MANOSPHERE Midnight Facts for Insomniacs Podcast Transcript

MANOSPHERE

Midnight Facts for Insomniacs

Podcast Transcript

(Note: transcript consists of episode outline)m

This topic was suggested by James via email.

The Pickup Artist Community and the Manosphere.

So this is a weird one for us to tackle, but—for me at least—kind of fascinating.

PUA tactics are genuinely toxic, and sadly, they also genuinely work. As long as your goal is just to get laid and also to corrupt your soul. If you’re a guy who has massive self esteem issues and you don’t have the guts to talk to women, these strategies will cure that. And they will cure that by building calluses...for all the talk of “game theory” as some kind of secret code for solving the mystery of women, all it really comes down to is a numbers game: if you hit on zero women you have a zero percent chance of sex; if you hit on 800 women, and even just .001% of them are receptive, you end up having sex with, what, 8/10 of a woman? A stump? I’m terrible at math. You get the idea. So you’ll overcome your fear of rejection and build confidence while becoming emotionally numb and dead inside. Because the seduction community has a cynical view of human relationships. When you view every interaction from the perspective of attack and defense—sex is the target and women’s brains and personalities are basically barriers to sex— women become a problem to solve rather than human h by rings. Life is a transaction.

But there IS real psychology behind a lot of these techniques. Evil psychology. It’s mad scientist stuff. So let’s talk about what it is, where it came from, and whether there’s any hope for the human race.

There is a long history of men distributing seduction advice and “instructional manuals.” The famous Roman poet Ovid created a three-book-long dating manual Ars Amatoria, or the “Art of Love” in the year 2. It was all about dating in the original aughts. Sex in the Jesus years. It was “sex in the city” except the city was Rome, and women weren’t allowed to have jobs. Anyway his book became super popular, because people realized he knew what he was talking about. He was a ladies man. Those poets were cleaning up back in the day. Nowadays, not so much. Bragging about being a poet is just bragging about being unemployed. But back in antiquity, “poet” was a viable profession. You could poet around all day long, and still make rent. Spend all week poeting and then go on vacation. Like whew, that was a rough week. Rhyming is hard work. I’ve been stuck on Orange for five days. I’m beat. Some of Ovid’s advice: he recommended finding a receptive lady at the theater, or an arena. You should befriend her associates to get into her good graces. Also, according to Ovid, once you’ve earned her affections, be sure to hide your sexual affairs, don’t give her any gifts, and also be nice to her slaves. So take notes, single guys. Wisdom from the ancients. It was a different time. Seriously, romance changes. Advice from today isn’t going to be relevant in 100 years. “Always share her TickTock videos, but don’t duet them. That’s just creepy. Don’t change your Facebook status before the second date“

Pickup artists are staples of literature through the ages, notably the many tales of the fictional womanizer Don Juan, most recognizable from the 17th century Spanish play, and the later Mozart opera Don Giovanni, all of which helped establish the archetype of the aloof, mischievous bad boy. Later in 18th century we get the autobiography of Giacomo Casanova, a Venetian author whose sexual exploits became so legendary that his name is now synonymous with the idea of a desirable and promiscuous man. So even if you weren’t poeting you could still make a living as an author by just bragging about your sex life. And it’s not like anyone could really fact check you back in the day, no one was checking sources and footnotes. The 18th century was a good time to be a liar.

The modern art of making money from the art of teaching men the art of getting laid became an established hustle in the 20th century. (it made sense when I wrote that sentence.) In 1931 we had A Gentlemen’s Guide to Scientific Seduction in Eight Easy Lessons by Jack Hanley, and of course who could forget Norton Hughes Jonathan’s Guide Book for the Young Man About Town. These are kind of snooty sounding for hook-up guides. “When you’re a sophisticated gentleman and you want to tap some ass.” But what we think of today as modern pickup artistry was birthed in 1971 from an ad at the back of penthouse magazine by a guy named Eric Weber. To come up with the techniques he interviewed and observed his friends, he interviewed and observed women, he was pretty creepy with all the observing and interviewing, and he ended up with a whole fuckton of misogynistic nonsense which he slapped together in a self published mail-order guide called How to Pick Up Girls! I said it like that because that’s totally how it’s written, with an exclamation point and everything. Here are some choice lines directly from Weber’s girl-picking-up advice :

“Whether you know it or not, you already have one great thing going for you when it comes to picking up chicks. And that is, you’re a man. As a man, it’s your right, your privilege to approach a woman any time you want. But women— they’ve got to sit there and wait.” How great are double standards, amiright? Yay misogyny.

“Even with Women’s Lib coming into its own, it’s going to be a long time before the average chick can approach a strange man without feeling like a whore.”

So we’ve dropped the whole gentleman artifice at this point.

