Introduction:
In response to continual listener curiosity, Tucker and Dr. Miller discuss their opinions of the PUA/seduction community. Not just what it gets right and wrong, but how its systematic assumptions about women, men and relationships prevent its ‘gurus’ from providing effective long-term guidance to young and struggling guys. Tucker and Dr. Miller also talk about how The Mating Grounds takes a very different approach to women and dating that solves these issues and engages many others the PUA community doesn’t realize even exist.
Podcast:
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Video:
[coming soon]
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Key takeaways:
Most pickup artists see mating as an adversarial zero-sum game – for one side to benefit, the other side has to lose out.
That’s bullshit. It can be win-win – guys and girls often want the same things.
Also, most of the PUA material views women in a very toxic, angry way. This doesn’t help guys (or women).
Very little of what pickup artists do and say focuses on understanding women in any real way.
But it’s not their fault – the pickup community was developed by autistics and sociopaths in a world that had no actionable, effective guidance for men on how to meet and interact with women successfully.
PUA’s exist because our society failed to teach men the right things about women, and the whole was filled by them.
A lot of guys use PUA material as a bridge to what actually works, so in that way, it’s definitely helped many guys.
One positive of the PUA community: for a lot of guys it’s the first time they’ve actually consciously thought about their own mating value, how to improve, etc.
The majority of PUA information focuses on bars and clubs – because that’s the only location that most of them have ever learnt how to interact with women.
This is not beneficial for the majority of guys, since bars and clubs are among the worst places to meet women.
There’s a skewed view of what constitutes “success” for pickup artists – they look up to guys who can number-close a 9 in 5 minutes. This is not actual success.
Some pickup artists are better than others. Some focus more on making guys more attractive, comfortable and confident, as opposed to learning how to manipulate and trick women.
The big question you should ask is: How much of their information are these guys giving away for free? If it’s not a lot, then they’re probably trying to scam you, and sadly, this is what most PUA’s are trying to do to guys.
We focus on actually helping guys, which is why all of our most important information will be free or near-free (book prices). Any paid products etc. will exist to save you time and effort – but the information will be the same, because our goal is not to exploit men but to help them.
Links from this episode
Paul Johnson’s book Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky.
More info on cargo cult science.
Mark Manson’s book Models. Despite this being one of the best things in the PUA community, it still gets almost all the fundamentals wrong.
For some real science turn to David Buss’s Why Women Have Sex. David will be on the podcast soon as well.
More research on how pick-up artists fail guys
For some awkward “daygame” pickups, try Sasha Daygame’s youtube channel. It will make you cringe.
Here’s the video of Roosh getting called out on Ukranian TV for lying in his book.
Podcast Audio Transcription:
Tucker:
Aright, so this is a special episode of The Mating Grounds Podcast. It is sort of an addendum to our normal series of show. Normally, we’re doing expert interviews or expert conversations. But, we’ve had a lot of requests from our listeners and our viewers to talk about how we are different than the pick up artists and the seduction communities and how we fit into the manosphere and our thoughts on the manosphere. So, we figured instead of talking about this a lot, we’re just going to do one big, long podcast, lay everything out, and then we don’t have to talk about it ever again. So, if you don’t care about any of those topics, seriously, don’t listen to this podcast. It’ll be a huge waste of your time. Go back to the other stuff that’s informative and actionable. This is going to be for the people who really care about those sorts of issues. But for those people, I think it’s going to be very helpful. This is going to be, probably, either a two-part podcast or one very long one. We’re going to do the pick up artist/seduction community first, then we’re going to do the manosphere. I know they’re not the same, but there is a lot of overlap and a lot of our thoughts are going to be similar for the two groups, although some will be very different. So, we’re going to start with the pick up artists. Generally speaking – there’s three of us here now, me, Dr. Miller, and Nils. We have slightly different opinions on each thing, so there’s not, like, a group policy here. Here’s my issue with pick up artists. My main issue is – there’s a couple big issues. I think from the first perspective – actually, Dr. Miller, you do a better job than I do outlining this with less emotionally charged language. Why don’t you outline what you think the problems with the pick up artist and seduction communities are?
Geoff:
Well, I’m going to get pretty emotional about game theory now.
Tucker:
If you want to talk about John Nash, we can talk about actual economic game theory, which they don’t know what they’re talking about when they bring that up. Let’s talk about what they think game theory is and what they think they’re talking about.
Geoff:
Okay. My impression of the pick up artist/seduction community is that they view male/female relationships as very adversarial. Like, what we call a zero-sum game where, like, if males get an advantage, females suffer or if females are happy or get an advantage or get a benefit, then automatically it’s at some cost to the males. Right? That, I think, is a fundamental difference compared to what we’re trying to do. We talk a lot about win/win situations, how if you make yourself a better guy, a more attractive boyfriend, it’s also good for women. It fulfills their needs, they’re happier, they are less lonely, they have more orgasms, whatever it is they want. So, we have kind of a win/win mentality. We think there’s an abundance of opportunity out there for both sexes to have relationships that are great.
Tucker:
Let me make this point. I actually should’ve brought this point up at the beginning. So, listen. If you are one of our listeners and you have dealt with pick up artist stuff before and you have taken something from it or it was beneficial to you, that’s fantastic. The last thing we’re trying to do is make any guy who’s ever used pick up artist materials or read it or learned something from it, we’re not trying to make you feel stupid or feel bad. We’re not really even attacking them. Like, I’ll kind of explain my feelings about the pick up artist community as people later on. This is much more about understanding what they are vs. what we are, understanding where they succeed and where they fail, and understanding how we succeed and avoid their failures. So, please don’t take this – I know we’ve had a lot of emails, actually, from guys who are like…they defend pick up artist type stuff and I interact with them about it and we go back and forth and I realize really quick, they’re not actually defending any of the stuff in pick up artist materials. What they are is they’re guys who were totally lost in their lives and then read some pick up artist stuff and it made them a little bit less lost, and so part of their identity they feel like they owe to those that wrote that material.
