Prekigeo,

How is asking a short question manipulation?

Girls will view being approached with stuff that can be identified as PUA material as manipulation.

Other than watching the Pickup Artist on VH1 and posting about some funny weird stuff in the thread related to it, i didn't have exposure to PUA.

After on-off reading of this thread, i used the power of the internet to check some things out..

Found a video of Mystery and Matador "In the Field", Mystery turned out to be one of the most boring people i've watched ever. Most of his conversation points was scripted ( people only have 28k days to live, a magic trick with a straw, and kept rambling on and on about how he has "good" friends, and kept nagging that he wanted a cigarette, Plus people would see the cameras he was using to film ).

In addition to that maybe 3 of the 4 women that were shown in the video as a "successful" pickup, THEY made the first move and initiated conversation with him, so i'm not sure how a dorky not very good looking guy would do using his technique.

I also checked out parts of a Juggler "Bootcamp" vid, this guy seems a lot more down to earth, realistic and logical. He toned down a lot of the BS about PUA, and gave advice very similar to that of Henry or Arturius ( Basically comes down to, you being REALLY interested in the stuff you talk about, don't be boring, be fun, friendly, social, like yourself etc..) so i could see how people that don't know this stuff would find his advice valuable.

It still it feels wrong to me (scam-ish) to charge people ~1.5k to hear this advice, but people do this willingly and its their choice so whatever..

I spent some time reading the forums on Charming Arts. I just skipped all the posts except those made by members who were official instructors. The whole program is such a scam. I feel conflicted. When people are desperate they are willing to try anything so I feel somewhat disgusted that they are exploiting that but at the same time I think if people make stupid decisions and get conned they got what they deserved.

(first, a disclaimer and explanation of my background: i don't really have a dog in this fight. i've never studied this stuff or been any part of the pua community, but i'm interested in the idea of it. i have read the Game and seen the VH1 show and read the numerous 2+2 PUA threads over the last 5 years i've been a part of this forum. i also read a lot of blogs and have read the blogs of a couple pickup artists who are both phenomenally successful with women and tremendous douchebags)

arturiusX, when i read your post previous to this (the trip report), it sounded exactly like a trip report from a PUA blog. i think it's clear that all of the PUA supporters in this thread will read your trip report and think "what the hell is he arguing with us about? what he's doing IS pua." but of course you don't consider any of that to be what PUA is all about, because for you that's just "being human" and you have already decided that PUA is only about deception. and some of this arguing past each other has to do with you purposely trying to misunderstand what everyone is saying, and partly the failure of the PUA supporters to give you a good idea of the real essence of studying PUA.

the whole point to PUA is to break down social interactions precisely the way you describe in your trip report. alternatively, you could say the whole point is trying to see and design social interactions from the woman's perspective. if a PUA saw you in the field doing what you were doing or read what you wrote, they would say, "this is good, let's think about what exactly it was you were doing that worked and why it worked and how can we make that work for us." now it seems that PUAs will also use and recommend all sorts of shortcuts and tricks to imitate what you're doing without actually becoming the cool guy that you are (and it does seem like you've got it all figured out and what you're doing is working, but it's also pretty obvious you're a cocky d-bag as well) and you feel those shortcuts make the whole thing less than worthless. but you've overextended yourself in your argument in saying that it doesn't work, because that IT includes everything that you're doing, and also the cheaper facsimiles that also work but are less honest. at the very least you should admit to the very real overlap between what you're doing and what they're trying to do.

i think a lot of what i see presented by PUA types is terribly stupid. but at the same time it's dumb to assume it doesn't work a lot of the time. for example, The Cube seems to be a routine that everyone in the community loves and recommends, and it's totally dumb and i couldn't make it work with my persona. but i actually can see it working on a lot of my very successful, harvard educated, attractive female friends. not all, but enough such that it's way better strategically than the mindless small talk that most guys use in interacting with new girls.

