Maybe “Mystery” is different from what’s in the forums—my first impression was from the forums. I can’t generalize to everyone who uses the label PUA—it’s possible that some sub-strains are decent.
Should we judge someone for being an asshole if it works for him?
Well, yes! Behaviors resulting from being an asshole are terminally bad. Let’s take a step back—a set of ideas has led you to the conclusion that it is okay to be an asshole. Don’t you think it is time to re-evaluate?
I’ll make my point better, since we’re doing a separate post. There is nothing wrong with the idea of optimizing attractiveness, the problem is the specific community of “PUA”, which I’m assuming is well represented by the most popular forum, although I may be mistaken.
AMOG— 1. noun [alpha male of the group or alpha male other guy]: a socially comfortable male who competes with a pickup artist for a woman or interferes with a pickup artist’s game. Origin: 01d_Dog. 2. verb: to remove a potential male competitor—through physical, verbal, or psychological tactics—from a group of women. Also: outalpha. Origin: Tyler Durden.
I’ve seen that type of guy, who tries to subtly put me down in front of female friends—even though I’ve done nothing but extend friendship to him! If you are interested in my friends (and I’m honestly not trying to stop you or “competing”), why does that need to involve putting me down? Rather than passive-aggressively antagonizing me, shouldn’t you be making friends with me so that you have a mutual acquaintance with the person you are interested in?
BF DESTROYER—noun [boyfriend destroyer]: a pattern, routine, or line a
pickup artist uses with the intention of seducing a woman who has a boyfriend.
You might “succeed”, if you call that succeeding....but it’s obvious why you shouldn’t rush people into decisions they might regret later.
BITCH SHIELD— noun: a woman’s defensive response to deter unknown men who approach her. Though her reaction to an opening line may be rude, this does not necessarily mean the woman herself is rude, or even impossible to engage in a conversation.
In other words, bothering someone who doesn’t want strangers to bother her right now.
A subculture’s DNA is in its slang and jargon. Do you want these memes in your mind? Admittedly, there are some good things, like getting rid of
AA—Approach Anxiety: Fear of approaching a set or girl due to an already assumed rejection.
and I wholeheartedly approve of doing things like that to improve your attractiveness. But there is a lot of bad mixed in with the good, and it takes a discerning mind to separate them out. Overall it seems like a net loss.
To be fair, this is mostly a problem with the jargon, which has mostly been chosen for effect. The jargon phrases actually give little or no indication of how these practices actually work in the field. They are far less nefarious than they appear at first glance:
AMOG …
The preferred AMOG tactic for experienced PUAs is… you guessed it, to befriend the Other Guy since this helps you get an ‘in’ with the group! However, attempts at befriending are not always successful; sometimes the AMOG really is trying to block or compete with you. That’s when something that could be described as “subtle status putdowns” might happen—but by that time, the situation has been antagonized already. Also, PUAs generally strive for effectiveness and do not like wasting effort on a bad “set”—but you can’t eject without putting in some effort to show that you will stand up for yourself in a status contest.
BF DESTROYER
Here’s how “BF destroyers” work: they are subtle ways of figuring out whether your “target” is reasonably happy in her relationship with her bf. If it turns out that she’s not that happy, what’s wrong with making an attempt at a relationship? As we often quote on this site: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” Or, if you like: “Now I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.”
BITCH SHIELD
“Bitch shields” happen because women get approached over and over and over in thoroughly uninteresting and unappealing ways. ANY attempt at anything resembling PUA, however loosely, has to be keenly and acutely aware of this effect in order to avert it—mostly by trying to be more interesting and more appealing, and also making this clear upfront.
This is not to deny the problem of antagonizing language in the PUA community, which is a very real issue. But it’s important to put this in perspective.
Edit: As of now, this comment has been downvoted to −3, for unclear reasons. My best guess for this is that the community broadly views discussion about pick-up arts (PUA) as unproductive or politically divisive, or more generally disapproves of it at some level. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have a proper explanation.
I think the downvotes are just expressing disagreement—which is a bit unfortunate, since the entire point of this thread is to tackle the PUA / misogyny issues that have been circulating.
this is mostly a problem with the jargon, which has mostly been chosen for effect.
Maybe. Let’s explore the non-jargon parts. This is first thing upon entering the forum:
How To Approach Any Woman With Zero Chance Of Rejection… This Works EVERY Time!
How To Make Out With Any Woman You Want In 16 Minutes Or Less
The Secret To Developing Emotional Addiction In Women (That Makes Them Loyal And Obedient)
So, all women are the same, you can pressure them to kiss you in <15min, and the goal is obedience? This looks like a scam preying upon the socially awkward. OK, maybe that’s just the web admin, let’s move on...
I can’t help but feel too cynical now when it comes to relationships and women in general. After reading PUA material and from personal experience, i realise that if you treat a woman nice or show vulnerability then it will later stab you in the back, even with girls who have got their heads screwed on and come across as being generally compassionate.
Interesting...many people are expressing agreement. It sounds like the memeplex has actually damaged these folks.
“You’re cherry picking”
Yes, I know. Look, I’m not saying every single person who does PUA is a misogynist, and I’m not saying that all PUA memes are bad. All I’m saying is that a large amount of it is bad, and there are certain extremely misguided ideas which are endemic in the community.
The preferred AMOG tactic for experienced PUAs is
Your essentially saying that the “real” PUA’s aren’t as bad as they seem on the internet, and I have no way of confirming or denying the truth of that statement. From where I’m standing, the website doesn’t mention befriending.
I get it, there can be a good side. In fact, all communities almost always have a good side. Half truths can be refined into full truths. Bad ideas can be reinterpreted into good ideas. But this post and others like it come out acting like everything is fine with PUA, even though the post itself harbors harmful PUA memes. Many of the attitudes I’ve heard here today carry harmful memes.
Here’s how “BF destroyers” work: they are subtle ways of figuring out whether your “target” is reasonably happy in her relationship with her bf. If it turns out that she’s not that happy, what’s wrong with making an attempt at a relationship?
You mean that you inform her that you are interested, wait for her to think it over and inform her boyfriend about the breakup, and then start a relationship? I guess I could get behind that...
First google search result—nope...it doesn’t seem like that’s how it usually goes…
Point being—yes, you can flip all of these around and turn them good. But the PUA community has to actually do that—as it stands right now, they haven’t.
So, all women are the same, you can pressure them to kiss you in <15min, and the goal is obedience? This looks like a scam preying upon the socially awkward. OK, maybe that’s just the web admin, let’s move on...
That’s an ad banner. I don’t think it makes much sense to treat these claims as coming from the seduction community, and most PUAs would not endorse them at all. What’s actually striking here is that PUA is effective enough (especially for socially awkward users who manage to acquire some focused social skills) that a banner ad can make such outlandish claims and not look wildly out of place on the site.
Interesting...many people are expressing agreement.
Note that the forum poster is citing personal experience along with PUA theory as a reason for his cynicism. And there is a lot of similarly-flavored cynicism which does not reference PUA memes at all, and has an even bitterer outlook on women and relationships. Look into the so-called “Nice Guy” phenomenon (which PUAs strongly object to, by the way), the “Men’s Rights” meme cluster and whatnot. PUA is a marked improvement on these meme clusters, while still being epistemically consistent with what we know about human social behavior.
