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Violet comments on More art, less stink: Taking the PU out of PUA - Less Wrong
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There are multiple levels of duping.
Now that the cat is out of the bag so to speak and the PUA game is well known, I've found that many women are actually surprisingly interested in it. To the extent that PUA skills increase unconscious signals that women find attractive, it may have a net benefit for women by upping the typical attractiveness of the dating pool, as Sarah points out. It could have an effect like tasty but safe artificial sweeteners, or widespread effective invisible makeup and cosmetic surgery.
That level of false signaling is probably harmless and even net benefit for women, but the aspect that many women rightly dislike or hate is the darker side to PUA which focuses solely on manipulating women into one night stands using whatever techniques work - which mainly includes alot of bullshit and dishonesty.
So it depends on what exactly is being faked and to what extent. As we all know men have less risk with casual sex, have higher net demand for it than women, and thus women have to be more choosy in finding mates. PUA 'dark art' persuasion techniques thus give women legitimate reasons for concern. (and reasons to be familiar with PUA game in general).
In real life the most common exposure to PUA is sadly men thinking that it is ok to lie to get into bed.
So this has created a situation where "more exposure to PUA locally" -> "more exposure to lying men" -> "less trust" -> negative externalities.
This is not to imply that PUA is all dark arts, just a perspective from the other side of the fence. There are probably lots of more ethical PUAs, but this is sadly the most visible part.
What exactly is the sort of lying that people think PUAs do? Which PUA gurus advocate lying? In my experience, the main lies that PUAs tell are in canned routines, such as saying "Did you see the fight outside?" when no fight occurred (and many PUAs don't use canned routines at all, including myself).
Telling a humorous fictional or anecdote to get a conversation rolling is a sort of a lie, but it seems to fall into the category of "white lie." It's not like PUAs are encouraging each other to lie to women about their jobs, income, or accomplishments.
This might be an artifact from my social circles and I don't doubt that nicer PUAs might exist on the internet. However people having negative PUA experiences in real life affects how the label is seen by different kinds of people.
And that can be relevant if the project wants to attract others than the single-hetero-male crowd.
But it seems like many men on the hinges of the social circle seem to get an "it is ok to lie to get sex because no harm done in that to the women, and it is their fault for not giving enough sex in the beginning." from various PUA sources.
Personally I am quite interested in ideas about open honest communication as good relationship practices and the whole "relationship management by white lies" is quite the opposite.
Then there are the ideas from Roissy etc that are directly misogynic
I absolutely do not want this to be limited to the "single-hetero-male" set, or even their disjunction! That would be rather limited.
I don't deny there is misogyny in some PUA sectors, and it's puerile. This is the association I would most like to distance myself from.
In fact, I can think of no reason why gender is particularly relevant to this project at all. That's a feature of PUA, and it doesn't need to be transferred.
Well said. I cringed when you included those dreaded letters in the title. Even though you distanced the proposal somewhat from PUA even just priming the subject was bound to damage the conversation!
I don't think PUAs do substantially more lying than your average human.
I think that much of the negative perception is largely that it's low-status to explicitly pursue the goal of getting laid... which of course is the goal underlying lots of human interaction. Hence homo hypocritus!