Clarisse Thorn begins her deep exploration into the world of the Pick-Up Artist.
There is an enormous subculture devoted to teaching men how to seduce women. Within the last half-decade or so, these underground “pickup artists” have burst into the popular consciousness, aided by Neil Strauss’s bestselling book The Game and VH1’s hit reality show “The Pick-Up Artist.”
Pickup artists — also known as the “seduction community” — exchange ideas in thousands of online fora, using extensive in-group jargon. One pickup artist site lists “over 715 terms, and counting.” There are pickup artist meetups, clubs, and subculture celebrities all over the world. There are different ideological approaches and theoretical schools of seduction. Well-known pickup artist “gurus” can make millions of dollars per year: they may sell books; they may sell hours of “coaching”; they may organize training “bootcamps” or conventions with pricy tickets; they may run companies full of instructors trained in their methods. The community even generates its own well-thought-out internal critiques.
I am a sex-positive feminist lecturer and writer. I write primarily about my experiences with sadomasochism, but I have a general interest in sexuality. I first encountered pickup artists when smart ones started attending my educational events and commenting on my blog.
Some aspects of pickup artistry are hugely problematic; many parts of the community showcase and encourage misogyny. While exploring the PUA jungle, I observed things that turned my stomach and brought tears to my eyes. On the other hand, I had to admit that some pickup artist perspectives were very interesting. Some had fascinating insights about gender theory and social power. I also felt drawn by their exploits. Learning seduction, and watching hypothetically-dazzling Casanovas run a courtier-like game, sounded like an extremely fun way to spend my time.
I started my journey by talking to a few pickup artists and reading their fora. By the end, I had given a lecture at a seduction convention, and I had decided against developing my own coaching business. Within the next few months, I plan to release a pop-feminist book online titled Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser: Long Interviews with Hideous Men. In the meantime, I can offer a quick synopsis of my own history, and why I became so interested in PUAs. I will break down some elementary distinctions among the men of the seduction community. Finally, I will offer a few PUA-influenced thoughts on feminist goals.
To begin at the beginning …. I was an awkward little bookworm of a child, but at least I was creative. I liked to draw, invent games, and run amateur social experiments. When I was in high school, most of my friends were on the Internet; I did not date a real-life boyfriend until college. I was inevitably teased by my peers, but even when treated well, I rarely engaged with the social hierarchies around me. I had difficulty grasping how social mechanics were “supposed” to work. A lot of things seemed obvious to other people that were not obvious to me.
For example, in sixth grade, a female friend of mine teased me about flirting with a boy. “What was I doing?” I asked. “Come on, you were flirting!” she responded. While I thought I almost understood what she meant, I was unsure — so I set out to poll everyone I knew about what constitutes “flirting.” Responses were inconsistent. One person said, very definitely: “Giggling.” Others cited examples such as “intense looks” or “making jokes.”
By the end of this experiment, I concluded that no one seemed able to explain “flirting” in terms of consistent behaviors; there were few commonalities in my final list. From what I could tell, flirting could only be explained in terms of invisible interpersonal dynamics. I found this both entertaining and frustrating.
I sometimes wonder what would have become of me if the modern pickup artist community had existed back then, and I had discovered it. PUAs devote a lot of time to understanding seduction in terms of observed behaviors. They have terms for social tactics that run the gamut from creating rapport, to encouraging trust, to building sexual tension, to shifting social power. But although the purpose of these social tactics is to manipulate emotion, the tactics are typically described as concretely as possible. Some PUA coaches provide long memorized “routines,” but it is more common to talk about particular social actions or broader strategies.
One famous PUA tactic is called the “neg.” “Neg” stands for “negative hit”, and one site defines a neg as “a remark, sometimes humorous, used to point out a woman’s flaws.” Like many PUA terms, the deeper meanings and usage vary from PUA to PUA — but there is an especially dramatic range of meanings with “neg.”
Some PUAs see negs as friendly teasing: a way for the PUA to show that he is paying attention to the girl, without appearing needy or overeager. I can offer a cute example of this approach from my own life. I was sitting in a café with a former PUA, and he gazed deep into my eyes.
“Wait a minute,” he said slowly. “Are your glasses held together by epoxy? It looks like you had to repair them at the corners.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
He grinned. “Everything about you just screams ‘starving artist’, doesn’t it.”
This made me laugh for quite a while. I think it worked because he understood that I have chosen (for now) to be a broke writer — but he also recognized the tension I feel about that choice. So this gentleman was demonstrating that he correctly discerned my priorities; that he is not bothered by a choice that makes me feel self-conscious; and that he is confident enough to tease me.
