I first heard about negs online. I thought it was just a backhanded compliment like I used to do in sales. Now, I’m not so sure I have it right. I never read any of the books or anything. I think the mature thing for me to do would be to admit that.
Nevertheless, I don’t believe in the very premise…meaning, I don’t believe you can teach a dork to be a don.
Can it happen once in a blue moon? Yes. But that doesn’t negate the scam. The shit is bogus. Not fair to the guys out there who truly are trying to improve themselves.
Someone should take the time to convince them to just get out there and practice being social with women…not sucker them out of their money on a set of tricks.
Kk, and in turn I shouldn’t imply that you are one of the dogmatic anti-EP guys. If you’re open-minded but all you’ve seen is junk so far, I don’t take issue with that position.
So, what do you recommend instead: that a guy should wait until he sees a woman who looks like a dream girl and only talk to her?
Now you could say “Why does it say approach lots of women? Why not say (to the hypothetical shy guy) approach lots of people?” and I would appreciate the sentiment. But one answer is that for many men they are more comfortable in the perceived lower risk situation of striking up a conversation with a guy than a woman, so they hardly ever do the latter.
So it’s more helpful to give them a kick specifically in that direction.
I don’t think so. Much of the advice concerns considerations of what women are looking for in a prospective partner, and what turns them on (yes, all generalizations of course), and then giving it to them. Actual PUAs don’t consider what they do to be mind tricks, people external to this say such things.
Yeah, they don’t call it mind tricks. Just like con artists pushing lose weight quick schemes don’t call it a ‘diet’. They call it a ‘cleansing’ or something.
PUAs come up with language to say, “Oh, the debunkers out there think we are playing tricks. We aren’t. We are just ‘considering what women are looking for’.”
Absolutely not, I was agreeing that the best approach to gaining confidence is talk to everyone, not only the people you want something from. There are other reasons to talk to the opposite sex besides getting laid.
There’s no “risk” in talking to people unless you are gambling on something to gain or lose. Reducing other people to wins and losses is where this whole thing turns seedy and gross.
Call me crazy, but if you want to know what a woman wants, don’t ask other men. Ask her.
I did not mean you especially at all. The PuA movement has been debated before and many posters there expressed dedain and disgust for it.
Your viewpoint is clear from your OP. You say guys either have confidence/swagger/charm/social skills or they don’t, and anyone pretending that this stuff can be taught, is setting them up for a disappointment, so, is in effect scamming them.
I think you are right up to a point. All my other opinions have been said better by other people in this thread.
I shouldn’t say that social skills can’t be learned, though. They can. But by sheer practice. No one has to be duped out of their hard earned dollars for that.
No, I mean risk as in e.g. risking rejection. The vast majority of people of both genders find rejection unpleasant and many people can quickly get into a pattern where they do anything to avoid it, even if it potentially means missing out on happiness.
That is crazy. Even for a person that is consciously aware of what things are most important for them to be attracted to them (and of course personality-wise, few people have or are aware of such a template), it would be a big turn off for many people to have someone ask what is wanted and then do exactly that.
The appeal to PUA is that it is a concrete system that allows the guy to get tangible feedback and work on it. For an awkward, spergy guy this makes sense since it cuts through all the inconsistent and irrational quirks us hugh-mons possess.
They see seducing women as this linear system, almost like a video game. They are too impatient to simply learn the natural way on how to interact with people. A lot of the misogyny comes from a kind of self-loathing I think; they define their self-worth by the type of woman they can get. If women they are interested in reject them, its like they think its because they have no value.
Ridiculous. PUAs telling men what women want is the height of presumption. Taking advice *from men about what women want *is the height of futility.
If you want to understand women, spend time in their company, not in the company of men out to make a buck off your naïveté. Ask them questions. And you know… listen. People looking for a one night stand (men and women) will flirt, make sexual innuendo, proposition one another, get physical with potential partners, ask strangers to go home with them. People looking for a relationship will tell you who they are, what they want out of a partner and out of life.
I agree with much of what you’re saying there, so maybe we’re talking past each other.
I’m talking primarily about early on meeting someone. Ice breakers. How to come across initially. Of course you can talk openly about what you both want in a relationship, but you’ll never get to that stage if you always come across as needy and anxious in the first 60 seconds.
