So what do we say about these "aggressive" approaches toward women?

[Realitycrash]

I'm not a feminist, I want equality. I'd say there is a vital difference (mainly that 'feminism' has become a watered-out term that most people nowdays ascribe to any woman they feel are trying to 'take away' something they enjoy, like boobs in video-games).

So glad we're letting whiny, uninformed gamer dudes decide what the definition of "feminism" is. So glad, you guys.

Just remember, only women can be feminists. If you're a guy and you call yourself a feminist, you're really just a white knight. That's how it werks.

I've been calling myself 'equalist' for as long as I can remember, since I was probably thirteen (this was back in 1999). Because I believe in equality, and I think the term is more fitting.
And I really don't care what other thinks of that either, it doesn't stop me from believing what I believe, just because I have chosen a different term for it.

 

[Dangit2019]

I'm not a feminist, I want equality

Fixed the first post.

No idea what you are attempting to imply.

The first thing I posted in this thread, I changed it.

 

[Realitycrash]

I'm not a feminist, I want equality

Fixed the first post.

No idea what you are attempting to imply.

The first thing I posted in this thread, I changed it.

Ah, I see.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

Another controversial topic, yay. What do we say about this?
Let's look at the goal of just wanting to get laid, and not wishing to have a relationship.
It's safe to say these men are clear in the intent and very early on in the interaction.

Watching the video, my response is this: Location, location, location.

They were at a night club (or several night clubs?) where the goal for both genders was hooking up. The women filmed wanted some hot bad-boy sex, so the asshole(s) got the women.

So in this case, the intent of the men (as stated by you in the quote above) was clear to the women they were picking up.

The only exception I noticed was the woman from Spain who was directly lied to. And even she might have seen through it - she certainly saw through the fake number and then let that slide.

Also, I honestly didn't think these pick up lines (the ones I could even hear over the noise) were that strange. Possibly because "do you and your sig-other want to have a four-way with us?" is my standard pick up line.

Finally, I watched a few minutes of the lecture after the first 4 minutes and the main focus seemed to be "listen to the girl - both what she says and her body language - and behave as she indicates she wants" which... is pretty good advice. The reason those men were getting good results is because they were listening and responding to the women - some might even call that good communication skills.

Oh, and because the men involved were very attractive. I'd fuck either of them on looks alone. **shrug** So just because they can pull that off doesn't mean their students can.

Edit: My point, in case it wasn't clear, is that I think "the Game" is a load of crap and that women mostly play along because, now and then, some rough bad-boy sex is fun.

 

[Darken12]

Oh. It's the PUA community.

I am going to be very understated when I say this, even though my feelings on the matter are far stronger: I feel a sense of moral disgust towards the people who follow the guidelines of the PUA community (and especially the people in the PUA community).

Absolving the pickup artists from all sliminess because women have agency is much like absolving a bunch of frat dudes who get someone drunk and make them do dangerous things for their entertainment (like driving). When someone uses psychology and pre-existent societal pressures in order to get others to do what they want (especially if those others weren't completely into the idea in the first place), they aren't decent people. They are manipulative assholes, even if the person ended up agreeing.

Also, I completely agree with this:

I find your 'game' equally as depressing as the though that getting laid is somehow 'cool'. Thread, die in agony.

The idea that getting laid is cool is for teenagers. If you're still stuck with that idea, you're still stuck in a teenager mentality (or you're a sad, sad adult who fruitlessly yearns to get back to those years).

Sex for its own purpose is meaningless (and little better than masturbation). But, of course, I'd be fooling myself if I thought the point of the PUA community is sex. The real point is ego, of course. Why measure your sense of self with genuine accomplishments, such as a degree (or several), volunteering, charity work, owning your own business, taking care of others or being generally useful to society, when it's so much easier to measure your own self-worth by the amount of people you've slept with?

 

[Giftfromme]

@Boots, lol i never know what you're trying to say, you're always over generalizing and making up assumptions in your posts.

Some have claimed that PUA works only if you're good looking. What about this guy:
http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.puaway.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/pua-tyler-durden.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.puaway.com/pua-tyler-durden/&h=268&w=400&sz=15&tbnid=WwcYYBLQGLhIDM:&tbnh=94&tbnw=140&zoom=1&usg=__lnLL746VJdE6FUKuNvmM6z00rBc=&docid=crvINMOip1TfeM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=V90aUd_uNuygmQX3_oHYCA&ved=0CDIQ9QEwAQ&dur=487

I wouldn't say that's a good looking guy by any stretch of the imagination. But he gets laid.

