What's People's Issues With Pua?

[Babaram]

Sorry, I had enough respect for you guys to assume you were both literate and had an attention span greater than a 5 year old. Perhaps I was wrong.

Yes

 

[zer0ed]

Bit the bullet and read the previous 6 pages of comments, but I'll answer the original posted question from a point of view of a complete noob: verified by my search query "what is PUA" on google less than a week ago and being stunned at such a thing existed (at least a formal term).

So here is my 2sen (not cents

The label PUA = Pick-up Artist just doesn't sound good. Similar things that came to mind when reading was: con artist, scam artist, or some sort of social "artist" employing cheap tricks to accomplish a certain goal. This is further complicated by the fact that there is no standardized definition of what constitutes a "true" PUA vs someone who is naturally good at picking up women. In the end, this label is just another label that anyone can freely use.

At first the idea just sounded silly: bunch of guys picking up girls to add to their "head count". But after thinking about it a bit more, who am I to judge? As long as those people are respectful and not breaking and moral or legal rules, then it should be fair game. Life is short, having fun shouldn't be frowned upon. Gambling, drugs, shopping, nerding out, all have negative stereotypes associated with people that indulge in said activities. However, as an open-minded individual, it's important to be able to look pass such labels and appreciate each person for what their motivations are. Of course you will encounter people who refuse to do this, but that is their loss in my eyes.

My suggestion is that if you don't like the negative connotation of PUA being applied to your hobby, perhaps re-frame it with your own terminology? Perhaps something along the lines of "Courtship Expert"?

 

[TAG_Member]

I make well over 5000000 JPY, up to 10 in a month.
Coming from money and working the family business.
I wouldn't generalise if I were you. Some people enjoy relationships that form organically.
Not that I have anything against mongers, or people working in the sex business.
Then again, I don't employ many tactics used by the PUA community, and I don't consider myself an artist in that sense.

Relationships that for organically shouldn't require tactics.

I actually didn't mean to sound like I was generalizing but was simply curious. With that kind of money, you probably find paying boring anyway. And FYI, I'm impressed but not that impressed

 

[Chocoballs]

So everyone (except @4vibes) agrees that a PUA sometimes annoys, harasses, or whatever. Then the opinions are
1. it's bad to approach anyone because there is a chance you make her uncomfortable
2. it's OK to approach because you might make her feel happy too.

Sure it would be nice if I could live my life without annoying anyone but it's unreasonably strict to never to able to approach anyone. Then a guy could never go up to a girl in a bar. A shop could not distribute sales flyers.

 

[Babaram]

Oh my goodness. Are you telling us you were 100% successful with any woman you approached. Come on bro, there is the fantasy and then there is reality of how things actually happen. 99.9% success rate is acceptable ;-)

Meet the Bernie Madoff of fast-seduction: One in a hundred turns into a 99.9% success rate. Sad.

 

[Babaram]

Sure it would be nice if I could live my life without annoying anyone but it's unreasonably strict to never to able to approach anyone. Then a guy could never go up to a girl in a bar. A shop could not distribute sales flyers.

Try intuition, feeling, social graces

 

[Chocoballs]

Try intuition, feeling, social graces

Can you please explain and give an example

 

[John Chavers]

I make well over 5000000 JPY, up to 10 in a month.
Coming from money and working the family business.

 

[Sinapse]

Try intuition, feeling, social graces

I agree with this!

But...If your intuition and feeling doesn't compel you to talk to stunning women (wherever they may be), I'm shocked! Desire compels me. Women reward me. Why would I stop??

I think an interesting question is :

Why DON'T you cold approach?

 

[John Chavers]

Then you see a man almost young, rich only in his doubts and with his life's work still in progress, accustomed to living in the solitude of work or in the retreats of friendship. He seems to be enjoying all those pleasures that you eschewed in your early life, with an easy and confident manner. He reminds you of what you once could have been, or wanted to be

How could I know this without resorting to PUA-level stalking tactics?

 

[rick]

Just like pua, maybe, if something is too out of your world, you don't believe it?

 

[Ches]

Pick up artists are stupid people who can't do anything with their boring lives.