The root problem here is that ‘cynicism’ is a problematic concept, since it conflates (1) epistemic beliefs and (2) markedly negative, scornful and complaining attitudes. It’s not clear at all that most aspiring PUAs share such bad attitudes, and PUA ‘inner game’ practices would tend to avoid and discourage them, if only because they’re markedly unattractive.
You mean that you inform her that you are interested, wait for her to think it over and inform her boyfriend about the breakup, and then start a relationship? I guess I could get behind that...
No, it’s a bit messier than that. Anyway, it’s a rare occurrence when one is actually able to “take over” from an existing relationship: the most common outcome is simply ejecting from the approach. Many posters make this abundantly clear in the linked forum thread. (In fact, I couldn’t even find anything clearly wrong with that thread, although I only looked at the first page.)
A better reason for being familiar with “BF destroyers” is that, as it turns out, women sometimes blurt out the “boyfriend” word as a kind of silly “test” or hoop to jump through, regardless of their actual relationship status.
If no, that’s a decent thing to point out to deter men from these tactics.
If the tactics work, men will use them. If you want to call winning (instrumental rationality) being an asshole, that’s your prerogative. To a large extent, the fact that such tactics win offends my sensibilities, I find the tactics annoying, and I would encourage those in a position to change the outcome to make those tactics lose.
But as long as those choosing the winners choose “assholes”, I find it hard to hold “being an asshole” against someone.
An at-least-equally-first question is whether the tactics leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents).
But as long as those choosing the winners choose “assholes”, I find it hard to hold “being an asshole” against someone.
That a tactic benefits the user in the immediate interaction isn’t the only relevant factor for an agent in a social network.
More specifically in this case: if agent A taking action X leaves my community worse off, then it’s reasonable for me to object to A doing X, even if X leaves A better off. It’s also reasonable for me to act so as to reduce the net benefit to A (e.g., by applying social sanctions), even if I’m not directly affected by X.
This is as true where X is a mating tactic as when X is a financial investment strategy or a waste disposal technique.
So for my part, I don’t find it hard to hold “being an asshole” against people, even when “being an asshole” benefits them, even if I’m not directly affected by their “being an asshole”. Indeed, I often consider holding “being an asshole” against people to be an important act of social hygiene, and resent members of my community who refuse to perform it themselves.
An at-least-equally-first question is whether the tactics leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents).
Worse off, according to who?
I’ll start with the assumption that the methods work to get and hold a woman’s interest, otherwise there’s nothing to discuss. If the methods only repel women, no one has an interest in them.
If women have a marginal preference for a man when he engages in PUA behavior over not, then according to them, the behaviors are better. Preference is revealed by choice, not rationalization and ideological piffle. And many women don’t agree with the ideological piffle, and laugh it off with a snort.
Works the for woman and the man involved, doesn’t work for you. Since it’s their lives, and they’re most affected by the choice, I calculate an overwhelming net gain.
Indeed, I often consider holding “being an asshole” against people to be an important act of social hygiene, and resent members of my community who refuse to perform it themselves.
A great many people resent others who don’t share and enforce their values. That’s one of the defining characteristics of the moral outlook.
Me, I resent buttinskis who harangue and berate others “for their own good”, and presume that everyone shares their values, as if they’re commandments from the Universe. We all have our crosses to bear.
Works the for woman and the man involved, doesn’t work for you. Since it’s their lives, and they’re most affected by the choice, I calculate an overwhelming net gain.
In all cases where the knock-on affects of their interaction don’t significantly affect anyone else, I agree completely. The same thing is true of people tossing their trash in the street, making investment strategies, grazing their sheep in the commons, etc.
In cases where the knock-on affects of their interaction significantly affect others, that’s less clear. That’s why I endorse starting from the question of whether the tactics leave everyone involved worse off. Sometimes other people matter.
A great many people resent others who don’t share and enforce their values. That’s one of the defining characteristics of the moral outlook.
Sure, that’s true.
Also, a great many people resent others whose actions have negative externalities, and seek to minimize those actions, and resent others who don’t seek to minimize those actions. That’s one of the defining characteristics of social behavior.
Me, I resent buttinskis who harangue and berate others “for their own good”, and presume that everyone shares their values, as if they’re commandments from the Universe.
Is the implication that that noun phrase describes me intentional or accidental? Either way, it’s false.
Everything affects everything else. Butterfly wings, and all that.
Actions don’t come with minus signs on them. A person may evaluate an action according to his values as negative. Negative, relative to what? Simply translating all values by a constant can change whether a particular value is negative or not. And if negative is relative to a maximal, as defined by the person, then everything deviating from his preferences is a negative externality. If he is committed to punishing those who deviate from his maximal, and punishing those who fail to likewise punish, he’s committed to an endless war until he’s converted the entire world to his ideology. Punish, punish, punish, until it’s One Mind, One Will.
I find such people a social menace.
That’s the implication of a punishing utilitarian, which you seemed to be from your earlier comments. Your comment below seems to imply otherwise.
Now you’re ok with the PUA and his lady friend living their PUA lives, as long as they don’t significantly affect other people’s lives. So am I. Woman who aren’t attracted to men who employ PUA tactics won’t be. I presume the PUA folks at least attempt to avoid such women, and if they don’t they should. Sounds about the best we can do—there is some necessary friction to the discovery process of who matches who.
But it’s inconvenient for you as a third party to the mating dance? Maybe so. But most people put quite a high priority on finding a suitable mate. Do you find your inconvenience relatively “significant”?
Everything affects everything else. Butterfly wings, and all that.
I’m not sure I understood this. You seem to be suggesting that the whole enterprise of taking action based on expected-value calculations is to be rejected because of the existence of chaotic uncertainty. If so, I simply disagree. Sure, butterfly wings might cause hurricanes, but that’s not the way to bet. If I’ve misunderstood you, I apologize. If you are willing to try to express yourself differently, I’ll try again to understand
Actions don’t come with minus signs on them.
That’s true.
A person may evaluate an action according to his values as negative. Negative, relative to what? Simply translating all values by a constant can change whether a particular value is negative or not. And if negative is relative to a maximal, as defined by the person, then everything deviating from his preferences is a negative externality.
Here, again, I’m not sure I follow you.
I perform an expected value calculation on an act, and conclude the expected value of the act is negative based on my values. Another way of saying that is that the expected value of the world after that act is performed is lower than its expected value if that act is not performed.
If he is committed to punishing those who deviate from his maximal, and punishing those who fail to likewise punish, he’s committed to an endless war until he’s converted the entire world to his ideology
Sure. Punishing everyone who behaves imperfectly until I’ve converted the entire world is a really bad strategy; it just doesn’t work, as has been demonstrated many many times. 100% agreed.
I find such people a social menace.
Sure, I agree.
That’s the implication of a punishing utilitarian, which you seemed to be from your earlier comments.
Did I? My goodness. Well, I’m glad we cleared up that misunderstanding.
