The Problem With Pickup Artists

At age twenty seven, when I started improving my sex life, I’d been with fifteen women. Not bad for a shy weirdo with bitch tits. Thank god for rock and roll because once or twice a year, some groupie would throw herself at me. But in the first year that I spent practicing pua techniques, I slept with fifteen, very pretty women. This is the debaucherous era I documented in my novel, A Thousand Tiny Failures. Was it beast-mode? State control? Kino escalation? My dashing charm and good looks? What specific tactic generated my outstanding success?

If you’ve digested many pua products over the last few years, you probably fall into two camps:

1. You were amazed and inspired by the information. “This is great! Finally an answer to my problems!”
2. You were left feeling a little bit icky and annoyed. “Do I really have to act like a manipulative douche to get a hot girl to sleep with me?”

Most people start with one, and end with the other. I went from being in awe of the pua community, to annoyed, and weirded out by it. These days I keep it and the people within at arms length, because the guys who need to discuss picking up girls like it’s a science, don’t get it. Once you get it, the whole deal is a bore. “Have you been to France?” One traveller asks another. “Yes I have.” “Have you slept with many women?” One male asks another. “Yes I have.” Bulls don’t need to discuss being bulls; they just are.

Most seduction teachers want absolutely no association with the pickup artist community. So we call ourselves “dating coaches,” “lifestyle coaches,” and all manner of title. But sometimes we let slip “pickup artist.” Because really, that’s what men want. They want the magic power to charm women into bed. And that’s the way it will always be. It’s just too bad we coaches can’t say “I’m a pickup artist,” without causing cringes and guffaws. One of my girlfriend’s said to me “What girl wants to feel like an experiment? Like she was targeted by a pickup artist?” None do. That’s who. And any man who is trained up and getting laid realizes what a ridiculous term it is. Even if it is fitting.

And on to the community…well, it’s pretty weird. I’ve met some of the strangest people from lairs and forums. Some men who called themselves pickup artists were the most socially uncalibrated I’ve come across. Men obsessed with sex, obsessed with “tens,” yet unable to approach a stranger without shitting themselves. Guys who want harems but have no friends, male or female. Guys who want to live like rockstars but have no interesting talents or hobbies. And these are the ones online, dishing out dating advice to other dweebs; dick measuring through field reports and parroting information via misogynistic bloggers, or going out and insulting—almost physically assaulting, women in bars—because they saw it in a Youtube video. Negativity aside, I’ve also met some of my best friends. Guys who’ve I’ve seen grow, and have grown with, into powerful individuals.

So I’ve kept one foot in and one foot out. I call myself a pickup artist, but any man who has slept with a woman he met at a party, or a bar, or from an approach at the mall, is a pickup artist. He’s a social artist, a charm artist…an artist in general. But really what we’re striving for is normalcy. It’s normal to approach a woman, to want sex, to want love, and to take action towards that goal is brave and noble. And if you want to sleep with a woman and then not call her back, that’s up to you.

If it wasn’t for the information, no, the motivation I found within that scene, I wouldn’t be the great lord, entrepreneur and seductionist that I am today. The pua community is like the retarded little cousin that you hide in the basement. He’s happy as long as you give him cake; but you don’t want your friends to know about it. And when you share him with the world, they will applaud your courage, and then snicker out of pity. Yet each and every one of them has some poor creature locked up in their own basement, whom they will never share, and so they are actually in a sort of prison themselves.

Call yourself what you want, do what you need, as long as it brings great joy and happiness. But when the whole scene becomes a bore, and intellectually stifling, feel no regret in moving on to grander philosophies and pursuits, because the pleasure of a woman’s affection is a reward, not a purpose. A true artist finds more joy in the process than the result. And even the greatest rockstar needs plenty of time alone to work on his scales and lyrics. So don’t be ashamed of stepping away from your self imposed identity from time to time, For myself, picking up girls is a skill, not a lifestyle. So whether you’re a newb going out seven nights a week and failing most of the time, or an old sex addict who can’t stop talking about his dick, understand that just because you can, doesn’t always mean you should, or have to. Not being a pua is also an option.