At the people who say this is about looking "cool" etc. how do you know these men feel that way? What if they just want to get laid as an end to itself? They don't care how it looks to others and pursue their goals as they wish. (If they did care, they certainly wouldn't pursue such techniques). Isn't it just possible these men want to get laid and don't need to look cool etc. to other guys?

Regarding fails they don't bother showing those on video, but this is one exception:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEFgvbNBTbk

Of the stuff I've read, they say to expect a lot of "fails" (you can still learn from them). No one hides the fact that it comes down to a number game in the end. You get as much experience as possible and from there, you'll have enough women wanting you that you can choose which one you want a relationship with.

Also what do you make of rock stars who have slept with hundreds if not thousands of women? Or people like George Clooney? Rumour has it he has slept with at least 2000 women. Let's say it's "only" half of that? What then? What do we say about these guys? Are they scum too, or is it just the techniques you use that make you scum?

 

[Ryotknife]

A video of a douchebag easily picking up chicks....you dont say!

okay im kidding im kidding. People will always find confidence sexy.

 

[Darken12]

Nope, I pretty much think that the techniques are there to bridge the gap between the guys who have the looks/money/fame and those who don't, though I do think they are a lot slimier than just walking into a bar and saying yes to the first person who jumps you.

However, I still stand by my previous assertion. If you want to base your life around the idea that your self-worth depends on getting laid, go ahead, nobody can stop you. It just displays a crippling lack of foresight (what are you going to do when you're older and you can't pull it off anymore? Will you have found something else to make you feel worthy? Or will you cling to your days of old, always chasing after the spectre of what time stole from you?) and potentially, a blend of hedonism and self-centredness. I've seen it happen, definitely, with one of my neighbourhood friends I no longer hang out with. He had money but no ambition, so his sense of accomplishments came from being good at videogames, and later on, to getting women. He didn't want to go to college and tried his best to avoid having to work on his own. He was trying to get his hedonistic life the way he wanted to without ever contributing to society in any single way.

 

[Bellvedere]

Even people that don't use the "game" can be perfectly horrendous. A group of girls from my old work used to go out and brag about how guys would buy them drinks all night and as soon as they got a drink they'd walk away.

My opinion on this sort of behavior and the game is the same:

If both parties just want a one-night-stand then it's perfectly fine.

If one party is manipulating the other to get what they want then they're being a dick. If they're taking advantage of a girl being drunk, or a guy wanting the opportunity to talk to them, or someone believing there's a possibility of an actual romance occurring then it's just not a nice thing to do to someone.

The game is about manipulation. Whether many of the women who go along with it do so because they're just interested in a one night stand or whether anyone falling for it is a total moron isn't really the issue when it comes to the game being wrong or right. If the goal isn't to fulfill the mutual benefits of both persons (that being both persons want just sex) but to exploit the vulnerabilities of someone who wants more then it's a nasty thing to do.


TLDR I don't respect people who take advantage of the vulnerabilities of others.

 

[Terminal Blue]

TAKE IT AWAY XKCD

A single tear of pure joy is rolling down my face as I type.

snip

Hello again!

Congratulations, you've discovered that bullying women into having sex with you by adopting a controlling attitude or playing on personal insecurities sometimes works.

The real question to ask yourself now is "why do you need to do it?" If women have so much agency and can choose whether to sleep with you, why do you need to bully or deceive them to get into their pants?

The answer, unfortunately, is that PUA types genuinely believe that women as a whole actively like this and respond to it. That they're exploiting "natural loopholes in female psychology" or whatever other bullshit rationalization disguises the very simple truth that if you bully people you can sometimes get things from them, but that doesn't make you a stud, it doesn't make you every woman's fantasy, it makes you a bully.

A few years ago, I got involved in a community in which various kinds of casual sex are quite normal. All my adult relationships have been open relationships, and I've never wanted for sex or intimacy with other people, often people I'd consider way out of my league. You know what I learned? That actually, the best way to get people to want to have casual sex with you is to be genuinely casual about it. If you lie, cheat, bully and treat people like possessions in order to fuck them, that is not being casual, that is you going to inordinate amounts of effort for a pathetic reward at someone else's expense.