“Women are fragile creatures. If they’re not dating they get terribly lonely and depressed. They don’t have exciting jobs and golf and tennis and football to keep them busy all day.” End quote. So look, you’re doing them a favor by hitting on them. What else were they going to do all day? Fending off horny dudes is their only pastime, it gives meaning to their aimless female lives.

This is from the introduction, this is Weber explaining why he wrote this book, illustrating that he understands and sympathizes with that feeling we all get when we see a pretty woman:

“You’ve just got to see more of her long lean legs. Her fine rounded breasts. Her high, firm behind. For an instant you even consider rape.”

Do ya? Maybe if you’re the kind of guy who purchases mail-order sex guides from the back of a porno magazine...touché. He knows his audience.

But Weber later did make an attempt to at least pay lip service to basic humanity and restraint. He continued “the most important tenet of a pick up is that it’s mutual … Women are entitled to say ‘no’, plain and simple.” So of course you WANT to rape every woman you see, duh, you’re a man, but like, try not to. Do your best to not commit full-on sexual assault, dial it back to like second degree harassment.

There are other little milestones in pickup artistry, but the real inception point, the nuclear bomb that goes off in the nascent incel community, before we even knew that that was a thing, is Neil Strauss’s The Game: penetrating the secret society of pick up artists, published in 2005. It sold 2.5 million copies and introduced the world to a subculture that most of us didn’t know existed: men who had been developing elaborate techniques, terms, principles, an entire pseudoscience of booty- hunting. Strauss was a journalist who was initially assigned to write an article on the pickup community, and got sucked in. He attended pickup “Boot Camps“ taught by one of the celebrities of the pickup subculture, a six-foot-five- inch-tall Canadian who wore a tophat and eyeliner named Mystery, The inventor of the “mystery method“ of seduction. Mystery becomes like Neil Strauss’s muse, his idol, Strauss goes all in on the pickup game, adopting his own obnoxious nickname, “Style.“ everyone has to have a cool pseudonym, it’s like top gun. Maverick, iceman. It has to be something smooth. I’d be “cat guy”...that’s no good. That’s like “cat lady.” It’s like how “cat woman“ is cool (Michelle pfeifer), but cat lady is very uncool. This is where we first learn the PUA terms that would become notorious. Like with all of the Manosphere, from incels to MGTOW—we’ll get into this later— they’ve developed their own creepy little lingo. For instance, here’s the definition of “negging“ from a pick up artist website (link in show notes). “A unique technique developed by Mystery that involves conveying active disinterest in a HB9+ target for the purpose of removing her bitch shield and lowering her value relative to the PUA’s perceived value.“ it’s pretty easy to decode based on context, obviously an HB9+ is a “hot babe” who is a 9+ on the attractiveness scale and a “bitch shield” is a woman’s defensive response to being sexually harassed by douchebags. So it’s like pig Latin...for pig men. Here are some other common PUA terms:

Peacocking Wearing ridiculous shit. That’s really all it is. Grab a sequined shirt and gold pendant and frost those tips. This accomplishes two things: you stand out from the crowd, and more importantly you show that you have the balls to stand out from the crowd. It’s like throwing down a gauntlet of bad taste. Like, “yeah, I’m wearing a giant flavor flav clock...the question is: why isn’t *everyone* wearing an oversized clock?” You’re Jedi mind-tricking the entire bar...“this purple velvet cowboy hat does not look ridiculous.”

Approach anxiety This one is pretty self- explanatory. The fear of harassing a woman you don’t know, because deep down you suspect that she probably doesn’t want to be harassed, and you’re right. Approach anxiety is also known as a conscience, an ethical impulse. It’s the angel on your shoulder saying, “hey, why don’t you just use tinder like a normal person, because then at least a woman has the option of swiping left without an awkward social interaction.” So naturally the goal of pickup artistry is to completely snuff out your approach anxiety. Numb yourself to rejection. Throttle the angel on your shoulder, and you’re left with his evil twin. Pickup artistry is conscience-murder.

Targets I bet you can guess. “Target” Is the pickup artist term for a woman. There is nothing wrong with this subculture. Set A group of targets. Which you have to infiltrate. There’s a lot of vaguely military jargon. Like...

Sarging A guy or group of guys using PUA techniques to pick up women. So, the goal of sarging is to acquire some sets of targets.

I love that they’re setting up these expectations that the night is going to proceed like a military operation, they’re going to infiltrate these “sets” of “targets” with surgical precision, but in reality they’re just drunkenly slobbering all over groups of horrified women. It’s less of a drone strike and more of a sloppy quagmire. These aren’t Navy SEALs, these are those guys who tried to kidnap the governor of Michigan. They tried to make explosives out of balloons. It didn’t work.

Assume familiarity Some PUA coaches will actually advise nervous aspiring PUAs to imagine that the target is their sister. Because the idea is that will put you at ease. I’m just going to leave that one there. There is nothing wrong with this subculture.