Also, at a moment when I thought he might compliment my eyes, the former PUA shook up my expectations by breaking the romantic pattern. Often, effective flirting involves offering the right mixture of confidence plus charming novelty plus paying attention.
Some PUAs see negs more strategically, as a way of passing a woman’s “tests” or breaching her indifference. They argue that this is necessary for women who are very high-status, very beautiful, etc. They argue that some women develop a kind of immunity to compliments, and that some women actively prefer feisty, faux-adversarial flirting. Most PUAs only advocate using negs on women who meet a certain “minimum” level of attractiveness, or who seem particularly feisty. Neil Strauss, a famous PUA and author of the bestseller The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, once wrote that:
When you give a woman who’s often hit on a generic compliment, she will usually either ignore the remark or assume you’re saying it because you want to sleep with her.
When you tease her and show her that you’re unaffected by her beauty and demonstrate that you’re out of her league — and THEN let her work to win you over and ultimately REWARD her with your approval, she will leave that night feeling good about herself. Like something special happened and she connected with somebody who appreciates her for who she REALLY is.
In short, a neg will buy you the credibility you need to sincerely compliment her later.
That said, I don’t necessarily advocate negs; they are in many ways a temporary patch to stick onto your personality while you learn to possess real confidence and strength of character.
Although this is a manipulative approach, it is not inevitably harmful. It also is not limited to the sphere of sexual relationships; humans often pretend not to care what other people think, and consistently attempt to be taken seriously by others. Additionally, for many people, flirting involves a certain amount of strategic ambiguity and plausible deniability, and negs are a useful tactic for that kind of game. Not everyone likes playing such tacit and confusing games, but many people do.
However, this is all cute and mild compared to how some PUAs talk about negs: some cite the neg specifically as a tactic to make the girl feel bad.
A well-known PUA who goes by the name of Tyler Durden once wrote that: “You use self-esteem negs to lower the target’s self-esteem, and crave your attention to re-validate herself.” Similarly, an especially pitiless PUA blogger who is sometimes described as “the Darth Vader of PUAs” writes that:
The best negs are those which are conceivably meant as compliments, but which linger in her psyche for hours afterward, undermining her self-conception and encouraging her to qualify herself to you [i.e. encouraging her to explain why she’s worth your time]. … [A neg] infiltrates a girl’s subconscious so that she spends more mental energy analyzing her worth than she does analyzing yours.
One commenter adds to the above blogger’s words that: “So long as you have a woman auditioning for you, power remains where it belongs — squarely in your pocket.”
In other words, a person who feels anxious and unworthy will be easier to control. These cruel PUAs have learned the same lesson as thousands of people in abusive relationships.
Here is an especially instructive quotation from the comments on “Darth Vader’s” blog: “[Women] really are insipid, vapid airheads. If it wasn’t for the pussy, there would be a bounty on them.” That statement is interesting not just because of its hatred, but because of its fear. After all, no one puts a bounty on targets that are not dangerous. The most misogynist corners of the PUA subculture not only discuss ways to aggressively manipulate women; they also paint women as selfish, deceitful and hazardous.
The various approaches to negging highlight both the different shadings of opinion across the subculture, and a particularly important distinction among PUAs themselves. Some of these men genuinely do enter pickup artistry out of a desire to connect to women. As one PUA told me, “When I first looked at PUA stuff, I was like, ‘This is so sleazy and gross.’ But I’d never had a girlfriend, and I kept telling myself, ‘Dude, you are lonely and miserable and you don’t want to die alone.’” On the other hand, many PUAs become PUAs because they want unilateral power and control over women — and many PUAs attempt to justify this through narratives and jokes that encourage fear and anger against women.
* Footnote: I will link to this “Darth Vader” blogger, but I preface the links with a statement that — while he is very intelligent — he is blatantly cruel and misogynist and is recognized as such even by some other men in the pickup artist community. As the seduction coach Mark Manson once said to me, this blogger is “pretty much as bad as it gets.” Also, I have saved copies of the “Darth Vader” posts I cite — although this precaution is a bit of a formality, since I doubt he would have the sense of social responsibility to delete his evil posts even if he recognized that they’re evil. On the other hand, “Darth Vader” once deleted a post in which he acknowledged that he had committed partner violence, so perhaps even he has limits on what he is willing to admit in public. Or perhaps he was merely afraid of legal action.
