People are weird. Some dudes, not kids, but grown-ass men, play Pokemon. Some even watch My Little Pony.
Weirdos aside, there are useful lessons to be learned from some of the PUA guys, and no, they can't be reduced to "Be yourself and treat people like human beings, and you'll be fine with the ladies." Lots of people spout that on GAF, and I'll bet most of them either 1) have been with a long-term partner for awhile and can't remember what it was like to date around, or 2) have been romantically frustrated more times than they would admit on that forum. Or 3) they're those guys who are just naturally good with women and have never had to think about what to do during any given interaction.
Some guys just aren't naturally good with women. We all know that one decent-looking guy who doesn't get laid or can't get a girlfriend. Fuck it, look at our very own Beps. The good thing is that it's a skill that can be learned to some extent. That's all that the useful PUA material out there is about. Some of the shit that people have written on the subject is weird and creepy, but there's nothing creepy about using every possible advantage you can to make your life better.
I think my critique would be -- if we break this down into sales terms because hitting on people is kind of the same as selling any product in that in this case the product is yourself -- that a fair amount of the rhetoric I come across about technique borders into obnoxious and disingenuous. Meaning, I think that there's a difference between a good salesman who is confident in his product and can connect with the right consumers to successfully make the sale, and people who are essentially just great snake oil salesmen.
Really, the key that this stuff unlocks is that it provides a means to faking confidence insofar as I can tell, at least in the beginning. It's a placebo effect. And really -- if you're a down-on-your-luck person who just doesn't have the gumption being yourself to succeed -- I concede that there's benefit at play. The problem I see is when you start to get good at it.
At that stage, it just reminds me of my retail days where the goal was to treat each and every consumer like a gullible mark. If you couldn't sell -- it wasn't that the product was lacking or that it just legitimately wasn't for them -- it was that you need to work on your technique. "Here's some objections you'll hear, and here's tried-and-true ways to overcome them" was bullshit I'd hear all the time. And some of the PUA stuff borders uncomfortably on that.
Struggling to seal the deal? I'm going to channel my best Alec Baldwin and shout at you to always be closing! I nailed 200 broads last year, what have you done?