Henry keeps classifying PUA material as either obvious (1%) or counterproductive (99%). given the number of people who have improved their girl-getting abilities it's pretty clear he's wrong about the counterproductive stuff. i bet most people on this board have friends or know people who have improved at least a little in approaching girls just from being exposed to the basic ideas (and obviously this would be pretty easy to check). there's obviously the problem that the people who are helped by it are way louder than the people who aren't, so there's a sampling bias. and people know the girls they attracted because of something new they did but it's harder to count the number of girls you turned off. but ultimately i think if we did a fair accounting of it we would find that people are helped by PUA techniques far more often than they're hurt by them.

Henry's biggest problem is that while i do believe he is very intelligent, he has a very hard time understanding the perspectives of people different from him. and given his own somewhat extreme views and experiences, it's not obvious we should be trusting his opinion of what people think or how normal people would react. i think henry and arturius are both foreign, which excused them a little, but it's hard to excuse their arrogance in assuming they understand the mindset of the people who might be helped by studying this stuff.

a lot of the people on this board were the type of guys who spent a little too much time playing starcraft or pool or poker with their other kind of geeky friends and too little time thinking about social interactions with the opposite sex. i don't know how "normal" that is, but it is certainly normal in the population on this board, and personally from the population of people i know i know (from harvard, or in trading on wall street), even very successful and intelligent and decent looking guys, tons of these people have approach anxiety and are terrible conversationalists with people they don't know. for those people, even something as simple as reading the trip report that ArturiusX posted would help them think about approaching girls in a better way. and reading lots of those trip reports, and spending time thinking about it, can really help people in their interactions with women. because it all is "obvious" in that it makes sense when you read it, but part of the reason it works is because that actually isn't how most people act. and having interesting hobbies and becoming well read aren't enough for most (or at least a significant minority) people.

it's amazing that this thread has gone on as long as it has, since it's pretty obvious that this stuff helps a lot of the people who try it, even if it can't make you into a better person by itself (and may actually make you a worse person).

I've contacted the local branch of the people who study The Juggler. I plan to go out with them and see if it actually works. I'm a strong believer that most people over report their success.

Further, I have never made the claim that PUA can't help someone. It really depends on what an individual's starting position is. PUA is better then other behaviours but it is still a very bad strategy -- this means that for people who were doing the stuff that is worse than PUA switching to PUA would be an improvement. Replacing one bad method with a second bad but slightly better method is not a optimal strategy.


Nope. I was born in Canada and of Western European heritage.


I don't believe it does. I have yet to see anything but evidence that it doesn't. The people who keep defending it are still as socially awkward. They still don't know how to talk to women. They might be out a few grand for bootcamps but they still can't function effectively in a social setting.

I'm Australian.

i am impressed that you are actually going through with this and look forward to your trip report. even though i think you have some distorted views about normalcy, i'm sure you are much better than most at evaluating social interactions.

if you had spelled it out like this all along there wouldn't have been much of an argument. but you should understand that your many claims in this thread strongly implied that it would not help someone, so your first sentence here is kind of a stretch, and if you don't realize the impression you were giving about PUA not being able to help then maybe you are less aware of people than you think you are.

i knew you were canadian, i said you were "foreign", not that you were pakistani or anything like that. i think the fact that canada (and australia for arturius) seems so similar to the US might make you overestimate the applicability of your experience to the actual american experience.


i think a lot of the people i know in real life that have any experience at all with any of this stuff only have a very basic introduction to the general ideas. and because of that i would agree that i do not have any personal experience with real PUA in action. it is possible that the general ideas of how to think about different social interactions are helpful at first but once you delve further into the meat of PUA it actually becomes counterproductive. though you haven't come up with any actual evidence for that theory either.

i know that my brother was a total social retard until recently. he's a loner and an introvert, but a very sweet, generous guy, a classic "Nice guy" except he wasn't a tool and didn't feel entitled to the love of beautiful women just because he was nice. then he started hanging out with a couple of players, who, like arturius, wouldn't consider themselves PUA (and have never associated with PUAs or purchased PUA material) people but actually talk about what works and think about the nature of social interaction in a way that is similar to the PUA mindset. just having that guidance and constructive encouragement has totally turned his social life around and now he gets random makeouts in bars and pulls numbers pretty easily, and without having turned into a misogynist. you may see that as him just learning about a side of "being human" that he had neglected before, and i agree, but i also see that as a success of the PUA mentality, though in very general terms and not the specific routines that PUA might teach.