Now you’re ok with the PUA and his lady friend living their PUA lives, as long as they don’t significantly affect other people’s lives.
Not only that, they can even significantly affect other people’s lives, as long as they don’t leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents). Which is why I started out by talking about checking for that condition in the first place. Which is why I disagree with the implications of “Now” in your sentence.
So am I.
Great. glad we agree.
But it’s inconvenient for you as a third party to the mating dance? Maybe so. But most people put quite a high priority on finding a suitable mate. Do you find your inconvenience relatively “significant”?
Nope, not for any ordinary understanding of “inconvenient.”. And, consequently, in cases where the expected value of the “mating dance” is that two people find suitable mates and I am inconvenienced, the result of asking whether the “mating dance” leaves everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents) is that I conclude that no, it doesn’t.
I infer from your comments thus far that you’ve decided that I’m some kind of awful moralist buttinski who will only ever answer the question by concluding that yes, it does, and therefore all “mating dances” must be stopped, or at least pearl-clutched over. So, just to be very clear about this:
As I’ve said several times now, if the “mating dance” (or actions more generally) don’t leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents), I don’t have a problem with it.
If it does leave everyone involved worse off, I do have a problem with it.
If I observe a “mating dance” (or other action) that I expect to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse acting so as to prevent that harm if I can do so.
If I observe a “mating dance” (or other action) that I expect not to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse leaving it untouched.
If someone else observes a “mating dance” (or other action) that they expect to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse them acting so as to prevent that harm if they can do so.
If they observe a “mating dance” (or other action) that they expect not to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse them leaving it untouched.
If you object to any of the above, I’d like to hear your suggested alternative action, and whether you endorse that alternative for scenarios other than the “mating dance.” For example, if I see someone engaging in the “driving in traffic dance” or the “putting their wallet in the washing machine dance” in ways I expect to leave everyone involved worse off, do you reach the same conclusions?
Not only that, they can even significantly affect other people’s lives, as long as they don’t leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents).
I think we can deal with the “net” business quickly.
Jack and Joe both desire Jill. Jack perceives that he can win Jill’s affections in competition with Joe, Jill would be just as happy with Joe, but that Joe would be happier than himself (Jack) with Jill.
The “net maximum” would be Jill with Joe. Do you expect Jack to bow out and leave Jill to Jack? Will you punish him if he doesn’t? Will you punish those who fail to punish Jack?
It seems from what you have said that your answers to this would be yes, yes, yes, and you’re back to being a punishing utilitarian.
My answers are no, no, no. I don’t expect Jack to sacrifice his happiness for Joe.
Are you positing a non-iterated affection competition, here? One-shot, there’s one girl, two guys, end of story, no further interactions, nothing else of value to be exchanged?
If so, then I certainly agree with you. In such a constrained universe, social behavior is useless.
If not, then depending on the details of what further interactions are likely, a strategy with a higher expected value for Jack probably exists which would involve Jack bowing out.
Do I expect Jack to adopt that strategy spontaneously? I dunno, it depends on how smart Jack is, and what information he has. Most humans won’t, though, so I don’t expect it of Jack either. I expect humans to defect on the prisoner’s dilemma, also.
Will I punish him if he doesn’t? Will I punish those who fail to punish Jack? Almost undoubtedly not. Ordinarily, the opportunity costs Jack incurs by pursuing a suboptimal strategy will be far outweighed by the costs I incur by a strategy of punishing people for being suboptimal. You could probably construct a scenario in which I would, though I expect it would be contrived.
I don’t expect Jack to sacrifice his happiness for Joe.
In practice, worse off according to the person answering the question, as is typically true when we ask questions of people, including ourselves.
But, OK, if it’s important for some reason to be more rigorous here: consider the set A of agents (A1..An) who have perspectives I consider salient according to which people can be worse or better off due to the use of a particular tactic.
The expected net value difference, aggregated over the entire system, of using that tactic will be calculated differently by each agent in A, for many different reasons. There are three possibilities, though: (1) All agents in A agree that the expected net value difference is positive. (2) All agents in A agree that the expected net value difference is negative. (3) Agents in A disagree about the sign of the expected net value difference.
I agree that whether a tactic leaves everyone involved worse off is tricky to determine in case 3, and that more generally sometimes the answer to “do the tactics leave everyone involved worse off?” is “I don’t know; it’s complicated,” especially if my set A has a lot of agents in it.
The existence of cases 1 and 2 can still make it worthwhile to ask the question.
The existence of cases 1 and 2 can still make it worthwhile to ask the question.
Given that this is a matter of competition for a scarce resource—the time, attention, and affection of a person − 1 and 2 are vanishingly small cases when dealing with generally desirable mates.
The only way this seems plausible to me is if you’re interpreting “expected net value difference, aggregated over the entire system, of using that tactic, as evaluated by agent A” as being roughly equivalent to “expected net value difference to A of that tactic being used, as evaluated by A.”
That is, if you are assuming an evaluation something like “There’s three of us, we all want the same girl, this tactic works, so either of you two losers using this tactic is BAD, but me using this tactic is GOOD.” Which, I agree, if everyone’s evaluating it that way, 1 and 2 are highly unlikely.
OTOH, if everyone is actually calculating the expected net value difference, aggregated over the entire system, of using that tactic, I would expect a very different result in most cases.… something more like “There’s three of us, we all want the same girl, this tactic works, so one of us using this tactic is better than none of us doing so, and probably better than all three of us wasting resources using it at once if we can agree on some other way of deciding which of us gets to use it, like drawing straws, or letting Sam have her because past experience shows he’s better at this than we are and will win anyway, or some other method.”
But I would agree that most people don’t actually do that in practice.
I honestly don’t know whether or not they (as in AMOG, BF Destroyer, Bitch Shield, and other “immoral” tactics) work in general. I don’t think they do...at least, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work on the type of woman I’d be interested in, so they are useless to me anyway regardless of moral qualms. Perhaps, for someone with a different set of goals working with a different demographic, these things would work.
If I had to guess, I bet that a lot of the more morally acceptable tactics the PUA community teaches—appropriate eye contact, body language, “kino” (non-creepy use of touch), playful banter - do increase attractiveness, and that the immoral ones don’t, but when you mix everything together you net a total gain in attractiveness.
But as long as those choosing the winners choose “assholes”, I find it hard to hold “being an asshole” against someone.
I don’t find it hard at all. Corrupt politicians and businessmen “win” all the time, but I find that it is shockingly easy to dislike them. But it doesn’t really matter whether or not one “holds things” against anyone...all that matters in the end is the decision about whether the behavior should be encouraged, or not.
Also, it’s a little odd to say that women are choosing the “winners”. It doesn’t have to be a competition, and being “chosen” by a women isn’t necessarily “winning”...or at least, it certainly isn’t one of my terminal goals.
I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work on the type of woman I’d be interested in
I used to think things like that too. The older I got, the less I believed it. We grow up being taught certain idealizations about how people should be. They aren’t like that.
Corrupt politicians and businessmen “win” all the time, but I still don’t like them...
I don’t like them either. But I blame the people who vote for them. They’re the true problem.