Negging We already talked about negging. The idea is that pretty women aren’t used to being insulted by strangers, and it throws them off guard, and makes them feel insecure. It’s all about undermining self-confidence to try to get a woman to lower her standards enough to be willing to have sex with a guy who would do this shit.

Keno escalation/ compliance test So a compliance test has different connotations based on whether it refers to a woman or a man. Pick up artists believe that women will try to test a man to see if he has any backbone, giving him little orders and commands that he should ignore if he wants her to continue to respect him. A compliance test delivered via a pickup artist would be a similar command or request in order to assert a power structure. For instance, asking her to move to a different table with you so that you can get her alone. This accomplishes two things: isolating the “target“ and getting her to comply, basically showing her who’s boss. Keno escalation is a form of compliance test where are you initiate physical interaction. Typically putting a hand on her knee, and then moving to her thigh, etc. it’s the ladder of molestation: each rung is a new level of harassment. Keno escalation is basically progressing from misdemeanors to Felonies. This is a build-up to the first kiss and obviously the ultimate goal is sex. last-minute resistance This is a pick up artist term that refers to...rape. There’s really no other way to describe it. The idea is that a woman might have second thoughts in the moments before sex, referred to as “last-minute resistance“ (I would call that “sobering up) and your goal is to overcome her sudden attack of good judgment. Not necessarily by force, but by any other means necessary. In the wake of the metoo movement, modern pickup artists don’t use this phrase a lot. At least, not in public. Having a cute term for rape is kind of a marketing no-no. So the way that that the seduction community views it, the ultimate strategy here is to reverse the normal power-structure of dating. The idea is that beautiful women are accustomed to being pursued, they’re used to being worshipped and flattered by men, which reinforces their sense of value and puts them out of reach for “normal” guys. So if you’re a guy who isn’t the stereotypical “alpha male” you have to find a way to “demonstrate higher value.” You basically have to twist reality. “Sure, I look like a slovenly chump, but would a slovenly chump have the guts to publicly treat you like crap? If I’m acting like I’m better than you, and everyone is treating me like I’m better than you, then I must be better than you” it’s a cynical idea: if a guy who a woman views as being below her level of attractiveness is ignoring her, belittling her, refusing to acknowledge her value, the woman will be thrown into a state of confusion and her sense of self worth undermined. She’ll try to regain her self-esteem by seeking validation from this guy who has shown that he’s not interested. The script will be flipped…Instead of playing defense, she’ll be pursuing him.

Here’s a basic template for a pickup. Recite a memorized opener, neg her, pay more attention to the men and the less-attractive women present to make her feel insecure and question her value, isolate her from the group, then perform some type of magic trick or interesting gimmick to capture her attention and demonstrate confidence. Then go back to negging. So tell her something like, “Beauty is common. What do you have inside that would make me want to know you as more than a mere face in the crowd?” You’ve turned the tables...now she’s vying for YOUR attention, auditioning for your approval. And of course you don’t give her that approval, keep her off balance, then escalate keno, literally invade her space, intentionally push her boundaries, initiate physical interaction. Kiss her. Then get her number and move on to the next girl. Or try to “close the deal.”

You might wonder why guys can get away with this, why don’t women just tell them to F off? I wonder that a lot. But the answer is, plenty of women don’t put up with it. Especially now that “negging“ has really entered the zeitgeist, plenty of women will call guys out on it, shut them down, but the fact is that most women are socialize to be polite. And of course there are literal dangers that can come from rejecting men. So women frequently resort to polite brushoffs, pretending to have a boyfriend, etc.

“Women are socialised not to challenge men,” explains Dr Bianca Fileborn of the University of Melbourne, an expert in gendered street harassment. “But this response may also be about managing the situation safely.” When you confront a stranger you risk escalating the situation. “You don’t know what’s going to happen next. These are men who’ve already crossed your boundaries … deflecting them, by telling them you have a boyfriend – in effect, saying, ‘I’m the property of another man, please leave me alone’ – can be a strategy for managing the situation.” After the publication of the game, VH1 created a reality TV competition show called “pick up artist“ with mystery as it’s star. And if the game was a minor phenomenon, making small waves in popular culture, “the pick up artist“ was a tsunami. It spawned an entire industry, with a new wave of pseudo- celebrities with dedicated followings. Let’s talk about a few of the more well-known PUAs.

Roosh V Born Dariyush Valizadeh, Roosh V is an alt-right activist, Trump supporter and rape apologist who believes that a woman’s value stems from her fertility and beauty, and that women should “live a life that is according to their biological genetics.” His first publication in 2007 was Bang: The Pickup Bible That Helps You Get More Lays and he’s now proprietor of the “Return of Kings” website. In 2019 Roosh had a change of heart and found religion. He’s now a convert to the Armenian apostolic church, having announced his conversion after a psychedelic trip on magic mushrooms. He now strongly condemns the sin of extra marital sex.

