#pickup artistry

[verifieldcomic]

February 18, 1986 — see Garfield Fat Cat 3-Pack #5

[in-sightpublishing]

What Does the Manosphere Reveal About Modern Masculinity and Its Contradictions?

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/06/23 Because nothing is manlier than: ranting on hypergamy at 2 a.m. being obsessed about meat and men without shirts. rating everyone’s sexual market value, like day-traders. proclaiming yourself an alpha male, on Reddit. spending Friday night memorizing pickup…

[theonlyfanslife]

Unlock the Secrets: 10 Proven Books to Get Any Woman in Bed

Forget pickup lines, THESE are the secrets to making her obsessed. Purpose: Welcome to “Unlock the Secrets: 10 Proven Books to Get Any Woman in Bed.” This webpage is dedicated to helping you discover the best resources available to transform your love life. Whether you’re looking to boost your confidence, understand the nuances of attraction, or learn proven techniques to win over the woman of…

Unlock the Secrets: 10 Proven Books to Get Any Woman in Bed

[dizzydarling]

Imagine reading “The Game” and taking it seriously lmao

[bluehermes444-blog]

“Pick-Up Artistry” and the Imitation of False Success

One of the best ways to destroy your own self-esteem is to compare yourself to someone whose success is the result of far-reaching hidden manipulations. As such, the production of an image of success which true origin is deceit about the extensive help one receives from the shadows results in behavior by others tending to denigrate and debase themselves. This is because humans naturally imitate those images they perceive as representing the success they desire. When they attempt to imitate the image of success, without realizing a crucial element in the production of that success is access to sensitive surveillance data, they are liable to blame themselves for failing to obtain a result they could never achieve without that help.

Imagine two individuals, one of them named Ruse and the other named Earnest. Ruse and Earnest are, initially, on an equal footing socially speaking. They both have similar odds of success in their attempts to attract and woo women. There is one essential difference between them. Ruse has “friends” with access to sensitive surveillance data. Earnest does not. In their pursuit of women, Ruse has an advantage over Earnest. The collection of surveillance data through internet service providers, phone records, and credit card purchases makes it possible to infer when a woman is most susceptible to “pick-up artistry” techniques exploiting their (momentarily) low self-esteem and/or temporary sexual recklessness. Sometimes this is as simple as identifying women who recently endured a painful breakup, although analysis of an individual's behavior over longer periods of time can also reveal specific personality traits indicating when their defenses are lowered.

Ruse, with the help of his “friends,” can be directed to these specific women who, all signs gathered by surveillance indicating their heightened susceptibility to his techniques, will experience an improbable degree of success. Earnest, observing Ruse's apparent success but unaware of the unseen manipulations, might imitate Ruse's behavior but, lacking the same help from behind the scenes, will experience a much lower degree of success. The result is that Earnest, comparing his lack of success to Ruse's, believes himself to “not have it” even though, in reality, Earnest and Ruse have equal social charisma. Because many men invest a lot of their self-esteem in their ability to seduce women, it is probable – though not necessary – men like Earnest experience a hit to their self-esteem.

Subsequent interactions between Ruse and Earnest can easily compound the distorted image Earnest develops of himself. Ruse might not even realize he has such “friends,” so he might attribute all his success to his own charisma without ever realizing his success is partly the result of the deck being stacked in his favor. When Earnest speaks with Ruse and explains his difficulties, Ruse – equally unaware of his help from the shadows – will, reasonably, infer it to be due to a defect in Earnest's comprehension and application of the techniques Ruse knows. The result is the development of a gulf between them in self-esteem – Ruse believes he's “got it,” while Earnest is left to believe he doesn't “got it.” Ruse keeps succeeding, Earnest keeps failing. Eventually, Earnest is likely to stop trying to seduce women. Earnest, internalizing the false self-image, becomes what he thinks he is only because he compared himself to Ruse's unrealistic success.

If institutions with access to surveillance data cared to create the impression among the many Earnests of the world that they are especially incompetent around women, they might achieve this effect by creating an image of success for other men to compare themselves to. Since the image Ruse projects is the result of help from surveillance organs men like Earnest aren't getting, the image is unrealistic. A man comparing his lack of success to someone like Ruse would be like a woman thinking she has an ugly body because it doesn't satisfy the ideals projected by photoshopped models on magazine covers.

