PUA comes from a bunch of nerds trying to tackle the problem of how to “systematically win” in the interaction with females. Mostly with relatively little contact to prior art and little experience in existing frameworks for building skills in human interaction.
At the start most of the PUA framework was created by discussions on an online forum.
Those basic underlying factors lead to a lot of problems that PUA does have. They are also present on LessWrong and not easily debunked.
At the beginning, the community at least tried to be experiment-driven, but after it became more popular, it gradually became adsense-driven. The more outrage, the more money, regardless of whether the advice actually works for anyone. (If there even is an advice, instead of mere bragging, preferably unverifiable.)
Also, people are mostly unable to tell a difference between “X made me successful” and “I am a successful person that happened to write an article about X”. So instead of advice that helps unattractive guys get a date, it became a list of things attractive guys can do and still get laid. Not the same thing.
But generally, it seems to me there is a repeating pattern—there is an official socially accepted narrative which contains a few blind spots and outright falsehoods. Then come people who point out the falsity, and gain a following. Gradually the group develops its own narrative, also full of blind spots and falsehoods. Until at some moment someone successfuly points out a mistake in the new narrative, and then the history repeats again.
At the beginning, the community at least tried to be experiment-driven, but after it became more popular, it gradually became adsense-driven.
I don’t think most of the successful PUA memes win because of adsence optimization. Most of the ebooks and videos many PUA community folk consumes is pirated.
Money get’s made by building a reputation and then charging high prices for bootcamps.
Eban Pegan might have made more money with selling Double Your Dating with adsence but he’s not the most popular guy within the PUA community.
PUA comes from a bunch of nerds trying to tackle the problem of how to “systematically win” in the interaction with females. Mostly with relatively little contact to prior art and little experience in existing frameworks for building skills in human interaction.
At the start most of the PUA framework was created by discussions on an online forum.
Those basic underlying factors lead to a lot of problems that PUA does have. They are also present on LessWrong and not easily debunked.
At the beginning, the community at least tried to be experiment-driven, but after it became more popular, it gradually became adsense-driven. The more outrage, the more money, regardless of whether the advice actually works for anyone. (If there even is an advice, instead of mere bragging, preferably unverifiable.)
Also, people are mostly unable to tell a difference between “X made me successful” and “I am a successful person that happened to write an article about X”. So instead of advice that helps unattractive guys get a date, it became a list of things attractive guys can do and still get laid. Not the same thing.
But generally, it seems to me there is a repeating pattern—there is an official socially accepted narrative which contains a few blind spots and outright falsehoods. Then come people who point out the falsity, and gain a following. Gradually the group develops its own narrative, also full of blind spots and falsehoods. Until at some moment someone successfuly points out a mistake in the new narrative, and then the history repeats again.
I don’t think most of the successful PUA memes win because of adsence optimization. Most of the ebooks and videos many PUA community folk consumes is pirated.
Money get’s made by building a reputation and then charging high prices for bootcamps.
Eban Pegan might have made more money with selling Double Your Dating with adsence but he’s not the most popular guy within the PUA community.