Sexuality & Culture (2018) 22:299–315

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12119-017-9468-0

ORIGINAL PAPER

Feminism’s Flip Side: A Cultural History of the Pickup

Artist

Andrew Stephen King1,2

Published online: 2 November 2017

 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017

Abstract This paper provides a historical account of the ‘pickup artists’ (PUA)
phenomenon, tracing the origins back to the early 1970s when more liberal attitudes
towards sexuality were on the rise in the West. Today PUA advice not only includes
information about seduction techniques, but also programs about self-improvement
or so-called ‘inner game’. Seduction and dating gurus can be found across the
internet—from individual bloggers to dating coaches and relationship experts—all
providing niche services and products on how to seduce and/or have fulfilling
relationships with women. By addressing the moral panics around the PUA dis-
course, the paper seeks to illustrate the connection between second wave feminism,
as a discourse increasingly interested in the idea of ‘gender egalitarianism’ and the
popularity of seduction techniques for men based on emerging scientific research.

Keywords Pickup artist
Seduction
Attraction
Feminism

Dating advice
Moral panics

Introduction

In 2005 Neil Strauss’ book The Game became an international best seller in the so-
called ‘pickup artist’ genre, generating controversy for its primary interest in sexual
seduction techniques and the pickup artist (PUA) community which taught them. The
Game reached the number 1 spot on Amazon after a few weeks of its release, and
remained on the New York Times bestseller list from October to November 2005

& Andrew Stephen King

sabargyi@gmail.com
1
Creative Industries Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, QLD, Australia
2
Wall Street English Institute, Beijing, China

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(Donovan 2017).1 The book was a semi-autobiographical account of Strauss’s

research into the PUA subculture of the late 1990s, and featured the work of prominent
PUAs such as Ross Jeffries and ‘Mystery’ (Erik Von Markovic). The commercial
success of the PUA community in the 1990s was due in part to the internet, which
provided individual men a forum to discuss ideas and techniques in anonymity. The
forum alt.seduction.fast became the first site through which early PUA books,
coaching manuals and, much later, ‘pickup boot camps’ could be promoted. Today
PUA advice not only includes information about seduction techniques, but also
programs about self-improvement or so-called ‘inner game’. PUA is not a unified
movement, and there is much disagreement about its principles and aims, however
seduction and dating gurus can be found across the internet—from individual
bloggers, dating coaches and relationship experts, all providing niche services and
products on how to seduce and/or have fulfilling relationships with women.
In the 1990s and 2010s it was easier to identify who a PUA was (a so-called expert
who gave other men advice on how to pick up women). Today the popularity of PUA
philosophy is much harder to identify and measure, given the differences in style,
audience engagement and views of authors and bloggers. Rollo Tomassi’s website ‘The
Rational Male’, for example, is ranked in the top 80,000 websites globally—according
to metrics from Alexa (Tomassi 2017). Tomassi started out by discussing pick up
techniques on a blog called ‘So Suave’, but today his own blog covers a range of subjects,
from parenting to politics. His new book on Red Pill Parenting currently occupies the
top seller spot in the ‘Fatherhood and Parenting Boys’ section on Amazon (Tomassi
2017). Other bloggers such as Coach Corey Wayne focus exclusively on dating skills,
and are more overtly commercial in their engagement. Wayne’s ‘How To Be A 3% Man’
ranks at number 31 on the ‘Relationships [ Marriage’ section of Amazon’s bestseller
list for Kindle eBooks (Amazon 2017), whilst his YouTube channel currently attracts
over 200,000 subscribers (Wayne 2017). PUA philosophy can be seen as a phenomenon
interested in intersexual relationships, one that occasionally branches out from the
subject of dating and relationships, in a way that challenges certain forms of political
correctness in Western, English-speaking cultures.
This paper provides a historical account of the PUA phenomenon, tracing the
origins back to the early 1970s when more liberal attitudes towards sexuality were
on the rise in the West. During that decade second-wave feminists agitated for
legislative and social reforms, which filtered through to more everyday sexual
practices. A less ‘prudish’ orientation towards women’s sexuality emerged, and
entailed a greater acceptance of premarital sex and even participation in the new
‘swingers’ subculture. There was also a lifting of restrictions on X-rated
publications, particularly books written about sexual techniques.2 A second phase

1
Data from Amazon shows the book’s long tail reach—it currently sits at number 6612 of the most
popular books ever sold; number 11 in the ‘Social Sciences [ Gender Studies [ Men’ category, and
number 26 in the ‘Self-Help [ Sex’ segment.
2
Restrictions on printed publications were being lifted too; the word ‘fuck’ being included in the Oxford
English dictionary for the first time in 1972. The Sensuous Man (1971) and The Sensuous Woman (1969)
were two classic sex manuals written at that time (by authors simply known as ‘M’ and ‘J’). The Sensuous
Man includes a good deal of information about male sexuality, covering topics like penis size, impotence
and premature ejaculation.

