I will just shortly pick up the pick up artist part of the article. I'm wondering whether there is any useful understanding about human cognition to understand - and whether that lesson is more gender neutral than people seem to believe.

I have a hypothesis that many of the things advocated by pick up artists work towards both sexes and that one of the primary issues is human as hierarchical and social animal and the allure of those above your perceived status.

Do we give different weights to opinion depending on the status of the one saying things? How much does this affect our rationality?