When did pickup artistry become criminal? Relying on online sex gurus for advice on persuading women into bed used to be seen as a fallback for introverted, physically unprepossessing “beta males”. And for this reason, in the 2000s, the discipline was promoted by the mainstream media as a way of instilling confidence in sexually-frustrated nerds. MTV’s The Pickup Artist shamelessly broadcast its tactics, with dating coaches encouraging young men to prey upon reluctant women, hoping to “neg” and “kino escalate” them into “number closes“. Contestants advanced through women of increasing difficulty (picking-up a stripper was regarded as “the ultimate challenge”) with the most-skilled “winning” the show.
Today, the global face of pickup artistry is Andrew Tate: sculpted former kickboxing champion, self-described “misogynist”, and, now, alleged human trafficker. Whatever results from the current allegations, his fall is a defining moment in the cultural history of the now inseparable worlds of the political manosphere and pickup artistry, and provides an opportunity to reflect upon their entangled history.
Pickup artistry burst onto the scene in the 2000s, propelled by the success of Neil Strauss’s best-selling book The Game. More a page-turning potboiler cataloguing the mostly empty lives of pickup artists (PUAs) than a how-to guide (though Strauss wrote one of those too), the methods in the book had been developed through years of research shared on internet forums. The “seduction underground”, as the large online community of people doing this research was called, then became the subject of widespread media attention. Through pickup artistry, the aggressive, formulaic predation of women was normalised as esteem boosting, and men such as those described in Strauss’s The Game could be viewed in a positive light: they had transformed from zero to hero and taken what was rightfully theirs.
The emergence of PUAs generated a swift backlash. The feminist blogs of the mid-to-late 2000s internet, of which publications like Jezebel still survive as living fossils, rushed to pillory them. The attacks weren’t without justification, but the world of PUAs during this period, much like the similarly wild-and-woolly bodybuilding forums, had no obvious political dimension beyond some sort of generic libertarianism. It was only after these initial critiques that it began to be coded as Right-wing by those on the Left. Duly labelled, PUAs and other associated manosphere figures drifted in that direction. MTV’s dating coaches were not part of the political landscape, merely feckless goofballs and low-level conmen capable of entertaining the masses. But their successors would be overtly political actors.
Oliver Bateman, “Why pick-up artists joined the Online Right”, UnHerd, 2023-01-08.
April 15, 2023
QotD: When the pick-up artist became “coded right”
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….are you really amazed that tactics that explicitly were based on psychological abuse got spread around and used by psychologically abusive folks?
I know that I grew up in a weird area, but… my aunt was abused.
Not, like, Hallmark “her boyfriend said she could afford to lose five pounds.”
I mean, “her parents realized there was an issue when her husband tried to kill her by beating her brains out on his pickup bumper after dinner at their place.”
“Negging” is taking that tactic into not usually criminally actionable areas, to emotionally abuse the target into thinking that sex with you is no worse than what she deserves.
… yes, I do think it’s horrible for both sides. If you think that sex with you is so bad that you need to use the tactics that go before “and then they found the corpse,” you need help.
The PUAs didn’t result in a swift backlash, because I ended up in several of them; it was fine until folks realized I am female, and then they got borked.
Sometimes because I pointed out ways to get dates that would not result in them hurting. (Yes, I was so innocent I didn’t realize it wasn’t supposed to involve females.)
Contrast with geek circles, where nobody cared I have girl parts.
Comment by Foxfier — April 15, 2023 @ 18:37
Thank goodness I’m too old to have experienced the dating scene that the Pick-up Artist community was responding to. The stimulus-response patterns of the internet-era dating world clearly still allowed the “haves” of the pre-internet dating world to continue to have enhanced opportunities with the opposite sex and the “have nots” to lack … but now to be far more aware of what they were missing out on.
Comment by Nicholas — April 15, 2023 @ 22:42
Foxfier;
> “Negging” is taking that tactic into not usually criminally actionable areas, to emotionally abuse the target into thinking that sex with you is no worse than what she deserves.
No, it isn’t.
Yes, the PUA guru/Red Pill providers are highly segmented, so some extremely militant PUA guru probably did define it that way. I read one commenter who defined it as, “a technique to slightly bring a person down who is overconfident in themselves to generate interest.”
I have no idea how that would work. It sounds like a very fuzzy thinker trying to be scientific and precise. Roissy, one of the acknowledged Kings of the Red Pill Kingdom, was paraphrased (by a woman) thus:
> … offering attractive women teasing insults instead of compliments: “You have really big ears. Nah, I think it’s cute, kind of like a bunny.”
Did you see? Did you?
*No* insult lurks in that quote.
She probably does have slightly-larger-than-average ears. Most people (outside of grade school) probably don’t notice, but you can bet she frets over them nightly. The quote *raises* her most visible anxiety (big ears) only to instantly *soothe* it (they’re cute).
The proper word is not “negging,” it is *teasing*.
The best example of a “left-handed compliment” I can think of is in “Nana to Kaoru,” chap. 33. Tachi shows up (uninvited) at Kaoru’s apartment and eventually bullies him into practicing bondage ties on her. (Literally: she “innocently” threatens to do something that might damage Kaoru’s relationship with Nana.) Looking at a picture of the completed tie, Tachi sees, for the first time, her actual sex appeal:
– [happy/scared/vulnerable] “Kaoru, I—I’m se- … I’m … *sexy*.”
– [absentmindedly, a little flustered] “Ah, well… maybe so… I guess. Since pictures can’t talk.”
– [a lot flustered] “Ha! ‘Maybe so,’ ha! ‘Maybe so,’ heh heh… Hey, what do you mean? You make it sound like it’s a shame that I talk!” [climbs on top of Kaoru and starts beating him] “What are you, my father?! Give me a *real* compliment!!”
Now, Kaoru didn’t do it deliberately (he is obsessed with Nana, to the point that he barely registers Tachi as anything but a pest), but if you can’t see how a young woman climbing on you, pounding you with her tiny, girlish fists, demanding you call her “sexy” can lead to a more intimate relationship… well, *shrugs*. (The implication that Tachi’s father teases her also is telling.)
Male friends routinely heap competitively inventive, verbal abuse on each other, all for a laugh. Teasing is the greatly watered-down version of this we indulge with our female acquaintances. (And yes, I have seen trolls on image boards heaping outright hate and abuse on camgirls, claiming to be negging, but really only out to spoil everyone else’s fun.)
Comment by somercet — April 16, 2023 @ 10:52
Male friends’ interactions with one another would probably count as abuse if men treated women that way. Even the milder “teasing” seems to be much closer to insult from the woman’s POV than men actually intend. Well, most men. The assholes are always with us, the trick is to minimize the asshole quotient of your social circle as best you can.
Comment by Nicholas — April 16, 2023 @ 12:07