I used to think things like that too. The older I got, the less I believed it. We grow up being taught certain idealizations about how people should be. They aren’t like that.
If you are saying you know better because you are older, I can’t argue with that because I am young. But as long as we are making arguments from experience, I’ve got to say, I think my girlfriend is like that. At the very least, I find that some of the population fit some of the idealizations of how people should be—although very few people fit them all.
And as long as we are speaking from experience, plenty of women have been attracted to me, despite my never pulling any of the subset of PUA behaviors which I’ve described as immoral. I’m not saying that being “nice” is all it takes—a lot of it is about being attractive, tall, well dressed and socially adept—and two of those things are trainable. I am just saying that being “bad” is not necessary...and I’d maintain that in the long run it’s not even helpful, since the type of people you attract is partly a reflection of your behavior.
If you are saying you know better because you are older,
I think I know better than I used to. Generalization increasingly made based on observations that cut across my natural preferences—not wishful thinking.
I think my girlfriend is like that.
Your girlfriend prefers a diffident man over a confident man? It’s always possible. We don’t all come from the same cookie cutter.
Your girlfriend prefers a diffident man over a confident man?
No, that’s really not what I said.
You said
To a large extent, the fact that such tactics win offends my sensibilities, I find the tactics annoying, and I would encourage those in a position to change the outcome to make those tactics lose.
I said in response
I’m pretty sure they [aforementioned PUA tactics] wouldn’t work on the type of woman I’d be interested in
You said in response
We grow up being taught certain idealizations about how people should be. They aren’t like that.
and that’s why I said
my girlfriend isn’t like that
“Like that” here means: not attracted to people who display “confidence” via aforementioned PUA tactics—by putting others down (AMOG), being overly persistent after being told off (bitch shield destroying) and pressuring people to make decisions they might regret later (bf destroyer).
So when I say my girlfriend is “like that” I mean she is someone who is not attracted to irresponsible, morally questionable displays of dominance which involve being presumptuous and putting other people down. As in, the tactics which you said would offend your sensibilities.
It is important to disassociate confidence (a positive trait) from a cluster of tactics which you just said offend your sensibilities (negative traits). Why did you just now treat “confidence” and “sensibility offending tactics” as synonymous? If the two are conflated in your mind and your model of confidence necessarily includes sensibility offending behavior, you’re going to end up either instinctively avoiding confidence or instinctively engaging in behavior that offends yourself...
I was discussing the basic premise that women prefer confident, dominating men. If they’re correct on the premise, then it’s just an argument over what techniques are effective to counterfeit that signal, if any.
You say the PUA tactics don’t work on your girlfriend. Maybe. I’d note that even if someone says they don’t like a particular tactic, that doesn’t mean that the tactic didn’t have the desired effect—“I really hate it when my confident, dominant man does X”. Yeah. But would you find him confident and dominant if he didn’t? Would he be “your man” if he didn’t?
I agree, that’s the trend. More the confident than the dominating though.
an argument over what techniques are effective to counterfeit that signal, if any.
Agreed on that too.
Here are signals which work, and I like- smiling, eye contact, casual touch, joking, interesting conversation...
Here are signals which work, and I don’t like that they work, but I do not morally object—demonstrating that other women are interested, being well dressed, displaying wealth, being in a position of authority....
These are signals which I morally object to, and I also express skepticism as to whether you get good results in the long run if you use these: subtle insults targeting insecurities (neg), antagonistic stance to other males (amog), ignoring “leave me alone” cues (bitch shield breaking), pressurizing in the face of significant resistance (bf destroyer and others)...
More universally, but dominating is probably more effective when it does work. And actual dominance over others—demonstrable power—is a huge plus.
Here are signals which work, and I don’t like that they work, but I do not morally object—demonstrating that other women are interested, being well dressed, displaying wealth, being in a position of authority....
I’ve been getting over the don’t like it part. Women are what they are.
[1] subtle insults targeting insecurities (neg), [2] antagonistic stance to other males (amog), [3] ignoring “leave me alone” cues (bitch shield breaking), [4] pressurizing in the face of significant resistance (bf destroyer and others)...
[1] Didn’t people used to just call this banter? Challenging back and forth remarks? Is Cary Grant “negging” in His Girl Friday? It doesn’t work universally—I find some women are just annoyed by banter and refuse to hit the ball back—but it’s a lot of fun when it does.
[2] Signals dominance. If it succeeds in driving other male off, so much the better. I’d wonder if the better strategy is alliance with the resident alpha male if he is on the hunt.
[3] Do the game theory. Bitch shield breaking more likely for desirable outcome for the PUA than scurrying off. You can’t win if you don’t play. They seem big on making it a numbers game.
[4] Significant resistance would imply to me at least a relatively bad hand. Play the bad hand, or fold. Similar to [3] in taking advantage of all opportunities.
For 2,3,4, there must be some point at which the opportunity costs make them a bad bet, though it seems something of a game of discovery where finding what works is a terminal good for them. But the strategies do seem to improve the odds of less than optimal situations to me. They don’t always work, but they do seem like good plays of bad hands.
There is almost zero doubt that those strategies work, and work extremely well. Every successful PUA I know keeps detailed logs of their interactions (or kept them at one point), and measures the effectiveness of their pitches.
Many guys do it just like telemarketing. They throw out their routines and track how many hang ups (well, walk aways) they get, how many conversions they get (and to what extent), and how each line impacts their numbers relative to the demographic they’re approaching. Other guys will adopt a tactic and use nothing-but-it for a week. You get very good data on it’s strengths and weaknesses. Again, good/bad tactics are discerned quickly and everything is very grounded in reality.
Your talk about ‘immoral’ and ‘acceptable’ tactics generally mirrors something called ‘inner game’ and ‘outer game’ in the PUA community. Inner game is general ‘being more attractive’ advice and is always applied. Outer game is a toolbox of very specific tools that you pull out for a purpose. Because most outer game is very specific, it is incredibly easy to get succes rates, and as a result these strategies have the most thorough numbers on success rates. I assure you, they are very effective.
I honestly don’t know whether or not they (as in AMOG, BF Destroyer, Bitch Shield, and other “immoral” tactics) work in general. I don’t think they do...at least, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work on the type of woman I’d be interested in, so they are useless to me anyway regardless of moral qualms.
Since one of those is actually a tactic used by females and one is tautologically a male tactic (the other being technically sex neutral but practically male) I’m also pretty sure that you couldn’t use at least one of them, regardless of your moral qualms and sexual identity.
“Bitch Shield” is a tactic for quickly filtering potential mates via subjecting them to stimulus that quickly discourages socially weak candidates. One could call it an immoral tactic, but there doesn’t seem like much point to such labeling.
Much of dealing with “AMOGs” is also about influences on other males and on the social group. Unless “the type of woman you’d be interested in” outright rejects any male she sees competing socially with other males then “wouldn’t work on her” just doesn’t make any sense.
“Bitch Shield” is a tactic for quickly filtering potential mates via subjecting them to stimulus that quickly discourages socially weak candidates. One could call it an immoral tactic, but there doesn’t seem like much point to such labeling.
