A woman’s mostly negative take on PUA, though she thinks that a little PUA can be useful for men who are afraid to talk to women. Getting into the PUA sub-culture can leave men worse off.
Both have put a lot of thought into it.
My take is that PUA seems to be set in a universe where no one likes anyone else.
Funny thing is that I agree with the first article, I just have completely different connotations to that.
Yes, the stuff Mystery teaches really is dumbed down. Which is good, because some guys start so dumb that they need this; sometimes they have problems to understand even this. I was there once. And the stuff helped me to get out of there.
It feels to me like saying: “The elementary schools are so dumb, I learned much more at university!”—Sure, good for you! Also, well-played sir; you gently reminded us of your higher status. The competition among PUA bloggers is strong these days; many authors have to market themself as beyond-PUA to be able to sell their PUA products. (Nothing wrong about that, I would probably do the same thing if I weren’t too lazy to blog.)
I also agree with the rest of the article. If you take a mentally unstable person and teach them PUA, you will get a mentally unstable person with some PUA skills. And therefore… I mean, if you take a mentally unstable person and teach them Java programming, you will get a mentally unstable person with some Java skills. Perhaps it is socially unresponsible to teach mentally unstable people anything that increases their powers without fixing their problems first. But that is not a problem specific to PUA industry.
My take is that PUA seems to be set in a universe where no one likes anyone else.
Men helping low-status men to overcome their lack of social skills… is an evidence that no one likes anyone else? (Ten years ago, the help was provided online for free, only later it developed into a profitable industry.)
But they don’t focus on liking women, do they? Well, they often don’t. To make a fair comparison, how often do seduction (sorry, relationship) articles, magazines, and books for women talk about liking men, respecting their agency, et cetera?
And maybe the people criticizing PUAs just focus too much on the bad parts, and ignore the nicer parts. But I admit the bad parts may be majority of the stuff.
I also agree with the rest of the article. If you take a mentally unstable person and teach them PUA, you will get a mentally unstable person with some PUA skills. And therefore… I mean, if you take a mentally unstable person and teach them Java programming, you will get a mentally unstable person with some Java skills.
And if you take a mentally unstable person and teach them to use a weapon, you will get a mentally unstable person with some weapon-using skills. This may be more undesirable than a mentally unstable person with some Java skills.
This isn’t necessarily not less undesirable than a mentally unstable person with some Java skills. [reads again to make sure to have said the right thing without getting farblondjet by the quadruple negation]
On reading that again one month later… I indeed got that wrong. Edited to say it like a normal person.
I still think that the benefits of publishing PUA advice are probably higher than the costs, but it would be difficult to defend this claim. (We would need to get data: how many clueless frustrated guys finally got their relationships right; how many naive girls were pumped and dumped by mentally unstable guys with pickup skills; the further impact of both on the society; etc. And even then we would have to make a value judgement about how much we care about a damsel in distress versus an expendable low-status male.)
The first link said that PUA could leave people in worse shape than it found them—and Clarisse Thorn (second link) said the same.
Good point about PUA cultivating friendships between men. I’d missed that part. Still, it doesn’t do a good job of encouraging friendliness between romantic/sexual partners.
it doesn’t do a good job of encouraging friendliness between romantic/sexual partners.
Compared with… relationship advice for women? (For example: don’t call him and rarely return his calls; stop dating him if he doesn’t buy you a romantic gift for your birthday or valentine’s day; don’t see him more than once or twice a week). How much of the PUA criticism—that it helps narcissist people develop their sense of grandiosity and become emotional vampires—applies to that, too? Perhaps the narcissism is more socially acceptable for women, because… uhm… yay, women! ?
Could we agree on a gender-neutral version that literature about “success” in relationships typically does not do a good job of encouraging friendliness between romantic/sexual partners? (And of course, there are always a few exceptions.)
(Or perhaps even more generally that literature about maximizing X does not do a good job at maximizing Y?)
That’s a reasonable question. However, I have no idea to what extent women take The Rules seriously, while there’s a lot of evidence that some fraction of the men here take PUA very seriously.
How about avoiding labels completely, and asking directly about behavior? Let’s make gender-neutral or gender-reversed questions for men and women, taboo all jargon, and see how many of them will report using the given strategy.
For example: “Do you sometimes pretend to be unavailable, even if you have free time, just to make yourself more scarce?” Or: “If the person you are dating becomes too proud of themselves, do you slightly criticize them in order to bring them back to earth?”
A woman can learn gender-reversed versions of some PUA advice from a magazine or hear it from her friends; she does not have to identify with any label. And she does not have to read any specific book, because all the information is already out there. Advice for women about manipulating men is generally not shocking and controversial. “The Rules” is a book that strongly pattern-matches PUA advice (a name similar to “The Game”, simplistic bullet-point advice), which was probably intentional, to create controversy and increase sales… but it’s not like women never read the specific ideas before in other books and magazines. (Okay, this one is probably new: “Don’t Discuss The Rules with Your Therapist”.)
Thank you for the links! I will most likely read the first link at some point, and maybe the second one eventually.