And you might say that it’s obvious to not act that way early on, but it really isn’t. People get stuck into patterns of behaviour and vicious circles of negative expectation -> shy and awkward -> bad outcome -> negative expectation.
Also, while our hypothetical shy guy may have female friends that reassure him all the time and say he’s a great guy but just needs more confidence it’s not specific enough advice and it doesn’t give an obvious path to improvement.
If “be yourself” and “be confident” were sufficient advice then hardly anyone would ever have any problems.
Think of PUA systems less like a scam and more like a placebo. The patient thinks he can now safely interact with women, and so he starts interacting. He thinks he sees results because of the system, rather than the fact that’s he is no longer on the couch playing HALO. They probably see as much rejection as they would have, but now they can blame their inexperience with the system, rather than that snazzy plaid/stripes combo they picked to wear.
Honestly, I think you and many people are taking this stuff way too seriously. Ranging from “OMG! Some cheeseball with bad game is trying to pick me up!” to “OMG! They are applying PUA technique to mental health treatment!”
This isn’t splitting the atom here. This is guys going to bars and clubs, trying to get laid. We used to do that in college and in my 20s three times a week. We get dressed up (sometimes outrageously), pregame a bit to get our drink on, go hit whatever party, bar or club was on the agenda for the evening and then spend the next five hours drinking and talking to girls. Eventually, most of us matured and got married and whatnot.
The point is, it’s just supposed to be having fun. So what if a bunch of dorks want to overanalyze social dynamics to teach other dorks how to get better at meeting women?
I disagree. What makes someone a “dork” or “don”? It’s all appearances and behaviors. Well appearances and behaviors can be learned and changed. Maybe you won’t turn him into Barney Stinson. But I think with enough guidance, a person can be reinvented to at least comfortible around women.
I find there is often a disparity between what women think they want intellectually and what they actually want emotionally.
Oh, is that what they’re selling…teaching men to be ‘comfortable’ around women? Or are they pretending to have all kinds of tricks to turn painfully shy awkward men into Lotharios.
I’m not like, “OMG! Nerds are learning wimmin magic!” I’m more like, “Yeah, so the PUA market is a scam.”
Who is taking it seriously? Those of us complaining find the whole poser scene to be amusing or at worst: annoying. It’s not extortion; it’s just another way to separate men from their money. PUAs aren’t rapists; but single women might want to be aware of the game.
To me it’s a cop-out, an excuse to avoid being realistic about what you have to give and what you deserve in life. But it’s not a travesty or anything.
There seems to be a natural tendency on the part of young males to resent those who have power over them. In the dating world this leads to a lot of misogyny that is present in PUA circles. Also since only young men who are socially awkward would need this kind of training there is going to be alot of rejection at first. Having techniques means that this rejection can be explained with “my technique needs work” and not “I am a loser who will die alone”.
Social awkwardness can be a downward cycle. Awkwardness leads to rejection, rejection leads to low self image, which leads to isolation, which leads to more awkwardness.
PUA techniques are focused on the women but to the extent they work is how the change the man. Since all PUA artists are young men it should be unsurprising that they are focused on sex rather than meaningful relationships since that is what interests young men.
Also the nature of the internet is such that an ad that says “Learn to bed any woman you want with mind control techniques” is going to be clicked on more than an ad that says “Improve your odds of finding a girlfriend by learning how to be less awkward”. As a salesman I am sure the OP understands about using hype to draw in customers.
Yeah, I get that. I mean, puddlegum, I have worked for programs that were closer to scamming the customer than I ever wanted to be. I get it. But a scam is a scam, and I call it like I see it.
Like I said, when I was sent Florida to train a new team, I didn’t dare pretend I was going to teach them to sell like I did. That would have been my company scamming the company we were helping. Instead, I pretty much admitted that I would be teaching the agents to “improve their odds of finding a girlfriend by learning how to be less awkward.”
And it’s not just young males, for the record. Many very young males already are very comfortable with women and some older men never get there.
I get the feeling there is some comfort to some men in believing that everyone can be like Brad over there, if they just study it. But, if we are realistic, we know that people are different.