The Pick Up Artist movement is about teaching men to troll women and get them in bed. You have links to support your point, please share. (Your “occasional troll” disclaimer noted.)
I should have chosen different terms and been more clear, I didn’t mean financial stability at all. Please note that I’m all for the pizza delivery guy in post # 154
I couldn’t think of an appropriate descriptor that encompassed “personality deficits and assets”, friends and family ties, and interests, hobbies, and activities.
You can check out The Game, the PUA movement, the link to the PUA thread Lamia shared, and the PUA message boards for more information, there’s quite a bit more to it than merely casting a wide net. It ranges from seedy to sinister, and very little if any of it helps lonely single men become better people.
I wasn’t talking merely about financial stability either. But what your language proposes that a man “deserves” no more than his “assets” (however you define them) can buy, then why not use dating techniques to improve one aspect of those assets (sales ability)? If a woman thinks of herself as having some valuation relative to other women that only a man with certain assets (looks, charm, personality, wealth, whatever) can afford, then why shouldn’t men approach such interactions as a sales transaction?
But does it get them more dates? If so, then obviously there are women who like the results. If that’s the case then women are getting what they want, so I don’t see a problem. If it’s not what women want, then they won’t get dates, and there won’t be many of these studied “players” or whatever roaming about. I have no fear that self-help programs like PUA are somehow going to create a society of horrible men. People are already pretty horrible. I don’t see anything in here that’s any worse than what we already have.
I don’t disagree that it is possible to teach men how to improve their “game” and that men can’t learn something from the PUA movement.
However, it is plainly obvious to me from shows like The Pickup Artist, books like The Game, ads for courses, dating experts and clips of speaking engagements found on YouTube that the PUA movement, if not a litteral “scam”, is very much a self perpetuating self help/public speaking industry. It almost seems to run like a pyramid scheme. Mystery learns from Nick Strauss. He teaches some random guy on his show to be a PUA. That guy starts doing speaking engagements and courses and teaches the weird Asian dude in my link. That Asian guy starts doing speaking enagements and teaching others. It’s selling herbal supplements.
Then you have the question of whether it’s even a worthwhile pursuit. How many random girls does a guy need to bang to compensate for the fact that he couldn’t get any in high school? How much time does one devote to this “hobby” before it becomes creepy?
I don’t want to steer this conversation way off track because I used a poor choice of words. The “nice guy” who gets no exercise and rarely leaves the house except to go his very specialized IT job may not be the best fit for a lively, active, gorgeous model at the bar and no amount of wishing and posing will make her rush into his arms. He may want that girl, he may feel that her date is a poor match because that guy isn’t as financially succesful or predictable, the nice guy may even feel that because he is a reliable employee and a law abiding citizen that he deserves her attention, but he would be wrong. That guy should probably limit his search to women who share his hobbies and interests, i.e. staying indoors, keeping a predictable routine, technology, etc.
The problem lies in the unrealistic expectations that lonely, gullible guys invest in the PUA movement and the rampant misogyny cultivated by the PUA movement. Women go to bars to find dates, to hook up, to meet one night stands, too, so there is no need to “game” them, insult them, or lower your opinion of women in order to find a connection.
As far as I know, the PUA “movement” is pretty much played out, and was popular until it was outed. The weirdness of “The Game” is that the author set out to write an expose, but finally admits that he got sucked in by the idea that women can be trained to follow you home, and instead of an expose, he ultimately attempts to co-op the tricks into a user-friendly format. The Game isn’t quite as blatantly ugly as the initial PUA movement, but still requires the practicioner to devalue the opposite sex. Fortunately it is poorly written and Strauss’ bias is obvious from the get-go, and Strauss comes off like a real cheeseball in interviews, so hopefully it’s getting less and less mileage as time passes.
There just can’t be that many PUA trying these “super-level techniques” (whatever they are called) or it becomes a self-limiting game. There just can’t that many people doing it or they would no longer work.