I was referring to the idea that one should try to “get past” the “bitch shield” as immoral, because it is essentially an excuse for bothering people who don’t want to be bothered. I wasn’t referring to the “bitch shield” itself.
“the type of woman you’d be interested in” outright rejects any male she sees competing socially with other males then “wouldn’t work on her” just doesn’t make any sense
Why not? It’s really not fun to be around people who view social interactions as a competition.
Also, “competing socially” really softens the antagonistic behavior advocated in the forum.
to remove a potential male competitor—through physical, verbal, or psychological tactics
What, you wouldn’t reject someone who tried to pull that?
Bitch shields are employed by both genders. It’s just a term that is used because +90% of PUAs are straight men looking for women. Gay guys deploy them against other guys (and girls), and straight guys deploy them against women they aren’t interested in.
The terminology is decidedly female, but it’s an equal opportunity tactic. Although admittedly, used far more often by women.
Ditto with AMOG’ing. I’ve seen alpha females of combined groups go at it like it’s Game of Thrones. It’s the same methods and goals, just with a gender swap.
It is true that many social dominance strategies relating to courtship are either applicable for either sex or have loosely comparable cross-sex analogues.
So those were the objections against PUA. Now the post itself...
A big part of the power a woman has over her mate is the threat of withdrawing from him sexually and/or emotionally....I still believe that women in general tend to have more power but PU shifted this towards men. W will have to consider “If I withdraw he can find another woman in two weeks.”, she clearly has lost bargaining power. P knows it too and will weigh if it is worth the hassle to remain in the relationship if he can find another woman very quickly. P has more power for being a PUA than he would have if he weren’t.
This is called an unhealthy relationship. Using the threat of leaving a relationship as a bargaining chip, to blackmail people, is emotional abuse. It’s far better to be alone than to have a relationship like this, in my opinion.
But back to the premise. If it’s all about supply and demand and power equilibrium, wouldn’t men object to fashion and beauty products by the same logic? Wouldn’t women object to men working out?
Good looking women will have no problem attracting lots of interested males. Usually women do the choosing, while males compete for the attention.
Warning: Anecdotal evidence—“Easier for women” only applies to casual sex. It is more or less equally hard for both genders to enter a long term relationship, and varies from social circle to circle as a function of gender ratio.
This is called an unhealthy relationship. Using the threat of leaving a relationship as a bargaining chip, to blackmail people, is emotional abuse. It’s far better to be alone than to have a relationship like this, in my opinion.
It certainly can be, particularly when when one partner is dependent on the other for more than physical and emotional rapport (ex. finances, living space, etc.) But a person’s willingness to remain in a relationship with someone else certainly depends on that person’s behavior. If whether it’s worthwhile for a person to remain with a particular partner hinges upon the partner’s willingness to enact a certain behavior, is it really never acceptable for the person to offer their partner that information and give them the choice of whether to enact the behavior or have the relationship end?
Sticking with a relationship with which one is unhappy out of refusal to hurt one’s partner by leaving is also an unhealthy relationship.
is it really never acceptable for the person to offer their partner that information and give them the choice of whether to enact the behavior or have the relationship end?
That’s an edge case, but I admit I had not considered it.
You might be right. I’m going to go think about that for a while.
Maybe “Mystery” is different from what’s in the forums—my first impression was from the forums. I can’t generalize to everyone who uses the label PUA—it’s possible that some sub-strains are decent.
Well, yes! Behaviors resulting from being an asshole are terminally bad. Let’s take a step back—a set of ideas has led you to the conclusion that it is okay to be an asshole. Don’t you think it is time to re-evaluate?
I’ll make my point better, since we’re doing a separate post. There is nothing wrong with the idea of optimizing attractiveness, the problem is the specific community of “PUA”, which I’m assuming is well represented by the most popular forum, although I may be mistaken.
Check out the jargon on that forum.
I’ve seen that type of guy, who tries to subtly put me down in front of female friends—even though I’ve done nothing but extend friendship to him! If you are interested in my friends (and I’m honestly not trying to stop you or “competing”), why does that need to involve putting me down? Rather than passive-aggressively antagonizing me, shouldn’t you be making friends with me so that you have a mutual acquaintance with the person you are interested in?
You might “succeed”, if you call that succeeding....but it’s obvious why you shouldn’t rush people into decisions they might regret later.
In other words, bothering someone who doesn’t want strangers to bother her right now.
A subculture’s DNA is in its slang and jargon. Do you want these memes in your mind? Admittedly, there are some good things, like getting rid of
and I wholeheartedly approve of doing things like that to improve your attractiveness. But there is a lot of bad mixed in with the good, and it takes a discerning mind to separate them out. Overall it seems like a net loss.
To be fair, this is mostly a problem with the jargon, which has mostly been chosen for effect. The jargon phrases actually give little or no indication of how these practices actually work in the field. They are far less nefarious than they appear at first glance:
The preferred AMOG tactic for experienced PUAs is… you guessed it, to befriend the Other Guy since this helps you get an ‘in’ with the group! However, attempts at befriending are not always successful; sometimes the AMOG really is trying to block or compete with you. That’s when something that could be described as “subtle status putdowns” might happen—but by that time, the situation has been antagonized already. Also, PUAs generally strive for effectiveness and do not like wasting effort on a bad “set”—but you can’t eject without putting in some effort to show that you will stand up for yourself in a status contest.
Here’s how “BF destroyers” work: they are subtle ways of figuring out whether your “target” is reasonably happy in her relationship with her bf. If it turns out that she’s not that happy, what’s wrong with making an attempt at a relationship? As we often quote on this site: “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” Or, if you like: “Now I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds.”
“Bitch shields” happen because women get approached over and over and over in thoroughly uninteresting and unappealing ways. ANY attempt at anything resembling PUA, however loosely, has to be keenly and acutely aware of this effect in order to avert it—mostly by trying to be more interesting and more appealing, and also making this clear upfront.
This is not to deny the problem of antagonizing language in the PUA community, which is a very real issue. But it’s important to put this in perspective.
Edit: As of now, this comment has been downvoted to −3, for unclear reasons. My best guess for this is that the community broadly views discussion about pick-up arts (PUA) as unproductive or politically divisive, or more generally disapproves of it at some level. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have a proper explanation.
I think the downvotes are just expressing disagreement—which is a bit unfortunate, since the entire point of this thread is to tackle the PUA / misogyny issues that have been circulating.
Maybe. Let’s explore the non-jargon parts. This is first thing upon entering the forum:
So, all women are the same, you can pressure them to kiss you in <15min, and the goal is obedience? This looks like a scam preying upon the socially awkward. OK, maybe that’s just the web admin, let’s move on...
What’s up in the pua lounge?
Interesting...many people are expressing agreement. It sounds like the memeplex has actually damaged these folks.
“You’re cherry picking”
Yes, I know. Look, I’m not saying every single person who does PUA is a misogynist, and I’m not saying that all PUA memes are bad. All I’m saying is that a large amount of it is bad, and there are certain extremely misguided ideas which are endemic in the community.
Your essentially saying that the “real” PUA’s aren’t as bad as they seem on the internet, and I have no way of confirming or denying the truth of that statement. From where I’m standing, the website doesn’t mention befriending.