And no, I don't mean faking being cool and aloof. I mean being honest, straightforward and openly careful not to be misleading or hurtful, you know, like a confident human being who understands what you want and is able to handle another human being's emotions without turning into a wreck or a creep. Like the kind of person who isn't going to judge them or cast them aside or treat them like a notch on your bedpost, not because you're faking (because then you still have to live with the fact that you're a antisocial jerk) but because you actually are that person. After all, what's the point of sleeping with someone you don't actually like, even "casually"? You may as well stick your dick in a pig.

This is not me talking as a pro-feminist or a gender theorist, this is me talking as me. Basically, the PUA community lied to you. They don't understand women (or men) because they don't understand that both women and men are individual people just like you or I and respond to positive and negative things very similarly to the way you or I would. They have hopes and dreams and desires and insecurities, not "loopholes" and "strategies".

You can live your life predating insecure teenagers and vulnerable women and pretending you're not one step from being a sex offender, or you can actually make the prospect of sleeping with you desirable.

 

[Vegosiux]

Yaknow, sex is fun not because it's cool to get laid but because sex is fun.

Make of that what you will.

I mean, running a score sheet kind of distracts from the experience and all that.

 

[BlindTom]

Sometimes I have behaved like this because thoroughly disregarding others is appealing sometimes. In these situations members of the opposite sex who wouldn't normally look at me have become appealing because they act in a predictable manner and make amusing playthings. I have in the past took part in the usual mating formula and it's been a little bit like an out of body experience where I'm looking in on this weird satirical figure that's only satirical because I know it's me doing these things. It's gone far enough that I've had sex in this state and it has been singularly unfulfilling. I don't know why somebody would attend seminars to "learn" to suffer from this. It's taken me a long time to escape from this pattern of behaviour and now I learn that I could have been acquiring currency by not only continuing to be a bully but by glorifying it? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

 

[Alexnader]

TAKE IT AWAY XKCD

If youre a pick up artist, if you need to refine tricking and coercing people subtly to make them like you and sleep with you then you have failed miserably at being an interesting balanced human being that people WANT to spend time with without employing any kind of "tactic".

With strawman *TM argument has never been so easy! Just make up an opinion for your adversary and take that to pieces! You don't even have to listen to the other side talk, giving you more free time to think about how much of a great person you are.

I'm not a pick up artist at all, however I have seen one or two of Tyler's videos (the ranga who introduces Julian). All his videos do is talk about being confident, meditating, being present in the moment and general self-help crap which can be useful to some people some of the time. They talk about being "in the zone" and just going in, talking to everyone around you and having the kind of presence that attracts people.

If you want a summary it's be a more open minded, mature and passionate version of yourself. It is nothing to do with secret tricks that manipulate emotionally vulnerable people into having sex with you. Now I'm not sure I agree with what he says, a lot of it is pseudo-scientific and unverifiable. However it's certainly an interesting opinion to have and it's one that you completely missed because you think a webcomic written by a computer science guy can be relevant to all situations in life.

 

[DrunkenMonkey]

You know sex must be awesome and all, but I can't just get close to a girl just for sex solely. It seems like a disservice
to the girl. I want there to be more to a girl/woman who I'm trying to make some sort of connection with than just a cute face.

 

[Alexnader]

With strawman *TM argument has never been so easy! Just make up an opinion for your adversary and take that to pieces!

You realise that it would only be a strawman if negging [http://www.seductionscience.com/2010/negging-women/] wasn't [http://www.pualingo.com/pua-definitions/neg-hit-negs/] actually [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=negging] a [http://attraction-chronicles.blogspot.co.uk/2006/03/power-of-cocky-and-funny-negs.html] PUA [http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Neg-a-Girl-Properly---Dating-Tips-For-Men&id=6496998] tactic [http://www.seductionbase.com/seduction/cat/Start_PU/neg/456.html], right [http://www.pick-up-artist-forum.com/some-negging-tips-please-vt57702.html]?

Yeah, except not all "PUAs" believe negging is a viable tactic or one they'd ever consider using. I'm not going to go all no true scotsman here but the fact is the primary definition of a pick up artist is they make a habit of picking up women. Not that they use cheap tricks. Some of them do, definitely. You know some of them think neuro linguistic programming could work for them, that's way more crazy than negging. However ultimately you'd be painting a fair few people with a very broad brush if you said that they all resort to cheap tricks to disguise their lack of worth as human beings which is essentially that the comic and the post I replied to were getting at.

I've perused some PUA forums in my time and some of their advice makes sense. Some of the stuff they link to is fascinating, like how eye contact works between strangers. If you look at some pick up forums and take nothing on faith and dismiss nothing out of hand then you'll find some good, useful stuff there that's helped me form decent and mutually respectful relationships with women.