With that preface, here are the “Darth Vader” citations:
2. The comment by a reader of his blog that said, “If it wasn’t for the pussy, there would be a bounty on [women].”
—Photo Alaskan Dude/Flickr
About Clarisse Thorn
I’m looking forward to the next installment.
My much too late commentary on comments is that most men (not 51%, but 95% probably) in the 12-32 age range are more than happy to date their peers. Men in the seduction community in this age bracket are not solely targeting the most physically attractive 10 or 20% of their peers. I’m going to speculate that the seduction community has a median age around 26 or 27. It’s probably composed of a lot of young guys (and some lesbians) who know they are lagging in sexual partner and girlfriend numbers and want to change things around. The peers of these people happen to be the most physically attractive women: women in their twenties. It’s unfair to say that these guys can’t find girlfriends because their standards for physical attractiveness are too high. Let’s not worry about “the creepy 40-year old guy who wants a 25-year old girlfriend” right now. How about all of the guys under 22 who are struggling to find dates?
Why even cite non-sources like this Vader character..? He’s obviously self-centered, immature, and bragging to the world about his abusive exploits. This kind of thinking & behaviour are about as far removed from anything that could be called ‘relationship skills’ as Charles Manson is from reality.
We can’t have good without evil. The abusive & deranged element will always exist… and it’s always been fairly easy to just ignore these clowns and the sideshows they live-out.
Charles Manson, very tragically, actually exists. He remains a part of our shared reality, in that A) the man still resides in prison, B) that the effects of his crimes will be felt by his victims’ (those who survive) and their families for the rest of their lives, C) and that his story is still invoked as a metaphor for hatred-fueled violence of unbelievably gruesome horror.
I appreciate Thorn’s introduction to a community that I had always ignored because I think they sound like a bunch of sociopaths. I am reminded that it’s a good idea to know how even sociopaths think, when they roam free in your neighborhood bars and libraries.
Even worse, this “Darth Vader” fellow is giving a bad name to every man writing into blogs under a pseudonym. People might get the idea that men writing under fake names are trying to hide something. What a terribly misleading idea. Dispense with that stereotype immediately.
I think Neil Straus is partly right and partly wrong about why “negs” can be better than regular compliments. An attractive woman is going to have lots of guys giving her generic compliments about her beauty while totally ignoring who she is as a person. She learns to associate the two. So the way to get to her is to tell her something she hasn’t heard a million times, this can be faux-adversarial teasing or it can be something more mild, it can even be a compliment as long as the compliment isn’t appearance-related. It’s not about who has to win who over, it’s about showing someone you see beyond their superficial aspects. The example of the guy who correctly identified you as a “starving artist” is a good one. In general, one of the best ways to win someone over–regardless of gender–is to be the one who sees the stuff about them that casual observers don’t notice.
clarise thorn looks pretty. pretty irish…. see? total neg. the safeword is.. marry me! summer and lightning at reverbnation im the dude with the guitar!
haha. I AM part Irish … I had to wear headphones in the street yesterday to ward off the fratboys
These guys who teach this stuff were all clearly nerds in high school who lacked charm and social skills, me and my friends got all the girls while they watched. Now they figured out that you can make money off of desperate guys who want to get laid and you can tell them anything. Lying to women is not sexy, being a man who is honest and works hard is. Why would you spend all that energy lying and manipulating a woman just to fuck her? Ive slept with enough women to know that if you dont trust who you are fucking it is the same as mastrubating . Save yer cash lads.
you know many lonely men seeks more than just sex? I can relate to many guys who enter PUA community because I was there too. I was a lonely, shy guys in high school. Many guys and girls said I’m handsome but I was too shy to approached a woman back then. I was really lonely and needs a relationship so I seeks advice from PUA. Thanks to some PUA advice on internet, I could have a relationship with girl I like. I didnt lying and manipulating her. And I dont want sex, I just want a relationship. Its maybe hard for you to believe, but I still a virgin now ( 22 years old, please dont laugh lol ) , I never have sex with anyone, even my girlfriend. I wait for marriage and so does my girlfriend.
One thing I find problematic with much of the PUA approach is that the whole concept of “seduction” is erroneous. It’s like a pick-up artist is actually convincing a woman who doesn’t want to have sex to change her mind and make her want to have sex. It seems to assume women do not really have any agency or any control over themselves, and seems to suggest they are pretty easily manipulated. The article of faith seems to be that women are so easy to manipulate that you can seduce them even against their better judgment and can therefore convince them to do something even before they’ve really thought about it.
