I’m no model or god with women, dry spells to be sure, but I’ve never had a serious problem meeting women nor sustaining long term relationships. A few years ago I stumbled onto 'The Game' through a female friend, weirdly enough. It’s a book based on supposedly real events. Rolling Stone writer Neil Strauss emerges himself in the world of ‘Pick Up’, a quasi secret internet society – based in America but also spread around the world – dedicated to the sole art of picking up women. Strauss transforms from geek to smooth operator and delves into the skills he learned and describes the people he met, as well as his self transformation.
Strauss explains things here.I found the book initially very amusing, these wacky characters on some alternative lifestyle trip. Strauss is a good writer too.
Since then, the ‘Pick Up Community’ has grown exponentially, from a geeky and amateurish underground subculture, punching through to mainstream visibility (Strauss’ book was a New York Times bestseller) with accompanied gloss and sheen. These days, witness VH1, an American TV channel, which ran two seasons of ‘The Pick Up Artist’ hosted by ‘Mystery’, a ‘Pick Up’ pioneer and character who features heavily in Strauss’ book; similar shows continue to be produced, like ‘Keys to the VIP’.
Perhaps the biggest barometer of the movement is the slew of products from a gaggle of gurus who have their own websites, e-books, DVDs, seminars and live weekend boot camps where students are taught by coaches, and then are taken in-field to test their mettle – for a hefty fee.
The idea basically being sold is this: there are certain rules to social interactions spanning fashion, body language, verbal tonality, as well as what to say and when. Most gurus have simplified models detailing the various stages of seduction, from meeting a women to having sex. Although not all are so rigid, with some preferring a more ‘natural’ style of ‘game’. This idea – a blueprint for success – presumably appeals to people having no luck with their amorous approaches, or those looking for some fine tuning.
The theories, tips, tricks, and insights are mix of self-help, social psychology, psychiatry and evolutionary theories.
Since reading ‘The Game’, I’ve read a lot of the material out there, spanning most of the 'systems' espoused by various gurus. I used to think it was very funny stuff, almost absurd. But all is not harmless fun. At first glance things seem anodyne, guys meeting girls, and although there is a good side in purportedly helping guys with no social skills, it is also apparent that a lot of the material sold to guys is (expensive) vacuous marketing hype, which is ethically dubious in content and underlying philosophy.
So here are some of my pithy dissenting remarks about the ‘Pick Up’ scene:
-- I think there is a claim here to preying on male insecurity as women's gossip and fashion magazines partly do to women. The situation is often set up as such: ‘Are you too: bald, fat, insecure, old, tall, short, poor, inept, sexually stunted etc.’ ... And the solution is of course to buy the latest material .... 'then I can teach you how to meet any women you want, all in the space of 200 pages!' There is no denying that the ‘Pick Up scene’ is now a multi-million dollar industry with products priced in their thousands for a boot camp and hundreds of dollars for audio products and DVDs.
-- A lot of the theories are based on a narrowly circumscribed evolutionary theory of humans. ‘Push the right buttons, and she will be “hardwired” to respond.’ This is faulty namely because it doesn't take into account the role of real life personality differences and situations, culture, ideals, nor intellect. To me, there is something missing painting humans and women especially, as the sum of their DNA. Further, a lot of mating and flirting rituals are culturally formed, and transform culturally, so I am not sure that I agree with the hard core evolutionary argument often implicit in many of these theories. Pushing it to its logical conclusion, you should be able to walk up to ANY woman, ANY time and push the right buttons. This is clearly not the case and to assume so is mad. In a move of (to me) astounding illogicality, many of the systems state, or their gurus confess that ‘some women just don't want to be picked up and you just have to improve your odds by learning the material.’
-- -- A realist response is that the techniques work so it must be hardwired responses. However, the information that isn't revealed is the ratio of success to failure. It might be the case that certain women respond differently to different guys, and if so, it appears to be some other variable accounting for success or failure than tapping into their hardwired responses. The ‘Pick Up’ literature in general sweeps the problems of failure under the preverbal rug, insisting that following the method exactly leads to success. Failure is a result of not executing properly. This, it seems, would serve to internalise and personalise failure for the student; hardly helpful stuff.
-- Many of the 'Pick Up' gurus have a narrative: transform a socially inept introvert to a ‘cool’, smooth and attractive extrovert. While this may be admirable in some respects, it falters in others. Namely, it doesn't account for different types of people meeting each other. For instance, the theories assume that geeky (or insert any pejorative term) guys cannot meet attractive women. However, it seems reasonable to me to suggest that geeky guys can meet other geeky women, and geeky guys can meet (attractive or otherwise) women who like geeky guys. There is a lot of variance among people, and it’s not necessarily the case that a man need become a LA type socialite to a) attract women or b) live a happy life.