I get it, there can be a good side. In fact, all communities almost always have a good side. Half truths can be refined into full truths. Bad ideas can be reinterpreted into good ideas. But this post and others like it come out acting like everything is fine with PUA, even though the post itself harbors harmful PUA memes. Many of the attitudes I’ve heard here today carry harmful memes.
You mean that you inform her that you are interested, wait for her to think it over and inform her boyfriend about the breakup, and then start a relationship? I guess I could get behind that...
First google search result—nope...it doesn’t seem like that’s how it usually goes…
Point being—yes, you can flip all of these around and turn them good. But the PUA community has to actually do that—as it stands right now, they haven’t.
That’s an ad banner. I don’t think it makes much sense to treat these claims as coming from the seduction community, and most PUAs would not endorse them at all. What’s actually striking here is that PUA is effective enough (especially for socially awkward users who manage to acquire some focused social skills) that a banner ad can make such outlandish claims and not look wildly out of place on the site.
Note that the forum poster is citing personal experience along with PUA theory as a reason for his cynicism. And there is a lot of similarly-flavored cynicism which does not reference PUA memes at all, and has an even bitterer outlook on women and relationships. Look into the so-called “Nice Guy” phenomenon (which PUAs strongly object to, by the way), the “Men’s Rights” meme cluster and whatnot. PUA is a marked improvement on these meme clusters, while still being epistemically consistent with what we know about human social behavior.
The root problem here is that ‘cynicism’ is a problematic concept, since it conflates (1) epistemic beliefs and (2) markedly negative, scornful and complaining attitudes. It’s not clear at all that most aspiring PUAs share such bad attitudes, and PUA ‘inner game’ practices would tend to avoid and discourage them, if only because they’re markedly unattractive.
No, it’s a bit messier than that. Anyway, it’s a rare occurrence when one is actually able to “take over” from an existing relationship: the most common outcome is simply ejecting from the approach. Many posters make this abundantly clear in the linked forum thread. (In fact, I couldn’t even find anything clearly wrong with that thread, although I only looked at the first page.)
A better reason for being familiar with “BF destroyers” is that, as it turns out, women sometimes blurt out the “boyfriend” word as a kind of silly “test” or hoop to jump through, regardless of their actual relationship status.
First question—do the tactics work?
If no, that’s a decent thing to point out to deter men from these tactics.
If the tactics work, men will use them. If you want to call winning (instrumental rationality) being an asshole, that’s your prerogative. To a large extent, the fact that such tactics win offends my sensibilities, I find the tactics annoying, and I would encourage those in a position to change the outcome to make those tactics lose.
But as long as those choosing the winners choose “assholes”, I find it hard to hold “being an asshole” against someone.
An at-least-equally-first question is whether the tactics leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents).
That a tactic benefits the user in the immediate interaction isn’t the only relevant factor for an agent in a social network.
More specifically in this case: if agent A taking action X leaves my community worse off, then it’s reasonable for me to object to A doing X, even if X leaves A better off. It’s also reasonable for me to act so as to reduce the net benefit to A (e.g., by applying social sanctions), even if I’m not directly affected by X.
This is as true where X is a mating tactic as when X is a financial investment strategy or a waste disposal technique.
So for my part, I don’t find it hard to hold “being an asshole” against people, even when “being an asshole” benefits them, even if I’m not directly affected by their “being an asshole”. Indeed, I often consider holding “being an asshole” against people to be an important act of social hygiene, and resent members of my community who refuse to perform it themselves.
Worse off, according to who?
I’ll start with the assumption that the methods work to get and hold a woman’s interest, otherwise there’s nothing to discuss. If the methods only repel women, no one has an interest in them.
If women have a marginal preference for a man when he engages in PUA behavior over not, then according to them, the behaviors are better. Preference is revealed by choice, not rationalization and ideological piffle. And many women don’t agree with the ideological piffle, and laugh it off with a snort.
Works the for woman and the man involved, doesn’t work for you. Since it’s their lives, and they’re most affected by the choice, I calculate an overwhelming net gain.
A great many people resent others who don’t share and enforce their values. That’s one of the defining characteristics of the moral outlook.
Me, I resent buttinskis who harangue and berate others “for their own good”, and presume that everyone shares their values, as if they’re commandments from the Universe. We all have our crosses to bear.
In all cases where the knock-on affects of their interaction don’t significantly affect anyone else, I agree completely. The same thing is true of people tossing their trash in the street, making investment strategies, grazing their sheep in the commons, etc.
In cases where the knock-on affects of their interaction significantly affect others, that’s less clear. That’s why I endorse starting from the question of whether the tactics leave everyone involved worse off. Sometimes other people matter.
Sure, that’s true.
Also, a great many people resent others whose actions have negative externalities, and seek to minimize those actions, and resent others who don’t seek to minimize those actions. That’s one of the defining characteristics of social behavior.
Is the implication that that noun phrase describes me intentional or accidental?
Either way, it’s false.
Everything affects everything else. Butterfly wings, and all that.
Actions don’t come with minus signs on them. A person may evaluate an action according to his values as negative. Negative, relative to what? Simply translating all values by a constant can change whether a particular value is negative or not. And if negative is relative to a maximal, as defined by the person, then everything deviating from his preferences is a negative externality. If he is committed to punishing those who deviate from his maximal, and punishing those who fail to likewise punish, he’s committed to an endless war until he’s converted the entire world to his ideology. Punish, punish, punish, until it’s One Mind, One Will.
I find such people a social menace.
That’s the implication of a punishing utilitarian, which you seemed to be from your earlier comments. Your comment below seems to imply otherwise.
Now you’re ok with the PUA and his lady friend living their PUA lives, as long as they don’t significantly affect other people’s lives. So am I. Woman who aren’t attracted to men who employ PUA tactics won’t be. I presume the PUA folks at least attempt to avoid such women, and if they don’t they should. Sounds about the best we can do—there is some necessary friction to the discovery process of who matches who.
But it’s inconvenient for you as a third party to the mating dance? Maybe so. But most people put quite a high priority on finding a suitable mate. Do you find your inconvenience relatively “significant”?
I’m not sure I understood this.
You seem to be suggesting that the whole enterprise of taking action based on expected-value calculations is to be rejected because of the existence of chaotic uncertainty. If so, I simply disagree. Sure, butterfly wings might cause hurricanes, but that’s not the way to bet.
If I’ve misunderstood you, I apologize. If you are willing to try to express yourself differently, I’ll try again to understand
That’s true.
Here, again, I’m not sure I follow you.
I perform an expected value calculation on an act, and conclude the expected value of the act is negative based on my values. Another way of saying that is that the expected value of the world after that act is performed is lower than its expected value if that act is not performed.
Sure. Punishing everyone who behaves imperfectly until I’ve converted the entire world is a really bad strategy; it just doesn’t work, as has been demonstrated many many times. 100% agreed.
Sure, I agree.
Did I? My goodness. Well, I’m glad we cleared up that misunderstanding.
Not only that, they can even significantly affect other people’s lives, as long as they don’t leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents). Which is why I started out by talking about checking for that condition in the first place. Which is why I disagree with the implications of “Now” in your sentence.
