[Anacardo]

I've been thinking a lot about questions of social self-management, image control, and the mindset those things imply recently. Whenever I cruise OOT those thoughts usually find a natural place of focus in whatever PUA debate thread happens to be going at the moment. As has been pointed out by many others, these threads tend to quickly organize themselves into a repeated pattern: the critics (either 'authentic' or 'nerds' depending on your perspective) against the apologists ('alpha males' or 'douche cookies,' again depending on one's point of view.) These arguments tend to be highly partisan and generally never resolve anything.

I would like to say that I'm gonna get past all that and break down the debate from a more objective, detached perspective, but if I did I'd be full of [censored] because that isn't really possible. Every time I read one of these threads I start to feel ill, in a disgusted-yet-keyed-up way that I find difficult to describe or explain. My native sympathies absolutely lie with the nerdy critics, and my gut is very vocal about telling me so. In matters like this, questions of elemental things like sex, social status, relationships, emotion, etc. etc. etc., I very much doubt there are any genuine neutrals. We are all of us prisoners of the flesh when it comes to this sort of thing; slaves to our own histories, experiences, conceptions, basic personalities. Silly to pretend otherwise.

Since I really have only my own perspective, I'll try to break that down and see where it goes. Why do I react with strong instinctive revulsion to the PUA position - which we will define, in very simple terms, as "sell yourself to women, project a successful image, control the terms of engagement, and get what you want from them." (If this is an inaccurate synopsis then I suppose this whole process has already failed, but I believe that to be a reasonable succinct summary.) I would guess that, as with most strong emotional reactions, there's a complex mix of motivators working here.

First and foremost are the factors that will be most quickly pointed out and argued for by the PUA apologists - spite, jealousy, the desire to somehow justify a 'failed' strategy, and a generalized inferiority complex. It is highly likely that every psychological response I just listed, as well as many unmentioned others, play a significant role here. Next month I will be twenty-five years old. I do not yet need my other set of fingers to count up my lifetime total of sexual partners. I have never had a real relationship of any mutual emotional significance. To the former I am fairly indifferent, but the latter bothers me a great deal. Insofar as I do not have what I want, and have no reason to believe that it is on the horizon, I must consider myself a failure in this regard. PUAs by titular definition get what they want as a matter of course. The 'hater' mentality - anger, jealousy, contempt, the desire to explain away the success of others and justify one's own shortcomings - is a natural psychological outgrowth of these circumstances, and to pretend otherwise is simply dishonest. So you've got me, and by extension 'us,' there, PUAs.

On the other hand, as the other side would be quick to point out, the list of valid objections doesn't stop at the mere desire to cling to a sinking ship and refuse to change for the better / become good at something. There are numerous valid philosophical objections which are usually excused / explained away just as the nerd-critics excuse away their own shortcomings.

If PUA was, as one poster described it, merely about becoming a funny, unique, interesting person who commands attention, pushes boundaries and stands out, then I respectfully suggest that I should be teaching these courses. I am unquestionably all these things and I am not a pickup artist. PUA is unquestionably about salesmanship and about power politics. There is a variety of well-discussed concepts that point directly to this - 'neg hits' or backhanded compliments; controlling the terms of engagement in terms of time, circumstance, who offers what, etc; making sure you always have options and can't be 'walked all over'; endless preprogrammed lines / routines; so on and so forth. Stay in the driver's seat, and present the right image for long enough to get what you want. Very modern, very 'realistic,' but undeniably manipulative and insincere, even to the extent that you come to adopt these sorts of tactics as part of your personality. I personally detest facades and have very little patience for fake or self-delusional behavior; I state this merely as a point of preference.

In my own limited experience with casual sex and one-night stands, the great majority of women want sexual encounters to lead somewhere, the great majority of the time. I have had in my life one purely sexual, no-strings-attached arrangement with a girl, and she was, in spite of other, more positive qualities, still exactly the sort of fairly dim, slutty chick that is typecast for the role. My other sexual encounters / relationships have ended in standard hurt feelings and guilt and disappointment and 'hating myself in the morning.' I very much doubt the experiences of PUA-ers are all that different - you just post about them with transparent explanations like 'they knew what was going on,' 'their unrealistic expectations aren't my problem,' 'they got too attached,' et cetera. Perhaps these things are strictly true - the sort of women who get attached to guys who seduce them and keep walking, rather than just rolling their eyes and moving on, probably tend towards neurosis, weakness, and stupidity, and those are their problems and no-one else's. That still doesn't mean it's good to be a catalyst for someone else's issues if you can avoid it, for one; and for the other, to [censored] them in the first place, you at some point consciously planted the seed of the idea that [censored] you could maybe lead to a relationship, since that's basically what it takes. You know this, the same way that fat guys in stained t-shirts and ponytails know why they're not getting laid, and yet you ignore it for your own comfort and convenience, same as them.

Everything I just said is basically a detailed restatement of other posts that have been made here a thousand times before. At this point the nerd-critics are patting themselves on the back for their moral superiority and the player-apologists are sneering at them for their ineffectuality. They're left on opposite sides of several complex philosophical questions.

-Is there any merit to virtue from a position of weakness? My great difficulty with women at the moment is the problem of meeting one who a) I'm really attracted to and b) is available. As it stands, then, my sexual options are dependent on trying to get with girls that I'm not particularly into. On the one hand, I don't have much interest in this, unless it's really easy, I'm hammered, or both. On the other hand, I'm not very good at it, either; I suck at faking interest, I'm not a very plausible liar, I get bored very quickly with most conversation in spite of my considerable skill with such things and I generally find it very difficult to approach strangers who are not obviously inviting. If I were more polished, or just an Adonis who didn't have to worry about such things - if I believed I could have any random woman I picked out of a crowd, would I have the same qualms about taking advantage of them? It's very, very easy to choose not to abuse a power that one doesn't even have, or doesn't believe one has. Is there ever any actual merit in that?

Can the 'losing' strategy ever still be 'right?' The nerd-critics would almost certainly say yes, and the player-apologists would likely say no. This is only corner of a very, very large debate about some very big questions.
Christianity is on the decline in Western civilization, and with it the notion of a theistic, ethical universe in which the ultimate reward or punishment for your actions has nothing to do with whether or not they bring you earthly profit. Success and survival are all-important. The notion that something can still be 'right' even if it doesn't work, and 'wrong' even if it does, are dying out in some ways, to be replaced by modern notions of realism, which are, essentially, the worship of success. Dialectics similar to this one appear in a thousand other places, centered around this exact theme - the Noble Loser versus the Pragmatic Winner. Which one's better? Where do you even begin to answer that question?