This is really interesting. There is something to notice here, but it’s not about PUA, it’s about the roles women play in society.
My first thought is that the rules should be:
Get a handsome guy to buy you a drink, but you’re not allowed to ask directly. You have to get him to offer.
Make him think you like him, and make him like you for some interval of time.
After a predetermined interval, say 15 minutes, make him lose interest.
I added the extra limitations because of wobster’s concerns: basically, it seems like a cheap trick to just ask drunk guys to buy you a drink until one says yes, and it seems mean to snub him afterwards.
Then, after I formulated those rules, I realized that these are basically the rules that women are socialized to follow: women are generally taught to be less assertive than men, to get what they want through manipulation, to not snub or make men feel bad, and to find indirect ways of getting out of situations without offending anyone.
I’d argue that this is the rough equivalent of one specific sub-field of PUA, albeit the most well-known: doing cold approaches in a loud meat-market type of bar, because it consists of approaching someone and controlling their interest level.
(There is some confusion here in that the term ‘pickup’ originally referred to exactly this, as in ‘bar pickup,’ whereas now terms like ‘PUA’ or ‘Game’ have been broadened significantly to include the entire spectrum of dating and relationship skills. I suspect that this semantic difference causes a lot of problems.)
So, in a sense, it’s the female equivalent: the way PUA (in some cases) teaches men to follow normalized gender roles [1], this teaches women to follow normalized gender roles. The reason it seems skeevier than PUA is that the roles women are “supposed” to follow are skeevier and more manipulative. And, as Manfred pointed out, the gender roles in the “bar-trawling subculture” already seem skeevy.
A more general equivalent would be sales: go door-to-door and get people to buy magazines or something.
A good counterpoint might be an assertiveness exercise such as:
Go to a restaurant and order something.
Take one bite.
Send it back because you don’t like it, and get the restaurant to take it off your bill.
This is surprisingly difficult for a lot of people to do.
[1] Obviously, this is a huge category, and there are definitely individual teachers who focus on the development of more feminine traits as an alternative strategy; however, a lot of pickup is learning to take on the “man” social role.
This is really interesting. There is something to notice here, but it’s not about PUA, it’s about the roles women play in society.
My first thought is that the rules should be:
Get a handsome guy to buy you a drink, but you’re not allowed to ask directly. You have to get him to offer.
Make him think you like him, and make him like you for some interval of time.
After a predetermined interval, say 15 minutes, make him lose interest.
I added the extra limitations because of wobster’s concerns: basically, it seems like a cheap trick to just ask drunk guys to buy you a drink until one says yes, and it seems mean to snub him afterwards.
Then, after I formulated those rules, I realized that these are basically the rules that women are socialized to follow: women are generally taught to be less assertive than men, to get what they want through manipulation, to not snub or make men feel bad, and to find indirect ways of getting out of situations without offending anyone.
I’d argue that this is the rough equivalent of one specific sub-field of PUA, albeit the most well-known: doing cold approaches in a loud meat-market type of bar, because it consists of approaching someone and controlling their interest level.
(There is some confusion here in that the term ‘pickup’ originally referred to exactly this, as in ‘bar pickup,’ whereas now terms like ‘PUA’ or ‘Game’ have been broadened significantly to include the entire spectrum of dating and relationship skills. I suspect that this semantic difference causes a lot of problems.)
So, in a sense, it’s the female equivalent: the way PUA (in some cases) teaches men to follow normalized gender roles [1], this teaches women to follow normalized gender roles. The reason it seems skeevier than PUA is that the roles women are “supposed” to follow are skeevier and more manipulative. And, as Manfred pointed out, the gender roles in the “bar-trawling subculture” already seem skeevy.
A more general equivalent would be sales: go door-to-door and get people to buy magazines or something.
A good counterpoint might be an assertiveness exercise such as:
Go to a restaurant and order something.
Take one bite.
Send it back because you don’t like it, and get the restaurant to take it off your bill.
This is surprisingly difficult for a lot of people to do.
[1] Obviously, this is a huge category, and there are definitely individual teachers who focus on the development of more feminine traits as an alternative strategy; however, a lot of pickup is learning to take on the “man” social role.