There are probably hundreds of thousands of young men whose self-esteem has been cratered as a result of comparing themselves to the unrealistic success projected by men like Ruse. Their success, it should be understood, is the result of unseen manipulations by those with access to information few have. A man like Ruse, especially if he were held up as an ideal role model for young men, could easily distort the self-image of men with few or no role models of healthy masculinity in their lives. These young men, unaware they could only equal Ruse's success with help from the shadows, might have their lives impacted permanently, and all because of the equivalent of social photoshop!

Most men are like Earnest, for whom success with women is a matter of persistence, accumulating social proof, and luck. The techniques touted by men making a lifestyle of pick-up artistry are instrumental to their success, although it is because their techniques exploit common insecurities and personal vulnerabilities of the specifically targeted group. The techniques do not work for the majority of women in the majority of circumstances. Men like Ruse are probably unaware – or lying to themselves about the fact – their techniques find success only because of the artificially cultivated circumstances in which they act.

Ironically, the unrealistic success of men like Ruse flushes out the practical advice that would help most men, a kind of memetic Gresham's law on the internet. Their sensationalized success means attention given to them and their techniques overlooks the techniques developed and touted by individuals meeting with realistic and non-manipulated success. The majority of men paying attention to men like Ruse and their techniques are mostly hurting themselves by imbibing information that doesn't suit their ordinary, not-getting-help-from-surveillance-data-collecting-organs circumstances.

[beaenkes]

Neil Strauss: 'My thinking was: If this woman’s going to be naked with me – I must be OK. It doesn’t last’

His book The Game made him a fortune, but left Neil Strauss in treatment for sex addiction. Ten years later, he’s a changed man, he tells Tom Lamont

This is a super fascinating article I found about the man who invented ‘Game’. He wrote the original pick-up book and it made him incredibly rich. Now, he’s reflecting on it. Some highlights:

He tells me that, without knowing it at the time, he was a pretty troubled man when he wrote The Game. Indeed, in the decade since the book’s publication, he has been through all manner of personal difficulties – periods of therapy, loneliness, heartbreak, depression. A new book, out this month, describes these upheavals and the eventual inner peace the author found in domesticity. Strauss has titled his book The Truth, although for a while, he tells me, he thought he’d call it Game Over.

He says it’s more a case of coming to have a wincing fascination about some of its content. Feeling a healthy sort of shame. “Like, when you’re 10 years old, you’re embarrassed for running around outside naked when you were a five-year-old, right? And when you’re five, you’re embarrassed that you shit in your pants when you were one. I hope always to regret and be embarrassed by anything I’ve done five or 10 years earlier. I hope to regret and be embarrassed by this discussion five years from now. Because then I know I’m growing and changing.”

By opening up his psyche to trained therapists for the first time, Strauss learned he had quite an assortment of mental and emotional conditions. In short order, he was diagnosed with anxiety syndrome, depressive disorder, two forms of sexual disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “It was like a hammer hitting me on the head,” he says. “I really thought I was normal.”

And this is my favourite:

“I think that a lot of guys who read The Game, they think that they’re fooling or tricking women. But most women are smart enough to know exactly what you’re doing. They just might like you enough to go along with it. I think one of the misconceptions is that someone else can be tricked into doing something they don’t want to. A lot of it was about men’s own fears. A technique to end up making out? You’re not going to make out with someone who doesn’t want to make out with you. It was more about being terrified of rejection, and getting over that. The techniques got him there. Not her.”

A fantastic take on pick-up artistry by the guy who wrote the book on it. It’s not supposed to be - and can’t be - about ‘tricking’ people into sleeping with you. It’s always been about men who don’t feel confident and ascribe to a formula to get themselves into a mindset they want to have.

[mcgriffin]

Wannabe pickup artists and 'men's rights activists' can move the fuck on out of my life. The line is drawn. No more 'gamergate'. No more 'bitches be crazy' bullshit. No more slut-shaming. You talk that misogynistic tripe you get the axe out of my life. 'Debate' me about it. See what happens. Fuckin' sociopaths.