(From the about page of the blog linked to:)
This is a site dedicated to observing and analyzing human behavior and the nature of social interactions. Theories about why we do the things we do in relationships, the workplace, with strangers, in nightclubs and bars or anywhere people socialize and try to get along.
WOW, I have been looking for a website like this for a few months now. Again, thank you!
A man’s negative take on PUA.
A woman’s mostly negative take on PUA, though she thinks that a little PUA can be useful for men who are afraid to talk to women. Getting into the PUA sub-culture can leave men worse off.
Both have put a lot of thought into it.
My take is that PUA seems to be set in a universe where no one likes anyone else.
Funny thing is that I agree with the first article, I just have completely different connotations to that.
Yes, the stuff Mystery teaches really is dumbed down. Which is good, because some guys start so dumb that they need this; sometimes they have problems to understand even this. I was there once. And the stuff helped me to get out of there.
It feels to me like saying: “The elementary schools are so dumb, I learned much more at university!”—Sure, good for you! Also, well-played sir; you gently reminded us of your higher status. The competition among PUA bloggers is strong these days; many authors have to market themself as beyond-PUA to be able to sell their PUA products. (Nothing wrong about that, I would probably do the same thing if I weren’t too lazy to blog.)
I also agree with the rest of the article. If you take a mentally unstable person and teach them PUA, you will get a mentally unstable person with some PUA skills. And therefore… I mean, if you take a mentally unstable person and teach them Java programming, you will get a mentally unstable person with some Java skills. Perhaps it is socially unresponsible to teach mentally unstable people anything that increases their powers without fixing their problems first. But that is not a problem specific to PUA industry.
EDIT: Changed my mind about this.
Men helping low-status men to overcome their lack of social skills… is an evidence that no one likes anyone else? (Ten years ago, the help was provided online for free, only later it developed into a profitable industry.)
But they don’t focus on liking women, do they? Well, they often don’t. To make a fair comparison, how often do seduction (sorry, relationship) articles, magazines, and books for women talk about liking men, respecting their agency, et cetera?
And maybe the people criticizing PUAs just focus too much on the bad parts, and ignore the nicer parts. But I admit the bad parts may be majority of the stuff.
And if you take a mentally unstable person and teach them to use a weapon, you will get a mentally unstable person with some weapon-using skills. This may be more undesirable than a mentally unstable person with some Java skills.
On reading that again one month later… I indeed got that wrong. Edited to say it like a normal person.
Uhm, you are right about this; my mistake. I focused too much on winning the debate. Apologies to everyone.
I still think that the benefits of publishing PUA advice are probably higher than the costs, but it would be difficult to defend this claim. (We would need to get data: how many clueless frustrated guys finally got their relationships right; how many naive girls were pumped and dumped by mentally unstable guys with pickup skills; the further impact of both on the society; etc. And even then we would have to make a value judgement about how much we care about a damsel in distress versus an expendable low-status male.)
The first link said that PUA could leave people in worse shape than it found them—and Clarisse Thorn (second link) said the same.
Good point about PUA cultivating friendships between men. I’d missed that part. Still, it doesn’t do a good job of encouraging friendliness between romantic/sexual partners.
Compared with… relationship advice for women? (For example: don’t call him and rarely return his calls; stop dating him if he doesn’t buy you a romantic gift for your birthday or valentine’s day; don’t see him more than once or twice a week). How much of the PUA criticism—that it helps narcissist people develop their sense of grandiosity and become emotional vampires—applies to that, too? Perhaps the narcissism is more socially acceptable for women, because… uhm… yay, women! ?
Could we agree on a gender-neutral version that literature about “success” in relationships typically does not do a good job of encouraging friendliness between romantic/sexual partners? (And of course, there are always a few exceptions.)
(Or perhaps even more generally that literature about maximizing X does not do a good job at maximizing Y?)
That’s a reasonable question. However, I have no idea to what extent women take The Rules seriously, while there’s a lot of evidence that some fraction of the men here take PUA very seriously.
How about avoiding labels completely, and asking directly about behavior? Let’s make gender-neutral or gender-reversed questions for men and women, taboo all jargon, and see how many of them will report using the given strategy.
For example: “Do you sometimes pretend to be unavailable, even if you have free time, just to make yourself more scarce?” Or: “If the person you are dating becomes too proud of themselves, do you slightly criticize them in order to bring them back to earth?”
A woman can learn gender-reversed versions of some PUA advice from a magazine or hear it from her friends; she does not have to identify with any label. And she does not have to read any specific book, because all the information is already out there. Advice for women about manipulating men is generally not shocking and controversial. “The Rules” is a book that strongly pattern-matches PUA advice (a name similar to “The Game”, simplistic bullet-point advice), which was probably intentional, to create controversy and increase sales… but it’s not like women never read the specific ideas before in other books and magazines. (Okay, this one is probably new: “Don’t Discuss The Rules with Your Therapist”.)
Thank you for the links! I will most likely read the first link at some point, and maybe the second one eventually.
(From the about page of the blog linked to:)
WOW, I have been looking for a website like this for a few months now. Again, thank you!