I don’t think “seduction” ever happens, if seduction means convincing someone to consent to something she didn’t want to do in the first place. It’s a sweet, romantic illusion (though not always so sweet) but that’s not really what’s going on. It’s ultimately a negotiation, not landing a fish in the boat. If a woman goes home with you after meeting you in a bar, then on some level that woman went to that bar with an idea of going home with someone. In any case, you can’t “seduce” her into doing something she doesn’t want to do. She either chooses or she doesn’t. If she has sex with you, then at some level she has also picked you up.
A good lesson from the BDSM community (from what I understand about it as an outsider) is that being passive and being submissive are NOT the same thing. If there’s an interaction in which one person is active and the other passive, don’t assume that the active one is the one who has more control. Just because a man is doing the pursuing and the woman is the pursued doesn’t mean that he’s really the one in charge. That’s an illusion. There’s nothing wrong with playing the role as the “man in charge,” but don’t let the illusion fool you into thinking that you really are totally in charge.
If there’s a “game” metaphor, men are not the only players here. Women are not just pawns in a game or fish in the sea. They are out there gaming as well.
Yes, many PUA techniques seem to require lying and emotional manipulation. Often the practitioner is trying to hide his ulterior motives.
I just don’t think that the women being lied to are as fooled as the PUA’s think they are. I’m guessing for most women being picked up they know that they’re being picked up. I seriously wonder how many of those women are really thinking, “I thought he loved me and we were going to start a long-term relationship. I had no idea he was just interested in sex. Oh, how silly of me!” It’s hilarious that a pick-up artist thinks he’s very skillfully covering up the fact that he wants to get her into bed. Please.
On the one hand, I don’t know because I’ve never used PUA techniques and I’ve never been in a situation where a PUA used any techniques on me. On the other hand, I have plenty of straight female (and male) friends, and that’s what I’m forming my opinion off of. Basically, no one is fooling anyone. Generally speaking, a woman who goes to a pub/bar/club and goes home with a particularly smooth-talking guy knows full well it’s a one-night stand. I’m sure there are naive individuals out there who do get duped, but for the most part…everyone’s well aware of the game.
Since it’s so easy to invent a pop evo bio theory to explain masculinity, I thought I’d give it a shot. Here goes:
The men described as “beta males” tend to be the ones who are most influential in shaping the overall culture. They tend to be the artists, writers, movie producers, and advertising creatives. They tend to be the people shaping the culture that men live in. It is actually the beta males who are in control, contrary to what alphas think of themselves.
What we “betas” have done is convince the silly “alphas” that they are in fact in charge and that we are envious of them. The arrogant jerks have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. They are convinced that women are so enamored of their muscular he-man selves that their wives, girlfriends, or crushes would never, ever even consider having sex with a nerd like me. Inconceivable. No women that they want would ever want someone like me. No need to think about me as a rival. That’s just the way I like it.
Meanwhile, I will even pretend to be insulted and pretend to protest that “women only like assholes” and “what about nice guys like me?” Pretty convincing, eh? This strokes the alpha male ego and even encourages some gullible beta males to work themselves to death alienating as many women as they can, winnowing down the competition. We betas have driven the alphas to become risk-takers and workaholics. We even send the alphas off to war so we can spend time with “their” women in the meantime. We betas own the gyms where the alphas over-exert themselves and preen themselves in the mirrors. It has been economically quite lucrative.
We have been so successful in this deception that many would-be alphas have adopted these ideas practically as a religion. Their belief runs so deep that the “alphas rule!” ideology is now an article of faith. In fact, it’s become like “scientific truth,” even. Of course, my manly hero. Believe what you want to believe. Can I interest you in a frontline combat position? How about some dangerous work in a coal mine? Whatsamatter, not a real man?
I dont believe there is such a thing as pure alpha or pure beta, you sound to me like the kind of guy with a victim complex news flash I wasent that popular in high school either but I am a quiet snobby guy and I learned that the results of my attitude werent great and that nerd rage is fruitless. My problem with pua is trying to fool a woman into lettiing you fuck her If some guy tried that on my sister I would probably enjoy watching him fuck off. A girls heart is not your dick, its not cool to play with it, in the end you are kidding yourself and her, a womans heart is not your dick, dont play with it, youre playing yourself.
Trust me, but look to thy own heart- Irish proverb
The method works btw but it needs time and devotion for it to work.I am a pick up artist 4 years,and still counting.The first year was awful tho i was rejected so many fucking times that i couldn’t count.You guys can’t blame the pua community,you have to admit there are guys who need help desperatly. Sincerely Nikki