The secret of success with women - The myth of Pick Up Artists

I read with wry amusement an article in the Guardian this week by Hadley Freeman (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/12/pua-pick-up-artists-julien-blanc-dapper-laughs) which discusses the technique of "pick up artists". It seems to me that I've been missing a trick or two over the years. Exponents of the art such as Julien Blanc are giving expensive seminars to blokes who have "trouble pulling". Mr Blanc has clearly identified a sure fire technique for making a pot of cash. The secret is "Identify a bunch of weak minded saddo's and make them beleive that they can become irrisistable to women by employing techniques which clearly appeal to the defects in their personality which caused the issue in the first place".

Apparently the technique is to be as obnoxious as possible. This is meant to make women find you fascinating, to such an extent that they will instantly become overcome with the desire to "have you" and will fall to their knees and perform fellatio on you. Given that I know a few guys who are completely obnoxious who have a degree of success with women, at first glance one may think that there is something in this. Then you analyse the reasons and it is a bit more complex. Being involved in music and playing in bands tends to get you a higher degree of attention than would otherwise be the case and for some inexplicable reason some women seem to be quite happy to be treated appallingly to be around famous people. I've also seen a similar pattern with extremely wealthy men. I suppose that there are women who are quite happy to put up with obnoxious behaviour in return for a glamourous lifestyle. I am however not aware of such tactics working for men who have no such background.

It seems to me, from reading the article, that what the guys who attend these seminars want is lots of sex, with lots of women, with no strings attached. They are not looking for long term relationships with another adult. I'm not a prude and I do wonder why such men don't simply engage the services of prostitutes. If they did this, they could have all the sex they liked, whenever they liked and they wouldn't have to inflict their boorish behaviour on people who are not getting a degree of financial reward for their trouble.

I must say that I find the whole mindset of the "pick up artist" mentality rather odd. As someone who is now 52 years old, I've been in pretty stable relationships since I was 19 years old (with a couple of short gaps) and strangley have a very good relationship with most of my ex's. I have quite a few very good female friends who I value greatly. Some are single and I find it really rather offensive that people would even consider using such a technique to loosen their nicker elastic. Over the years, I've heard all manner of dodgy techniques to achieve success with girls. These vary from "sharing a bottle of Malibu" to "when you meet a girl, stare at her feet". My Dad once told me what he called "The two rules of seduction". These were "If a girl is clever, tell her she's pretty and if she's pretty, tell her she's clever". I asked "But what if she's both?" He said "Shut up and listen to her and you'll hit the jackpot".

When it comes down to it, I've found that if you want to be happy, the secret is to find someone with who you are compatible. If you've got a similar sense of humour, like similar types of music and share a love of similar activities it helps. It also helps not to be jealous of your partners time, so they can also have their own circle of friends and own time. If you live in each others pockets 24 X 7 it can get very claustrophobic. I don't beleive there is any universal secret of success, because we are all different and we all have different aspirations.

The one aspect of the Pick Up Artist technique which disturbs me is that I do actually believe there is one subgenre of females on which it may work rather well. There are some who have a complete lack of self confidence and self esteem, who such boorish behaviour may seem appealing. If someone is completely lacking in confidence and self respect and expects to be treated badly, then they may respond. Sadly the experience is likely to further undermine them. I see the technique as a form of sexual bullying and I see the people who profit from teaching the technique as highly exploitative scumbags who profit from propogating bullying and exploitation of peoples vulnerability. We wouldn't allow people to run seminars in how to be racially discriminatory, so I see no earthly reason why we should tolerate sexual exploitation of vulnerable women.