 

[Bocaj2000]

"Agressive" approaches to women is fine and dandy. When I'm desperate for a relationship, I tend to be more blunt with my intentions.

If you're talking about PUA people...
They're slimy and make me uncomfortable. I can smell the bullshit coming from their mouths.

If one must fuck as many women as possible, it is essential that he does so ethicly.

To expand on this:

Let's start off with a common argument I've heard about the game. It's that it's about manipulating woman. But if you think that, then you believe the women have no agency in the matter at all, it's as if they suddenly wake up and are in bed with a guy and then must have sex from that point on. Surely we can credit women with more intelligence then that? Just how manipulative can a guy be? Surely at one point we have to allow for the fact that some women want to get laid (even in a one night stand) and are willing to play along with the game. They might just accept the "antics" from the guy because they wish to get laid too. But to say they are being 100% manipulated into sex is silly, I think. Surely women can think for themselves?

Fair enough. Some women look for these guys because they just want to get laid too. However, you forget it is a common tactic to prey on drunk women while sober. No, it's not rape, but it's sleazy and unethical.

The next argument is that it demeans women. Let's say the majority of women would be demeaned by this type of behaviour toward them, but a minority are fine with it. I mean surely these women that are getting picked up aren't just dreaming all the way along and have no idea what the guy is saying or doing. At some point they have to be fine with such language and behaviour. If we say that these women are idiots and aren't representative of normal women, does that mean we label them after they have slept with such guys or can we do so before hand? Same thing for saying these women have no self respect. And when should we label these women? What if she goes home with such a guy once a year? Once a month? If some women are fine with such approaches, who are we to judge the men who do these approaches? If both the man and the woman want to get laid, what is the issue with the tactics used?

Seeing a women as a sex object and not a person is demeaning. Just like seeing a nerd as a punching bag.

Let's look at the goal of just wanting to get laid, and not wishing to have a relationship (as everyone in RSD seems to be this way). Ultimately what is wrong with not wanting a relationship but many one night stands? Let's say we classify this as unhealthy. There are many examples of Emperors and the like having a harem of women, I guess this would just be the modern incarnation of it. Who says that everyone should always strive for a relationship and not just want one night stands for a while? Why can't this be a legitimate pursuit?

You know nothing about harems; don't pretend you do. And having series of one night stands is incomparable to the tradition of having multiple wives. I could list all of the ways in which this comparison is incorrect, but I will not do so unless you request it.

It's safe to say these men are clear in the intent and very early on in the interaction. What about the following examples (and I know many such people): a guy buys a girl who he likes flowers in the hopes she will like him or reciprocate in return. He hopes to get in her good books and just wants to get laid, and thinks buying flowers or any other such things will do it. He holds a hidden agenda. Or he approaches a woman and pretends the conversation is going one way, but secretly wants to steer it toward getting her number. How do we judge those situations?

Each situation is to be judged differently. This is because of different intentions and cultures.

So if these tactics (if we call them that) work, where does the judgement start and end? If both parties in the interaction are cool with it, then where does the problem lie? If we say the men are antisocial, or that it could affect them adversely later on, and they don't care, then how do we judge?

I personally don't know what to make of such approaches. I agree they go too far, but don't know exactly when and how I should judge the situation.

Judge it however you want. If your only goal in your young adult life is to have sex with as many women as you possibly can before finding someone to marry, then go for it. I have seen people pursue this ethically, and I have seen people people do this in the slimiest way possible. The only problem is that there are a LOT more slimy PUA than not.

 

[michael87cn]

"Now I don't fully agree or endorse this type of behaviour with pickup, I think it's too far, but the general principles behind game are fine to me." -OP

Stopped reading there, nothing else that you said mattered to me. I watched the video, women fall for this because they think that assertive confidence and slight aggression means that he legitimately loves them and cares about them. As a guy this might not make sense to you but that's how they work. If you show them affection they assume the best of you, that you really like them. But in reality, you just want 5 minutes in bed with them.

Safe to say I think the 'game' and its 'principles' aren't fine to me. Real men don't play games. Real men...grow up at some point.

Be a real man and don't go 'hunting' for sex. Find a partner and *gasp* actually commit to something. *Gasp* actually care about someone else and make a real life. Stop drinking and hitting up drugs and going after people for that 'glorious' 5 minutes in bed.

Sorry if I sound offensive, but I find the way my sister and mother were treated by men most of their young lives offensive.