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of the ‘pickup’ and seduction culture emerged in the 1990s, with the development of
the internet and a more critical focus on female sexuality. Whilst this second phase
never explicitly criticises feminism per se, the current range of PUA books—
including Roosh V.’s Bang series—is much more polemical in its attack on
feminism. Media coverage of Roosh often seeks to characterise his work as
canonical of PUA philosophy, thus writing off useful distinctions that exist within
the genre. The current phase of writing and online video production also focuses on
self-improvement and masculine forms of attractiveness.
This paper argues that the growth of PUA philosophy parallels the rise of
feminism in academic and popular culture—and in some ways can be seen as a
critique of its limitations, particularly the idea of ‘gender egalitarianism’. Whilst
second wave feminists concerned themselves with legislative and representative
forms of equality, it has left a popular legacy that makes it difficult for
educators, policy-makers and other public figures to acknowledge the influence
of biology on male and female personalities, work choices and dating
preferences.3 Without questioning the philosophical foundations of the gender
egalitarian ideal, media and cultural studies research risks losing touch with
more empirical behavioural approaches that seek to understand the dynamics of
heterosexual attraction based on biological differences between the sexes. These
approaches are not only becoming prominent within the PUA discourse, but also
within popular neuroscience books. The current study does not seek to promote a
normative view of sexuality through these scientific approaches, but rather
suggests that by examining PUA philosophy as a cultural phenomenon we can
better understand the role of culture (and indeed education) in shaping
heterosexual forms of attraction.

Pickup Artists, Academics and Journalists

Though it has been more than 10 years since the publication of Neil Strauss’s book,
very little has been written about the growth of the online seduction community
from a media and/or cultural studies perspective. In part this is due to the dominance
of constructivist-feminist approaches in the field, which have been reluctant to
consider men’s experiences of dating—either from a scientific or cultural
perspective. Media and cultural studies research rather focuses on the history of
dating advice books (see, for instance Bailey 1989; Connerley 2008), and share an
almost exclusive interest in women’s experiences and interpretations of the genre.
Likewise, Eaton and Rose’s (2011) 35 year study of dating advice books places an
emphasis on ‘cultural scripts’ as an explanation of women’s disempowerment when
dating men. Those cultural scripts insist that men propose and pay for dates, leaving
women with the power to reject or accept the man’s offer of intimacy afterwards.
3
Not all feminists would deny the existence of biology in helping to shape gendered and sexuality
identities, but by looking at media debates about quotas in politics and the military, for example, these
voices are less prevalent. At times Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was almost entirely based on
the feminist ‘gender egalitarian’ presupposition that, because of her sex, she was at a disadvantage and
would make a better political leader.

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Dating, they argue, is ‘the prime arena for evaluating progress towards gender
equality’, even though such cultural scripts clearly limit how both women and men
are seen to interact. That this process could be disempowering for men underplays
the extent to which women’s attractiveness can be a form of power in itself.
In all of these approaches there is an unquestioned assumption that traditional
gender roles are oppressive, and that so-called ‘nontraditional’ male/female
interactions are more ‘progressive’. The conventional ‘gender studies’ or ‘con-
structionist’ view of gender asserts that any observable behavioural differences
between the sexes are the product of culture (‘nurture’) rather than biology
(‘nature’). Eaton and Rose’s study is based on a review of articles published in Sex
Roles, a social and behavioural sciences journal which endorses the feminist
‘constructionist’ viewpoint—even though some of the papers cited contradict this
perspective. Citing a study of gender preferences in dating, they highlight that even
‘men and women with nontraditional (egalitarian) gender role attitudes described
[their] ‘‘ideal dating partner’’ as having stereotypically gender-typed personality
traits’. Though gender roles may not be entirely fixed at birth (as some socio-
biologists suggest), the role of biology as an explanation for gender preferences in
sexual selection is never explored.
It’s worth highlighting an obvious point here that relationship advice books are
dominated by women, as both authors and consumers. This is a point made by
McLean and Kapell’s (2015) study of self-help books, where they point out that
women make up the majority of readers. The Game is classified as ‘self help’ in this
study, and an interviewee named ‘Finn’ is quoted as saying this about the book: ‘I
just wanted to ascertain what the book claimed … Once I got into it though, I started
to think more about improving self-confidence’ (qtd in McLean and Kapell 68).
Danny Kaplan’s article ‘The nerd and his discontent’ looks at PUA genre more
specifically, but eschews the possibility that the consumers of ‘game’ books might
want anything more than a one night stand with women. ‘Courtship is construed as a
standardized, rule-governed social skill and is characterized by hyperconsumption
and objectification of women’ (1). Men and women have always objectified each
other during the courtship process, yet the definition here clearly views objecti-
fication as a one way process. Traditionally men were expected to initiate courtship,
to pay for entertainment or gifts (consumer commodities like movies or takeaway
meals at the diner) and, in earlier times, even to meet the parents before dating—for
better or worse, these are examples of women qualifying men for their affection.
The article goes on to mention the importance of ‘inner game’ (personal
development, self-improvement), but only discusses the use of ‘outer game’ (tricks
and techniques). Men are pathologized for wanting sex with women,4 and other
aspects of the genre—such as a confidence-building and relationships—are ignored.
What a relationship is, and how it is defined in terms of a woman’s primary
biological drives, are never discussed in academic reviews of the dating or
4
Kaplan goes so far as to say that ‘gaming logic culminates in the dehumanization of all parties and
suspends moral considerations’. It’s important to consider that all interactions cited in the article—like
those mentioned in PUA books—are consensual, and objectification in and of itself is not necessarily
amoral. The implicit assumption here is that traditional dating practices (whatever they are), by contrast,
are morally superior in some way.

