I’ve read and watched and listened to a lot of creepy pickup artist crap over the past few years while writing this blog, but in some ways this little video, from PUA “coach” Julian of Real Social Dynamics, one of the bigger and better known of the commercial “game” marketers, may well be the creepiest. Essentially, Julian provides tips to young men on how to “get” the girl of their dreams by temporarily driving her out of her mind.
No, really: he recommends that men overwhelm their female targets with confusing and contradictory stimuli to throw them so off-balance they’ll reflexively turn to their mental tormenters for support (and, maybe later, reward them with sex). This isn’t pick-up artistry so much as freak-out artistry.
The one thing about this video that is vaguely reassuring is that Julian’s examples of his technique in action are so crude and hamhanded I seriously doubt they’d actually work on anyone “in field,” as the PUAs like to say. What’s not so reassuring is that anyone would actually come up with something this predatory and perverse in the first place. Also, you know that at least a few of the video’s 32,000 viewers have actually tried out this technique on annoyed and bewildered women around the world. The world doesn’t really need any new ways for dudes to be assholes in clubs.
About that comments policy… I’d say that “persistently offensive, disruptive, and tedious” describes LesserGood pretty damn well.
I don’t know. All Good does to my brain is bore it. Persistent Tedium would be Good’s middle name, if he had one.
If it doesn’t work, PUAs are Stupid.
If it does work, PUAs are Evil.
Stupid or Evil, Good?
Speaking only for myself, I find Good hilarious. But then I find drying paint pretty amusing, so this might be a disorder on my part.
I generally don’t find the word evil to be useful… but both. Stupid for believing that people are robots without sense or feelings of their own. Evil (or just bad) for wanting to manipulate people into sleeping with them.
It’s like dnd alignments. If you believe it and practice it? Stupid Evil. Believe it but don’t practice it? Stupid Good. Don’t believe it, but would practice it? Clever Evil. Don’t believe it and don’t practice it? Clever Good. Totally uninterested in it? Cat.
Good clearly doesn’t believe that gaslighting & psychological torture exist.
My dad gaslighted me so badly for years, that I came to believe that I was worthless, stupid, incompetent, & mentally ill. He made me believe that I couldn’t do a damn thing, & that I was losing my mind. Gaslighting is very much a real thing.
As for the psychological torture, I was conditioned by someone else into thinking that when I saw certain images or heard certain words that I was going to die. Then my parents used it as punishment because they didn’t know that I was having severe panic attacks thinking I was going to drop dead or worse. They just thought I had some irrational, childish fear.
(Guys, it really is me. I’m just posting with another e-mail so that it doesn’t link to my WordPress blog or profile.)
Fibinachi, I think you’re just peachy, festering alien invaders and all!
By the way, if any Boobzers want to get in contact with me and do meet-up stuff, please let met know! I’m going to be getting sporadic in a couple of days, and I’d really like to have folks’s emails so I can rig up meetups, crash space, coffees, whatever. Send me some of your newfangled electronic mails up to me via loonybrain at healthymultiplicity dot com! Hope to be seeing folks this fall/winter!
This reminds me (again) of the Sovereign Citizens shtik. It’s ritual magic for boring people – learn the right incantations and suddenly you have cheat codes for reality. Personality, good hygiene, a life that’s interesting enough to talk about – naah, just peacock, neg and mindf##k your way to the sex life that is yours by right!
LBT, I hope your trip is A W E S O M E!
“Totally uninterested in it? Cat.”
I was gonna change that to uninterested in everything, but then there are feet to chase and curtains to hide behind and unknown things to flip the fuck out over (literally at least once, she literally flipped over for no apparent reason, and I don’t mean random cat rolling)
I’m sure all of Good’s sex times are transactional, for obvious reasons.
RE: katz
*happy arm flail* It will, and god willing and the creek don’t rise, we will see YOU upon it!
Manboobzers being visited thus far:
pecunium
Argenti
katz
cloudiah? (you’re in LA too, right?)
thekidwiththereplaceablehead? (tune in, comrade!)
thebionicmommy? (depending on my travel route through Texas)
aughochlorella? (also tune in and let me know!)
pillowinhell? (I think you’re in Texas; are you up to visitation this January?)
States I am MOST DEF visiting:
Ohio
Illionois
Minnesota
Wyoming
Montana
South Dakota
North Dakota
Washington
Oregon
California
Arizona
New Mexico
Texas
Missouri or Louisiana
Mississippi
Alabama
Georgia
Florida
If you’re in these areas and want to meet up or offer crash space, LET ME KNOW! 😀
My cat is afraid of the new refrigerator. I couldn’t figure out why, because it looks almost exactly like the old refrigerator, then I finally figured it’s probably because the door now opens the opposite way. It’s messing with his mind.
The Good who is currently demanding women “take responsibility for their own behaviour” (or, more accurately, take responsibility for the actions of manipulative asshat men) is the same Good who, in his first appearance here, said women were emotionally and cognitively exactly like children.
Mordsithj, tell us when your cat starts serenading the fridge and trying to take it on dates.
I did notice that Bad apparently has no response to this:
@LBT, I’m in LA, so yeah keep me posted. I can’t offer crash space, sadly.
Bad ignores a lot of arguments. Then he blames cats and unicorns for his own behavior.
Much to my eternal glee, cats are often interested in me! Granted, only as a heat source/scratching post and occasional cat-a-cake partner, but still… the joy is palpable.
Athywren – hear, hear! 🙂
I just had a weekend marathon of knitting and lap-providing for Fribs. Hours ‘n’ hours worth, she was one happy kitty (well, except when I was so selfish as to get up for trivial reasons like going to the loo).
Dud: ” This is a great example of women not taking responsibility for their own behavior.”
How about the men trying to manipulate and undermine women taking responsibility for their behaviour, eh, loser? Do you think abusers aren’t responsible for what they do, too? Probably not.
“Now there is some serious naivety.”
Wow, you just admitted nobody’d go to bed with you without being paid for it, in essence. Why am I not surprised …
“PUAs acknowledge who they are and what they do.”
Only if they acknowledge they’re trying to commit rape, whether by deceit, coercion or physical force.
Two can play the “weirding you out!” game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wRXa971Xw0
Hi, Cap’n! 🙂
@Andrew Johnston
WOw O_o there are so many things wrong with that I can’t even count them 🙁
@arubakera
Just butting in to say I don’t think you’re being oversensitive. Everyone else already got what I was gonna say in better ways.
@good
Wait, lesbians are being jerks? Here I thought we were perfect angels of heaven, incapable of committing anything bad because we are both girls and gay! As a strawfeminist, I must defend these lesbians, because anything a woman does ever is good!
/sarcasm off. Anyway, yes Good, manipulation is bad no matter who’s doing it.
@arubakeru – I don’t know if I’ve made comments that are down on people who’re socially awkard, but I apologise if I have; it wasn’t my intent (yup, intent is magic!).
What comes up with misogynist behaviour so often is social awkwardness being used as an excuse for them. The douchebag in question mightn’t be awkard at all – just a creep who doesn’t give a shit about other people, women in particular, but there’ll always be someone ready to say “Oh, but he’s just awkward, give him a chaaaance/ don’t be meaaannn!”
Stuff ’em. It’s just what you said – socially awkward doesn’t mean lacking empathy, or simply being an ethical person. But what a convenient excuse or cover it is for those who aren’t!