Swiss dating coach Julien Blanc, now based out of Los Angeles, releases a series of training videos called “pimp,” and in one of his videos he said “in Tokyo, if you're a white male, you can do what you want...all you have to say to kinda like take the pressure off is just yell ‘Pikachu’ or ‘Pokemon’ or ‘Tamagotchi’ or something.” He related stories of “romping through the streets” grabbing random women, shoving his crotch in their faces and yelling “pikachu.” Good clean fun. “I do not choose you, pikachu.” In 2014 the UK denied him a Visa, effectively barring him entry. When you’re such a giant misogynist that you get banned from a country... might want to reevaluate your decisions.

Adnan Ahmed, from Glasgow Scotland, known as Addy-A-Game in his YouTube man-on-the-street videos that depicted him harassing women, many of whom were clearly trying to deflect him gently. And of course at the end of the video he would always claim that it was clear they wanted him and that in other circumstances he would have scored a “same-day lay.” Charges were filed and Ahmed was sentenced to two years in jail and ten years on the sex offender registry. In 2020, Ahmed’s sentence was reversed on appeal. Score one for the good guys. So these guys are deeply embedded in the so-called “Manosphere,” which is the overarching term for a bunch of angry men online and a bunch of online angryman sub-groups. You’ve got your Men’s Rights Activists, who believe that there’s a power discrepancy between the genders which is completely unfair, and they apparently don’t read history books or watch the news or live in the world like normal people, and they’re complaining about a gender disparity without any sense of irony. Then you have your aforementioned MGTOW: an acronym that stands for “men going their own way“ These guys think the best life for a man is a womanless life, and they basically want to secede from the dating world entirely, they’ve decided to try to create a woman-free environment. Next you have the Red Pillers, who are basically men’s rights activists with a pickup artist spin, these guys claim to have had an amazing epiphany—like Neo taking the red pill in the matrix—and they now understand that women are trying to rule the world with sex appeal, and the only hope for us all is Trumpism and rampant misogyny. And finally you have Incels, A.k.a. “involuntarily celibate, “ The saddest terrorists ever, angry dudes who think it’s really unfair that they can’t get laid and as a result they’re gonna shoot up a school. Not all incels are violent, but guys who identify as involuntarily celibate are fucking weird and often dangerous. When I was in high school I wasn’t getting laid, I didn’t call myself involuntarily celibate, I didn’t whine about my plight and rail at the gods of acne, I just started working out, read a lot of books, focused on improving as a person, and hoped for the best. If you’re a young guy who isn’t attractive to women, you’re 90% of the young male population. You’re not an incel, you’re just impatient.

So just like any cult or subculture or weird philosophy, PUA resonates because there are little kernels of truth...dating can be very cutthroat and obviously superficial, but the real problem is that pick up artist aren’t trying to change the norm, they’re just trying to game the system. And they’re doing damage to themselves and their “targets.“ I genuinely believe this. Viewing women as targets and every interaction as a game, viewing dating as transactional with sex as the goal, it’s mentally debilitating. Because again, it’s a numbers game, so you spend all this time just overcoming your most basic sense of decency, conditioning yourself to intrude on women‘s personal space and desensitizing yourself to their discomfort, to the point that you’re completely numb and you don’t view women as people anymore, you don’t review relationships as meaningful, everything is just a competition. And of course the type of women who are receptive to being negged, these are women who aren’t secure in themselves, so you’re preying on vulnerabilities, reinforcing those vulnerabilities, it’s just a bunch of damaged people doing more damage to each other. It doesn’t lead to any kind of long-term happiness. I know, I was very transactional about sex for years. I started looking at sex as a goal. It took literal therapy to move away from that mentality. Because healthy relationships don’t ever start this way. Ever. Honey, remember the night we met? That dive bar? It was so romantic, I was out sarging with my sex coach, I approached your set, insulted you to undermine you self-confidence, isolated your from your friends, intentionally invaded your personal space, pretended you were my sister when I got nervous, bullied you into having sex by overcoming your last minute resistance… true love.

And I get it, it sucks to be lonely. There are some realities to dating in this world, attraction is partly superficial, and if you want to date you do have to put yourself out there, and some of these techniques to work, if by “work“ you mean “result in meaningless sex. “ But again, it’s really a numbers game. Sure, you’re learning some techniques to prey on vulnerable people, but mostly it’s just those numbers.

The problem is that no self- respecting woman with a healthy sense of self-esteem is going to be receptive to this approach, and no healthy man with a decent sense of self-esteem would be trying this stuff. So it’s just a bunch of damaged people fucking.

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