My Life as a Pickup Artist

Copyright Mark Manson, 2012

Note: This article is long. It accounts my history in the Pick Up Artist
(PUA) community, my successes and failures as well as the strengths
and shortcomings of the movement as a whole. If you have never
been associated with PUAs or know nothing about them, then this
article acts more or less as an extended auto-biography of my personal
journey and experiences with my development with women. If you
have been associated with the PUA scene, then Id recommend
reading it to gain understanding and insight into your own process.
Introduction
In case you arent aware, the whole dating advice for men thing is a
fairly new concept. In fact, it didnt even exist until a couple decades
ago, and really didnt begin to become a legitimate industry until this
last decade. A splinter of this movement is a community thats
commonly referred to as The Pick Up Artist community.
Beginning as some Usenet forums in the 90 s, it was a group of guys
who congregated mainly to share pick up lines, strategies and tips in
order to sleep with as many women as possible. The prevailing
zeitgeist of the time was that there was a knowable formula of
seduction that if a man simply knew the correct components and
how to press the right buttons, any woman would sleep with him.
Despite all evidence and common sense to the contrary, the idea
caught steam and suddenly thousands of men worldwide were
dedicating a massive amount of time, energy, and effort into cracking
the code of a womans heart and ultimately, her vagina.
The first man who came around claiming to have done this was none
other than the famous Mystery himself, creating for himself quite a
reputation, a business and later on, a television show to boot. Many
others followed in his wake, including Neil Strauss, the author of the
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best-selling book The Game. From there, the floodgates opened.
The book was a hit. And soon the few thousand geeks gathered
sharing their secrets with one another turned into hundreds of
thousands, and then millions. A few message boards turned into
hundreds. A multi-million dollar industry was born and still thrives to
this day.
And as the landscape of the community evolved, so did the content
in which was created. With the mainstream success of the book and
television show came thousands and thousands of normal, mainstream
men. Theory slowly drifted away from the concepts of lines and
routines. And the idea of there being a formula for picking up women
is slowly being rejected in place of advice more focused on getting in
touch with ones sexuality, becoming more dominant and escalating
on women liberally.
But despite these positive developments, the scene, as a whole, can be
as toxic as it is helpful. The exact reasons why Ill get into a minute.
Hopefully my own story will help you understand my reasoning.
From Heartbreak to Glory Times
In 2005, I underwent one of the most traumatizing moments of my
young 21-year-old life. My girlfriend at the time, my high school
sweetheart, suddenly left me for another guy. My confidence level
with women at the time hovered around nil, and my role in our
relationship could have been more or less described as a doormat. I
was painfully insecure and blissfully naive. So as you can imagine, I
was absolutely devastated.
But despite the glaring flaws in the relationship, at the time being as
ignorant as most of us are with our first loves I thought everything
was perfect up until then. As usual, the last one to realize that the
relationship was completely falling apart was the man in it. If you had
asked me the day before, I would have told you this was the girl that I
would end up marrying. I couldnt imagine myself with anyone else,
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much less being happy with anyone else.
A few months later, it was by chance that I stumbled across The
Game in my local bookstore. It was sitting atop the New Releases
table in front of the door. Ive always been a bookworm, so its title
and appearance was immediately well, seductive. I picked it up, and
my first reaction was to feel repulsed. What kind of scumbag would
write a book about this stuff? But of course, being human, I couldnt
help but read the first few pages. I had to see for myself how vile this
guy was, right?
Needless to say, within 5 minutes I was hooked. I bought the book
and finished it within 24 hours.
And so began my foray into the netherworld of PUA. Little did I
know how far this wormhole would take me.
I devoured 3-4 books, dozens of YouTube videos and hundreds of
pages worth of forum posts in a matter of days. The prospect of not
only taking control of my love life (where I had recently been so hurt),
but finally becoming the cool player that I had always wanted to be,
and having massive amounts of sex with hot girls it was all too
much to resist.
It took me three months to work up the nerve to approach a girl. I was
so nervous that I immediately apologized for talking to her. It took
another three months to actually get a girl to go on a date with me.
And finally, two more months to get one to actually sleep with me.
For the next year and a half or so, I went out 5-6 nights a week
picking up women. I posted on multiple forums and continued to
consume a monstrous amount of dating advice and pick up theory.
There was something deep down driving me, and although I didnt
realize it at the time, it wasnt completely healthy.
