The only social cues I have a problem with are dating/flirting. I’ve worked with the public my entire career, and have been very good at it. I’ve always had plenty of friends. Ms. P was totally direct in showing her interest; if she hadn’t been I would have missed out. I didn’t really know I was missing signals until the woman I dated before her told me she’d been giving them out from the time we met. Ms. P has told me women were looking at me in a “certain way” a few times, and I never noticed anything. The times I thought there was interest when there wasn’t made the anxiety go from serious to crippling.
That’s on me as that is the specific part I responded to.
Yes we are social creatures and being able to read social cues is, in general, important. I do however also accept the validity of neurodivergence as not equal to disability. We all have strengths and weaknesses and differences are not necessary “problems”.
I doubt however that PUA materials aided too many in learning to read social cues better.
Oh no question it ran into that knee jerk reaction, similar to how Pinker’s Blank Slate book ran into those accusing him of racism. And it is not the current leader as a hypothesis to explain autism.
That said whether based on intrinsic brain wiring or based on learned societal expectations, or most likely both to some degree, there is, on a statistical basis, a tendency for males to “systematize” (look for rules) than females.
One fairly recent study -
The idea that male and female gendered brains are the same, with gender being exclusively a sociological construct, is now the realm of the anti- trans radical feminists. Brains that identify as male on average tend towards systematizing styles, including those assigned female at birth:
There are brain bases that underpin gender identity.
Well I’ve tried to share my experience that it helped me, and many others who were doing the same materials, but clearly I am swimming against the tide in this thread, no-one wants to hear it.
For example, I found Real Social Dynamics had a lot of good social cues advice. I can’t vouch for what direction they might have gone after 2007 say, but certainly when I did the course it was a lot of generic social advice, not really pickup, even though it was mentioned in The Game.
I accept your testimonial. You are right I guess. Some of us (looking in mirror) have such a strong preconception about what these products were about (based on stuff like this) that we have a hard time hearing that despite its image and press there were also people like you who experienced it positively as basic social skills training.
Yeah, that kind of sucks.
I studied a lot of social dynamics in college. Not academically or anything (other than a social science elective). Just observing how people interact so as to navigate the social landscape. My college was a bit of an elitist party school. Lots of “scholar athletes” (rich jocks) and fraternities/sororities and so on. As it happens, my school had a lot more dudes than women, so everyone’s not going home with a date that night.
So IOW a lot of trial and error trying to pick up girls. Mostly error.
But from what little I have read of PUA techniques, I do recognize some trends that have worked for me:
- Being conventionally attractive - I mean…it doesn’t hurt, right?
- Peacocking - Doesn’t hurt to stand out a bit with some ridiculous conversation piece
- Isolating - If you’re with a group, at some point you want to go off somewhere more intimate, even if just to talk. Doesn’t have to be weird.
- Changing locales - If things are going well, taking her to a different spot for an after dinner drink or coffee or whatever can make the evening seem more interesting.
- I don’t like “negs”, but I’ve always had success with some light teasing banter. Helps if girls find you funny.
- Also don’t forget to entertain her friends (or have your friends do it). Last thing you want is one of them being all “I’m bored…let’s go home”.
When I was younger, I probably could have been a bit more assertive about asking girls out or making a “first move” on a date. But a lot of that comes with confidence and recognizing social cues.
I think some of those books might be useful, so long as you don’t treat it as some Jedi mind trick cheat code that will let you hack women out of their panties.
And therein lies the problem with the toxic incels. They do, or think that they do, all of those things and it “doesn’t work”. Well, yeah, it doesn’t work if you’re fucking creepy and entitled. They see it working for “Chads” and they get dangerously disgruntled.
Elliot Roger is the perfect example. He got the car and wore the clothes and used the techniques that he thought entitled him to women’s affection and went over the edge when he didn’t get it.
Maybe break out of a mindset where you see people for whom sex comes easier in life as living on a level superior to yours. Easier said than done, of course, just like not seeing people with more money as superior either. But the alternative is to subject yourself to frustration and empty aspiration.
What is the best thing a human being can do with themself? “Get laid a lot” isn’t really a deplorable answer, respecting the biological imperative and all that. But being honest with oneself is a more worthwhile imperative. At least start with developing a distinction between horny, lonely and bored.
Of the three I found lonely the worst. Bored I could deal with. Horny was frustrating, but at least I had a good right hand. Lonely truly sucked. Being convinced you don’t have what it takes to break out of it is a pretty horrible way to live your life. The fact that waiting and hoping someone would meet me, make the first move, and fall madly in love with me worked in my case doesn’t make it a good strategy. I was too crippled by anxiety and insecurity to do it any other way, though.
No, he didn’t. He got the car and wore the clothes and that’s it. He was so avoidant that he didn’t even try to talk to girls at all, he just silently hoped they would talked to him. If he had used some PUA techniques, walked up to girls with confident body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice, and sad hi, he might have gotten a date.
Most of man’s imperatives are in the pursuit of getting laid. 
I think most people want a life where anxiety and insecurity isn’t preventing them from doing things they want to do. Particularly when you are young and society sets all these expectations that it’s supposed to be the “best time of your life”.