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relationship genres. Connerley’s (2008) Master’s thesis, for instance, is very

detailed in its focus on books written about relationships and dating advice
throughout the twentieth century, but seldom explores the man’s romantic or sexual
expectations. As Hollander’s (2011) survey of today’s popular advice books
suggests, there ‘remains a prevailing assumption … that women are more interested
in creating and maintaining romantic relationships than men and more eager
recipients of advice that is supposed to help them to attain this goal’. Despite the
gains of the feminist movement over the past 40 years, Hollander argues that much
of the popular advice aimed at women is more about self-esteem building than
practical insights based on scientific inquiry.
In contrast to these disciplinary absences, journalistic media often express great
disdain for the PUA genre. Many journalists, for instance, maintain a highly
moralistic stance against individual PUAs, labelling them as ‘vile and disgusting’
(Sullivan 2016), ‘sexist’ (Gordon 2016; Gross 2016), ‘misogynistic’ (Scriver 2015),
or ‘sexist’ and ‘misogynistic’ (Thwaites 2016). Such pejorative language does little
to help advance our understandings of the social, cultural and historical reasons for
the PUA phenomenon, and its commercial success at a time of enormous
demographic changes taking place in Western societies. Without a more balanced
inquiry into the movement, and one which considers the scientific underpinnings of
the philosophy (why it might work, and why it might be appealing to particular
men), it remains difficult to understand what kinds of social and cultural problems
PUAs might be trying to solve.
O’Neil’s (2015) work on the seduction community in London is one of the few
attempts to reframe some of the moral panics around the PUA movement,
particularly the Julien Blanc controversy in the UK. Her article shows how the PUA
boot camp culture provides ways for men to make sense of increasingly
commercialised forms of (male and female) sexuality in society. Her ethnographic
account challenges the idea that PUA’s are ‘pathetic, pathological or perverse’; but
rather shows how they provide a context for ordinary men to become socially aware
and more assertive, developing skills which spill over into other areas of their lives.
Jürgen’s historical explanation of the global PUA culture highlights the spiritual
side of the movement, and suggests its historical roots lie in the expansion of an
‘excessively commercialized and politicized [culture] of sexual liberalism’ along-
side the growth of ‘the self-help market’. Though heterosexual men are left feeling
‘inadequate’ in this new cultural context, the rise of feminism is conspicuously
absent as a possible contributing factor to the rise of PUA philosophy.
This is an important point, as PUA philosophy often draws upon scientific studies
that challenge much of the ‘gender-as-cultural-construct’ idea promoted by second
wave feminism. Nathan Oesch’s (2012) meta-study of socio-psychological research
shows that the ‘Mystery Method’, as one of the main strategies promoted within the
seduction community [as covered by Strauss (2005) and von Markovic (2007)], is
‘grounded in solid empirical findings’ (899). Oesch’s study suggests that there is
some scientific credibility to PUA observations of female behaviour, including
responsiveness to social dominance cues (Sadalla et al. 1987) and risk taking during
the ‘approach phase’ of courtship (Wilke et al. 2006); the role of physical touch (so-
called ‘kino’ in PUA parlance) at appropriate times to build ‘comfort and rapport’

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(Thompson and Hampton 2011); and self-disclosure during the final ‘seduction’
phase [to] induce feelings of closeness and emotional affinity’ (Collins and Miller
1994). All of this is not to deny the flexibility of gender roles in male–female
courtship; but much PUA philosophy promotes the idea that men need to accentuate
‘masculine’ traits (such as assertiveness, risk-taking and expressions of social
dominance) as ways of attracting feminine women—creating what Manson (2011)
describes as ‘sexual polarity’. Masculine behaviours are said to attract feminine
women, in other words.
Whilst PUA philosophies are not anti-feminist per se, the central idea of sexual
polarity does contradict the feminist notion that men and women are biologically
indistinct as far as behaviour and psychology is concerned. A number of popular,
scientifically-grounded books assert there are not only important sexual-arousal
differences between men and women (Bergner 2013), but important cognitive
(Baren-Cohen 2003) and emotional (Brizendine 2007, 2011) differences too. PUA
advice draws more upon insights from behavioural and evolutionary psychology,
but many also acknowledge the significance of these different scientific viewpoints.
The extent to which gender-relativism remains unquestioned in the media and
humanities/social science research reflects the degree to which feminism itself may
have become something of an orthodoxy; by breaking with the political correctness
around ‘equalist’ gender roles, it’s no wonder that PUA philosophies, which teach
the importance of attractive masculine behaviours, mindsets and orientations, draws
such harsh criticism from the media.