Great. glad we agree.
Nope, not for any ordinary understanding of “inconvenient.”. And, consequently, in cases where the expected value of the “mating dance” is that two people find suitable mates and I am inconvenienced, the result of asking whether the “mating dance” leaves everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents) is that I conclude that no, it doesn’t.
I infer from your comments thus far that you’ve decided that I’m some kind of awful moralist buttinski who will only ever answer the question by concluding that yes, it does, and therefore all “mating dances” must be stopped, or at least pearl-clutched over. So, just to be very clear about this:
As I’ve said several times now, if the “mating dance” (or actions more generally) don’t leave everyone involved worse off (on net, aggregated over agents), I don’t have a problem with it.
If it does leave everyone involved worse off, I do have a problem with it.
If I observe a “mating dance” (or other action) that I expect to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse acting so as to prevent that harm if I can do so.
If I observe a “mating dance” (or other action) that I expect not to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse leaving it untouched.
If someone else observes a “mating dance” (or other action) that they expect to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse them acting so as to prevent that harm if they can do so.
If they observe a “mating dance” (or other action) that they expect not to leave everyone involved worse off, I endorse them leaving it untouched.
If you object to any of the above, I’d like to hear your suggested alternative action, and whether you endorse that alternative for scenarios other than the “mating dance.” For example, if I see someone engaging in the “driving in traffic dance” or the “putting their wallet in the washing machine dance” in ways I expect to leave everyone involved worse off, do you reach the same conclusions?
I think we can deal with the “net” business quickly.
Jack and Joe both desire Jill. Jack perceives that he can win Jill’s affections in competition with Joe, Jill would be just as happy with Joe, but that Joe would be happier than himself (Jack) with Jill.
The “net maximum” would be Jill with Joe. Do you expect Jack to bow out and leave Jill to Jack? Will you punish him if he doesn’t? Will you punish those who fail to punish Jack?
It seems from what you have said that your answers to this would be yes, yes, yes, and you’re back to being a punishing utilitarian.
My answers are no, no, no. I don’t expect Jack to sacrifice his happiness for Joe.
Are you positing a non-iterated affection competition, here? One-shot, there’s one girl, two guys, end of story, no further interactions, nothing else of value to be exchanged?
If so, then I certainly agree with you. In such a constrained universe, social behavior is useless.
If not, then depending on the details of what further interactions are likely, a strategy with a higher expected value for Jack probably exists which would involve Jack bowing out.
Do I expect Jack to adopt that strategy spontaneously? I dunno, it depends on how smart Jack is, and what information he has. Most humans won’t, though, so I don’t expect it of Jack either. I expect humans to defect on the prisoner’s dilemma, also.
Will I punish him if he doesn’t? Will I punish those who fail to punish Jack? Almost undoubtedly not. Ordinarily, the opportunity costs Jack incurs by pursuing a suboptimal strategy will be far outweighed by the costs I incur by a strategy of punishing people for being suboptimal. You could probably construct a scenario in which I would, though I expect it would be contrived.
No, neither do I.
In practice, worse off according to the person answering the question, as is typically true when we ask questions of people, including ourselves.
But, OK, if it’s important for some reason to be more rigorous here: consider the set A of agents (A1..An) who have perspectives I consider salient according to which people can be worse or better off due to the use of a particular tactic.
The expected net value difference, aggregated over the entire system, of using that tactic will be calculated differently by each agent in A, for many different reasons.
There are three possibilities, though:
(1) All agents in A agree that the expected net value difference is positive.
(2) All agents in A agree that the expected net value difference is negative.
(3) Agents in A disagree about the sign of the expected net value difference.
I agree that whether a tactic leaves everyone involved worse off is tricky to determine in case 3, and that more generally sometimes the answer to “do the tactics leave everyone involved worse off?” is “I don’t know; it’s complicated,” especially if my set A has a lot of agents in it.
The existence of cases 1 and 2 can still make it worthwhile to ask the question.
Given that this is a matter of competition for a scarce resource—the time, attention, and affection of a person − 1 and 2 are vanishingly small cases when dealing with generally desirable mates.
(blink)
The only way this seems plausible to me is if you’re interpreting “expected net value difference, aggregated over the entire system, of using that tactic, as evaluated by agent A” as being roughly equivalent to “expected net value difference to A of that tactic being used, as evaluated by A.”
That is, if you are assuming an evaluation something like “There’s three of us, we all want the same girl, this tactic works, so either of you two losers using this tactic is BAD, but me using this tactic is GOOD.” Which, I agree, if everyone’s evaluating it that way, 1 and 2 are highly unlikely.
OTOH, if everyone is actually calculating the expected net value difference, aggregated over the entire system, of using that tactic, I would expect a very different result in most cases.… something more like “There’s three of us, we all want the same girl, this tactic works, so one of us using this tactic is better than none of us doing so, and probably better than all three of us wasting resources using it at once if we can agree on some other way of deciding which of us gets to use it, like drawing straws, or letting Sam have her because past experience shows he’s better at this than we are and will win anyway, or some other method.”
But I would agree that most people don’t actually do that in practice.
I honestly don’t know whether or not they (as in AMOG, BF Destroyer, Bitch Shield, and other “immoral” tactics) work in general. I don’t think they do...at least, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t work on the type of woman I’d be interested in, so they are useless to me anyway regardless of moral qualms. Perhaps, for someone with a different set of goals working with a different demographic, these things would work.
If I had to guess, I bet that a lot of the more morally acceptable tactics the PUA community teaches—appropriate eye contact, body language, “kino” (non-creepy use of touch), playful banter - do increase attractiveness, and that the immoral ones don’t, but when you mix everything together you net a total gain in attractiveness.
I don’t find it hard at all. Corrupt politicians and businessmen “win” all the time, but I find that it is shockingly easy to dislike them. But it doesn’t really matter whether or not one “holds things” against anyone...all that matters in the end is the decision about whether the behavior should be encouraged, or not.
Also, it’s a little odd to say that women are choosing the “winners”. It doesn’t have to be a competition, and being “chosen” by a women isn’t necessarily “winning”...or at least, it certainly isn’t one of my terminal goals.
I used to think things like that too. The older I got, the less I believed it. We grow up being taught certain idealizations about how people should be. They aren’t like that.
I don’t like them either. But I blame the people who vote for them. They’re the true problem.
If you are saying you know better because you are older, I can’t argue with that because I am young. But as long as we are making arguments from experience, I’ve got to say, I think my girlfriend is like that. At the very least, I find that some of the population fit some of the idealizations of how people should be—although very few people fit them all.
And as long as we are speaking from experience, plenty of women have been attracted to me, despite my never pulling any of the subset of PUA behaviors which I’ve described as immoral. I’m not saying that being “nice” is all it takes—a lot of it is about being attractive, tall, well dressed and socially adept—and two of those things are trainable. I am just saying that being “bad” is not necessary...and I’d maintain that in the long run it’s not even helpful, since the type of people you attract is partly a reflection of your behavior.
But that’s not really the test. The controlled test would be whether you had more success or less using the PUA behaviors or not.