But my emotional issues aside, I cant lie: I was having a blast. After a
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year or so I was dating multiple women, something I had thought
completely impossible before. I was more confident than I had ever
been. I had more friends than I had ever had. I was getting laid
constantly, and developing some awesome social skills to boot.
Being a Deadbeat and Re-evaluation
But as another year of debauchery and irresponsibility went by, not
everything was peachy. I was becoming addicted to the validation I
was getting, addicted to the thrills and forsaking a lot of priorities in
my life for superficial kicks and fun. Having sex, something that most
people treat as a normal activity had almost reached a point of
obsession to me. To give you an idea of the state I was in, I wrote the
following in November of 2007:
A realization hit me whats the big deal? I get laid a lot.
Congratu-fucking-lations Mark, youre a normal part of society
now. So why are you spending hours a day posting on forums,
reading theory, dissecting phone calls from girls with your
roommates and going out four nights a week? For the love of
God, I live on a fucking couch. I ride my bike all day. I dont
even have my own computer to type these blog posts on. I
havent done anything that didnt involve alcohol, a vagina or a
television screen in months.
I was a deadbeat. I was broke, had a shitty job I hated, lived on my
friends futon, and was going to bars and chasing women every night.
Now, I take full responsibility for my behavior, but I existed within a
community that glorified and reinforced this type of lifestyle. And
ultimately, it was making me miserable.
I made an effort to start getting my life together, and I even began to
flirt with ditching the whole PUA thing and trying to get along on my
own. But it was soon obvious I wasnt done yet.
The main thing that sucked me back in was the prospect of coaching.
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At the time (late 2007), the industry was still booming, and the average
experience-level of the guys coming in was unbearably low and naive.
Through no act of my own other than sharing my stories and antics
publicly on forums, I began getting consistent requests to be coached
and taught.
The Truth About PUA Coaching
Heres a dirty truth about being a PUA coach: many guys who take
coaching dont actually want to change. They want to be validated.
They want to feel cool and be around someone who they think is
cool. They want to unload the responsibility for changing themselves
onto someone else.
Rather than hiring a coach to help them progress, to them its more of
a rent-a-cool-friend service. Now, dont get me wrong, there are a lot
of guys who ARE looking to improve, and there are a lot of guys who
do have good attitudes and do get a lot out of coaching. I had many
students accomplish amazing things with me. But unfortunately, the
PUA market and community dont promote the proper attitudes in
fact, much of the marketing and hype only encourages this sort of
pathetic behavior.
The market promotes fanboyism and idol worshiping. Its sickening. I
started to realize this when some of my students turned out to be these
brilliant, successful and amazing men. Men who were far more
successful in life than I was, and theyd look at me as some sort of
demigod. Why? Because Ive slept with more women? Because when
I walk into a club, people actually think Im cool? It makes absolutely
no sense. Looking for advice and guidance is one thing, but this was
something else entirely.
A lot of these guys dont need a pick up instructor. They need a
shrink and maybe some sort of anti-anxiety therapy. They need some
confidence and a push to put themselves out there more and more.
The technical aspect of picking up women really ISNT that difficult. It
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really can be explained and taught within a few days. But it must be
practiced for a long time, and to have that practice, a guy has to have
healthy mindsets and an ability to overcome his fears.
But theres a side to this that doesnt get talked about often. Theres a
concept in psychology called The Over-Justification Effect. From
Wikipedia:
The overjustification effect occurs when an external incentive
such as money or prizes decreases a persons intrinsic motivation
to perform a task. According to self-perception theory, people
pay more attention to the incentive, and less attention to the
enjoyment and satisfaction that they receive from performing the
activity. The overall effect is a shift in motivation to extrinsic
factors and the undermining of pre-existing intrinsic motivation.
In one of the earliest demonstrations of this effect, researchers
promised a group of 3-5 year old children that they would
receive a good player ribbon for drawing with felt-tipped pens.
A second group of children played with the pens and received
an unexpected reward (the same ribbon), and a third group was
not given a reward. All of the children played with the pens, a
typically enjoyable activity for preschoolers. Later, when
observed in a free-play setting, the children who received a
reward that had been promised to them played significantly less
with the felt-tipped pens. The researchers concluded that
expected rewards undermine intrinsic motivation in previously
enjoyable activities.[1] A replication of this experiment found
that rewarding children with certificates and trophies decreased
intrinsic interest in playing math games.[2]
This effect is felt too much by instructors. We receive so much
external validation and incentive (money, accolades, fanboys,
groupies, etc.) that it distorts that original emotional desire to simply
meet people and meet women. I also ran into this in music school
when I was a teenager. Believe it or not, music and art schools have
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the highest drop out rates in the world (some pushing 90%). And if
you think about it, it makes sense. Youre taking something that
people have always naturally been inclined to do (create music or art)
and start rewarding them tangibly for it through money, grades, prizes,
etc. For me it killed all of the passion of music and I dropped out after
a year.