So, guys, if you fall into that category, please do not think we’re attacking you or that we’re shaming you or putting you down. We’re not at all. Like we’ve said over and over, the only point of The Mating Grounds, the only real goal, is that you develop and get better and improve so that you can have the types of relationships that you want – short, medium, long, any of them – with the types of women you want. Okay? That’s the only goal here. Pretty much every critique we have about the pick up artist and seduction community is that they don’t do a good job helping you reach those goals, or they don’t do the best job that could be done. Every critique we have is going to fit into that framework, so understand that. Okay, guys? So, like Dr. Miller said, zero-sum game. First off, you’re totally right. You look at the way that they – everything they talk about with women, they see, especially a lot of them frame it in terms of status hierarchies, like, “Oh, you have to increase your status. You have to make her feel insecure. You have to put yourself above her.” One of the primary concepts is nagging, right? And it’s like, if there’s anyone on earth who’s famous for nagging people and making fun of them, it’s fucking me. Okay? So, it’s like, when they do that, I’m always like, you guys are missing the fucking point. This doesn’t make sense. Teasing someone is funny, but the best teasing is always when both of you are in on the joke, not when you’re putting someone else down. They don’t get this, for the most part. As a community, they don’t understand that at all. They think it’s about putting the women down, making her feel shitty so that the woman will then search for your validation.
Nils:
They’re trying to flip the power dynamic.
Tucker:
Exactly.
Geoff:
Yeah, but it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what status is. Status is your competitive position within your sex. Status, for a guy, is status relative to other men. It’s not to do with other women. Status for a woman is relative to other women. Now, between the sexes, there can be differences in mate value, so if a woman’s super high mate value and you’re super low, she doesn’t want anything to do with you or vise-versa. But that’s not a status difference. So, the fundamental way that the seduction community even thinks about nagging is kind of misconceived from the start.
Tucker:
Right. We’re going to talk about this a lot more in the manosphere discussion. Part of the problem is…So, here’s what you see with these guys. Either they don’t understand…Actually, let’s start with who these guys are. So, I know a lot of these guys. I know Neil Strauss. I know Nick Cho, who I think started Real Social Dynamics or one of those things. I know probably four or five others, right? And I’ve been emailed by I don’t know how many of these dudes over the last ten years, and what I have found dealing with these guys – I’m talking about the ones who teach this stuff – in person, and I’m not necessarily calling out any specific person, but meeting these dudes in person, dealing with them in person, I have found there’s sort of three types of pick up artists. There are the ones that are complete sociopaths, and I mean that. They are sociopaths, like, diagnosed sociopaths. There are the ones who fit somewhere on the autistic spectrum, like they have Asperger’s or they can’t understand people or whatever. And then there’s the ones who, I think, really, genuinely hate women. Like, have real issues with women, and to them, pick up artist stuff is their way to get over on them. It kind of ties back in with zero-sum game.
So, understand, guys, if you want to understand an idea or a concept, it’s a really good idea to look at who is propagating it, who’s talking about it, and their background. There’s a reason Paul Johnson’s one of the great biographers. It’s because – like, his book Intellectuals or read his biographies of great leaders – he actually tries to understand those people as people, not just what they did but where they came from. I think you need to look at who these pick up artists are. You’ve never, ever, ever seen a pick up artist who is a guy who was popular in high school or popular in college or popular anywhere outside of the pick up artist community ever. The one exception is Neil Strauss, and Neil Strauss was not popular until he basically disavowed the pick up artist community and moved on. By the way, he has a book coming out this fall about this, about how he realized that entire approach to life was wrong and unrewarding and how he moved away from it. Not the approach to talking to women, picking up women, sleeping with women, having relationships with women. No. The approach looking at women as opponents, looking at women as objects, looking at women as things that you have to get over on, right? Think about the way that they talk, the language they use. Seduction. Seduction implies you are getting something out of someone they don’t want to give you. Gain. That implies you have an opponent.
Nils:
There’s a winner and a loser.
Tucker:
Right! There’s a winner and a loser. Bang. Words like that. That’s an offensive action. Bang is the sound a gun makes. I’m not picking shit out. This is not meaningless, guys. Words usually indicate underlying emotional thought. Like, we can go deep into that sort of stuff. It’d probably be super boring to you, but believe me, the language people use indicates how they think and what they think about. As a general idea, pick up artists are about manipulating, exploiting women. Getting something out of them. What we advocate and what a healthier approach is to be in relationships with women, have women as partners where you both have a goal. Your goal can be sex. Your goal can be fun. Your goal can be companionship. Your goal can be conversation. Or, it can be all those things together. Relationships should be seen as things you do together. Partnerships, not oppositional competitions.
Geoff:
And you can see the difference in…Very rarely in the pick up artist world will there be any consideration of what life is like from a woman’s point of view. A woman’s fears, anxieties, hopes, aspirations, preferences, whereas we spent, like, the first six podcast episodes about guys, here’s what it’s like to be a woman. Here’s what they want. Here’s why they want it. Here’s why their mate preferences are adaptively logical. Etc. So, for us, it’s all about getting inside the heads of women in order to build those win/win relationships, even if it’s just for one night.
Tucker:
You know why they do that, though. Look at the history of pick up artists, the way it developed. First off, listen. Let me say this, too. The fact that the pick up artist community exists, I don’t look down on these guys. I don’t hate these guys. I actually feel sorry for them because they’re really kind of pathetic, most of them, and they’re really sad and they’re lonely and they have awful lives, right? I don’t blame them, because the fact that these guys have to exist means that our society has failed men. The fact that a guy in goggles and a top hat and makeup is on TV giving advice to men about how to pick up women means that our society has failed men.
Nils:
And if you want to look at a social analogy for that, it’s the same for the urban African American community. Think about it. The hustle, “I got to get mine.” It’s the same sort of combative nature where society has failed that group of people and now it’s about taking. It’s not about any sort of collaboration.