I think I know better than I used to. Generalization increasingly made based on observations that cut across my natural preferences—not wishful thinking.
Your girlfriend prefers a diffident man over a confident man? It’s always possible. We don’t all come from the same cookie cutter.
No, that’s really not what I said.
You said
I said in response
You said in response
and that’s why I said
“Like that” here means: not attracted to people who display “confidence” via aforementioned PUA tactics—by putting others down (AMOG), being overly persistent after being told off (bitch shield destroying) and pressuring people to make decisions they might regret later (bf destroyer).
So when I say my girlfriend is “like that” I mean she is someone who is not attracted to irresponsible, morally questionable displays of dominance which involve being presumptuous and putting other people down. As in, the tactics which you said would offend your sensibilities.
It is important to disassociate confidence (a positive trait) from a cluster of tactics which you just said offend your sensibilities (negative traits). Why did you just now treat “confidence” and “sensibility offending tactics” as synonymous? If the two are conflated in your mind and your model of confidence necessarily includes sensibility offending behavior, you’re going to end up either instinctively avoiding confidence or instinctively engaging in behavior that offends yourself...
I was discussing the basic premise that women prefer confident, dominating men. If they’re correct on the premise, then it’s just an argument over what techniques are effective to counterfeit that signal, if any.
You say the PUA tactics don’t work on your girlfriend. Maybe. I’d note that even if someone says they don’t like a particular tactic, that doesn’t mean that the tactic didn’t have the desired effect—“I really hate it when my confident, dominant man does X”. Yeah. But would you find him confident and dominant if he didn’t? Would he be “your man” if he didn’t?
I think I’ve misrepresented my position
I agree, that’s the trend. More the confident than the dominating though.
Agreed on that too.
Here are signals which work, and I like- smiling, eye contact, casual touch, joking, interesting conversation...
Here are signals which work, and I don’t like that they work, but I do not morally object—demonstrating that other women are interested, being well dressed, displaying wealth, being in a position of authority....
These are signals which I morally object to, and I also express skepticism as to whether you get good results in the long run if you use these: subtle insults targeting insecurities (neg), antagonistic stance to other males (amog), ignoring “leave me alone” cues (bitch shield breaking), pressurizing in the face of significant resistance (bf destroyer and others)...
More universally, but dominating is probably more effective when it does work. And actual dominance over others—demonstrable power—is a huge plus.
I’ve been getting over the don’t like it part. Women are what they are.
[1] Didn’t people used to just call this banter? Challenging back and forth remarks? Is Cary Grant “negging” in His Girl Friday? It doesn’t work universally—I find some women are just annoyed by banter and refuse to hit the ball back—but it’s a lot of fun when it does.
[2] Signals dominance. If it succeeds in driving other male off, so much the better. I’d wonder if the better strategy is alliance with the resident alpha male if he is on the hunt.
[3] Do the game theory. Bitch shield breaking more likely for desirable outcome for the PUA than scurrying off. You can’t win if you don’t play. They seem big on making it a numbers game.
[4] Significant resistance would imply to me at least a relatively bad hand. Play the bad hand, or fold. Similar to [3] in taking advantage of all opportunities.
For 2,3,4, there must be some point at which the opportunity costs make them a bad bet, though it seems something of a game of discovery where finding what works is a terminal good for them. But the strategies do seem to improve the odds of less than optimal situations to me. They don’t always work, but they do seem like good plays of bad hands.
There is almost zero doubt that those strategies work, and work extremely well. Every successful PUA I know keeps detailed logs of their interactions (or kept them at one point), and measures the effectiveness of their pitches.
Many guys do it just like telemarketing. They throw out their routines and track how many hang ups (well, walk aways) they get, how many conversions they get (and to what extent), and how each line impacts their numbers relative to the demographic they’re approaching. Other guys will adopt a tactic and use nothing-but-it for a week. You get very good data on it’s strengths and weaknesses. Again, good/bad tactics are discerned quickly and everything is very grounded in reality.
Your talk about ‘immoral’ and ‘acceptable’ tactics generally mirrors something called ‘inner game’ and ‘outer game’ in the PUA community. Inner game is general ‘being more attractive’ advice and is always applied. Outer game is a toolbox of very specific tools that you pull out for a purpose. Because most outer game is very specific, it is incredibly easy to get succes rates, and as a result these strategies have the most thorough numbers on success rates. I assure you, they are very effective.
Since one of those is actually a tactic used by females and one is tautologically a male tactic (the other being technically sex neutral but practically male) I’m also pretty sure that you couldn’t use at least one of them, regardless of your moral qualms and sexual identity.
“Bitch Shield” is a tactic for quickly filtering potential mates via subjecting them to stimulus that quickly discourages socially weak candidates. One could call it an immoral tactic, but there doesn’t seem like much point to such labeling.
Much of dealing with “AMOGs” is also about influences on other males and on the social group. Unless “the type of woman you’d be interested in” outright rejects any male she sees competing socially with other males then “wouldn’t work on her” just doesn’t make any sense.
I was referring to the idea that one should try to “get past” the “bitch shield” as immoral, because it is essentially an excuse for bothering people who don’t want to be bothered. I wasn’t referring to the “bitch shield” itself.
Why not? It’s really not fun to be around people who view social interactions as a competition.
Also, “competing socially” really softens the antagonistic behavior advocated in the forum.
What, you wouldn’t reject someone who tried to pull that?
Bitch shields are employed by both genders. It’s just a term that is used because +90% of PUAs are straight men looking for women. Gay guys deploy them against other guys (and girls), and straight guys deploy them against women they aren’t interested in.
The terminology is decidedly female, but it’s an equal opportunity tactic. Although admittedly, used far more often by women.
Ditto with AMOG’ing. I’ve seen alpha females of combined groups go at it like it’s Game of Thrones. It’s the same methods and goals, just with a gender swap.
It is true that many social dominance strategies relating to courtship are either applicable for either sex or have loosely comparable cross-sex analogues.
So those were the objections against PUA. Now the post itself...
This is called an unhealthy relationship. Using the threat of leaving a relationship as a bargaining chip, to blackmail people, is emotional abuse. It’s far better to be alone than to have a relationship like this, in my opinion.
But back to the premise. If it’s all about supply and demand and power equilibrium, wouldn’t men object to fashion and beauty products by the same logic? Wouldn’t women object to men working out?
Warning: Anecdotal evidence—“Easier for women” only applies to casual sex. It is more or less equally hard for both genders to enter a long term relationship, and varies from social circle to circle as a function of gender ratio.
It certainly can be, particularly when when one partner is dependent on the other for more than physical and emotional rapport (ex. finances, living space, etc.) But a person’s willingness to remain in a relationship with someone else certainly depends on that person’s behavior. If whether it’s worthwhile for a person to remain with a particular partner hinges upon the partner’s willingness to enact a certain behavior, is it really never acceptable for the person to offer their partner that information and give them the choice of whether to enact the behavior or have the relationship end?
Sticking with a relationship with which one is unhappy out of refusal to hurt one’s partner by leaving is also an unhealthy relationship.
That’s an edge case, but I admit I had not considered it.
You might be right. I’m going to go think about that for a while.