There have been some famous studies done on motivation and what
theyve found is this: external incentives create better performance in
rote and logical objectives. But external incentives create WORSE
performance in creative objectives. Hence the 90% drop out rate of
music/art schools.
Well apply that burn out to social interactions and you get a pretty
fucked up effect. When your social interactions are the yardstick that
your success is measured on, it absolutely kills the joy of socializing,
and depresses the hell out of you in the process. When your
emotional intimacy becomes a business asset, it completely
undermines your relationships. For a prolonged period of time, this
effect can lead one to a very dark place. I met many coaches who had
been working in the industry for years and years who were obviously
miserable people. Its why my original business partner quit and got a
day job. And it consistently tested my resilience for two years.
But both sides are to blame: the consumers for buying into such a
false idol, and the instructors for being seduced by it. On the surface,
its a life of partying, girls and money. The three things a young guy
loves most, right? But in actuality, you spend more time hanging out
with other men men who are awkward, insecure and desperately
watching every move of yours and judging you. Youre no longer free
to just be yourself. You arent allowed to have a night where you just
want to drink and relax. You arent allowed to pass up a girl because
you dont feel like talking to her. You arent allowed to be awkward or
unsure of yourself or nervous about anything.
The line between work and play blurs until the two are
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completely indistinguishable. Your nights out being social are the
same as meeting prospective clients and marketing opportunities.
Your prospective clients and marketing opportunities, in turn, want to
be your friend and go out with you socially. Its a psychological mess
that drags your emotional stability down with it. Thank god I had a
serious girlfriend by that time, otherwise I probably would have lost
my sanity.
And heres the most screwed up part: the beliefs on which the
community is founded lead to a constant state of mutual discontent.
Since the success of ones sex and emotional life is the standard of
success, thousands of men sit online arguing and comparing things
that are 100% subjective. And what invariably happens, is everyone
merely projects their own personal discontent onto the perceived
failures and shortcomings of others. This guys girls arent hot enough.
That guy only sleeps with 3 girls a month. This guy is only good at
day game. That guy just gets by on looks. Everyone is deemed a
fraud in their own way and for some reason, everyone has tacitly
agreed to unrealistic expectations that can be met by none. What the
community has become is a cess pool of frustrated children with
keyboards.
The Pathologies of the Pick Up Artist
There is absolutely NOTHING normal about what a Pick Up Artist
does or why he does it. Dating advice is one thing. Self improvement
is another. But quantifying your social and emotional life and then
measuring it against others online and for money will murder your
soul. Plain and simple.
In the beginning picking up women can be a science, but the better
you get, the more it becomes an art. Once guys pass a certain
threshold or so, the only thing that differentiates them is style. This
style is based mostly on your personality and what types of women
you like. Improvement only exists in adapting your objective skill-set
to your subjective desires. Any sort of next step is actually more of a
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lateral movement, rather than moving up.
Beyond getting the first couple lays, quantifying game in any sense
approaches the impossible completely subjective and any arguments
about skill-levels, quality, consistency, or styles is arguing past one
another like claiming heavy metal is better than rap just because
well, just because.
Over the years, Ive dated women that other guys think are hideous.
Ive dated women that guys who dont know me literally come up to
me in bars and give me high fives when shes not looking. There are a
lot of women that most guys consider hot that I have absolutely no
interest in, and vice-versa.
What Im getting at, is once you become consistent, the only real
metric for success is your own satisfaction. Were always playing a
numbers game, and once you get your % up to 1/10 or above, really
any objective measure of skill kind of becomes pointless.
Once your % passes that magic threshold, its really just a matter of
how much time and effort youre willing to dump into your sex life.
Some of us dump a lot of time and effort. Most dont.