Why do I have a distorted view of normalcy? Regardless this is a pretty easy thing to evaluate. The guy either goes home with the girl or alone. It is a fairly cut and dry criteria.

My view is that it won't help most people. What PUA teaches people is bad and will have a very low success rate. That being said there are some people who would have an even lower success rate without it. This isn't an endorsement of PUA as I see it as going from 0.5% to 1% which is an improvement but still horrible. Since people are not limited to their current status or PUA and can actually choose a third option PUA is still never be the optimal choice.

Also, I maintain that the group of people is a tiny minority of guys. Most guys have better social skills than what they will gain from PUA. I think the bulk of guys fall into the non-social retard category but also not really too confident. For those guys PUA actually makes things worse.


I lived in the States and I spend a lot of time there. There is a greater difference between different geographical areas of the States than there is between Canada and the States.

I think the Horse Opener is more than enough evidence of that. That these students study this stuff and don't realize how socially retarded most of it is.

Your brother is not an example for PUA working. He just started spending time with guys who were comfortable and successful around women and so he picked it up from them. No one is claiming that isn't possible or even a good thing. The difference is that your brother's friends actually were successful with women so what he picked up was actually useful. That is very different than PUA which is designed with the goal of being easy to market to socially awkward guys. That is why it is packaged with its own lexicon, pseudo-science, and sob story about how the guru was once a failure with women too. The material isn't designed to improve a guy's ability to talk to women it is designed to sell. A proper PUA guide would be very "normal" so no one would pay $2500 a weekend for it. It is actually ironic because it is possible to teach a guy the skills to be more successful with women but a program that actually works would be very difficult to market while a program that sucks has a lot of appeal to the target demographic.

I guess you could define me as a PUA because I can do the PUA things, the difference to me is, I don't define my life around it. I have a gf right now, I go through months where I'm too busy to focus on girls, and I definitely never do anything to impress girls other than be myself. I don't shop for the latest trendy clothes, I don't work on my social contacts so I always have awesome events/parties to attend, and I don't try and re-invent myself. Nor have I ever used a pre-emptive tactic on any girl, everything by me is spontaneous and to the heart.

So if I'm the ideal 'PUA' type, why the hell aren't you guys doing what I did? Why do you believe PUA material is some short cut to becoming more like me? I mean, I don't really get with that many girls, I'm very whatever towards women tbh. I have a ton of female friends, girls who I'd never have sex with (and not because they're unattractive), because I think there's more to life then seeing women as constant targets. Hitting on and hooking girls (when single) probably takes a maximum of 2% of my life. Its just not a priority, because my self esteem is an evolved system beyond what fast glorification can do. So I may seem like, when posting a story like the above, that I'm a PUA person, but I there's key differences. I regularly sacrifice hooking up or having sex with decent women for entertainment or to do other activities, something a true PUa disciple would never consider.

