It’s not the woman who gets hit on that’s the victim. It’s all the other women the self-proclaimed PUA will ever encounter. A man who has willfully transformed himself from someone who sees a bar full of women as a room full of people into a person who sees a room full of targets, of stupid bitches that will collapse in the face of his clever mental tricks is not going to turn that off when dealing with non-pick up situations. It seems like the whole thing is an attempt to build confidence by saying 'Remember, you’re way better that some girl", and how is that a good attitude toward women in general?
I don’t believe that that’s an accurate perception of the PUA movement. I’m sure at the extreme edges you’ll find some dicks, or misogynists, like just about anywhere. But for most guys, the advice, and their attitude towards other people is similar to someone doing a public speaking class.
Hatred of it? Do you guys even read my posts or do you just have a handful of responses to PUA criticism that you think you can use interchangeably? I think some people are confused about what prompted this thread, but it wasn’t hatred. Check it out.
There was a thread on the SDMB where PUAs came up. Someone was mocking it, saying something like, “When someone says they are a PUA, I always think, yeah right.”
So, I said,
[QUOTE=Me]
Remember there was a thread with men getting down right pissed that we were telling them that pick up artist stuff was bogus? They were pissed. They were citing science and everything, boy.
[/QUOTE]
That prompted this:
[QUOTE= poster in other thread]
Their puny facts were no match for your preconceptions, huh?
[/QUOTE]
And so I started this thread to avoid hijacking the other thread.
I don’t hate PUAs. Some of them are good at what they do. I recognize the PUA community as a community of the scammed and the scammers. I don’t believe the junk that they are selling is rooted in legit science, I suspect that it is rooted in the junk science of Evolutionary Psychology or some such.
But, that is just my suspicion. I honestly don’t know what different tactics or angles they use in their scammery. I just know a scam when I see one, so if someone wants to imply that junk science is real science, I am going to give my opinion on that.
At MandaJO, I’m sorry. I just don’t get worked up about the ‘women are victims’ thing when it comes to this. It just doesn’t resonate with me at all. Other women see it differently, I realize.
Don’t sweat it, Nzinga - the rest of us like uppity women just fine.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear but I was not accusing you of hatred (though again I’m curious why this topic is of particular interest to you).
I’m saying the many past threads on this topic, and indeed some of the posts in this one, show a huge hatred of the movement that I don’t understand.
Hate guys who are dicks: fine. Hate guys who are trying to improve themselves: why?
EP is far from junk science. There are hundreds of papers on this that are well regarded and well supported with research.
What seems to happen is that people who are uncomfortable with EP (e.g. people that wish to believe the human mind is a blank slate), find some daft paper and use that as the basis for saying the whole thing is junk. The “why gentlemen prefer blondes” paper has been repeated and discussed about a million times and yet it’s one that has few proponents even within the EP community.
If finding one dumb paper is sufficient to reject a whole area of science then we need to bin the whole thing.
I can’t understand what you mean by ‘particular interest’. It makes no sense unless I view it as coming from someone who is feeling persecuted or defensive or something.
If someone says, “I really believe in astrology, and the scientific community agrees with me” I will respond “Lol, no.”
If the astrology believer then says, “Oh, I see, we are supposed to take your word for it, huh?”, I will want to respond to that. But not in a thread that is off topic.
Here is the threadthat I found interesting initially, that I referred to in the other thread. It went on for about 15 pages. I never even bothered to post again after page 3. I just can’t figure out this whole “You seem overly concerned with PUA” thing I’m getting from you.
OK, I went over to the Rico Suave PUA message board cited above and looked around. Besides being depressed at the realization that I’m just one voice in millions and with those kinds of numbers every voice is equally worthless, I did find one not at all benign tumor:
In the married men section, a husband is absorbing abuse from his wife for tarrying too long in the bathroom. He deflects this by either, by his account, not matching her level of combustion; or by perhaps being pointedly passive aggressive and inflaming her more.
She fails to spark a fight with him, so she takes it out on the oldest child (IIRC, a 3 year old. There is also a 19 month old present, in, what with the one-bathroom situation, is a modest living situation. He intervenes and hands her the car keys, telling her to come back when she is calmed herself. She does come back, with police.
As he’s relating this, he’s praising the PUA techniques he’s learned. She’s doing a “shit test,” which, in his newfound religion, is part of the game theory that determines everything under the sun. Now he has games to counter her, and a roadmap to control.
Totally negating the need for real mental health care. Police get involved, two vulnerable children are involved, who knows how ugly this shit might get, and he’s playing game theory. Real life’s problems are a bit more serious than “find 'em, fuck 'em, forget 'em.” Bi-Polarism, Bordeline Pesonality Disorder? Schitzophrenia? It’s all child’s play to Rico Suave!