 

[Wwanderer]

If they see the men yes. In this case I'm talking about street / club approaches where the guy is coming in and the girl isn't expecting it.

You are conflating two situations I consider very different, street and club. Afaik VERY few women walk down the street or take trains or go into a Starbucks for the purpose of meeting men. When you approach women in those environments you are imposing your agenda and goals on them. However, in a club or bar, particularly certain types of bars, it is reasonable to suppose that she is there for the purpose of meeting men or at the very least can reasonably expect that men will be approaching her. I do NOT think that men approaching women in the latter type of venue is objectionable at all. I think there are some other reasonable objections to what @Babaram brilliantly described as a "paint-by-numbers approach" in those settings, but here we are mostly discussing the question of bothering/annoying women.

On top of that, these are things which have been said to me, repeatedly, by women on this board and in real life. @User#8628 in this thread of course being the most recent to say she appreciates a good approach.

Absolutely there are women, such as @User#8628 (who, btw, is about as accepting and nonjudgmental a person as you could ever hope to meet...a trait even more incredibly attractive than her appearance, imo), who enjoy and appreciate good approaches. Equally absolutely there are those who do not; @User#16452 is the local TAG lady to balance against Alice's views. But we need not restrict ourselves to the hand full of women who are active on TAG threads; I have heard numerous women report their pleasure in being hit on in public places and numerous other women complain about it, sometimes bitterly. There are also surely people who appreciate being handed advertisements in the street and some who happily welcome religious proselytizers into their homes too. But that does not, imo, make it good behavior for such folks to knowingly bother and annoy those who don't like it.

-Ww

 

[Wwanderer]

It is a simple fact that p4p requires money.

True enough.

And it is a simple fact (according to its proponents) that PUA requires a lot of money, effort and brutally unpleasant rejections.

But your point is...?

-Ww

 

[rick]

True enough.

And it is a simple fact (according to its proponents) that PUA requires a lot of money, effort and brutally unpleasant rejections.

But your point is...?

-Ww

That money being required for service is natural, although he seems to think that the other poster insinuated otherwise.

 

[Sinapse]

Pick up artists are stupid people who can't do anything with their boring lives.

Wut.. Lol

Why did you reach out to me to come along to a seminar then?

 

[rick]

Pick up artists are stupid people who can't do anything with their boring lives.

How can you fail to see the irony in your own sentence, ches...
I will readily agree that people who do nothing but pick up ( in that their lives revolve around the theory of pickup and no other hobbies/interests) are pretty pathetic, but just like eating dairy and cereal, think of it as part of a healthy, balanced lifestyle.

 

[Sinapse]

You are conflating two situations I consider very different, street and club. Afaik VERY few women walk down the street or take trains or go into a Starbucks for the purpose of meeting men. When you approach women in those environments you are imposing your agenda and goals on them. However, in a club or bar, particularly certain types of bars, it is reasonable to suppose that she is there for the purpose of meeting men or at the very least can reasonably expect that men will be approaching her. I do NOT think that men approaching women in the latter type of venue is objectionable at all. I think there are some other reasonable objections to what @Babaram brilliantly described as a "paint-by-numbers approach" in those settings, but here we are mostly discussing the question of bothering/annoying women.



Absolutely there are women, such as @User#8628 (who, btw, is about as accepting and nonjudgmental a person as you could ever hope to meet...a trait even more attractive than her appearance, imo), who enjoy and appreciate good approaches. Equally absolutely there are those who do not; @User#16452 is the local TAG lady to balance against Alice's views. But we need not restrict ourselves to the hand full of women who are active on TAG threads; I have heard numerous women report their pleasure in being hit on in public places and numerous other women complain about it, sometimes bitterly. There are also surely people who appreciate being handed advertisements in the street and some who happily welcome religious proselytizers into their homes too. But that does not, imo, make it good behavior for such folks to knowingly bother and annoy those who don't like it.

-Ww

I feel very little - Nay, none whatsoever - shame nor guilt from approaching women in public. If you like you can call me a sociopath and be done with it, but any attempt to instill shame into me isn't really going to work. And perhaps you could tell women to stop banging me as well - though this isn't likely to work well either.