Like I said before, guys see women as the ultimate unattainable, hot women are they one thing they want constantly but 90% never have. Our sex drive reminds us of this more than any other want or desire. The belief that setting benchmarks can somehow show that we're a better person (benchmarks ie scoring with girls) is built on a faulty belief system, and because of this I can't support that lifestyle. henry also sums up my critique on the system's effectiveness itself.

this is just based on your many descriptions of your social habits and most importantly your contributions to the many OOT tipping threads. for example in a recent thread about that loser who stiffed the waitress who shared a shot with him, several times you explicitly stated that anyone who ever goes out would have a perfect understanding of what was implied by that whole interaction. and based on that thread it's clear that you do not understand the depth of social misunderstanding that exists out there by a large number of a people. for some reason you assume people understand way more than they do about social interactions, when people who actually understand what is going on and why are the exception.

based on some of what i've already said i predict a trip report from you that claims any actual witnessed successes were pretty much guaranteed anyway, vastly overestimating the social ability of the these people before they learned any of this stuff.

since you've rejected out of hand all first hand evidence provided by people who are actually in this category and claim it helped them, what evidence would you find sufficient to change your view on this?

don't disagree with this, especially with regards to toronto or montreal. i was trying to provide an explanation for you not understanding a part of the american geeky guy experience that you clearly do not understand. but since you do not agree with me on that i don't expect that you would embrace your being canadian as an excuse.

i find it hard to believe that all of these self-professed gurus (and there is no central coordination here, these guys are almost all independent) are making **** up. i understand being cynical, but there are a lot of people for whom there is a lot of evidence that they were once clueless with girls and now clean up. to me at least, it seems like you're just putting your head in the sand here. you essentially discount every one of their stories because you find the idea objectionable, so because you already think what they're describing is impossible it's easy to dismiss them all as snake-oil salesmen. but taken together i think the more rational thing to do is question your original judgment that the whole enterprise is fraudulent.

here is a guy who writes a pickup themed blog:
http://www.rooshv.com/2008/day-game-workshop
and the link above is him selling his services to work in small groups on "day game" in DC.
i chose that post because it gets to the heart of your skepticism (it's not about theory, it's about selling something). if you read over his overview of what he's trying to do, do you really not think something like that could be helpful in meeting strange women on the street?
(and to pre-provide my response to your response, i think you overestimate the ease with which most people handle interactions like that)

http://vksempireofdirt.com/?p=1028
this is the blog of one of his "wings". his blog is not as focused on pickup, but he certainly talks about it often enough
http://roissy.wordpress.com/the-sixt...ments-of-poon/
here's another guy from the same DC pickup circle. roissy is a tremendously bad person, but it's interesting to read his blog nonetheless.

but taken all together, these blogs make sense if game works. none of them have good jobs or are that good looking. all of them swear by PUA mentality. this would be a 9/11-level conspiracy if this were all a plot to sell roosh's book and workshops. roissy in particular is clearly just a guy who likes talking about his worldview which is why he blogs. but all 3 of these guys are real-world examples of guys who have made it work for them, and even taking out a significant exaggeration factor they are very successful with women. now i'm not holding these guys up as people to model yourself after, but there are legitimate examples of people making PUA work all over. and it's just not plausible that they're all making up their previous loserness.

Arturius,

You still haven't responded to my assertion that your reaction to what your friend said and did was in fact being dishonest. You knew he wasn't being truthful. You knew thay he didn't need anger management. So were u lying?

i agree with you 100% that one of the major flaws of PUA is defining social worth or life success as how many "notches" you can get.

but at the same time your participation in this thread from the beginning was almost entirely to brag about how this is easy for you. not just easy, but so easy you can't even understand how people wouldn't find it easy, and also it's easy even though it's unimportant. the problem is that your boasting is so thinly veiled. and LOL at the number of times you've deferred to henry's criticisms in this thread as if they validate everything you're saying. of course if henry "wins" this argument you can bask in the glory of being on the right side, but the two of you really haven't been saying the same things.

he wasn't being dishonest because she knew he was being playful the whole time. the part about going to mamma mia was true, and his dislike for abba was true too. he had to go to the bathroom and get drinks, so he used a fake meltdown as a joke. I don't get what you're saying?

You'll have to point out what henry is saying thats mutually exclusive to what I'm saying, because to me it just seems like 2 life perspectives that even so, are forming the same opinion based on the obviousness.