The objections I read were cogent and considered, nothing knee-jerk about them.
A study that starts from the assumption :
the preference one has to study physical sciences or the humanities reflects one’s tendency to systemizing or to empathizing.
is absolutely as flawed as Baron-Cohen’s critics think, and my knee didn’t even jerk.
To the extent that there are differentlly “gendered brains”, which is an absolute crock of shit the way most people mean it, it doesn’t matter. If some university does not have a 50% gender ratio among the electrical engineering faculty, believe me, the primary cause is not a dearth of female candidates due to “empathizing” (also a crock of shit when it pretends there is a systematizing/empathizing dichotomy or that certain fields of study do not demand both).
Oh agree completely. Systemic sexism both implicit and explicit from early stages onwards swamps the field. And to the degree that an engineering program selects with no regard for the skills included under “empathizing” in that model, they create a less capable workforce. Being part of and coordinating teams of people is difficult without some social skills.
Still the “cite please” was for a claim that males tend towards wanting rules … and multiple studies document that (including brains of males assigned as female at birth).
I also suspect that those who are by nature less skillful at reading social cues are often more (in that model) systematizing individuals - looking for rules. (Whether or not any “spectrum” diagnosis applies.)
Decades of working with kids tells me that with them it’s not a male/female thing; it’s more of a stage of development thing. Many times I’ve seen 4th-5th graders spend more time working out what the rules are going to be than actually playing the game.
Why are you considering only the person using the manipulative and cynical tricks, and not the people they’re used on? Such tricks are most definitely not beneficial to them.
Nor do I agree that it’s better for the person using the tricks to become the sort of person who deliberately uses manipulative tricks on others than to remain a person who’s not getting laid.
The audience to improv is generally voluntary.
Have you checked any surveys to see whether this isn’t also true of the men who answer such surveys?
I suspect there’s also an issue with how the surveys are set up. How much description is given of the people available to choose from? If the only information available to make the choice is along standard definitions of “attractiveness”, then people are going to choose those who are more attractive according to those definitions, or else they’re going to refuse to take the survey. The bias is built into the survey, not necessarily into the humans.
Yeah. Is what’s meant a combination of wealth and physical appearance? Because such men often (not always) make terrible partners.
There are plenty of women looking for kindness and reliability. Of course, anyone using “manipulative tricks” is right out on both of those grounds.
And that is entirely useless when trying to deal with any specific person.
Nobody needs to attract a statistical majority of partners. They’d be crushed into an unrecognizable smear by the pile (as would most of the potential partners.) People, of any gender, who want a relationship and/or to get laid need to attract somebody in particular. And not everyone is attracted to the same qualities.
Of course.
The subject that the comment was addressed to was a population issue: why is/was there a market for something that advertised itself as teaching socially unsuccessful men some (mythic, otherwise secret) set of rules to “success with women” (as success was imagined to be)?
In that context a male brain bias, perhaps even more common in those who have less social skill agility innately, to look for rules over trying to put oneself in another’s POV emotionally, is relevant.
It in and of itself does not however explain why that decade (other than a generational bulge of single men in the pertinent age group).
It had nothing to do with individuals attracting other individuals.
In my experience women (and I am limiting my discussion to women because I don’t date men), will screen on success/wealth and to a lesser extent looks to a first cut. Once you clear that hurdle, kindness and reliability come into play. A sedentary dude with a giant beer gut living paycheck to paycheck isn’t going to get much play regardless of how genuinely kind he is.
That’s fair.
I think I went too far with my “devil’s advocate”. So let me clarify.
In my experience there weren’t any jedi mind tricks. It was all advice on making yourself more attractive, end of. Now, some of it was cheesy, and ineffective, like pick up lines. And what I was trying to say is that those are probably still a net benefit to guys, since if they get you out socializing and talking to people, your social skills will improve eventually.
And pick up lines are pretty much harmless to the recipient, as long as they aren’t lewd or rude.
(Yes there might be some degree of discomfort from even a polite pick up line, but that’s socializing for you – in any social setting, talking to people of any age or gender, you will encounter people with sub-optimal social skills.)
- but -
I agree with you, that if, hypothetically, there were mind games that a guy could use to trick a woman into bed that doesn’t really want to…yeah it wouldn’t be cool using those techniques. And, depending on how effective they were, they could even be made illegal. (e.g. if guys were hynotizing women or something, and it was essentially “date rape” then it might become a matter of criminal law).
I have not seen or heard of any such thing though.
And yet there are plenty of guys like that who are married with kids.
But a lot of women have wound up feeling pushed into sex with someone. There’s a really long distance between ‘legally provable as rape’ and ‘enthusiastic consent.’ And if there’s enthusiastic consent – then there’s no cause for “manipulative techniques”.
If what was being recommended was really just ways to feel confident about starting a conversation in appropriate circumstances, and ways to then properly ask somebody out in the course of that conversation, then I don’t know why “manipulative techniques” was used in your post in the first place.
And in an appropriate circumstance.
As I say, I just misspoke, while trying to play devil’s advocate.
I am not aware of any manipulative techniques.