For this reason, the idea of who is the best? Or who can close the
most consistently, or who has the best club game, the best day game,
etc. its a bunch of nonsense and as my friend Doc used to say,
Dick crack. It gets a bunch of competitive and horny guys and their
egos excited. But at the end of the day, whether I can lay a girl in 50
minutes and you need two dates is pointless. If my girl has a 9 body
and a 5 face and yours has a 6 body and 8 face is pointless.
Youre getting sucked into the validation trap, which turns into a very
dark place if you stay there long enough.
The fact is, what is perceived as the community, is merely a loud
minority. An elitist and somewhat pathological minority.
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You dont end up in the Pick Up Artist community unless you are
incredibly unhappy or unsatisfied about something. It may be
conscious, it may be unconscious. It may be short-term, or it may be
deep-seated and long-term. But the fact is, the community acts for a lot
of men as a diversion or scapegoat from dealing with their real issues
their emotional issues.
As men, were experts at rationalizing painful feelings away we hate
dealing with them. For a lot of men, all these eBooks and audio
courses merely act as rationalizations a way to escape for a little bit
longer, a way to logically solve the unsolvable. Emotions arent
quantifiable or objective, so these men band together in attempt to
quantify and objectify their emotional lives together, under the
auspices of improvement.
And by their shared metrics, improve they do. I had my first SNL.
I banged my first 9 last night. Etc. But theres no yardstick for
happiness, fulfillment, meaning or significance. This may sound lame
and campy, but when youve met as many miserable guys with 100+
lays as I have, you may take it seriously.
Some of them forget they forget that theres a whole life to these
interactions behind the objectification and quantification. They enter
the validation trap where a cocaine-addicted stripper has more
value than a Plain Jane with a Ph.D, where a threesome has more
value than an engagement ring, where things like acne scars or B-cup
tits suddenly become deal-breakers in a relationship.
The PUA community at large is a bubble it has a propensity to
become elitist and to project its own desires and intentions onto
everyone else.
They glorify their goals, try to deduce others actions and desires into
base sexual needs, scoff at guys who dont get into it as AFCs and
look down upon newbies who give up and leave as quitters and men
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who arent man enough to persevere the hundreds of rejections just
to get their dick wet more often. Yet most guys are pretty damn
content with a couple of nice girls and a plain-Jane girlfriend who
loves them.
Destroying My Demons
As Ive been saying since 2006, and its not a big revelation anymore,
but PUA is self-help in disguise. PUAs can applaud themselves for
their social development, their amazing relationships and conquests
but the truth is that they all arrive there because something was/is
wrong. And theres nothing to get all high and mighty about.
It takes a certain kind of man to find the objectification of his
emotional life appealing. It takes a certain kind of man to become
addicted to the validation of receiving love and affection from women.
The vast, vast majority of men who come to this stuff are the one and
done crowd. In fact, you who are reading this, chances are youre
one of them too. Youre here because youre nervous about this or
that. You have a date coming up. Theres a girl in your class you think
is cute, but you dont know what to say. Youre in the middle of a dry
spell and want to get out. You come here for a little simple advice,
maybe a little motivation. You go out and get the date you want, the
girlfriend you want, approach the girl you want to approach and
then youre done.
But theres a loud minority who for them its something more.
Something deep down in their emotional fabric drives them much
further. They excitedly accept the objectification and relish in the
validation. I did. And I see other guys do it too. And really what it is
is their way of sorting through their emotional baggage. Some guys it
takes 10-15 women. Some it takes 50-100. Some guys are damaged too
deeply and never get out. But the truth remains: you dont sell your
soul to the devil unless part of you is already a little dead inside.
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I am not an exception, just another casualty. I wrote this in August of
2008:
I had kind of a disconcerting experience tonight. I hung out
with some female friends that Ive known for a long time. And
no matter what we talked about, we seemed to always end up
back on topics of my sex life, my sexcapades, and in particalar,
the threesomes that Ive had recently.
This actually started to bug me because these are friends I
havent hung out to any significant degree in about a year, and I
felt like we should talk about something more substantial than
the vaginas in which I had been sticking my penis. But I realized
two things. First of all, I had little else to talk about from the last
year and also that my friendships with these girls had ALWAYS
largely consisted of me sharing my sexscapades with them. I
didnt realize this until one point when I said, OK, enough
about my sex life, lets talk about something more interesting.
One of my old friends replied, But Mark, we ALWAYS talk
about your sex life.
I became horrified. Had my friendship with these girls merely
consisted of me obsessing over my sexuality with them? Had our
friendship just been a repository for me to validate myself that
Im attractive, that women have sex with me, and that other
women like it that women have sex with me?
