopathic, etc. is certainly not a plus in my mind, but it doesn’t have anything to do with them being a scam.
And again, no, while I’d certainly prefer for everyone to view other people as people, not marks or pawns to be manipulated, it’s not a scam to teach people how to manipulate others (if you can in fact effectively teach it). It’s not nice, but it’s not a scam.
It’s about as “manipulative” as wearing clothes that flatter your figure.
If someone were to lie in the opposite direction (e.g. claim to be single when in fact they are in a long-term relationship), that’s objectionable. But the other way round? It’s playful; I don’t see who is getting hurt by this.
<I haven’t ignored your post about the cites, will respond to that later>
And Heart of Dorkness nails it. HoD, will you sell me an expensive seminar so I too can post like that? My posts are clumsy, (fumbles with keyboard, it falls off desk) klutzy, and just downright rambling! With your EZ steps, I can post clearly and concisely for three easy payments of 99.99.
“You can have this product for four easy payments … I’d like to have a product that’s available for three easy payments and one fucking complicated payment. We ain’t gonna tell which one it is but one of these payments is gonna be a bitch!”
Mitch Hedberg
Really??
That’s all kinds of baffling. Wouldn’t telling someone I’m not available lead, y’now, normal people to decide “OK, he’s a no-go, on to the next one…”?
So this is a technique for those who want the kind of person who (since she will still come after you after being told you’re “taken”) does not respect others’ boundaries?
Never heard it called a “movement,” but this page refers to the “seduction community.” Can’t decide if that’s kewler or lamer.
And, yes, there are books.
I can’t say I’m a PUA expert, and I’ve never bought any of their stuff. I have read a lot of blogs and forums though, and none of the ones I read make that claim. They all pretty much say the smooth players are “alphas” and that it’s not going to work for Poindexter without him changing himself by becoming more “alpha” and assertive at least in the way he carries himself. If Poindexter works on his diet and exercise, dresses better, and works on his body language and all that before approaching women, then he is no longer “shy awkward Poindexter.” It’s not like he has no control over his own behavior and demeanor. There isn’t a god who made him and declared “You are shy awkward chump Poindexter and will always be lonely masturbating and crying yourself to sleep, no matter what you do in life.” They will also give different advice depending on 1-10 ratings and so on.
I imagine there are others out there more aggressively pimping products and more scammy, like in any business niche. But I’ve rarely come across anything that promises someone can be purposely socially undesirable and get laid like a boss by learning some negging routines.
That describes a lot of people, including (unfortunately) the spouses of many. Maybe I just know a lot of crazy chicks.
This is reflective of a subset of men who regard women as numbers (HB1-HB10) and whose go-to when their shtick fails to convince a woman to have sex… is alcohol. Don’t bother crediting a group of guys who exchange tips on tricking women into dispensing sex while barely skirting rape charges with any shred or morality. If you are disturbed by the lying game, whatever you do, don’t spend a single moment on a PUA message board unless you want nightmares.
I won’t link to anymore of that nonsense because the boards are similar to this and just as easy to pull up in a Google search. Certainly don’t want to give them more traffic and attention.
I normally wouldn’t post in a thread like this, but I like you Nzinga, Seated, so I’m gonna make an exception 
The PUA thing is a scam, and I feel really sorry for one of my co-workers who was getting sucked into it (although he hadn’t been spending any money on it as far as I know). But each day at work he’d tell me more tidbits about how he was going to be more successful with women by doing these little tricks and such. It really made him seem sexist and terrible to me. He also brought up his height a LOT and how he needed to compensate for it with these tricks and tips (he’s probably average height, maybe a little on the short side but nothing that stuck out too much to me).
What the hell are you talking about?
First of all, one person being scammed does not prove the whole thing is a scam. Otherwise just about anything you could potentially spend money on is a scam.
But secondly it’s not typical PUA stuff that your friend is talking about. They don’t say “If you’re short, you need to compensate for that”. They actually say “If you have hang ups where you think you’re too short / poor / bald, forget about it. Such things are far less important than your personality. The hang up just gives you a convenient excuse for not acting”.
I recommend Real Social Dynamics for a good perspective on such things.
BTW the talk about “alphas”, the very use of the term, is specially offputting to many outside observers.
(IME truly uncontrivedly charismatic people don’t go around calling themselves “alphas” or any other term of superiority to rub in others’ faces. It’s terminology used by/for the would-be gurus and/or the wannabes.)
Ah, the “no true playah” defense, Mijin? Those jerks on Strauss’ moderated forums aren’t true Sarges, huh?
I recommend bettering yourself as a person and throwing any untested, non-scientific, anti-woman PUA lit you stumble across in the trash. Mijin, we should stop.
Hee. This tickles me for some reason. Just how dead pan I picture you saying it.
You are the one doing the no true scotsman thing.
I don’t doubt that there are some people in the community that are jerks. It’s a big community.
But, many aren’t: I know it’s hard for some to appreciate but dating isn’t something that everyone finds easy. I am just taking part in this thread because I don’t feel there’s anything wrong with that and I hate to see guys get beat up just for trying to improve themselves.
And, really, accusing the whole PUA community of being about getting women drunk and raping them is bizarre to say the least. It’s either the opposite of, or tangential to, what the concept of PUA is about (depending on how you look at it).
It’s not anti-woman and it’s not either-or. I recommend finding lots of interests and trying to get as much as you can out of life AND listening to dating advice if you feel you need help in that area.
Sorry, but I am going to continue fighting ignorance.
When I was involved in this community, in the early days, I would often talk about the dating classes, and some of the advice therein, with women that I met. They often found it very interesting and attended some of the classes – there really was nothing to hide here, and certainly nothing anti-women.
I genuinely find it upsetting to hear all the anti-PUA rhetoric. Perhaps the community has got worse since I was involved. But since many times the anti guys mention cites that I’m familiar with, such as The Game, and make ridiculous claims about them, I doubt that this is the main cause of the anti movement.
This is exactly why I don’t understand why anyone would identify themselves as a PUA.
Would you mind sharing which “actual page” of The Game says this? Because there is an actual page of the book (217), that says that when a woman says stop the pick-up artist should NOT stop, because no doesn’t really mean no. “It’s not real. It’s just ASD – anti-slut defense. She doesn’t want you to think she’s easy.”
Only after the woman has repeatedly resisted his efforts to remove her pants (I mean that literally – Strauss describes the woman as pulling the man’s hands away as he tries to unbutton her pants) should the pick-up artist actually stop and do something else like checking his email, but not because he’s a gentleman who respects the woman’s wishes. No, this is part of a strategy called a “freeze-out” that is presented as a sure-fire way to get the woman out of her pants (p. 218) that very night. There’s nothing about what the pick-up artist should do if the woman wants to leave, because there’s no acknowledgment of even the possibility that the tactics described will fail.
But this is a long book, and I really don’t have the stomach to read through it. If there’s some other page that acknowledges that when a woman says no she might actually mean it I’d like to know about it, if only because it would make me feel better about the world.
I dispute some of your paraphrasing / summarizing, but I don’t have the book to hand.