Aight, I actually have some experience in PUA shit.
I got into it as a teenager (around 15-16?) because I was asocial af and would literally choke up anytime I talked to strangers (not even girls, just anyone I wasn’t familiar with).
Guys that get into pickup artistry are mostly REALLY LONELY. Like really fucking alone. They don’t have a lot of friends overall and are socially awkward because for one reason or another they never got that formative experience growing up among their peers (many people that I knew in the community told of how they were bullied all their life, or lived an extremely sheltered life, or was neurodivergent in some way that made socializing really difficult for them).
And yeah, when they got into PUA they acted in some scummy ways. I myself acted in some scummy ways. And there’s no real defending it. But when you come from that history of profound loneliness and this constant feeling of being unworthy of romance and respect in any form, and then FINALLY you find something that seems to explain all this extremely confusing shit in a “logical” way that made a sort of sense the tendency was to believe any crazy shit you were told by the “gurus”.
Imagine you’re me: Most interactions I had had with girls my own age was to be ridiculed by them, or seen as the nice guy in class who you could ask for whatever and I’d just fucking hand it over to end the interaction quickly before it gets humiliating. I could hardly look girls in the eyes without turning red. And then you read this book that promises you that there is a “script” you can follow; proven steps that will make a woman not only treat you with kindness, but she will even find you attractive! That felt like magic.
And then you actually work up the courage to give it a shot, and it WORKS! Well it doesn’t get you instantly laid, obviously. But you manage to strike up a conversation with a girl, and she is actually interested in what you’re saying. She is kind, laughs at some of your jokes, and you can almost feel a connection forming.
In it’s defense: It did help me come out of my shell and learn how to talk to people because no matter what was taught you had to actually use them out in the real world with real people.
But what helped the most wasn’t the techniques, it was experiencing CONSTANT REJECTION 100′s of times every time we went out to try this shit out. Eventually you learn that the worst case scenario that you imagine in your head is just a fantasy, and without the fear of failure one could learn to be genuine and connect with others.
That said, some things that were taught was straight up encouraging assault. For example: I remember reading about how a “no” really means “not yet”, and even back then in my virgin little teen head I was thinking “this feels sort of fucked up…”. Although you were never meant to be pushy (that was beta!) you were taught on how to manipulate the situation to your benefit. For example: If you were with a girl, kissing or whatever, and tried to escalate it into sex and she resisted, you were supposed to shut down any affectionate display and maybe try to shift into doing another activity (one of the bigger names in the community said he had a chess set next to his bed for this reason, so he could be like “oh you don’t wanna bang? That’s cool, here let’s play chess”).
And BOY OH BOY did it give me a fucked up view of women for some years before I unlearnt that shit. Every interaction with women are viewed as transactional. There is also a constant mental head game of ranking every social interaction (even with men) to always come out on top as the alpha. Ways to do this was to subtly bully people (they call it teasing/negging, but it was just acting like a fucking asshole tbh).
Also: I don’t know how it is now (last time I was “practicing” PUA was when I was maybe 19-20, back in 2010) but back then there were different “schools” of pickup artistry. The more popular ones taught scripts, mind games, and other weird shit (the Mystery Method that was popularized by Neil Strauss’ book was the most popular) and then there was another school of thinking that focused more on being yourself. Not lying about yourself but working on improving to become the best version of yourself; which I think was way more positive for the young men that got involved with it (although there were still some toxic shit being taught by that school as well).
I don’t exactly regret all that cringe shit I was into back then, because it did help me in some ways (but I do wish I had found better self-help resources or role models than whatever the hell all that shit turned out to be). I’m not exactly a social butterfly these days, but I do have a much easier time socializing and I no longer feel like a social outcast, which I think my life would have led me to become if I had not found PUA.
Try not to judge these young men too harshly who listen to the fraudsters in the PUA community. Most of them aren’t evil villains, they’re just lonely and desperate and literally have no other idea what else they could do to fix themselves, and no positive role models in their lives to teach them differently.
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