The Emergence of Pickup Culture: 1970s

Books and articles written for men on how to seduce women are not new and, to
some degree, have always attracted their fair share of controversy. Ovid’s Ars
Amatoria (‘The Art of Love’) is the first written account of the seduction process in
the Western tradition, providing advice for men on where to take women on dates
(the theatre, circus and the races mentioned as the best locations), and how to
generate sexual interest through conversation and appropriate forms of physical
touch. Despite a more liberalised attitude towards sexuality in the West, there were
only a handful of books written for men on the topic of seduction throughout the
twentieth century; books like Let’s Make Mary (1937) and Guide Book for the
Young Man About Town (1948) had a strong focus on etiquette, reflecting the class
restraints of dating circa World War II.
Such conservative attitudes towards dating changed dramatically during the
1970s, with Eric Weber’s How to Pick Up Girls (1970)—the very first mass-
marketed PUA book. The author’s descriptions were unsophisticated but novel for
their time by identifying what men find sexually attractive about women. The
simplicity cut through some of society’s judgements about sexuality, in a time when
young men and women were questioning the meaning of traditional gender roles.
The post sexual revolution politics were evident in the book’s attempt to ‘uncover’
what women really think about sex, drawing as it did on the author’s ‘interviews
with 25 beautiful girls’. Weber used his interviews to state a seemingly

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unconventional truth of the 1970s—under certain circumstances, women actually

enjoyed being picked up.
Weber briefly mentioned the impact of the women’s liberation movement in his
book, but only in terms of how that may influence a man’s chances of attracting a
woman. There is acknowledgement that women are becoming more active in
society, gaining new forms of employment, access to education and being able to
participate in traditionally male endeavours. Under the chapter called ‘How to get
women to pick you up’ Weber encourages men to take an interest in women’s lives,
and to visit ‘places where there are scores of women’ (104) such as ballet classes
and colleges. But rather than encourage men to feign an interest in women’s
liberation for the sake of sex, he places more emphasis on cultivating honesty. Men
need to be confident, and in practice this simply meant approaching and talking to
women wherever men and women happen to meet. In contrast to today’s best PUA
advice, ‘picking up’ women in the 1970s didn’t involve ‘negging’ or elaborate
pickup lines but, on the contrary, entailed giving compliments and being nice:
If you’re a genuinely nice guy, or at least know how to act nice, then you’ll be
good at picking up girls. Remember, when it comes to picking up chicks, nice
guys finish first.
Weber’s book showed the increasing acceptance of the idea that two people could
meet in a public place and escalate their mutual interest towards sex. During the
1970s the feminist ‘politics of liberation’ manifested itself in many popular fora
such as Playboy articles and swinger’s parties where the new cultural practice of
picking up women (or men) could be observed—however much these cultural forms
favoured the man’s preference for uncommitted sex.5
Ariana’s 1972 How to Pick up Men! (1972) tried to replicate Weber’s success for
the female market by explicitly adopting the feminist language of liberation.
‘Contrary to what you might expect’ she claims, ‘good men find all this liberation
sexy’. The book includes a lengthy quote from a man called Adam, who talks up the
virtues of sex with a liberated woman who—unlike more traditional girls—didn’t
make him feel ‘guilty’ after sex. The book is identical in format and structure to
Weber’s, but its focus on women picking up men made it a much less successful
marketing proposition. How to Pick Up Men! Struggled to find a market during the
early 1970s, whilst How to Pick up Girls sold over 2 million copies and was even
made into a not-so-successful Hollywood film. The varied successes of these two
publications underlies the fact that men and women (at least as consumers of these
books) had different expectations when it came to sex, especially in regard to
picking up and wanting to be picked up.
In both publications pickup culture was promoted as egalitarian, and feminism
was used to promote such an ideal to women. Neither books attracted much negative

5
Morton Hunt’s Sexual Behaviour in the 1970s (1974), for instance, resurveys some of the same terrain
that the Kinsey’s studies covered in 1948 and 1953, including new data on the emerging swingers
lifestyle. Hunt optimistically suggests that ‘[t]he double standard [regarding female sexual permissive-
ness] has been relegated to the scrap heap of history’. The research was funded by the Playboy
Foundation.

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publicity, despite their explicit focus on sex as an outcome of dating and interacting
with the opposite sex.