Tucker:
They have no guidance, they have no leadership, they have no models that are positive but actually work. You know? Listen, pick up artists developed in a world where there was no actionable, effective, honest advice for men. So, I understand why they developed it. I don’t blame those guys. If you’ve taken something from them and it worked a little bit and it helped you, that’s great. We’ve had plenty of people on podcast talk about that. John Romaniello talked about that. Charlie Hoehn talked – or, I guess these podcasts won’t be up when this goes up, but you’re going to head a bunch of guys come on and talk about that. But you know what every single one of them said? Every single one, is, “I realized that the underlying ideas are stupid and don’t work and pick up artist material was a way I got to what worked.”
Nils:
It was a bridge, yeah.
Tucker:
Exactly.
Nils:
Because there’s no long-term game there, not long-term play. It’s all short-term transactional.
Tucker:
It’s transactional, right? So, let’s think about how and why pick up artists developed. It developed out of a world where there was nothing, and then the Internet blew up and you had guys who were essentially the mating losers, guys who could not or did not get any women. But now they had a way to connect with information over the Internet. But if you think about who were the first ones, there were two groups that really understood and used the Internet a lot. The first big group, obviously, are Asperger’s people and autistic people because they tend to be programmers, the computer doesn’t require personal interaction, etc. I mean, you can see multiple histories of the Internet where people write about this. This has nothing to do with pick up artists, but then on top of what, what you have is you have sociopaths. If you look at the early development…Like, look at the earliest message boards and whatever. If you look at the history of pick up artists, it’s guys who have no success with women, which tend to be guys who don’t understand women – sociopaths – or people – sociopaths. Or, people who can’t read or understand people but aren’t evil – people with Asperger’s and autism, right? And they got together and they, essentially, reverse-engineered what…They would go to clubs, literally, this is what they would do. They wrote things called field reports, like they’re anthropologists. Seriously, they still do. They still call them field reports. And they would go to places, bars and clubs, because they didn’t understand where anyone else was meeting even thought that’s not where most people meet because they are so divorced from human interaction, sociopaths and autistics. So, they would go and then they looked and they watched people and they tried to reverse-engineer what successful guys were doing. So, what they ended up with was this weird, perverted set of rules where it’s sort of like…You know what it reminds me of? Cargo cult science. So, if you don’t know what cargo cult science is, literally it’s this thing. It’s a real thing. Richard Dawkins wrote about it in his book about god. I think Sam Harris has written about it. Basically, in World War II, U.S. and Japan fought over all these Pacific islands. There were more than a few Pacific islands that had people, essentially hunter-gatherers that had never seen or interacted with civilization. Right? So, for whatever reason, American allies were dropping supplies onto a lot of these islands, either advanced supplies ‘cause they were going to be landing soldiers or they were trying to win over the tribal peoples. I don’t know. I actually read about cargo cult science, like, twenty years ago, so if I get anything wrong, Dr. Miller, please correct me. Here’s what happened, though. Here’s what’s relevant to us. These tribes who had never interacted with civilization saw these massive boxes parachuting out of the sky and they landed and they opened it up and it was full of these things that they’d never seen. They had no concept of what a motorcycle was or what a wrench was or how you could make this, or food! Prepared food! Concentrated sugar. Like, they’d never seen concentrated sugar. It was this amazing tasting stuff, etc., right? So, to them, they couldn’t explain this ‘cause they didn’t understand industrialization or whatever. This is the forties, people. The 1940s, not 1640s. So, they essentially – this is the way the human mind works – they created wools but it amounted to a religion. Because one of the boxes – this is so funny – had a bunch of pictures of…What’s Queen Elizabeth’s – Prince William? Prince Albert? What’s his name? He’s not the King. Prince Albert, right?
Nils:
I think so, yeah.
Tucker:
I think his name was Albert, right? Charles is…Prince William’s grandfather is Prince Albert.
Geoff:
Prince Phillip.
Tucker:
Prince Phillip! That’s it! Prince Phillip. I don’t really give a shit. I’m American. I don’t give a fuck about royalty. Whatever his fucking name was. The point is, there were a bunch of pictures of him. So, one of the major islands’ tribes thought he was God. So, they now worship him. He actually went and visited after World War II, and they’re all bowing down like shit out of Star Wars with the Ewoks where it’s like, “Oooh,” to C3PO, right? Remember that, from Return of the Jedi? That’s that it was like! It gave a perfect example, a scientific experiment how religion develops and how humans will automatically reverse-engineer things they don’t understand and if there’s too many gaps, they’ll fill the gaps in with religion. That’s what pick up artists have done with male-female interaction and how to hack it, right? Now, they’re much smarter. They know more. So, it’s not a religion to them, but they have missed huge components of this. And the funniest thing is, most of them have tried to backfill this with science, and who do they quote? David Buss, Richard Wrangham, and, by the way, Dr. Geoffrey Miller. Right? I know you’ve read a bunch of this stuff, and especially a lot of ones who quote you. What percentage of them, would you say, get the science right? Even forgetting all the stuff about being transactional, whatever. What percentage get the science right?
Geoff:
10%. 10%, actually.
Tucker:
It’s that low? I thought you were going to say 30. 10?
Geoff:
I mean, you know, it’s clear that…Okay, fair enough. Probably more than half the people who bought my book The Mating Mind are in the pick up artist/seduction community. So, thanks for the sales, I appreciate it. But, it’s kind of weird to be kind of idolized in that world but to realize, like…most of these guys didn’t get through the book. They didn’t actually—
Tucker:
They didn’t understand it.
Geoff:
They didn’t read it. Or if they read it, they didn’t really understand it. And, they kind of viewed it from this pick up artist lens. They missed the key point, which is that for men to succeed, we have to understand what women want and that that’s been driving human evolution for millions of years. That’s one fundamental point. And they just don’t have the background! Why don’t they have the background? Because frankly, my field, Evolutionary Psychology, isn’t taught in that many places. There aren’t that many courses on it.
