Kidstrangelove sent in a link to a video of self-proclaimed top PUA gurus attempting to demonstrate their craft by picking up a hot talk show host. He wanted to know if I agreed that the PUAs embarrassed themselves. I saw the video (which has now been made private) and do agree that the PUAs do not come off looking very suave. If this is all I knew of them, and I was in the market to learn game, I would not give my money to them for instruction.
But to be fair to the parade of men who threw their worst best game at a female talk show host who was anticipating their moves and relishing the thought of humiliating them on live TV, they were playing against a stacked deck. Few men, no matter how smooth they are with women in real life, will come off looking good under those circumstances.
So I cut them a break for their woeful performances. But this does lead one to wonder why high profile PUAs would risk certain embarrassment and discredit to their business model by hawking their skills on a talk show where all the rules are in the female host’s favor and the whole thing is a set-up to entrap the PUA into making a fool of himself. I doubt even Mystery — a man who has certainly banged more hot babes than 99% of the men in the world can claim to have banged — would do well in such a distorted scenario.
The only explanation that makes sense is that the desire for fame exceeds common sense. Maybe these guys think “Hey, I have a low chance of avoiding humiliation by doing this, but the TV exposure will certainly redound to more clients for my workshops and more chicks on my schlong.” They might be right; who knows, I don’t see their financial or bedroom balance sheets.
“Bro-town”
Kidstrangelove then linked to this post by a guy named Rob Judge (reputedly one of NYC’s best players), who eviscerates (semi-justifiably, in my view) a lot of the silliness that passes for PUAdom.
The Pickup Artist is no longer someone who walks among us. The term, once a secret endearment to men on the Internet, has become a label of satire and shame. To aspire to be a PUA—or the ever-lofty mPUA—is now, ironically, the most rAFC you could do. Because The Pickup Artist is dead… […]
Let me ask you this, Pickup Artist: If you weren’t allowed to tell anyone you got that girl’s number, would it still be cool? Would you still take her number and run like a thief in the night? Or would you shift your focus from getting #-closes to actually trying to get girls.
In fact, that brings up an important point: Why ARE you doing this? Why are you studying pickup material, involved in the community, and reading this blog? Is it to meet awesome women? Or is it to get the awesome approval of guys?
See, almost every guy will scream at me, “It’s to meet awesome women!” But what do those same guys scream when they do meet awesome women…”LAY REPORT BRO!!!” These same guys who claim they’re out to meet women are the first ones on the Brag Express with a one-way ticket to Bro-town whenever they do anything that resembles meeting an awesome woman.
Lay reports can serve as a useful learning tool for newbies, as long as they are written in the spirit of knowledge sharing and analytic insight. But too often, they degenerate into bragging matches, and that’s where the douchery rears its ugly head. Back in the day, on sites like Fastseduction.com, lay reports were gold mines of insider knowledge about the workings of the female mind; today, more of them resemble the chest-thumpings of frat boys and nerds speaking through Casanova avatars.
As those who know me very well know, I ring the death knell of The Pickup Artist because I want to see guys actually meet and attract awesome women. And The Pickup Artist will not help you do that. In fact, the first thing any guys who wants to meet and attract awesome women has to do is sift through his intentions. He must remove any inkling of “Bro-town” from his approach. I challenge you not to tell a soul about your “infield accomplishments” for a full month and see how much better you are at attracting quality women.
OK, so this guy Rob Judge is marketing himself by positioning his business model as the antidote to widely assumed PUA hucksterism and douchiness. Nothing wrong with that, but it does suggest his slam of the PUA community should be taken with a grain of salt.
The useful advice here is that you should live your womanizing life as if the opinions of men didn’t matter to you. In real life, I rarely broadcast my pickups. Truth is, I can’t be bothered. The allure of recounting in vivid detail last night’s seduction with a bunch of male friends lost its appeal after legal drinking age. Sure, if I take a call from a really good friend the next day, I’ll tell him about the chick I scored. That will never change. But most of the time, my pickups, my flings, my one night stands, and even my long term hookups, remain shrouded in shadowy mystery from the eyes of acquaintances. Often, very good friends won’t meet my girlfriends until a month after I have been dating them. My friends don’t seem bothered by this; in fact, they admire it, because it shows I’m serious about the effort I put into romancing women.
This attitude imparts my lifestyle with a bit of gravitas and, more practically speaking, allows me a measure of control over my relationships (and my ex-relationships) that would be harder to attain were the whole world to know every detail of my licentious misdeeds. And it does matter for pickup success; when it’s just me versus the women of the world, and not me and my bros versus the women of the world, I can better focus on the task at hand. Women will know, too, if your motives are tainted with anything but achieving the heights of pleasure with them.
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