The Game, and the Birth of The Neg: 1990s

In the 1990s PUA philosophy became focused on men’s experiences of dating,

developing more technical approaches to understanding female sexuality. Though
PUAs were seldom critical of feminism per se, they did express frustration with the
conventions of dating in a changing world, especially when it came to being the so-
called ‘nice guy’. A whole host of techniques were developed to overcome women’s
resistances in this sense, including more elaborate approaches, novel pickup lines
and psychotherapeutic programs designed to increase confidence—all mar-
ketable via the new technology of the internet.
The most well-known embodiment of this new approach was ‘the neg’, which
Neil Strauss first described in The Game as a way of cutting through women’s auto-
pilot responses to male compliments. ‘The neg’ was a technique that aimed to
disarm the sexually attractive woman, and her greatest source of power in the
interaction—her charm. It was a warning to men not to be too ‘nice’, or
accommodating when dating:
Neither a compliment or insult, a neg is something in between – an accidental
insult or backhanded compliment. The purpose of the neg is to lower a
woman’s self esteem while actively displaying a lack of interest in her – by
letting her know she has lipstick on her teeth, for example, or offering her a
piece of gum after she speaks.
David De Angelo’s Double Your Dating (2001) explains that negs are intended to
confuse and intrigue women. It’s easy to see how such a practice can be
misconstrued as rude or misogynistic by journalists, but such criticism doesn’t take
into account why these techniques were developed in the first place—or how they
are written about by PUAs. De Angelo suggests that in a world where women have
more power, in the workforce and in the realm of dating, traditional seduction
techniques begin to lose their appeal. Women get used to compliments, flowers and
free drinks. With so many options, ‘women often view men picking up on them as a
sort of game’:
They talk about it with each other, they have standard lines that they learn
when you ask for their number - ‘‘Why don’t you give me YOUR number
instead and I can call you…?’’ and so on. I know that some, maybe even most
women go out on weekends with the mindset of ‘‘I’m never going to meet Mr.
Right at a club, but it boosts my ego to have men paying attention to me by the
dozens, and I like to have free drinks… and I love to dance with my girlfriends
and be a tease… and I love the power of shooting men down while pretending
to be annoyed by it’’.
Whilst this might not be every woman’s experience of dating, it does highlight how
some women view dating men. How to use the neg properly entails understanding

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female psychology, and appreciating more feminine forms of communication (i.e.

indirect and non-verbal). In honing these skills, De Angelo encourages men to read
gossip magazines, romance novels and to watch soap operas rather than the male-
dominated sports and news programs. Such texts provide a wealth of detail about
how emotional cues, facial expressions and body language sometimes convey subtle
‘romantic’ messages.
Another technique developed in the 1990s that was designed to disarm attractive
women in the seduction process was the elaborate chat up line. In the 1970s, pickup
advice focused on simple and memorable lines like ‘What time do you get off
work?’ and even ‘Are you a model?’ In the 1990s Ross Jeffries became famous with
the line: ‘Hi. I just wanted to tell you my name is Manny the Martian. What’s your
favourite flavour of bowling ball?’ Much like the neg these elaborate pickup lines
were intended to communicate confidence to a woman, given that they encouraged
men to operate out of their comfort zones.
Unlike the neg, elaborate chat up lines also had the side effect of helping men
master their own ‘inner game’—the opinions, feelings and attitude a man has
towards himself. The theory was that if the man could risk potential embarrassment
when talking to a strange woman, then he could build confidence and be able to take
more risks with future encounters. It’s an approach that has its origins in Albert
Ellis’s cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a psychotherapeutic approach that
helps patients overcome anxiety through selective exposure to anxiety-inducing
stimuli. In his memoir Ellis (2011) even attributed the origins of CBT to his own
‘experiments’ chatting up women in the Bronx Botanical Gardens in the 1930s,
risking embarrassment to overcome his teenage fears of sexual rejection. Jeffries
‘Manny the Martian’ opener was a gimmickier version of CBT, but the intent was
the same—to assist men overcome ‘approach anxiety’ when talking to attractive
women.
Alongside other books offering unique chat up lines and useful seduction
techniques, Jeffries most marketable approach to ‘inner game’ was a technique
called neuro linguistic programming (NLP). NLP first emerged in the 1970s, and
has rightly attracted scientific scepticism around claims that the power of suggestion
alone can make people overcome phobias. Jeffries’ books include details about
inner-dialogue when building confidence, demonstrated through downloadable
podcasts. As more and more PUAs began publishing their own online material
during the late 1990s, many of whom flooded the market with canned pickup lines
and routines, Jeffries remained one of the few PUAs to maintain a successful online
and offline profile. Capitalising on appearances on late night and day time television
shows, interviews in Playboy and Rolling Stone, the image of a nerdy Jewish boy
turned Casanova is perhaps the most intriguing element of his own ‘inner game’
successes.
Like other PUAs during the 1990s and early 2000s Jeffries’ work is critical of
society itself, and in particular the social conventions surrounding female desire.
Self-improvement philosophies necessarily cultivate an awareness of limiting
beliefs, and where they come from; in terms of PUA thinking this element includes
discussion of how men are taught to view the dating process itself. In Jeffries’
books, the critical approach to sex starts with the concept of ‘love’. He explains that

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to become good at seduction, the process needs to be deconstructed. How to Get the
Women You Desire into Bed (1988) starts with this key understanding:
There is no such ‘thing’ as love, attraction, chemistry, desire, fascination or
any of the other labels society commonly uses to describe and explain the
dance of attraction between men and women. What society commonly labels
as ‘things’ are, in reality, ongoing processes that can be understood,
duplicated, modified, and re-directed.
Such an unemotional view of the dating process lends itself to feminist criticisms
that PUAs are selfish and disrespectful to women, but some PUAs would argue the
reverse can be said of women: that women crave attention and only reward the bad
boys with sex, rather than the ‘nice guys’. The whole ‘just be yourself’ (JBYS)
convention that was championed by Weber in 1970 became less useful to the PUA
movement, and the development of ‘inner game’ propelled the genre forward—
much to the ire of some feminists.