-- A lot of systems seem to be about borderline manipulation. If one gets into the material, you will hear a lot about 'frame control', 'alpha males', 'dominance' and such. To me, these are just euphemisms for doing what you want to whomever you want merely for the purposes of being 'attractive' or getting your way. Whilst this may be an aspiration for some, it is not something I need nor advocate. The people I am close to don't feel the need to dominate or manipulate others because the starting point is different: acting civilly and with virtue is just a good thing to do outside of the possible benefits you might accrue. A lot of this murky thought stems from the evolutionary point of view adopted: society is one big competition; men strong, women weak; men lead, women follow; men need to ‘take’ or ‘claim’ women and show dominance; men fight each other for women; men just need to figure out the right buttons to push on women to get them to work properly, that is, for them to work for men. While there may certainly be truths or half-truths in this puddle of thought, it all seems a little caveman, 20th century, and too black and white for me. It positions the lone male as the only active force against passive or mean-spirited females that need to be won over and conquered – a little base and basic. Essentially, women are dehumanized by being viewed as animals or machines.
-- A lot of the philosophies are very often narrowly utilitarian. That is, acting in a certain way is only justified because of the results you will get. This is ethically bankrupt. Many gurus teach things like: ways of stealing a guy’s girlfriend, ‘fake it to you make it’ to convince a women of your ‘worth’, an arsenal of ways for getting women to say ‘yes’ to sex if they initially refuse, and other assorted manipulative techniques to increase ‘compliance’ from women; i.e. getting women to do what you want.
-- You are what you eat. Likewise, you are what your teacher is because you adopt their worldview. A very small proportion of the gurus have long term girlfriends, wives or families. This is fine on the grounds that this might be what they want. A lot of guys shun monogamous norms, which is also fine. However, digging a little a deeper, and I get the sense that there is a lot of sexual addiction for the 'successful' guys in the community. A lot of the gurus claim to have a lot of sex. It appears that they don’t engage in what people in the adult world call, relationships of substance. Which again, is fine; I’m not one for preaching how to live your life. But I think it is important to recognise the underlying lifestyle that is being pushed here. A lot of the original gurus are now (oddly) approaching middle age, but it still seems that the material teaches you to get the girl, but not keep her. This makes sense in that the entire industry is called ‘Pick Up’, and not ‘find a nice girl to connect with and marry’. But I wonder what happens when the ‘pick up’ finishes and the relationship begins? Do the women realise they’ve fallen for a shell of a man? It would be interesting to read some retrospectives in 20 years time though.
-- A lot of the material is canned, even in so called 'natural game'. You learn what to say, what not to say, what to do in certain situations, what not to do in others, what to wear, what personalities to have, what jokes to tell etc. Although there is attraction in a rigid system and dogma for ease of learning, it is very robotic and hollow. Do you want to show women who you are, or what some guy has told you to be? This reliance on canned material also reinforces the underling psychological message: you alone are not good enough. This feeds into the business feedback loop: buy more products and we can cure you of your anti-social disease(s).
-- There is a limited pool of useful information; a lot of gurus recycle each other’s information (the web of former work associates is very tangled as companies go bust and others spring up) as well as there own, just in slightly different packaging, which leads to trench warfare among rival companies which are all vying for the average Joe’s desperate dollar, without producing much real innovation or really new ideas.
These problematic texts privilege biological responses as “truth” and position women's bodies against themselves by teaching men to arouse women and then to interpret this physical arousal as consent and ignore women's verbal communication.-- There is significant backlash now both from gurus themselves (sniping at each other) and from their clients. See sites such as this, this and this. It seems that the sell-redundant-and-expensive-information-to-desperate-guys bubble is about to burst. Many claims abound: fakery in ‘pick up’ videos, money back guarantees not honoured, appropriation of content, and marketing scams all rate high on the growing list of gripes.
-- There is also latent academic attention. One study finds that:
This refers to the essential aim of many of the theories: arouse a women emotionally and physically; this will override her logical objections. Again, not a very flattering or inspiring picture painted of women.
In summary, whilst there is no doubting that some of the stuff works, especially for people who are on the shy side, I would suggest to anyone considering getting deeper into the material to take what they read with a pinch of salt and a glass of gin. Indeed, with many of the ‘Pick Up’ products priced at thousands of dollars, and all theories borrowing heavily from psychology and psychiatry, why not cut out the middle man and go see a real shrink? It seems many male problems stem from a lack of self esteem and social awareness, and sexual anxiety. Real problems to be sure, but I’m not entirely convinced that the ‘Pick Up’ scene is tackling these problems at their roots, but rather, are offering one band aid per DVD sold or boot camp booked.
That's my take on the ‘Pick Up’ scene.
The New York Times has an 