
Hacking Women and the Delusion of the Ethical Pickup Artist - chasingsparks
http://pathdependent.com/2010/04/07/hacking-women/
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raganwald
My simple thought: The men who read "The Game" and the women who read "The
Rules" deserve each other. How come they don't end up with each other? Because
each is looking for people to con, not for partners.

I like to think of Lions and Antelopes. Lions eat Antelopes, but they mate
with Lions. A book telling you how to find and eat prey does not help you find
and mate with another Lion. In fact, its methods steer you away from other
Lions.

So, at some point you have to decide whether you want to stop fooling around
cutting the weak out of the herd and start looking for a true mate.

I don't believe for a moment you're going to do that with a seduction system.

~~~
ErrantX
Hey, I read The Game - I even tried it out for a while. :D

There is useful information in there; but it is obscured by the idea that the
ultimate aim is to sleep with lots of women, get pissed and not really care
about anything else.

In actual fact when I read The Game I felt I was looking into the mind of a
lost individual who found a process to attach himself too. Im not sure if Neil
actually learned anything during that time period but it reads like he may
have done. Sadly the book only touches on those aspects.

(your analogy regarding Lions/Antelopes is something I'd agree with though)

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jdminhbg
Here is my problem:

"I find no fault in youthful promiscuity. Oscar Wilde could have written a
novel about my college years. It was part of my development as a person and I
have (almost) no regrets."

This strikes me as similar to the advice naturally skinny people give to the
fat -- "Why don't you just eat less and work out more?" If something comes to
you naturally, it seems like a real jerk move to blithely assume that it's the
same for everyone else. The author had a decent amount of natural success with
promiscuity, and now he looks down on people who have to work on it. If
something doesn't come naturally to you, you shouldn't be allowed to
experience or enjoy it?

~~~
roc
The author seems to be making the classic mistake of assuming everyone is
coming to the material for the same reason.

He is apparently past the stage of promiscuity and was looking for help
finding a true mate. The MM disappointed him. So now he's preaching against
the MM itself, rather than against the MM as a tool to meet his particular
goal.

I bet if confronted about the contradiction, he'd claim he never meant to
disparage the young using the MM to improve their own "youthful promiscuity"
experience.

Whether he'd change his article is another story. He'll clearly get more
attention as it is.

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swombat
"Becoming a PUA" is definitely a bit of a warped aim, but I have personally
benefited from reading those books. For example, the "3-second rule" to remove
approach anxiety does not turn you into an oversexed asshole, but it does
greatly increase the chances you'll actually chat to girls. Hell, I even use
that "technique" when networking. Approach, smile, say something (anything)
within 3 second of spotting the next "target". Works great.

I'd argue that although the programmes themselves are destructive, the books
published on the topic are useful when read by smart people who realise
there's more to life than sex and can "switch" into a more mature mode of
behaviour once they find a suitable potential mate. I guess, like all good
tools, what it does depends on who uses it. Assholes become bigger assholes.
Good guys become more successful good guys. Sounds like a good starting point
to me.

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reader5000
There's no such thing as "hacking" women. If you can be attractive to a woman
then you are attractive. I mean maybe wearing an earpiece and having somebody
else feed you lines would be hacking a woman. But the good 'pickup' gospels
basically just tell you how to become an actually attractive person. This is
necessary in modern society since modern society is so comfortable with its
xboxes and dorritos men have no impetus to ever leave their houses and
therefore do not learn how to be attractive naturally. I think inasmuch as the
pickup meme gives men the courage to go outside once in a while it does more
good than bad.

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pohl
This is a very imbalanced blog post. At least the author is up front about his
biases ("Unfortunately, I doubt that this group dominates his readers.
Instead, I assume...") but stays far from acknowledging that it is just a
tool, and any tool can be used for good or evil. I can build a home with a
hammer, or I can bash your head in. I can live a long life of copious but
fleeting, shallow entanglements - or I can use my knowledge to deepen and
secure one life-long relationship. (This makes me question his claim to being
a hacker...isn't such a view about tools rudimentary?)

Anyway, no essay that claims to explore the morality of these techniques is
complete without an honest acknowledgement of the ubiquitous & accepted
industries geared towards helping women misrepresent themselves so that they
can hack the simple automata that are the masculine visual and olfactory
processing systems.

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khafra
> I suppose it seems hypocritical of me to lambast Mystery and his cohorts. I
> have obviously read their material.

I should hope the author would not consider penning a severe and detailed
criticism of a body of work _without_ having read it. This part is not
hypocritical, but admirable.

The portion with which I find fault is the inherent sorites paradox: At what
point does optimizing yourself and your interactions with women for attraction
become unethical?

~~~
nopassrecover
At which point would a woman optimising herself for interactions with men
become unethical? (answer: never).

Presenting yourself as the best you can be to those you are attracted to is
one of the most basic purposes we have on this world.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So there is nothing wrong with cheating/lying as long as your goal is to have
"interactions" with a partner?

~~~
nopassrecover
How dare you misrepresent me. Where did I say cheating or lying. The parent
was discussing your presentation.

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keefe
I hate this whole mystery method and all the cultural assumptions that go
along with it. I applaud the author for attacking it, but I'll take it one
step further.

There's nothing wrong with promiscuity. Sex is good - if you want to fuck
hundreds of people, do so and please use a condom every time.

In my experience, women like sex and hate being treated like objects. Here's a
"pickup method" that'll have even MORE success than the awesome mystery method
:

1) Join a gym. Workout a lot until you have big muscles. This won't take you
more than half a year.