If in fact these super-level techniques actually “work.” As everyone knows that the overblown claims are ridiculous, but it’s probable that some of the more mundane stuff is actually useful for some people. As I’ve never seen the show or read the book, I can’t tell personally, but I know that getting advice on how to meet people was useful for me.
And now we’re commodifying men. Really? People never find someone simpatico outside their own pre-set categories? Opposites never attract? People don’t experience new things in life by meeting people who expose them to new things? Wealthy, geeky, IT workers never land lively, active, beautiful women? As stupid as “gaming” sounds, I can’t say I’m very comfortable with this kind of stereotyping either.
How much are any of them really investing? Do they buy a book, attend a few seminars? Is anyone going broke? Is anyone being driven out of their minds? And you say it’s played out anyway. So it doesn’t seem like it has really done much harm.
The PUA movement has cultivated this kind of “rampant misogyny”? Excuse me while I laugh out loud. It sounds to me like you’re merely describing our society as it has existed for a long time now. I can’t believe that this tiny “movement” has had any social impact whatsoever.
Well, yeah. It’s always much easier with the aid of a pimp.
Beyond a message board discussion? Probably not. It did blow up in the mid 2000’s, and there were a couple crappy movies with the theme, but it wasn’t a big deal and probably still isn’t worth mentioning unless someone brings up the topic. I find the whole PUA thing distasteful and feel it sets unrealistic expectations and encourages gullible guys to lower thier opinions of women. And I doubt my opinion will have any impact on the genre.
But if one guy needs a tiny push in the other direction, that reassurring him that he can in fact, meet people by being nicer instead of meaner, being himself instead of pretending to be someone else, behaving normally instead of “peacocking” and meeting women with whom he has ideals, hobbies, and a lifestyle in common rather than setting his sights on someone so far out of reach that his goals are unachievable… then this discussion served some small purpose.
Sure, as the exception rather the norm. Am I the first person to tell you that romantic comedies aren’t documentaries? I think that if the copy guy at Kinko’s takes a break from a WOW marathon to pay a PUA to convince him that he can pick up Kate Upton at a bar is beyond the reach of self-improvement seminars and should save his money. Sue me.
Yeah. About a year ago, I posted this thread.
Basically, it was about a fellow salesman who I named Slick Willy for the purposes of the thread. He was literally pushing a pyramid scheme at work.
The thing about it is, Slick Willy was one of the best sales people when he was selling (By the time he started the scheme he was no longer selling). He was already the type who really could work a pyramid scheme to work out for HIM.
All the people who he was pushing the program on didn’t have an iota of the flim flam grease that Slick Willy had, and he liked it that way. He knew they would make him money, while not making any for themselves.
This is the same thing…only the people who are already Slick Willies really benefit, and everyone else are suckers.
On that show The Pick-up Artist, I heard on E news or something that one of the ‘contestants’ was touted as a nerdy writer or something, and it turned out in real life he was a model. Ha! Of course he was. It really seems like a very corny movie where the girl takes some ‘popularity lessons’ and then pulls off her glasses and ponytail and all of a sudden she is the most popular girl in school, with Marilyn Monroe sexuality.
I think most people have a negative reaction to the idea that there exist certain biases in the human mind that can be known and taken advantage of by others. Social psychology departments all over the country study biases and heuristics people use in decision making, and that researchis consumed by advertising and marketing departments of all kinds of different companies. Why these biases exist (evolutionary pressures, social conditioning) is up for debate, but the fact that they do is well established.
Given that we’re all just hairless apes, it seems plausible to me that women might unconsciously use similar heuristics when initially evaluating the possible fitness of a mate.
“Is he socially dominate?”
“Is he confident?”
“Does he have the approval of the peer group?”
(Note, I am not saying that PUA techniques are even close to scientifically validated methods or reproducible, only that I find plausible the idea that there might be certain exploitable biases common to many people).
If you give a person $500 they’ll be happy. If you give someone $10,000 and then a few minutes later give them another $500, the incremental increase in subjective utility most people feel from that extra $500 will be significantly less than the person who had $0 and received $500. Most people aren’t too bothered by the idea that car dealerships uses their knowledge of behavioral economics when offering $500 “cash back” off of a $20,000 car rather just selling it for $19,500. The salesmen know that people feel better when they frame it as a positive event for the consumer and will likely lead to more sales.
