Why the Pick-Up Artist (PUA) subculture is so disgusting... [View all]

A few articles:

When I first learned about it, I was mostly just intrigued. I ended up learning a bunch about it. I read The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists (which I still think is a really interesting book) and ended up meeting a lot of people who were in the pick-up artist community (not a goal—it just happened).

I even ended up helping out with one of their weekend seminars, to be a "female test dummy," essentially. Far from the stereotype of sleazy guys who want one-night stands, 24 of the 25 guys in the class were just awkward, nerdy guys who just wanted a girlfriend (the 25th wanted to bring home a girl for a threesome with his girlfriend). But that's not the instruction of these classes. The classes are about getting laid, not getting a girlfriend.

snip:

PUA instruction turns awkward, nerdy guys who just want a girlfriend into creepy guys who harass and insult women. And that's not OK!

PUA instruction teaches guys these mechanical ways of interacting with women that don't really work and fails to recognize that every woman is different. Some women just won't go home with you. Sorry. Maybe she's out of your league. Or maybe she's just not interested in you. Or maybe she just doesn't go home with random dudes from bars.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2012/09/25/why_are_women_so_negative_about_the_pickup_artist_community_.html

The Pickup Artist diverse systems purport to be scientific, psychological theories, in the sense that they claim to provide empirically-testable claims about the nature of human sexuality. (Each variation of the system claims that using the techniques propounded by certain "pickup artists" is on average more effective than not using them in one's attempts to seduce women.) However, the claims of Pick Up Artists are not made in peer-reviewed psychological or social science journals, and central figures in the community such as Mystery and Neil Strauss have no formal training in psychology or the methodologies of the social sciences.

Professional psychologists who have examined one older Pick Up Artist technique referred to as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), ridicule it as pseudo-science; psychiatrist Roderique Davis has called it a "cargo-cult psychology." Meanwhile psychiatrist Dr. Petra Boyman says that there is "no evidence of effectiveness" for any claims of Pickup Artists.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickup_artist#cite_note-10

And a post on a forum for disgruntled PUA men (a post from a guy, FWIW), as quoted in Jezebel:

You are desperately seeking this one thing: vagina, to the point where nothing else matters to you. The only thing that defines you is thrusting. You are animalistic, incapable of rational thought, future considerations. You are needy because you have nothing else going on in your life beside the pursuit of pussy. You are losers because the time you put into it does not reflect your results - otherwise you would be happy.

http://jezebel.com/5906648/the-angry-underground-world-of-failed-pickup-artists

In conclusion: The PUA subculture is full of assholes, misogynists, and sociopaths who prey on the insecurities of all-too many men, and lead them in a direction that is horrifyingly sexist and frankly, a perpetuation of rape culture.

It's actually OK to be socially awkward (contrary to PUA logic, I know...), you don't have to change yourself into something you're not, but it's never OK to be a creep or a sexist asshole.

So yeah...fuck off, PUA's and their apologists.