The Pickup Artist Goes Viral: The Internet ‘Dating Coach’

The very first online fora for discussing pickup techniques was the alt.seduction.fast
forum, which was the creation of David De Angelo’s student Lewis De Payne in the
mid-1990s. The original forum was also used to promote Jeffries’ Speed Seduction
products, but also provided the space for young men to share their results and
feedback from the techniques practiced ‘in field’. Today the sharing of seduction
techniques occurs across the internet, and the original forum has been surpassed by
a range of different bloggers and ‘experts’. Using much of the pickup lingo that
Strauss first popularised, dating gurus like Coach Corey Wayne have achieved
success with more mainstream audiences. These dating experts seldom receive
attention from journalists or feminist bloggers, despite being critical of feminism
and a more ‘feminized’ contemporary media. At the other end of the extreme,
activist PUA’s like Roosh V actively provoke controversy, maintaining a hostile
view of feminism and a less than favourable view of (mainly Western) women.
One of the most popular dating experts online today is ‘Coach Corey Wayne’,
who attracts male and female viewers through regular video posts on his YouTube
site. Drawing upon advice from his book How To Be a 3% Man: Winning the Heart
of the Woman of Your Dreams (2014a), Wayne’s videos answer email questions that
develop from offline coaching sessions with clients. Emails are usually in the form
of a synopsis of a date, or a client’s interaction with someone they are sexually
interested in. Videos cater to all manner of questions, from picking up women and
arranging casual hook-ups, through to long term relationships, reigniting attraction
with an ex or dealing with general life pressures, such as planning for children or
becoming unemployed. The breadth of topics are reflected in the volume of videos,
each being 20–30 min long, but the underlying principles apply to situations many
young men and women may find themselves in. Being a ‘3% Man’ refers to those
men who understand and embody what it takes to be attractive: being aligned with
inner values and core beliefs.

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Much like his PUA predecessors Wayne’s advice retains a critical engagement
with more mainstream popular culture, particularly what it means to be a man.
According to Wayne masculine men should be concerned with their personal
mission and purpose, not putting the woman at the centre of his life a la standard
romantic comedies and soap narratives. This doesn’t entail treating women with
disdain, but rather focusing on being a happy and productive person. The definition
of masculinity in Wayne’s videos is much more nuanced than the PUA versions, as
the commentary about ‘What Women Really Want’ (2014b) describes a shopping
list of positive characteristics:
A man who is unapologetically himself. A man who knows what he wants,
why he wants it and is determined to get it despite the risks and potential for
failure, a man who marches to the beat of his own drum, a man who is a
gentleman, strong, charming, chivalrous, humorous, determined and respect-
ful; a man who will chose walking away verses staying in a relationship that
requires him to sacrifice his hopes, goals and dreams to make a woman happy.
Successful relationships should not compromise personal values and dreams, for
either men or women. Here the importance of ‘inner game’ again comes to the fore.
Though Wayne’s advice is intended for both sexes, he does focus more on the
role of the man in the relationship. His work does not seek to be politically-engaged,
but he occasionally offers critical views about the influence of feminism in today’s
society. Wayne is not anti-feminist per se, but his popularity entails a view of the
effects of the second wave feminist gender egalitarian ideal. In response to the email
of a 42 year old man in the video ‘My Feminist Man Hating Girlfriend’ (2015), the
criticism targets mainstream media as much as the feminist movement itself:
Feminism originally was a great movement that came about in the early
twentieth century in order to help women earn the right to vote, earn equal
rights to men and no longer be treated like they were property, objects or
second class citizens. However, modern-day feminism often takes the
women’s liberation movement to unhealthy extremes. You can see this in
most television programs and movies. Men are generally portrayed as being
stupid, inept, weak, feminine and often as having little use other than being
sperm donors.
Rather than establish himself as a feminist agent provocateur, Wayne’s more
general-focus advice as a life coach helps him sidestep some of the negative
coverage his PUA predecessors attracted. Having developed the business solely via
the internet, self-publishing his book through Amazon, Wayne is less reliant on the
broadcast publicity PUAs like Jeffries courted back in the 1990s.
With such a low mainstream media profile, Wayne’s skills lie in being able to
solve mundane communication problems that men and women face whilst dating—
a subject rarely covered in broadcast media. Titles of videos include statements that
women make that men find confusing: ‘I don’t want to go all the way’; ‘Sorry, it
didn’t mean anything’, ‘Men only care about sex’ and ‘Do you miss me?’ For
Wayne the key to understanding such statements starts with an observation that
many women often prioritise emotional forms of communication, and are less direct

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than men, especially when it comes to sex. Explaining how to respond to an

attractive woman’s ‘do you miss me?’ text is not as easy as it seems, particularly if
the man finds that honest and direct responses get him nowhere. Understanding the
circumstances surrounding the text (whether it was received after a passionate night
together or after a week apart) are important in constructing a response. Details are
key to understanding women, and its Wayne’s ability to contextualise these email
requests that gives him the greatest value to his predominantly male audience. Such
an approach assumes that, generally speaking, men and women are different when it
comes to communication styles and relationship expectations.

