Tynan,

I absolutely understand where you are coming from with this, and why you are trying to defend the PUA community.

Here's the problem, though.

Now, granted, I'm an outsider. I am not a part of the PUA community. I have certainly read quite a few articles written by men in the PUA community. Leaders. Or if not leaders necessarily, certainly members with quite a large following. Those articles can range from reasonable and helpful (similar to your response here) to downright disgusting and unquestionably misogynistic. And certainly, the latter (being more inflammatory) gets more attention. 

But it doesn't get more attention simply because it is inflammatory. If that were true, a large portion of the comments on those sites would be argumentative. In fact, what I have seen is a huge outpouring of concurring with said nastiness. Most often, these are men who, because they have been repeatedly rejected, have turned to bitterness and misogyny. Sometimes these are men who started out misogynistic and used the contents of those articles to justify their misogyny. And sometimes these are men who didn't start out misogynistic, but read the articles and realized that PUA is not only a way to change their lives, but also a way to put some of the blame on their past failures with women on the women themselves by mentally devaluing them as a whole. (Let me clarify this for a moment: There is value in "devaluing" individual women, in the sense that many of these men focused on only one woman and put her on a pedestal, so to speak, and by devaluing individual women they are able to reduce the pain of rejection. This is healthy to some extent. But it becomes not healthy when they instead - as they often seem to do - devalue women in general, across the board.)

The more virulent members of the PUA community encourage this kind of thing. That's why 'negging' isn't called 'teasing'... it's called 'negging' because you are pointing out something negative. The PUAs whom I have read have described negging in a VERY different way than you describe here... as quite literally a way to take women down a notch and make her desperate to earn the man's approval.

And these more virulent members also seem to be both the most public ones - or at least the ones shouting the loudest. So, as with any kind of group, this is what any non member (such as Randall) is going to picture when they think of PUAs.

You may think that what you are doing here is 'setting people straight' about the PUA. Unfortunately, that's not really what's happening. You outright dismiss that the misogynistic vein of the PUA is anything more than what is present outside the PUA, and that is simply not true. And here's why: in normal society, extremely misogynistic people, particularly those who are PUBLIC and LOUD about their misogyny get shouted down, because people find misogyny so repulsive. Within the PUA community, however, they are, if not celebrated, they are acknowledged as having something valuable to say, or at the VERY least are somewhat ignored. Not shouted down. Not condemned. The PUA community is not policing its own. If your views of the PUA are truly the mainstream and majority opinion, why are you not addressing the loud vein of misogynists using your name to spout ugly rhetoric?

THAT needs to be your priority. Not defending the community against attacks from the outside. But addressing the real poison on the inside that is spurring those attacks in the first place. Or, barring that, not calling yourselves by the same name as those who have hijacked it. Creating a place for men who genuinely want to learn social skills, who want to grow and learn as people, and be more socially successful without thinking of women as objects to be won or used and then discarded. Because there definitely IS use for that. But you can't expect society at large to view the community that way with it in the state it is in today.

And I have to say one more thing, I'm sure its on many peoples minds. What is actually wrong with treating women as sex toys? What is wrong with women treating men as sex toys? Are we supposed to only have 'meaningful relationships' with people we have sex with? Is this some christian/muslim universe?

Really I think you're upset that your "trick dumb girls into talking to you" powers were called into question. PUA doesn't work on any girl with more than 3 braincells, and the smarter ones not only think its funny when guys try it, they also don't "fall" for it and recognize it for the scumbag get-your-dick-wet-as-quickly-as-possible technique it is. Grow up.

Tynan, you're a very positive guy. You come across as liking people in general, and women too.

Not all PUAs are the same. I was stunned to recently read another PUA's blog applauding a 41-year-old high school teacher - who left his family to shack up with his 18-year-old student - as "Alpha Male of the month," and in another post slamming single moms and their "hellion spawn."

Among PUAs, I'm not sure his beliefs are such a minority.

Not only does society not teach social skills, but it often tries to dissuade you from wanting to have them. When I was a nerdy kid who couldn't make friends, adults kept telling me that it was okay, because being a nerd means I'll be the next Bill Gates and all the "cool" kids will work for me when I grow up. They feed you this kind of tripe instead of just encouraging you to put the fantasy books away and go play some baseball with the other kids.

When I had bad social skills, few people thought I could get better, and almost as few thought I should even want to. And as I've gotten better, just as few people can believe that I used to be terrible. So I've just come to accept that most people won't ever view social skills as learnable like other skills; they put up this false dichotomy between what you DO (which changes) and what you ARE (which somehow can't possibly change), and social skills get put into the what you are category. So forget them; haters gonna hate, and players gonna play.

Tynan, I find your blog almost always interesting & engaging. Even posts on subjects I don't have any real interest in (e.g. tea, poker) are well-written, informative, and fun. I learn stuff & I like your approach & worldview.

BUT... I've got to say that I find these posts about 'pick-up' to be shallow, worthless bullsh!t.

This culminates today in your defensive hissy fit about a webcomic poking fun at the 'scene'. C'mon, it's satire, surely?

Your blog obviously, so you can do what you like with it. But the 'pick-up' stuff is the black fly in the Chardonnay, IMHO.

I went through a period of significant interest in the PUA community after I read The Game, which, as an avid reader, I thought was a phenomenally well-written book about a topic that most men are most interested in: sex with beautiful women.

That's about as far into the PUA community as I could get. Problem is that I realized I was doing a lot of this stuff naturally, because it's who I am. I felt it to be abhorrent somewhere deep down inside me that guys were faking these 'triggers' to manipulate women into having sex with them. As you say, this may not always be the case, but as a savvy commenter pointed out, it seems to be the case with many men in the community.

The problem, as I see it, is the 'fake it until you make it' mentality. These 'tricks' PUA's are 'discovering' that 'work' are because they are behaviors that men who are actually smart, interesting, confident, etc. actually portray. Men should be concentrating on becoming interesting, more cultured, well-read, well-traveled, etc. and THEN they will attract women.

It's the spiritual bankruptcy of our culture. We are entering a period of hedonism like before the fall of Rome where all we think about is immediate pleasure. Boys aren't trying to become men anymore, they are trying to pretend they are men so they can sleep with women, who, let's face it, are often easily manipulated emotionally, and then, being emotional creatures, sexually.

It's one thing if you are the rare man who is just genuinely learning to be more of a man in a culture that doesn't encourage or teach us in anyway, but from what I've seen and read, this isn't the case for most of these guys. At best it's a curiosity and a game, at worst it's making up for a deep lack of something better in their character.

The fact that women feel the need to get plastic surgery and wear push-up bras doesn't make it better. That's a symptom of the same problem. The sheep are being lead astray to the detriment of our culture.

Thank you. XKCD can be a real jerk sometimes. Last year he insulted something I value a lot and I stopped reading him. I guess he thought he was negging me.

Seriously, many people have a lot of hostility towards learning social skills. I think they just hate people for not popping out of the womb with them already honed and hate the idea of any of us ever having any companionship at all. Being shy and awkward is a hanging offense for which we should burn in hell eternally.

I also suspect that guys with a degree of natural game are threatened by the idea of more competition.