2) During that half a year, take up meditation and contemplate your past
relationships, your parents, your childhood. Write about it in a journal and
become at peace with who you are. Think about what you want.

3) During that time too, concentrate on your career. Get it all laid out in
front of you.

Now, you've made yourself as attractive as possible. Next up, find random
women - on craigslist, on okcupid, on the street. Talk to them. Treat them
like equal human beings and never, ever deceive them. If you want sex but no
commitment yet, tell them when that comes up.

There will be some more waiting, sure. Waiting is until fullness. After a
while, you will get to the point where you are in good shape, you've got a
good career, you're emotionally stable and you deal with women honestly and
see things from their point of view.

If you do this, you'll never have trouble finding someone to sleep with. Maybe
you can get someone slightly "hotter" and stupider by deceiving people?
However, in my 8 years of living with X1 and my 2 years of living with X2 and
the single-ness in between, I've noticed there are all kinds of different
types of sex. Sometimes, it's just mutual masturbation. Sometimes, sex is a
transcendent experience. For me, the experience is always improved with
honesty and destroyed by lying. I may not necessarily believe in monogamy
anymore, but I believe sex is an expression of love. Love can last a day or a
week or a month and it comes so easily when we give up on lying.

~~~
raganwald
> 1) Join a gym. Workout a lot until you have big muscles. This won't take you
> more than half a year.

I'm sure you're being sincere with this advice, but I think there's a major
pitfall to be considered with joining a gym. If you're joining a gym to make
yourself more attractive so you can meet people, you are already on the road
to hell.

What is the difference between big muscles and a hair implant?

I see happy couples who are short, who have acne, who are obese. I myself have
a serious receding hairline that is merging with my bald spot as we speak.
Join a gym if you don't like your body for YOUR reasons, not because you think
it will increase your chances. You don't need a 'nice' body to meet people.

On the other hand...

If you find a sporting activity you enjoy, do it 3-4x per week and don't worry
about your body. It will morph itself into something fine. And you'll enjoy
yourself, and that enjoyment is infectious. People of both sexes naturally
gravitate towards people who are doing something they enjoy.

Co-ed activities like Tennis, Surfing, Ultimate, Rock Climbing, and so on are
all amazing ways to meet people if you are sincerely enjoying yourself.
Climbing gyms are redolent with sexual tension, you could cut it with a knife.

And after six months, just look at yourself in the mirror and tell me you
don't like what you see!

The key is to keep looking until you find something you sincerely enjoy.
You'll meet lots of other people who sincerely enjoy it to and you won't need
any "game" or "rules" to meet someone wonderful.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
There's nothing wrong with doing things to increase your self confidence. For
some people, a good-looking body can be one of those things. In the end, it's
a self-correcting mechanism: the ones who are doing it just for others will
lose interest after a few months. Doing it for yourself can keep you going for
years.

For me, weightlifting _was_ the activity I enjoyed. It started out as me being
really skinny and wanting to gain weight, but got to the point that being
muscular was just a pleasant side effect. The true enjoyment came from the
endorphin release of moving heavy weight, the satisfaction of getting stronger
every week and just knowing that there was a direct correlation between how
hard I worked and what results I achieved.

Where I take issue is okeefe's comment about not wanting to be a hypocrite.
You like what you like; it's not hypocritical to be attracted to someone
slender and athletic if you are overweight and out of shape.

FWIW, I have never cared much about what people look like. If I like someone
enough I will probably find her attractive - that's been proven to me time and
time again and the range over which it holds is pretty surprising.

~~~
keefe
It's certainly something to be overweight and expect your partner to maintain
an athletic figure, whatever language you want to put on it. There is probably
some small portion of athletic women that prefer overweight men, but the
majority will prefer athletic men, so why should my partner settle for
flubber?

There have been a lot of comments about - oh, unless you do it for yourself,
you'll quit! This is nonsense. I know a lot of extremely fit guys and the many
of them are doing it to impress women very successfully. It's also just one
more motivating factor among many to keep your body in good condition.

I've been working out for years and I find the actual activities inane. Pick
up the heavy thing. Put it down. YAYYYY slightly heavier. However, I want
toned muscles for many reasons, so I just do it. It's really not that hard to
just discipline yourself, particularly if you are as interested in longevity
as I am.

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etherael
Did anyone else find it amusing that whilst systematically dismantling the
evolutionary cues of the target candidates and exploiting those cues in order
to provide false positives, the entire premise of the action falls victim to
the exact kind of tactics it lays out in order to achieve victory?

That being, these men are going out looking around for women with all the
evolutionary cues for feminine fitness which are hardwired into our brains
whilst seemingly blissfully unaware that having those evolutionary buttons
pressed in themselves they're not making any kind of conscious or rational
decision about the kind of women they actually want, they're just falling
victim to their own evolutionary cues.

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flatline
There have been "self-help" books out there along these same lines for years.
Most of them are written by guys, largely with the perspective of how to
manipulate women into bed. While this is an attractive proposition,
particularly for young guys with raging hormones, it's not what most people
are looking for in any long-term sense.

There was one book that was popular a few years back, "10 Secrets to Success
with Beautiful Women", written by a former supermodel, that I thought actually
had some good stuff in it. It dealt with basically the same subject matter
without any of the egotistical BS.

~~~
blurry
[http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Secrets-Success-Beautiful-
Women/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Secrets-Success-Beautiful-
Women/dp/0966969707)