Tucker:
It’s still very new.
Geoff:
And it’s very easy to misunderstand it. If you grow up in Britain, the popular media there covers it very well and they explain it on TV and radio shows and it saturates the culture. You can get it. If you’re a young British man, you’ll understand The Mating Mind better. But, in American culture, there’s so little intellectual foundation or science education, and when it does appear in the popular media, it’s sort of second- or third- or fifth-hand. So, it’s frustrating when you see your ideas kind of…
Nils:
How are they retarding those ideas when they process them through their brains?
Tucker:
Well, I’ll tell you a big one. A really big one, and we’ll probably talk about this, maybe, more in manosphere. We can talk about it now ‘cause both groups do this. Here’s a big one. The pick up artists think that the only – so, one of the best ones that everyone recommends, everyone says this guy…we’ve gotten ten emails about this. “No, you’re right. Pick up artists are clowns, but this guy used to be a pick up artists and figured out and he’s doing really good stuff. His name’s Mark Manson.” A bunch of them recommended his book Models. It’s got a tie on the front. It’s really weird. I was like, “Alright, fine.” So, I picked it up and I started reading through it a few days ago in preparation for this podcast, and literally, in the fucking introduction, he makes fundamental mistakes, fundamental misunderstandings about science that now impact the entire book. He gets everything wrong ‘cause he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about. Here’s exactly what he does wrong. First thing he says is that no one understands attraction and that anyone who says they understand who women are attracted to is lying. I was like, wow, dude. I don’t claim to be the experts, but I know a lot of them and I’m partners with one of them. They don’t claim to know everything, but they have…there’s a lot of empirical data and it’s been repeated over and over and it’s pretty clear. That’s called science. Science is a process, not a result. If the process is showing the same result over and over, then you can be very confident in those results, generally speaking. I’m like, man. You’re wrong about that, dude. He uses that as one faulty foundation. The next piece of the foundation, he says, “The only thing that I’ve ever seen work and the only data I’ve ever seen is status.” He’s like, “Your status in the hierarchy fully determines you’re ability to mate,” and I was like, wow. You’re way off. Social status is very important. It is one of about three broad ways women categorize, and we’ve talked about this in our podcasts. There’s social status, social hierarchy, there’s partner, sort of personal interaction, and then there’s potential father mating type of status. Three prongs, right? And you can be bad at one if you’re good at the other two or if you’re really good at one, etc. I realize — oh, by the way, you want to know what he quotes in the intro? Why Women Have Sex. David Buss’s research. Which, by the way, folks, David Buss is going to do a massive, long interview of me and Dr. Miller on this podcast. David Buss is one of my good friends. You’ve known him for twenty years. We talked about this. He was over here for dinner the other night and we talked about this and he laughed. He’s said, literally, “These guys always get my stuff wrong.”
Nils:
It sounds like Manson filtered an entire field of science through the lens of his own personal experience.
Tucker:
That’s exactly what he did. That’s exactly what he did. Exactly what he did. And it goes to back what you said and we were talking about, is how pick up artists developed. Because they were autistics and sociopaths – and I say that broadly. I don’t think every single one is. I don’t think Neil Strauss is a sociopath or an autistic, okay? But most of them are. One of those two things, or close. They sat in clubs and watched successful guys, and they reverse-engineered. So, that’s their entire experience of mating, and that’s probably where anywhere from 5-20% of mating activity goes on, whether it’s meeting women or interacting with them, whatever. It’s important, but it’s a small section, and so they have a super perverted view of these things and they don’t understand how and why the other things matter, too. In fact, far more.
Geoff:
I think there’s a particular kind of salesmanship tactic that a lot of the PUAs – the pick up artist gurus – use, which is I do think a lot of them are sociopaths and who can do well in clubs and bars that are noisy where they have no fear of rejection and no conscience? Sociopaths do really well there. So, if you can get a bunch of desperate Aspergery guys who don’t understand human social dynamics and get them to go to a bar with you which is the single most intimidating environment that an Aspergery guy, an introverted guy, can confront, and then you go around and actually talk to women.
Tucker:
Even if you get rejected. The fact that you’ll even talk to a woman…
Geoff:
Right. The fact that you’ve got the guts to go up, to a clinical psychologist or someone who’s taught it like me, yeah. Sociopaths can do that. That’s what they do. That’s their mating strategy.
Tucker:
Because they don’t care.
Geoff:
But to an Aspergery guy, he’s like, “That’s amazing! I could never do that! Amazing social proof! That guru must have some amazing insider knowledge that I need and I will pay thousands of dollars for.”
Tucker:
Yes.
Geoff:
And I think that’s the fundamental sales pitch, that basically, sociopaths are going, “Hey, you can be just like me, poor Mister Asperger, if you buy my product and DVD set.”
Tucker:
I can give you a perfect direct example of what you’re talking about. This guy I know, he’s really smart, neuroscience, whatever, but very Asperger. A little bit on the spectrum, not very Asperger, actually. And he’s, like, super into Mating Grounds. I’ve known him before and he loves what we’re doing. But whenever we talk, he defends pick up artist stuff. Part of the reason he’s defending is he improved with women because of it and he has the identity thing that we were talking about earlier. But we were talking about this specific thing and he’s like, “You’re right. Most of them are wrong.” And then he pointed me to two people that were good. Manson was one and then…I forget who the other one is. It’s some dude with some clowny name, like Johnny Pick up or something like that. I honestly can’t remember it ‘cause it’s so clownish. But the evidence he gave is, “No, this guy is really good because he’s the first one in the pick up artist community who ever wrote field reports about getting head from a girl in a club or hooking up with a girl in a club.” I started laughing and laughing at him. And he’s like, “What’s so funny? I don’t understand.” And I’m like, “Dude, do you understand that as long as there have been drinking establishments and men and women in them, men have been fucking women in them? I’ve been doing that since I was nineteen! I’m just not a fucking nerd who has to go on the Internet and write about it, dude!” In fact, I wrote books about it later on, as I grew up because they’re funny, but I looked at him and I’m like, “Listen, dude. He might have been the first sociopath or Asperger’s person to get a girl to blow him in the club and then wrote about it on your fucking weird forum.” This is maybe five years ago or something. I don’t know. But, dude. People have been doing this forever. But the guys who do this, which are a lot, a lot of guys, like I didn’t invent any of this shit. I just watched other people and said, “Oh, I can do this too,” and I have normal emotions – maybe not normal emotions, but I have good enough emotions. You were loaded up for a joke, dude. I saw you. But, I can do this. Nils has done this. A lot of people have. In fact, a huge majority of guys who are good like that socially have done this. We just don’t sit around and write about it. We’re too busy fucking girls.