Rapid Escalation and Neo-Masculinity

By viewing the vast number of videos on Corey Wayne’s website, and judging from
other dating advice ‘vloggers’ on YouTube, it’s clear that most men just want to
have a girlfriend. Yet it’s easy to see why dating experts like Wayne are ignored by
the mainstream media, given the media’s interest in accentuating the perceived
negative elements of the pickup artist. Given the mainstream’s fascination for
stories of danger, men’s very ordinary interests in relationships are not that
interesting. Other PUA bloggers and so-called ‘experts’ take a much different tack
in building up their reputation, engaging their critics in inflammatory ways. Roosh
Valizadeh is a blogger and self-published author whose Bang series of books best
represent the more controversial side of the PUA phenomenon, particularly given
his antagonistic relationship with feminist bloggers and activists.
Born of Iranian and Armenian immigrants to the US, Roosh’s travel books
explore the application of pickup skills in different countries. In his Bang series the
seduction of women is accompanied by a detailed description and history of each
country, and reads like a PUA’s Lonely Planet Guide. Cultural descriptions are very
detailed, but also reflect back on the modern American culture he seeks to engage.
In his Why Can’t I Use a Smiley Face (2013), a book written about his brief return to
his family in the US, Roosh takes a swipe at Western feminized culture by
comparing the different pickup styles that work on Eastern European and American
women:
It was going down like a Lithuanian or Ukrainian pickup. The lead time was
slow, but the attraction was being built based on my experiences and
knowledge instead of my ability to make her horny with cocky statements.
Taken at face value, Roosh’s work simply details his sexual encounters with lots of
women, but elsewhere he uses his profile to antagonise his many feminist critics. In
2015 he published an article deemed as ‘hate speech’ in the press, subsequently
forcing Australian and Canadian authorities to ban him from future promotional
tours. His article ‘How to stop rape’ (2016) was an attack on journalism’s
increasingly hostile view of PUA culture, and Roosh’s success in particular. It was
published in response to a number of false rape accusations covered in the press that
year, especially a Rolling Stone article about a sexual assault case at the University
of Virginia. The Rolling Stone article has since been discredited, but questions still

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Feminism’s Flip Side: A Cultural History of the Pickup… 311

remain over the lack of journalistic accountability and fact-checking. Roosh voices
his relatively conservative views on female sexuality throughout the article,
complaining about the lack of responsibility and modesty among many young
American women, enabled by a very pro-feminist (anti-male) media. These views
aren’t particularly controversial, except for the very publicity-seeking suggestion
that rape should be ‘legal if done on private property’.
Taken in isolation the statement is an extreme one, and many took the message at
face value—calling for Roosh’s arrest, and labelling his ‘Return of Kings’ website a
‘pro-rape’ forum. The media’s reaction revealed how easy it was to stir up a moral
panic around PUAs, a strategy Roosh willingly capitalised upon. The panic also
revealed the uncritical gallantry of some journalists in their rush to view women as
sexual victims—as the original Rolling Stone article did.
Roosh’s personal views on rape are stated in a number of places, including in the
controversial article itself. These views are seldom cited when journalists discuss his
work. Reading the article in its totality, and understanding the motivation for his
work, it’s clear that his writing is much more concerned with journalistic ethics
rather than rape per se:
I have a sister who I don’t want to be raped, so I carefully examined the
articles on Salon, Buzzfeed, and Huffington Post that were written by
professional journalists who pursue truth and justice over mass hysteria and
delirium.
From the very outset his writing conveys a contempt for mainstream ‘click-bait’
journalism, and what he sees as its ‘anti-male’ bias. The article continues, and shifts
the focus away from journalism to the culture of young American women. His views
are based on observation, yet consideration of his argument shows he is not a rape
apologist his critics deem him to be. Rather, the article sought to make a point about
young women’s behaviour and accountability when attending campus frat parties:
I saw women wholly unconcerned with their own safety and the character of
men they developed intimate relationships with. I saw women who voluntarily
numbed themselves with alcohol and other drugs in social settings before
letting the direction of the night’s wind determine who they would follow into
a private room. I saw women who, once feeling awkward, sad, or guilty for a
sexual encounter they didn’t fully remember, call upon an authority figure to
resolve the problem by locking up her previous night’s lover in prison or
ejecting him from school.
What Roosh is addressing here is the flip side of PUA culture, and the social context
which enables the success of the pickup artist in the first place. A culture which
insistently seeks to remove previously shameful practices for women, which are—in
biological reality—risky, is seldom questioned by academics, journalists and other
gatekeepers of public morality. For if society insists that men and women are the
same when it comes to their personal and sexual interests, contrary to scientific
evidence, such views risk further driving apart men and women in the realm of sex,
relationships and marriage. Roosh’s popularity is a symptom of such a culture,

