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My Life As A Pickup Artist PDF
My Life As A Pickup Artist PDF
At the time (late 2007), the industry was still booming, and the average
experience-level of the guys coming in was unbearably low and naive.
Through no act of my own other than sharing my stories and antics
publicly on forums, I began getting consistent requests to be coached
and taught.
The Truth About PUA Coaching
Heres a dirty truth about being a PUA coach: many guys who take
coaching dont actually want to change. They want to be validated.
They want to feel cool and be around someone who they think is
cool. They want to unload the responsibility for changing themselves
onto someone else.
Rather than hiring a coach to help them progress, to them its more of
a rent-a-cool-friend service. Now, dont get me wrong, there are a lot
of guys who ARE looking to improve, and there are a lot of guys who
do have good attitudes and do get a lot out of coaching. I had many
students accomplish amazing things with me. But unfortunately, the
PUA market and community dont promote the proper attitudes in
fact, much of the marketing and hype only encourages this sort of
pathetic behavior.
The market promotes fanboyism and idol worshiping. Its sickening. I
started to realize this when some of my students turned out to be these
brilliant, successful and amazing men. Men who were far more
successful in life than I was, and theyd look at me as some sort of
demigod. Why? Because Ive slept with more women? Because when
I walk into a club, people actually think Im cool? It makes absolutely
no sense. Looking for advice and guidance is one thing, but this was
something else entirely.
A lot of these guys dont need a pick up instructor. They need a
shrink and maybe some sort of anti-anxiety therapy. They need some
confidence and a push to put themselves out there more and more.
The technical aspect of picking up women really ISNT that difficult. It
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really can be explained and taught within a few days. But it must be
practiced for a long time, and to have that practice, a guy has to have
healthy mindsets and an ability to overcome his fears.
But theres a side to this that doesnt get talked about often. Theres a
concept in psychology called The Over-Justification Effect. From
Wikipedia:
The overjustification effect occurs when an external incentive
such as money or prizes decreases a persons intrinsic motivation
to perform a task. According to self-perception theory, people
pay more attention to the incentive, and less attention to the
enjoyment and satisfaction that they receive from performing the
activity. The overall effect is a shift in motivation to extrinsic
factors and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation.
In one of the earliest demonstrations of this effect, researchers
promised a group of 3-5 year old children that they would
receive a good player ribbon for drawing with felt-tipped pens.
A second group of children played with the pens and received
an unexpected reward (the same ribbon), and a third group was
not given a reward. All of the children played with the pens, a
typically enjoyable activity for preschoolers. Later, when
observed in a free-play setting, the children who received a
reward that had been promised to them played significantly less
with the felt-tipped pens. The researchers concluded that
expected rewards undermine intrinsic motivation in previously
enjoyable activities.[1] A replication of this experiment found
that rewarding children with certificates and trophies decreased
intrinsic interest in playing math games.[2]
This effect is felt too much by instructors. We receive so much
external validation and incentive (money, accolades, fanboys,
groupies, etc.) that it distorts that original emotional desire to simply
meet people and meet women. I also ran into this in music school
when I was a teenager. Believe it or not, music and art schools have
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the highest drop out rates in the world (some pushing 90%). And if
you think about it, it makes sense. Youre taking something that
people have always naturally been inclined to do (create music or art)
and start rewarding them tangibly for it through money, grades, prizes,
etc. For me it killed all of the passion of music and I dropped out after
a year.
There have been some famous studies done on motivation and what
theyve found is this: external incentives create better performance in
rote and logical objectives. But external incentives create WORSE
performance in creative objectives. Hence the 90% drop out rate of
music/art schools.
Well apply that burn out to social interactions and you get a pretty
fucked up effect. When your social interactions are the yardstick that
your success is measured on, it absolutely kills the joy of socializing,
and depresses the hell out of you in the process. When your
emotional intimacy becomes a business asset, it completely
undermines your relationships. For a prolonged period of time, this
effect can lead one to a very dark place. I met many coaches who had
been working in the industry for years and years who were obviously
miserable people. Its why my original business partner quit and got a
day job. And it consistently tested my resilience for two years.
But both sides are to blame: the consumers for buying into such a
false idol, and the instructors for being seduced by it. On the surface,
its a life of partying, girls and money. The three things a young guy
loves most, right? But in actuality, you spend more time hanging out
with other men men who are awkward, insecure and desperately
watching every move of yours and judging you. Youre no longer free
to just be yourself. You arent allowed to have a night where you just
want to drink and relax. You arent allowed to pass up a girl because
you dont feel like talking to her. You arent allowed to be awkward or
unsure of yourself or nervous about anything.
The line between work and play blurs until the two are
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You dont end up in the Pick Up Artist community unless you are
incredibly unhappy or unsatisfied about something. It may be
conscious, it may be unconscious. It may be short-term, or it may be
deep-seated and long-term. But the fact is, the community acts for a lot
of men as a diversion or scapegoat from dealing with their real issues
their emotional issues.
As men, were experts at rationalizing painful feelings away we hate
dealing with them. For a lot of men, all these eBooks and audio
courses merely act as rationalizations a way to escape for a little bit
longer, a way to logically solve the unsolvable. Emotions arent
quantifiable or objective, so these men band together in attempt to
quantify and objectify their emotional lives together, under the
auspices of improvement.
And by their shared metrics, improve they do. I had my first SNL.
I banged my first 9 last night. Etc. But theres no yardstick for
happiness, fulfillment, meaning or significance. This may sound lame
and campy, but when youve met as many miserable guys with 100+
lays as I have, you may take it seriously.
Some of them forget they forget that theres a whole life to these
interactions behind the objectification and quantification. They enter
the validation trap where a cocaine-addicted stripper has more
value than a Plain Jane with a Ph.D, where a threesome has more
value than an engagement ring, where things like acne scars or B-cup
tits suddenly become deal-breakers in a relationship.
The PUA community at large is a bubble it has a propensity to
become elitist and to project its own desires and intentions onto
everyone else.
They glorify their goals, try to deduce others actions and desires into
base sexual needs, scoff at guys who dont get into it as AFCs and
look down upon newbies who give up and leave as quitters and men
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To Be Fair In Hindsight
I know Ive been pretty harsh on the whole Pick Up Artist thing in this
article. And a lot of this probably stems from my bitterness and being
too close to it for too long. But I must give credit where credit is due:
I would not be nearly as socially confident or competent today,
if it werent for the PUA community.
There are HUNDREDS of amazing experiences and dozens of
amazing women I would have missed out on, had I not picked
up that book on that fateful day.
Through sheer force and confrontation, Ive had to face many of
my own emotional issues and overcome them in a short period
of time issues I probably would have gone half a lifetime
being otherwise oblivious to.
And of course, I made some pretty cool friends and met some
interesting people. Without whom, I wouldnt be who I am
today.
In the end, I suppose this article should be taken as a cautionary tale.
Theres a lot to gain from that whole movement, but theres also a lot
that you can get trapped in and sucked under by. A friend of mine
put it perfectly when he said, You can judge a self-help movement by
how many people leave it. If people are leaving it, then its doing
something right. Well, many people leave the PUA community, so it
must be doing something right.
Just make sure youre one of the ones who leaves.
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