Geoff:
And look what counts as success in a lot of that community. It’s like, “Oh, I was able to do a number close with a 9 within five minutes, right?”
Tucker:
You know why she gave you her number? To get you away from her, you fucking weirdo! You ever watch their videos on YouTube? Oh, my god, dude. In prep for this podcast, I watched some of them, and it’s like…you’ll see it. You’ll see it clear as day. We’ll link some on the page related to this. They’re, like, anxious. They’re like, “Get this dude away from me. Yeah, here’s my number.” I promise you they’re fake. Absolutely promise you. 80% of the time they’re fake, because you can tell. Because they’re either sociopaths or have Asperger’s, they’re not reading the girl at all. There’s no emotional interaction there.
Nils:
They’re focused on the transaction.
Geoff:
Yeah, or it’s like, “Okay, I hooked up with a really hot girl and it only took five hours to seduce her.” Okay, fine. Your definition of hot might be purely physical attractiveness, like, she was slightly above average but wearing a lot of makeup and heels and a hot dress and you thought that was hot because you’re twenty and you don’t know better. I defy you to identify pick up artist gurus who are actually succeeding with intelligent, professional, sophisticated women. Women with PhDs or lawyers or any kind of woman you’d actually want to have as a girlfriend or even a woman who’s fun and mentally balanced and emotionally stable. And sober.
Tucker:
I mean, dude. I’ll be honest, that, to me, is not that much of a critique of pick up artists. It’s really not. I know what you’re saying and I get it and a lot of guys would agree with you, but they’re not selling that. They’re not selling that you’re going to find a great girlfriend. Which, by the way, study after study shows most guys – not all guy and it changes at different stages of your life. If we haven’t already posted those podcasts, they’re coming, about how you’re going to change over the stages of your life, but most guys, I think, buying pick up artist shit don’t care about that. They care about doing anything with any women.
Geoff:
True, but I think the toxic part of that is there’s an implicit social norm that says you’re not a real man unless you want to bang a bunch of nines with no commitment and no ties and no connection and no intimacy and no girlfriend. And once you get a bunch of these sociopaths and Aspergery guys together and if they establish that as a social norm and the expectation, like, that’s the definition of masculinity. And then they mis-cite me and David Buss, as if that’s what Darwin says. No! No, no, no.
Tucker:
“Darwin said you got to bang a bunch of nines in the club,” which would be hilarious.
Geoff:
Tucker’s right. Even in college, most young men do want girlfriends. And a problem is, if you hang out with the pick up artists, they’ll actually shame you for wanting that.
Tucker:
That’s not just pick up artists. Let’s only dump on them for what they deserve to be dumped on. In all honesty, that is not just pick up artists. That is pick up artists picking up on a large part of established American culture. Listen, I am more than willing to shit on them where they need to be shit on. I don’t think it’s right or fair for us to blame them for things that aren’t their fault. Just like it’s not their fault that American culture did such a poor job educating men on these things. Not their fault at all. It’s not their fault that there’s an idea in American masculine culture that masculinity is defined by lots of random sex. That’s not their fault at all. Alright, so here’s one of my favorite examples of how ridiculous the pick up artist scene is. So, there’s this concept in the pick up artist scene called—
Nils:
It’s a new one. It’s a new concept. It’s evolved.
Tucker:
Right. It’s new! Like, it’s in the last couple of years. It’s called day game, right? They literally just realized that you pick up girls during the day, that you can talk to girls outside of bars and clubs or whatever.
Nils:
At nighttime.
Tucker:
At nighttime.
Nils:
Because they’re vampires.
Tucker:
Yes. No, seriously, these dudes just discovered what the rest of us call real life! Like, it was incredible to these guys that you could actually talk to women in social situations. That’s how fucked up they are.
Nils:
Or that anything outside of a bar is also a social situation, a store or…
Tucker:
Right. The idea that you interact with humans, not transactionally, but as two humans trying to connect and enjoy each other, etc. is literally foreign to them. We’ve talked about this in this episode because almost all of them are either sociopaths or have either Asperger’s, so they don’t…they either don’t or can’t understand those concepts. Then, the rest of them are just scammers trying to steal money from desperate guys. Even if they do understand it, they’re just copying marketing materials and whatever and, “Oh, I can sell pick up artist shit, too.” But look, think about that for a second. This is after ten years of pick up artist material, someone came along and invented day game. That’s like the dude I was talking about, he’s like, “Oh, yeah. Your field reports about blah blah blah,” and I’m like, motherfucker, I’ve never written a field report in my life! I’m a normal guy. Lots of guys hook up with girls in lots of different places. That’s been happening as long as men and women have existed. But they literally couldn’t understand that. Think about that for a second. That’s mind blowing to me. That’s like…It’s funny, people talk about, “Oh, nutrition science and this and that.” The most important hormone that regulates, like, one of your most important body weight regulating hormones is Leptin, was discovered in the nineties. So, all these people talking about weight and whatever literally had never heard of the most – because no one knew about it, the most important hormone. It’s like, oh, wow. Maybe we should not listen to those people. You know? Hello! They literally just discovered real life, and then they call it day game. They don’t even call it, oh yeah, you can be social and you can act like a human. No, they come up with a name for it.