Trans people using the bathroom with which they identify also "makes people uncomfortable". As does Muslims being allowed into the US at all. That doesn't mean they shouldn't continue

 

[Wwanderer]

That's a point I can respect, but to remain consistent, you would have to share the same level of hate for those guys handing out tissue in front of the station, door to door mormons/jehovah's witness, izakaya advertisers, etc, etc

Ah! I hope you don't think that I hate PUAs/gamers, not at all. I wouldn't spend my time talking/posting to them if I did. I do fault them, their community and their views/beliefs on many points (about which I have posted extensively in TAG PUA forum threads...though "extensively doesn't begin to do justice to it I guess), but I still think that they are largely just well-intentioned people doing their best to cope with their own situations and viewing the world through the glasses with which their experiences have fitted them...just like the rest of us in other words. A few, sadly few, are like you...interested in a real discussion in which they recognize the difference between a reasoned criticism and an attack.

I do think that the level of nuisance that PUAs/gamers and those "in training" to become PUAs/gamers impose on women via approaches in public places is rather similar to that caused by "guys handing out tissue in front of the station, door to door mormons/jehovah's witness, izakaya advertisers, etc, etc", as you mention. An important difference, in my mind, is that those folks don't seem to be nearly so full of contempt for other people, arrogance, self-importance, humble (and not so humble) brags etc. I suspect if izakaya touts showed up on some forum concerned with marketing to the public and started saying that they had the ultimate and end-all secrets to marketing which anyone could master if only they'd follow their flyer hawking system, they would get a colder reception than PUA/gamers get on adult fun forums! Don't ya think? That sounds ridiculous of course, but fwiiw, all of this stuff about boot camps and escalation ladders and such as a way of meeting and getting to know women sounds no less ridiculous to me.

Btw, @static , this thread is so long and so hard to track already, I am not bothering to mention all of the points on which I agree with you, but there are quite a few. Thanks for starting the thread and for at least trying to keep it rational and civil.

-Ww

 

[Wwanderer]

Bit the bullet and read the previous 6 pages of comments, ...

Take the rest of the day off, pal; you deserve it!

-Ww

 

[Babaram]

I feel very little - Nay, none whatsoever - shame nor guilt from approaching women in public. If you like you can call me a sociopath and be done with it, but any attempt to instill shame into me isn't really going to work. And perhaps you could tell women to stop banging me as well - though this isn't likely to work well either.

If you are proud of being a sociopath, then you deserve all the pity we can muster.

"The most incredible trait of a sociopath, is their complete lack of conscience, lack of empathy, remorse, guilt or shame. Sociopaths are great at feigning ‘moral outrage’, or playing victim, giving a false persona that has the impression of being truly empathetic and caring character."

Sociopaths frequently succeed in the beginning, because the rest of the world simply is slack-jawed by the sheer gall, and can't believe what the rest of the world is seeing. Eventually, sociopaths tend to find a rather uncomfortable end.

 

[Wwanderer]

Relationships that form organically shouldn't require tactics.

Wow! You certainly hit the nail on the head and so succinctly and clearly. I'd go a step further and say that tactics, especially pre-meditated and learned tactics have no place in a real relationship; using them steals away its heart, its essence.

And FYI, I'm impressed but not that impressed

Add a zero and it starts to get impressive, but I don't think this has anything to do with why people dislike PUA/gaming, does it?

-Ww

 

[Wwanderer]

Why DON'T you cold approach?

It takes a lot of time and effort and is unnecessary. It is basically the same reason I don't make friends (male or female) by cold approaching people.

-Ww

 

[Wwanderer]

Pick up artists are stupid people who can't do anything with their boring lives.

I disagree with that, but based on her frankly expressed views, I would hazard a guess that @Ches is another woman who finds cold approaches VERY seriously unwelcome.

-Ww

 

[zer0ed]

Take the rest of the day off, pal; you deserve it!

-Ww

Thanks, already have!

This post is turning into a pseudo-chatroom...

Don't any of us have anything other to do than to read TAG? Hell, I'm not even in Japan... yet.