Sadly, it had.
Your first reaction to this may be, Shit, I wish I had that problem
but remember this article and this quote. Because one day you may
find yourself there, and you may find yourself as disconcerted as I
was.
Whenever I talk about this, most men immediately ask me, What
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emotional realities are we running from? What baggage are you
talking about? Im normal, its all these other guys who are crazy.
This is actually an easier question than it may seem. Its going to be
different for every guy, but by FAR the most common deep emotional
problems and fears that I come across in the PUA crowd are: ex-
girlfriend or ex-wife that broke their heart and/or ruined them,
divorced or absent parents, death of a loved one, death of a parent, or
just repeated emotional beat-downs growing up whether it be
growing up in the projects, being verbally abused by girls your entire
childhood for being fat, etc., etc.
A lot of guys can relate to at least one of the above. I know I can.
Its painful to go back and deal with a lot of that. Some of it is
REALLY painful. And we dont do it. We put it off for years. I came
to PUA and was motivated primarily by my ex-girlfriend of four years
cheating on me and leaving me. That fucking hurt. I thought I got
over it, but I didnt get over it for years. And when I looked deeper, I
just realized that that had just been irritating a deeper wound
stemming from my divorced parents and family situation growing up.
That one STILL hurts. And I think the circumstances in which I grew
up in is the largest reason why Ive dedicated so much time, effort,
thought and emotion to picking up women.
Its not normal. And I accept that.
I look at myself and I realize now that underneath it all, there was a
need for intimacy and love. It was when I finally buckled down and
committed to a girl and started a new relationship that was actually
healthy and happy, that finally showed me that. Like everyone else on
this planet, Im searching for intimacy and love, Im just wired in such
a way that its hard for me to get to that point with a woman. Thats
what drives me. Just like I think deep down thats what drives most of
these guys. For whatever reason, we need to traverse some complex
and damaged emotional landscape to get there though. And PUA has
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been an avenue for some of us to do that.
Regardless, I choose to not identify with the Pick Up Artist moniker
any longer. The reasons are the two I listed above: I refuse to objectify
my social interactions and love life, and I refuse to judge my personal
success or have others judge my personal success based on my social
and emotional life.
But not only do I choose to continue teaching and coaching, but I
believe I can teach and coach from a much healthier and far more
successful place this way.
If you were or are part of the PUA community, I encourage you to
shed the unhealthy associations that come with it. This site is
specifically designed to give dating and seduction advice and direction
in a healthy manner: focusing on personal satisfaction and fulfillment
with all of your sexual relationships, rather than racking up numbers
or conquests, winning the admiration of your peers or attempting to
be the coolest guy you know.
Personally, I think the PUA thing is a fad. I think in 10 years, well
look back and think of it as one of those silly things we did in the
2000 s, kind of like big hair in the 80 s, or dial-up modems in the 90 s.
The mindsets the community is based upon are self-defeating, and
only the truly damaged or self-loathing would continue to subscribe to
them for a whole lifetime.
Dating advice for men, on the other hand, is only growing and will
continue to grow. Its going to continue to expand and become more
inclusive and more mainstream. I think everything thats currently
Pick Up Artist related will either transition to a more mainstream
audience or fade into relative obscurity. It will run its course, just like
the men who make up its ranks will run theirs.
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To Be Fair In Hindsight
I know Ive been pretty harsh on the whole Pick Up Artist thing in this
article. And a lot of this probably stems from my bitterness and being
too close to it for too long. But I must give credit where credit is due:
I would not be nearly as socially confident or competent today,
if it werent for the PUA community.
There are HUNDREDS of amazing experiences and dozens of
amazing women I would have missed out on, had I not picked
up that book on that fateful day.
Through sheer force and confrontation, Ive had to face many of
my own emotional issues and overcome them in a short period
of time issues I probably would have gone half a lifetime
being otherwise oblivious to.
And of course, I made some pretty cool friends and met some
interesting people. Without whom, I wouldnt be who I am
today.
In the end, I suppose this article should be taken as a cautionary tale.
Theres a lot to gain from that whole movement, but theres also a lot
that you can get trapped in and sucked under by. A friend of mine
put it perfectly when he said, You can judge a self-help movement by
how many people leave it. If people are leaving it, then its doing
something right. Well, many people leave the PUA community, so it
must be doing something right.
Just make sure youre one of the ones who leaves.
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