However, mix calculated exploitation of “stupid human tricks” with sex, relationships, and the male/female dynamic and you open a big can o’ worms.
Yah maybe. But the real thing is superior than the imposter, and I can’t see how anyone can expect long term success by pretending to be someone he isn’t and learning to think less of the women he so desires in the process.
That’s one way of putting it. But bear in mind these “stupid human tricks” aren’t some peripheral thing that is only relevant in PUA type situations.
All of sexuality is a cognitive bias. I wish I could pick what I find attractive but I can’t.
And these “biases” are a feature of every relationship whether anyone was trying to play to them or not.
Personally I don’t see the difference between a guy buying a nice suit to look more presentable versus making a conscious effort to appear more confident and calm than he’s feeling, say.
I’m not a pick up artist, I’m fairly certain I’m not a misogynist, and for the most part I roll my eyes at the entire “spitting game” concept as hard as the rest of you but I think there seems to be this anger and vitriol that the ladies have against this industry that I simply don’t share.
Not to pick on MsSmith but her post really struck me:
So really it should be as harmless as weight-loss, wrinkle cream, or 5 weird tips to lose belly fat, no? I mean, ultimately the goal is to pick up women, not rape women. The sex (in theory) is still consensual. Nobody’s really getting hurt unless except if the product is faulty and that’s just a textbook example of buyer beware.
Eh. It’s a pyramid scheme in the sense that there are less suppliers than consumers but then you could say that industry itself is a pyramid scheme. I’d say it’s not a pyramid scheme because the money isn’t being flowed upwards towards a single Bernie Madeoff (also you’ve got the hierarchy wrong. Neil Strauss learns from Mystery and becomes “equals”). In fact, there are many different “schools” of game. Some use psychology, some use hypnotism, each with their own kooky pseudo-scientific name attached and branded. Also they hate each other. It might be hokum but it’s a free market hokum.
Here’s where it gets patronizing. When people of both genders look out at lonely men and scream “jeebus, how hard is it?” Well, I don’t know. I do know that some guys just can’t throw a baseball. They look ungainly and awkward. Left unchecked, they’ll just go on throwing a baseball that way for the rest of their lives. What’s wrong with them shelling out a few bucks and learn some social interaction tips?
These PUA’s are gracious enough to go out into the “field” with their students and teach hands on. That’d be more than what you’d get out of a course on investment or real estate.
No matter the “school of thought” the basics are the same: project confidence, be interesting (even if artificial and superficial), and smile a lot. It’s not like they’re going around spraying pheromones or trying to control women’s minds with the healing power of crystals or anything. They’re teaching rudimentary social skills and some guys need that booster seat.
Yes, it’s easy to look out on these guys and scoff. It’s also easy to point out that these 'techniques" work almost exclusively on the feeble minded (girls). Duh. But the anger? The danger? The vitriol? I don’t get that part.
I prefer withering disdain. Peacocking, sarging, negging, Kino escalation ladder, good guy game, Grand Master PUA… holy shit here’s a glossary. It’s pathetic.
Just want to point out its msmith and I believe he is a guy.
Yeah, seriously, “how many girls does a guy need to bang”? Come on. There’s nothing unusual about young men wanting more sex than they have. That’s common and biologically ingrained and really in this respect there’s no difference in this respect between men with a lot of “assets” and the despised WoW geeks.
A lot of this sounds like loser-bashing. A guy who doesn’t already get as much sex as he wants obviously shouldn’t try to get more sex because he’s a loser and doesn’t deserve it. The creeps. No scrubs, please.
Bullshit. Please take the time to read the links provided. The WOW geeks aren’t despised unless they think a cheat code will help them trick women out of sex. There’s no shortcut to life experience and broader horizons.
Personally, I would be trying to trick women into sex, not out of it. But maybe that’s just me.