Thanks Gyrate. I’m givin’ my opinion like a Bowse!
Spoiler alert, spoiler alert! No spoilers. I haven’t read it much yet. I am saving it for later, when I get home.
Mijin, I shouldn’t have dismissed all of EP out of hand, because I don’t know enough about it to do that. I only know of bullshit that is associated with it. Like PUA.
That is my take on it, too.
I haven’'t read it, but if that is true I agree that is a sad case of a guy who takes the “women as the adversary” attitude a couple of magnitudes too far.
Can you guys show me a post I have made where it looks like I am hating on guys who want to improve themselves?? I truly am lost here.
It all sounds fairly ridiculous to me, and I’ve seen some youtube videos of techniques in action that were fairly cringeworthy. However, I think the main point is really to give a guy the confidence to talk to girls in the first place. I would think that those who are successful users of the PUA technique use it only to give them confidence to walk up to a girl and then they don’t actually use a single one of the actual techniques on her.
Fine, I’m only too glad to hand the baton off to you. Barf bag attached.
Let me know if you find a post by a hostage negotiator: “Al Qaeda had a row of them buried up to their necks in the sand, with a buldozer idling at one end. But I just negged them until they were putty in my hands. Thank PUA!”
Wise words, stay away from Great Debates forums, that kind of open mindedness can get you in some serious trouble over there 
And you missed my point, to absolutely no one’s surprise.
Keep wallowing in this little corner of ignorance you seem to enjoy living in. I’ll fight it on occasion when I feel like it, but generally I’ll just leave you to it since it doesn’t seem like fighting it will actually benefit you.
So the most successful users of the technique don’t use the technique. That definitely sounds like a winning technique to me and definitely not scam-like in any way.
LOL on so many levels, here. I’ll leave you to your ignorance now that I see what I’m dealing with.
Okey dokey. And good luck, out there. Remember that just ‘taking the call’ and ‘asking for the sale’ will improve your odds.
I’m sure that Rand Rover is entirely capable of using the same persuasive interpersonal skills in real life that he continually demonstrates on this messageboard, and to much the same effect.
When I saw the thread title BBT is the first thing that came to mind, since Howard was always talking about such techniques in the early seasons. It was the first place I heard about “negs.”
Sven said this far better than I could:
The consensus of advice to shy, lonely guys is “put yourself out there and chat up everyone, even women who aren’t your dream girl”, so the trial by fire method of self-improvement seems universally approved. It’s the constant reinforcement that women are targets, conquests, marks, makes, and other synonyms for “less than you/less than human” that reeks. PUA are convinced they magiced a woman into bed, when she probably decided to go home with someone before the night started. Convincing vulnerable men that 52% of the population are just panting to be duped is pretty shitty, and that’s the crux of it.
I’ve seen it attempted several times, and it’s annoying, leaves a bad taste, but ultimately forgettable. Just made us feel sorry for the awkward douchbag who didn’t know how to be nice to women he wanted to play with. But I haven’t even heard my younger girlfriends mention it in years, so I didn’t even know it was still an active plan. Like **even sven **said, the guys drawn to this posturing may have already had a low opinion of women *and *the men that women like, so the negging and the objectification of “targets” probably stick before the potential boost in confidence. Is there an alternate self-help approach that coaches shy guys to approach a lot of women, show genuine interest in her, give her sincere compliments, and be up front about his desire to see her naked? If so, I’d love to support such a theme. Everybody should get laid all the time, with as many folks as they like, but the environment would be more hospitable if guys would just be cool about it.
PUA techniques don’t turn women into “victims” in the Oprah sense of the definition. That versatile word’s been weighted to favor women and malign men since the mid-80’s, and we’ll probably never get it back.I think the previous posters who referred to women as *victims *could have used targets interchangeably. No crime has been committed, that’s for sure. We can’t both claim we are smart enough to see through this weak game and also dumb enough to be duped; so no one has expressed dismay that PUA are tricking poor defenseless women out of pussy.
The frustration comes from the objectification of women, the negging, the peacocking, and the PUA community which is a fertile habitat for misogyny. Or well, misanthropy, since the community tends to pile left-handed envy on guys with natural charisma, too. No one will actually be improved by applying the technique, guys who frequent those communities will have their sour grapes mentalities solidly reinforced, and the divide between men who want to have sex and women who want to have sex will just deepen. Speaking for one woman: I don’t want to see more hostility and defensiveness between the sexes; I’d like to see less.