Well… you’re absolutely right! I’m on my second project right now, and would never dream of guilt-tripping a client into a sale :-) But still, a lot of successful projects get started without much regard for ethics. This especially applies to online communities: LessWrong’s launch is actually an outlier. Creating hundreds of sockpuppet accounts to simulate active life on the site is pretty much standard industry practice, Myspace got its startup push from a huge spam emailing (insider info I saw somewhere), etc. Because the choice is either this or 5 visitors/day, month after month, who look at your comatose website and leave.
For an especially clear-cut example, SEO is certainly unethical from the customer’s point of view, but I absolutely have to do it, and will. Sounds a bit like PUA practices, no?
For an especially clear-cut example, SEO is certainly unethical from the customer’s point of view, but I absolutely have to do it, and will.
SEO is not unethical when it focuses on findability. Making your site reachable by the people who are looking for it is not manipulative—it’s just good customer service.
If you are doing something unethical, you should reconsider whether you “have to” do it. Hurting your customers is not good business, and you’re making yourself an enemy of the people you purport to help.
Creating hundreds of sockpuppet accounts to simulate active life on the site is pretty much standard industry practice,
I have been unable to find folks who’ll verify this for me. I’m pretty well-read on Internet startups, and I’ve never found a serious source suggesting it.
Myspace got its startup push from a huge spam emailing
This InformationWeek article cites Sanford Wallace as the source of this rumor, and I was unable to find anyone else claming this happened. Given his reputation, I seriously doubt this is true.
I think it’s quite possible in principle to be successful at pickup and seduction, even for beginners, while maintaining regard to ethics. I run a quick expected value calculation on just about anything I do.
The reason it is difficult in practice is because some of the ethical standards applied to men learning conscious seduction are bogus and would not hold up if applied to female mating behavior, or to naturally skilled men who do exactly the same thing unconsciously. Such standards would ban large swathes of human social behavior if applied consistently.
Applying a reasonable moral framework is not much of an impediment to learning and practicing seduction, yet there are certain bloated, anachronistic, non-reality-based, moral frameworks that are. In the extreme, we can see radical feminists John Stoltenberg and Robert Jensen who have come to believe that participating in heterosexual sex is currently unethical because it is so oppressive to women, and turned towards celibacy (Jensen’s essay is titled “Patriarchal Sex,” but I don’t see it available online for free anywhere).
Well… you’re absolutely right! I’m on my second project right now, and would never dream of guilt-tripping a client into a sale :-) But still, a lot of successful projects get started without much regard for ethics. This especially applies to online communities: LessWrong’s launch is actually an outlier. Creating hundreds of sockpuppet accounts to simulate active life on the site is pretty much standard industry practice, Myspace got its startup push from a huge spam emailing (insider info I saw somewhere), etc. Because the choice is either this or 5 visitors/day, month after month, who look at your comatose website and leave.
For an especially clear-cut example, SEO is certainly unethical from the customer’s point of view, but I absolutely have to do it, and will. Sounds a bit like PUA practices, no?
SEO is not unethical when it focuses on findability. Making your site reachable by the people who are looking for it is not manipulative—it’s just good customer service.
If you are doing something unethical, you should reconsider whether you “have to” do it. Hurting your customers is not good business, and you’re making yourself an enemy of the people you purport to help.
I have been unable to find folks who’ll verify this for me. I’m pretty well-read on Internet startups, and I’ve never found a serious source suggesting it.
This InformationWeek article cites Sanford Wallace as the source of this rumor, and I was unable to find anyone else claming this happened. Given his reputation, I seriously doubt this is true.
I think it’s quite possible in principle to be successful at pickup and seduction, even for beginners, while maintaining regard to ethics. I run a quick expected value calculation on just about anything I do.
The reason it is difficult in practice is because some of the ethical standards applied to men learning conscious seduction are bogus and would not hold up if applied to female mating behavior, or to naturally skilled men who do exactly the same thing unconsciously. Such standards would ban large swathes of human social behavior if applied consistently.
Applying a reasonable moral framework is not much of an impediment to learning and practicing seduction, yet there are certain bloated, anachronistic, non-reality-based, moral frameworks that are. In the extreme, we can see radical feminists John Stoltenberg and Robert Jensen who have come to believe that participating in heterosexual sex is currently unethical because it is so oppressive to women, and turned towards celibacy (Jensen’s essay is titled “Patriarchal Sex,” but I don’t see it available online for free anywhere).