Pickup artistry is like waggling your penis in front of a cat, explains pickup artist who may not have ever met a cat

So over on Chateau Heartiste, Mr. Heartiste is trying to explain a highly innovative pickup strategy that you may know as “playing hard to get.”

First he tries a “fishing” metaphor, quoting from a commenter on his site who wrote:

It’s like fishing. You don’t just jerk your line out of the water as soon as you can. That’s how you get a broken line and lose an expensive lure. You jerk her in slowly letting the fish tire herself out. Once she’s sufficiently submissive then it’s time for the net.

Then, presumably, you gut her and fry her up in a pan?

Heartiste doesn’t say. Instead, he moves on to another metaphor that he manages to make even more awkward than the fish one. Apparently women are like cats, who are much more likely to pounce on a string if it’s being pulled away from them than they are if the string is just sitting there.

There is some serious science behind this observation: In their Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation, studies reveal, prehistoric cats were in a perpetual war with irregularly moving string creatures.

In trying to explain the whole string thing, Heartiste writes:

A cat won’t lunge for the string if it’s just sitting there in front of her, but if the string [your penis and any proxies for your penis, like your brain or personality] is moving away or zig-zagging, she’ll pounce.

Dude, have you ever met a cat? Cats have claws. They’re hunters, known for capturing and killing prey animals with a single well-planned pounce. You definitely don’t want a cat’s claws in your junk.

The shared idea behind all these pithy game theories is that women want a man who seems like he gets so much mad pussy that he can take or leave any one particular pussy. This is the man who “flips the script” and has women chasing him. Women love the man of plenty. Women are repulsed by the man of need.

I think you’ve actually just described cats, the world champions of playing hard to get.

In the comments, Heartiste’s readers somehow managed to make his creepy metaphors even more creepy.

According to Broadsman,

Some fish have a “hard mouth.” Once the hook is set, you just reel them in as hard as your rig can stand. Some women are like that – once you plant the idea that you’re going to bonk them and they buy in, it becomes a matter of logistics.

Some fish have a “soft mouth,” Once you set the hook, you can reel them in but too hard a pull, and the hook slips out and they are lost.

MILFs tend to have hard mouths. Once the appeal is there, it’s a matter of finding a room.

Young girls tend to have soft mouths. You have to be gentle in tugging them into your clutches.

Soft mouth women tend to have the more succulent flesh but it can be more difficult to catch your fill.

It apparently never occurs to Broadsman that the “hard-mouthed” women he thinks he’s “reeling in” may have actually decided on their own to have sex with him; they may be easy to “reel in” because they are also reeling him in.

trav777, mixing up a couple of metaphors, suggests that “young girls” are so eager to be fished that they “jump in the boat when they get close…no pullin teeth.”

Sentient, meanwhile, takes the fishing metaphor way too literally:

Fish are “attracted” to “lures” but you have to match the conditions and the species sought to the right lure and technique.

You can’t just paddle out in a farm pond and start tossing an offshore lure around… No matter how many “numbers” you put up in that scenario, you will never “hook” a fish… kind of like opening a HB9 in a bar at 11PM and discussing in detail your career as a mid-level actuary or the excellent gas mileage in your Honda Accord…

Successful fishermen know all about the species they are seeking (mating, migration, hibernation, etc.), know the right lures for the conditions and time of year (what they are eating, what attracts them, type of environment/bottom) and know the right techniques (depth, rate of retrieve, where in water column etc.)… It’s a science and a skill – just like pick up. It’s GAME game. It’s not a numbers game.

Apparently feeling that comparing women to animals is too flattering, Greginaurora compares them instead to plants:

When I was in college I practiced “gardening”. Open every woman I’d consider taking to bed, then don’t-close. Everywhere on campus. … I’d “plant the seed of her interest in me”, then I’d walk away and let that interest germinate. One nice side benefit of this was that I had pretty women starting conversations with me everywhere I went (post-open). Eventually, one-at-a-time, these girls would let me know they were ready and bloom for me.

Ew ew ew ew ew.

Broadsman (the hard and soft mouth guy from above) returns with a whole new metaphor — women aren’t cats or fish or flowers but MINKS — and manages to out-creep everyone in the thread with a weird, victim-blaming apologia for domestic violence:

It is a common mammalian behavor for the female to require the male to get rough with the female before mating. For example, the female mink has to be bitten and bleed from the wound before she ovulates.

Lots of women at least appreciate rough treatment, from just being picked up and thrown on the bed to being battered women, loving their abusive mate.

Women: As PUAs see it, they’re fish to be lured, or cats to dangle strings in front of, or flowers to plant, or minks to physically mistreat — anything but sentient beings with their own thoughts and their own motivations for things.

h/t — dashapants

EDIT: Added the h/t, and a link to Heartiste’s piece. Oops.