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arguably exploiting the unquestioned view that the media presents of female
promiscuity as being unproblematically empowering.6
The history of the pickup artist, and the growing popularity of sex-focused
relationship advice for men in recent years, can be seen—in part—as a reaction to
these ideals of gender egalitarianism. Many women are likely to feel shame more
acutely than men when it comes to anonymous sexual encounters, yet some are also
likely to enjoy sex with PUAs knowing that they’re less likely to feel shame.
Though we live in an age where women consume fantasies of meaningless one-
night stands, holiday romances in Bali, and affairs with well-dressed bosses who
have helicopters and fetishes for BDSM, seldom are we treated with interviews on
day time talk shows with women who enjoy sex with pickup artists.
Such an absence is a telling one, and underlies the importance of shame as a
mechanism of social control in the discourse around the pickup artist. As Roosh’s
career indeed illustrates, it’s much easier to shame men for overtly expressing their
sexuality than to shame women for theirs. Objectively, as many PUAs point out,
such arguments are mute anyway—understanding the principles of attraction entails
understanding and mastering one’s own psychology, and that also includes your
sexual attraction to others. Shaming simply serves to make the PUA more attractive,
by establishing a new context through which different risk-taking and other
‘confident’ behaviours emerge. The risk of social ostracization is often what makes
a PUA attractive, and in a society where masculine traits are attacked, the
embodiment of those same characteristics (rightly or wrongly) may become more
desirable. The same can be said for the somewhat unspoken taboo of sexual
dimorphism, and second wave feminism’s insistence that men and women are
psychologically indistinguishable, which arguably frustrates the desires of millions
of feminine heterosexual women, and their desire for masculine men.

Conclusion: Feminism’s Flip Side

To view PUA culture as a reaction to second wave feminism is a little simplistic, but
the history outlined in this paper shows that second wave feminism’s insistence on
gender egalitarianism has many consequences. Whilst the questioning of traditional
gender roles has opened the way for less rigid expectations around what men and
women can do in society, a trend that has been extended to LBGTIQ individuals in
more recent years, the movement towards gender egalitarianism has also given a
rise to a culture of female sexual liberation that perhaps predisposes some women to
seek out PUAs for sex. Rather than judge or ‘slut-shame’ them for doing so, we
should perhaps examine the context of negative media coverage of the PUA, and
start evaluating our own expectations of relationships in alignment with observable
behaviours.

6
There are, of course, downsides to both male and female forms of promiscuity, just as there are
limitations to more conservative forms of relationship. It’s not my aim to promote ‘one side’ over the
other, but to seek a better understanding as to how public debate (including within academia) has been
shaped in the first place. Scientific research is by no means infallible, but I do believe it has an important
role to play in cultural studies’ exploration of the topic.

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Feminism’s Flip Side: A Cultural History of the Pickup… 313

If PUA practice insists that concepts like social-proof do help to attract women,
given that many women do indeed pursue status and power in men,7 then women’s
biology can be manipulated; in much the same way that men’s weaknesses for a
young woman’s physical beauty can be manipulated by women. These are by no
means essential characteristics of all men and all women and, of course, not
everyone fits neatly into the classification of ‘normal’ on the bell curve. There will
always be outliers and statistical anomalies, but those should not be our guide for
understanding society-wide trends. By helping us understand biological realities of
heterosexual attraction (as it changes over time), the science of the pickup artist
might help some people overcome potential weaknesses when developing healthy
relationships with members of the opposite sex.
But such an understanding needs to start from a neutral, less emotional base. By
looking at the history of seduction as a male art, it’s also necessary to consider the
significance of our moral outrage against the pickup artist himself. The conventional
view that pickup artists are manipulating women against their will is a misleading
one and, as many PUAs like to remind men, women have the entire cosmetics and
fashion industries at their disposal. For if we insist on gender egalitarianism, then
we risk denying women full responsibility for their actions. After all, women aren’t
magically seduced by pickup artists. Women don’t get seduced; they decide to be
seduced. Pickup techniques only work so long as women actually respond to them, a
point made by Neil Strauss himself:
You cannot be tricked into sleeping with someone you don’t want to. On the
other hand, you can very easily be dissuaded from sleeping with someone you
do want to. These routines were designed to prevent men from scaring away or
boring to tears someone they like or love or desire.
Pickup artistry is not just about teaching men to manipulate women, but used in the
right way can be used to teach men and women to understand how we manipulate
each other in the art of seduction. Sexual polarity in and of itself is not a bad thing,
just as the gender egalitarian ideal of second wave feminism isn’t either. Many men
are attracted to feminine women, and many women attracted to masculine men.
With the popularity of PUA philosophy, in an increasingly fragmented media world,
it’s perhaps time we examine the science of attraction, and question where all the
moral outrage is really coming from. After all, fear is perhaps a more powerful form
of manipulation—especially when it goes unquestioned.

7
A number of studies (Dunn and Hill 2014; Dunn and Searle 2010) highlight how markers of material
wealth (such as luxury apartment- and car-ownership) can increase a woman’s sexual attractiveness
towards men. These findings align with the ‘parental investment’ theory, which posits that—because of
the risks related to childbearing—women tend to seek out resources and security in a sexual partner.
Recent research provides a more nuanced view, considering the influence of hormones and risk-taking
behavior during the menstrual cycle. What defines ‘status’ too is an important question to bear in mind,
and one which relates to the individual woman’s personal values. Data on male sexual attraction, on the
other hand, continues to highlight the importance of female youthfulness, physical attractiveness (shiny
hair, nails and clear skin) as well as a hip-to-waist ratio of about 0.7. Evidence suggests a strong
correlation between these traits and female levels of fertility.

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314 A. S. King

Funding This study was 100% self-funded.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of interest Andrew Stephen King has received no grants or research funding from any external,
commercial and/or institutional sources.

Ethical Approval This article does not contain any studies with human participants performed by any of
the authors.

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