Nils:
Which compartmentalizes it from the other parts of your life. It’s like, it’s…living.
Tucker:
Right! Right. It’s like, “Oh, guys, I’ve discovered this whole new thing. Respiration! The oxygen helps—“ Like, what the fuck is wrong with you, you fucking weirdoes? And these guys set themselves up as teaching men about women.
Geoff:
And PUA gurus, you might be going, “No, no. We knew all about day game back in 2004.” Well, show me some examples of your seminars where you get guys together and, instead of going out at night and sarging in bars and clubs where you take the guys out to a grocery store.
Tucker:
What is sarging?
Geoff:
Oh, like…going out and picking up women…
Tucker:
Is that one of their goofy terms?
Geoff:
Yeah. It’s one of their…yeah. So, show me examples of a PUA guru who took guys out in normal daytime social situations more than a couple years ago. As far as I know, it didn’t happen. It was all about, “Oh, you’ve got to go out at night. Night is when women want sex. Let’s meet them at night.”
Nils:
It’s when they’re tired and fatigued.
Tucker:
No! Night is where we see people who are successful with women picking up women. That’s all we see. No, I actually watched one of the videos from…I honestly can’t remember the guy’s name. I think…day game is part of this dude’s name. It’s like…Johnny DayPickUp or something. Or Johnny DayGame. I don’t know.
Nils:
Johnny Sunlight.
Tucker:
Right? And it’s this clown with this ridiculous hair talking to a girl in the middle of the street and you can see…anyone who understand people will watch this video and be like, “Oh, this girl’s super uncomfortable.” She basically eventually just gives him her number and walks off and then looks over her shoulder at him, not like, attractive, like an animal afraid it’s being chased. I promise you, she gave him a fake number. Or she didn’t and then will ignore this dude. It made me so uncomfortable to watch this.
Nils:
That sounds like the beginning of a Law & Order episode.
Tucker:
Dude. Seriously! This is on YouTube. This is their promotional video! This is supposed to be their best shit! I watched this and I couldn’t believe…I felt bad for this dude. I’m like, dude, do you not realize…obviously he doesn’t. He’s obviously either a sociopath or has Asperger’s or something. He’s got some problem with him where he couldn’t tell this girl was running away from him like he was on fire. But, okay, fine. This is his promotional video. Right? I felt like I was secretly filming this motherfucker. This is one he put up as proof…Whatever. Let’s move on.
Geoff:
Well, let’s identify some positive things about the seduction community, then. ‘Cause there are some.
Tucker:
It’s better than nothing, I guess.
Geoff:
I mean, I’m personal friends with Eben Pagan, aka David DeAngelo. I attended one of his Chicago events years ago and I got some useful stuff out of it, no doubt. There are a lot of tips and tactics about, you know, voice pitch, how to talk to women, how to present yourself, grooming and style and conversational skills and confidence and humor and all that. A major value of that whole scene is simply thinking consciously about your mating life. Just paying some attention to what you’re doing, right?
Tucker:
Right. The problem is they don’t…yes.
Geoff:
Most guys don’t bother.
Tucker:
You’re right. We emphasize that over and over and they’ve got that right. They’re totally right. Most guys don’t even think about…they want women, but they don’t think about how many women they’re dealing with is a consequence of what they do.
Geoff:
So, number one is you can get better, you can learn stuff. There’s knowledge out there. There are skills to practice. There are experiments to run. That’s better than doing nothing, for sure. Second thing is owning your sexuality as a man. Overcoming the sexual shame that a lot of guys have. I think that’s a valuable thing.
Tucker:
Yes. I don’t think they do a good job with that, though, to be honest.
Geoff:
I mean, yeah. What they don’t do is own anything other than your desire for short-term casual sex. Like, you’re allowed to own that but not much more.
Tucker:
Yes. But you can’t really do anything else or whatever. Listen, let’s be careful ‘cause we’re grouping all pick up artists together which is clearly not true. There are definitely some who are better than others. Like, I know I’ve been on The Art of Charm podcast and I think you’re going on it soon. Jordan Harbinger or whatever, I think, is his last name, run that. He’s a nice dude. He’s a smart dude. I think he’s trying to really help guys not just hook up with women, but he’s trying to help guys achieve their romantic goals, whether it’s short- or long-term. And he’s doing it by trying to help guys become better men, right? Here’s the problem with Jordan’s podcast. It was the same problem with Manson. I literally just watched one of his videos and it’s like…they pitch themselves as, like, “Oh, we’re going to explain the science to you.” And…whatever. I’m just going to fucking make fun of her ‘cause it’s ridiculous. First off, it’s like a guy and a girl, right? And the guy is, like, this skinny, ridiculous, little…Like, he looks like straight out of central casting for a video gamer programmer. You know? Which is fine. That’s probably a lot of her audience, right? Okay, fine. Whatever. I couldn’t stop laughing at the dude ‘cause I was like, man, why don’t you knock out thirty pushups instead of doing this video? You don’t have to get big. Just do something with your body. Okay, fine. And then they had a girl next to him who was pretty attractive. This Asian girl. As social proof or intellectual proof at what they’re talking about as actual science, he’s like, “She has a psychology degree.” And I just started laughing because I was like, “From where?” Podunk Community College? Come on, man.
Geoff:
You mean, like, an undergrad degree?
Tucker:
They didn’t mention, which probably means it’s a community college degree. Not even an undergrad degree, right? But right! At best, an undergrad degree which is a fucking joke.
Geoff:
Yeah. Like, her and ten million other American women have an undergrad psychology major.
Tucker:
And then my favorite part is, the video comes up and she…I’ve got to show you this, man. She has this thick, New Jersey accent.
Nils:
Oh, no.
