The Rise and Fall of Pickup Artistry
(music credit1)
In 2005, investigative reporter Neil Strauss drew back the curtain on the underground movement of pickup artistry when he published his best selling autobiographical expose´ “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists”. Suddenly men of all ages gained access to a curated set of methods for meeting and seducing women. Thanks to the power of Internet forums, this gave rise to an entire industry of “social coaches” who charge lonely men thousands of dollars to attend bootcamp-style workshops. This typically involves spending a couple of days learning party tricks to attract the attention of women, followed by “field trips” to shopping malls during the day and bars and nightclubs in the evening to practise these attempts at social manipulation on women they’ve never met.
To be fair, these methods and courses are, to some extent, effective. Having peer support and routines to follow instills confidence in someone who is shy or socially awkward. The “party tricks” of pickup artistry are designed to provoke favourable emotional responses and promote the illusion that the the “artist” is interesting, socially sophisticated, and romantically desirable. With time and practice, the pickup artist is statistically guaranteed to meet more women willing to spend time with him than a recluse who is too shy and awkward to make the first move.
If Pickup Artistry Works, What’s the Harm?
In more recent interviews, Strauss himself acknowledges how problematic pickup artistry is, going so far as to declare that “It was really a book about scared men who were afraid of women”2.
Very few illusions are sustainable, and pickup artistry is no exception. There’s nothing inherently wrong with social crutches like using party tricks to boost your confidence or stand out from the crowd. The problem stems from the other person being attracted to the illusion you created. If you are socially awkward and insecure by nature, but you managed to attract someone by pretending for a couple of hours to be confident and gregarious, it should come as no surprise when the relationship disintegrates when the facade slips. In other words, the problem for the pickup artist is a lack of congruence between their authentic character and the persona they adopt while “gaming”.
This incongruence is usually apparent to the more socially aware even before they come into direct contact with the “artist” and his party tricks. Once detected, any sense of connection and attraction wanes instantly when a woman observes the “artist” repeating the same approaches and routines time and again with different women.
The darker side of pickup artistry is the extent to which it subjects unsuspecting women to the clumsy advances of poorly socialised men. As part of their “training”, students of pickup artistry attempt to overcome fear of rejection by approaching women at random and seeking a date and their phone numbers. Reactions to a graceful, well-adjusted PUA tend to range between minor annoyance and flattery. On the other hand, the clumsy attempts of inexperienced men frequently provoke a sense of unease which escalates to primal fear as the men fail to respond to polite cues of disinterest and blindly persist in harassing their unwilling victims. This practice became so problematic that certain book stores in Sydney and Melbourne have explicitly banned social coaches from operating there, and security guards monitor for signs of suspicious customer behaviour.
Recent social activism such as the #MeToo movement has generated much greater awareness of the extent of harm suffered by women at the hands of badly behaved men. In a society where the slightest hint of misogyny provokes aggressive condemnation, the pickup artist community has largely retreated from the celebrity of “The Game” back to the secretive online chat rooms frequented exclusively by a mix of naive, confused, fearful, embittered, and lonely men, and the cynical “social coaches” who exploit them in their quest to learn how to be attractive.
Although he now recognises how troubled he was at the time he wrote “The Game”, Strauss also acknowledges how much the experience of the book transformed his social skills. By his own assessment, Strauss evolved from a lonely, balding “lump of nerd” who struggled to attract romantic partners into a widely recognised master of seduction.
What if we could distil the elements of attraction out of pickup artistry, and integrate them into healthy, authentic social behaviour?
The problem with pickup artistry is that it is disingenuous. It presents apparent shortcuts for building momentary attraction that lack the substance required to make it last. On the other hand, if we can identify the traits of attraction, we can begin the work to integrate these qualities into our character.
The essence of pickup artistry is to create the impression of four attractive qualities:
Confidence
Social competence
Skilful communication
Interesting and/or fun.
The routines and party tricks of pickup artistry allow the practitioner to fake these attributes within specific social settings, but unless they can consistently maintain the facade in other circumstances, the incongruence of their behaviour reveals the deception, breaking the spell of attraction.
In future articles (see: The Cultivating Attractive Qualities Series) we’ll focus on ways to develop attractive character traits in a lasting way that ensures clarity in relationships and an authentic, fulfilling way of life.
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How do you feel about Pickup Artistry?
I’d love to hear your thoughts about the topic - have you been approached by a PUA? How did you feel about it? If you have tried PUA yourself - how would you describe the relationships that came from it?
Music: "There It Is" Kevin MacLeod (Creative Commons: BA 4.0 License)
Interview by Tom Lamont, The Guardian, October 2015
To the extent that pickup artistry is congruent with the biology of human mating, pickup artistry will be useful and practical. Some skills will have to be learned and skill competence progresses through the 4 phases of 1) unconscious incompetence, 2) conscious incompetence, 3) conscious competence, and 4) unconscious competence.
Now let's consider male and female mating strategies. Let's call a strategy "game."
Women's game involves subtlety and deception. Makeup, pushup bras, falsies, girdles, high heels, cosmetic surgery, secret stalking, wardrobe malfunctions, etc. all involve subtlety. Women cannot be too overt or they risk crossing into male strategy territory and being perceived as unfeminine and forward and easy.
Men's game involves boldness. Men must approach women and initiate conversation. Men generally ask women to dance if they have mating motives. Men must be the first to expose their sexual interest in a woman. Men show their value via social dominance and their ability to be violent, We see that musicians in bands and mixed martial artists have women vying for their sexual attention. The same is often true for actors & male politicians.