Tucker:
And she’s like, “This is called thin slicing” or whatever. And I’m exaggerating a little bit, but it’s this ridiculous, obnoxious accent. She’s a really nice girl. But I couldn’t stop laughing, man. I couldn’t stop laughing. And then of course, they get the science wrong. Like, that’s the worst. If they’d gotten all the science right, I would have literally called Jordan and been like, “Look, dude. You need to get someone different on your videos ‘cause these people are clowns.” They got the science wrong! Not totally wrong. It was the closest I’ve ever seen to someone who actually had some idea what they were talking about, but it was pretty clear this girl had read, like, a couple Malcolm Gladwell books and that was, like, her science.
Nils:
What are the…I mean, they get the science wrong. What are the implications of them getting the science wrong in the context of the conversation? I think that’s the impact of that.
Tucker:
Right. Exactly. Getting science right by itself doesn’t mean anything. How does that impact your advice? So, the example I gave from Manson was he thinks mating opportunity is only defined by social status, right? The implication is that as a guy, you don’t ever work on yourself and anything outside of what’s going to be attractive to a woman in a club, which is literally the worst thing you can do if you want to have a relationship with a woman or, actually, if you want to be sexually active. ‘Cause now, if you’re a young guy who’s not good with women, what Manson has just told you is that you need to compete with guys like me and you’re fucked if you have to compete with me, especially when I was at that age and I was out getting girls. You’ve got no shot. You’ve got no fucking shot, because I’ve been doing this a long time and I’m real good. Right? So, it’s like…and you’re competing against other guys the equivalent of me, right? There are a certain percentage of guys who are good at this, 10, 20% of guys go out to a lot of bars. Smart, funny, attractive, whatever, they can play the social status in a bar game. If you can’t play that game, what do you do? Well, there’s a lot you can do and we talk about that over and over and over. In fact, we tell guys that going to bars and clubs is not the best way to meet women because empirically it is not! It is absolutely not. For the vast majority of guys, that is not a mating strategy that’s rewarding, right? I can do it, but even I had to learn how to do it. I didn’t step out of the womb doing this, man. I didn’t walk into high school doing this. I had to learn and it took a long time and a lot of trial and error, but I’m very outgoing. My strategy is not the right strategy for most guys. We’ve talked about and we’re going to keep talking about all of the different strategies. That’s Manson’s example. With Harbinger’s example, and these are just the two. Literally, I’m five minutes into this material and already seeing major problems. With Harbinger’s example, they were talking about how women – it was very similar, sort of, with one of our first podcasts about how women look at you. This girl starts talking about thin slicing and she doesn’t understand what the fuck she’s talking about, right? And she basically focuses on, like, four things, which are four of about eight things and not even the four most important things. She never talks about size or shape. Like, the shape of your body is possibly the most unconsciously attractive indicator of interest for a woman. Never mentions is. Never mentions it. Which is like…If you’re a dude and you’re out of shape and you don’t want to get in shape, okay, fine. Whatever, man. There are other things you can do. But if you don’t even talk about that, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about and you are giving bad…or worse, toxic—
Nils:
Or you’re pandering to your audience because you know size is one of those sorts of things…
Tucker:
That they’re going to feel bad about and they don’t want to change and they’re going to quit and whatever.
Nils:
So, you’re fucked coming or going. It’s just a matter of where it’s coming from.
Tucker:
Exactly. Which actually brings up a great point. Well…Let’s get to the exploiting men part in a second. ‘Cause I don’t think Jordan is and I don’t want to tag that to him. But they’re not doing a good job…if you really care about the science, not just in the abstract, but if you want to understand what we’re telling you and why we’re telling you and how it impacts women, they aren’t even doing a good job. And these are the best ones in that field are leaving some of the most, if not the most important things out of their advice.
Geoff:
Another great example is when a lot of these guys talk about status, they don’t even have the mental equipment to distinguish between…there’s formidability, like how physically big and intimidating and strong you are; and then there’s dominance, which is kind of your ability to physically intimidate others through your reputation for fighting; and then there’s general social status; and then there’s prestige; and then there’s fame; and then there’s mate value. These are all different.
Nils:
They’re talking about the TV versions of status.
Geoff:
Yeah. And, you know, as we’ve said again and again, when women list the top things they’re looking for, status isn’t even on the list. Intelligence, kindness, sense of humor. Okay, you can display some of those through status or status can be a marker for some of them, but if you don’t have a good mental model for how all these concepts fit together, it’s actually hard to even understand the feedback that you’re getting from women. Like, why you’re succeeding or failing.
Tucker:
Well, here’s the thing. They’re not wrong with what they’re saying. Like I said, Manson’s like, “Social status is all that matters and here’s how it works,” and everything was described. It was bar, club, pick up. Once he was in that field, he was close enough where it’s going to be good enough for probably 50-80% of guys, right? But he’s now missed essentially most of it. He’s narrowed in on this and he thinks this is the entire world. This is the world. And he’s getting this part pretty good, but that’s a tiny part and he’s fucking over all these guys who don’t understand the rest. So, what they’re describing is really good in a club on a Rainey Street or a club on wherever you are. It makes a lot of sense and it’s really good. That’s about 5-20% of your mating market, even if you’re a young guy looking for short-term hookups. That’s still no more than 25-30% of your potential mating market.
Geoff:
Yeah. The other implication is you don’t have any “game” or any mate value unless you can go to a club and pick up a “hot girl” who’s twenty-one and of a certain body type. I don’t have any game like that, ‘cause I fucking hate clubs and bars and I don’t drink much and I don’t want to meet the kind of women…
Nils:
Can you imagine Geoff in a bar on 6th Street?
Geoff:
Yeah. It would be a disaster! But, you know, I’m very successful with women in my own little niches and using my own strategies and meeting women where I meet them. And so, you know, this is their sales pitch, that, “You would fail if you went into a club and nobody knew you and if you can’t pick up a woman in a club, you’re a failure as a man. And we will supply the products that will help you do that.” That is just an ass-backwards way to approach human mating.
Tucker:
Which I think brings up a really, really good point. The next thing we’re going to talk about is exploiting men. Actually, by the way, let me bring something else up first. This is really funny. So, I actually got one email about you on this podcast and this one guy was like, “Tucker, you’re great. I love your stuff. I don’t really like Geoff Miller. He doesn’t sound credible to me.” So, I wrote back, “Okay, why?” ‘Cause I’m thinking maybe this guy’s some other scientist who has a different perspective. No, not at all. He’s, like, twenty-two. He’s like, “Well, it just doesn’t sound like he’s been with a lot of girls and so how can I learn anything from him?
Nils:
“Where’s his fuck voice?”
Tucker:
Right. I know. So, I went back and forth with this dude, like, ten times and basically unpacked, because you didn’t annoyingly, incessantly brag about how many women you’ve slept with, he thought you weren’t good with women. I was like, “Oh, my goodness, dude. Look. Geoff Miller does very well, especially for his goals, which are different goals than mine. But I know some of the women he’s dated. They’re amazing women. He’s very happy with his life and the idea that he’s not successful is ridiculous.” In this kid’s mind, successful was only pulling a 9 from the club three days a week and then bragging about it incessantly all the time. No! Wrong. That’s just totally, totally wrong in every single way. Like, that’s something I wanted to kind of bring up, is guys…I guess the perception of me from a lot of young guys is that I do that. I guess I do, sort of, because I give all you know about me is my books and the way I write. It seems like that’s all I talk about. But again, I talked about this before. I talk about how much I mess up at least as much as how successful I am, and also, that’s the only stuff that’s funny and interesting and I’m writing books that are supposed to be funny and interesting. There’s plenty of other stuff about me. I just don’t write about them. Like, the reverse situation would be, like, one of the other podcasts, I think it was actually a review on iTunes. Or it was John Durant’s interview. Someone wrote and was like, “Yeah, I’m a big fan of yours, Durant. Your part was great. I’ve heard a lot of that before. I was really shocked at how smart Tucker Max is.” And then Durant was like, “LOL, he just called you an idiot,” to me. Because this guy obviously hadn’t read my stuff. His impression of me was I was a moron ‘cause I wrote about sex and I’ve been with a lot of women and there was just no way I was intellectual or academic, right? Which is exactly what the other guy said about you except reverse. Okay? Guys, all of that shit is ridiculous. All of it. You can fuck a lot of girls and be smart. You can be really good with women and not sleep with tons of girls. It’s really about, are you good at achieving your romantic goals? If your goals are, “I want to meet an amazing women and marry her and have a great relationship with her the rest of my life,” not only is that valid. That’s a great goal and you should be proud of that and then you should affect a strategy that can get that for you. Alright? Now, let’s go on to the last big point on pick up artists. I said before I don’t hate them. I just feel sorry for them, and that’s true for most of them. There is a small group of them that I really hate, that I really dislike. These are the ones who I consider spammy charlatans who are just selling snake oil to desperate lonely guys. I don’t think that’s all of them. As much as I criticize Manson, it doesn’t appear to me that that’s what he is. Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t really think Jordan falls in that category. I could be wrong. Obviously. The ones I’m thinking about that fall under that category – I could even be wrong about them, although I don’t think I am. But what really frustrates me is that this is a real problem. There are a lot of guys in America who are totally lost and desperate and angry and sad and pissed off and are missing out on the most important part of life, which is relationships with women. Relationships overall, but especially with women, especially romantic ones. That is the meaning of life, guys, by the way. In case you want to know, it’s more life, and you get more life by having life with a woman. They are selling their fucking bullshit to guys. Even if there are some things that can help guys in it, the way these guys approach this is such bullshit. It’s the worst, scammy – it’s one step above Nigerian 404 scams or whatever they’re called. Like, they basically use every trick in the book to manipulate and basically all but steal from desperate guys. This is, like, the worst shit ever. I don’t know. I could go on for about ten minutes with this stuff, like, just ranting and ranting.
Nils:
How do they do that?
Tucker:
Alright, so over the last couple years…
Nils:
Like, what does the exploitation of that desperation look like?
Tucker:
What it looks like is these guys implying that…okay, there’s a couple pretty easy sales tactics. They imply to guys that this is the only way they can understand women, is through their tactics, that they’re going to be alone and desperate forever unless they buy their products. It’s like, “Oh, here’s our $1000 video course and here’s our $5000 in-person training.” I’ve never, obviously, been to one of these in-person trainings, but I know a lot of people who have. What happens, invariably, is the guys…you actually described it really well, Dr. Miller. You said these are the autistics. A lot of them are really socially inept guys who don’t go out and talk to women at all, and so then these sociopaths or these clowns go talk to women and they get these guys to talk to women and they get this rush of adrenaline. We actually talk about the neuroconnectors in the brain and how this releases dopamine and oxytocin and whatever and it literally gives you a high, like, a mental, neurological, hormonal high. So, they think it’s amazing, but then what happens is they don’t really teach them anything. Even if they teach them, “Oh, here’s your opener and here’s your closer and here’s this and here’s that,” they don’t teach them anything about women. They don’t teach them anything about what to do after their first three lines. They don’t teach them where to actually meet women who are going to like them because if these guys are having to pay five grand to go to a conference and then they’re taking them to bars, these guys aren’t the type of guys who should be meeting women in bars. They don’t give them anything at all that they can use over time to actually have relationships – even short-term relationships. Right?
Nils:
‘Cause it’s not about self-improvement.
Tucker:
No. It’s not about self-improvement. It’s about getting the money out of them and then making them feel like they got something.
Nils:
Giving them some external patches.
Tucker:
So, they’ll record a little testimonial at the end and then six months later or shorter, all these guys are back where they began and actually more angry and more frustrated, more bitter and out five grand. A lot