Spoken like a chaotic neutral, I know…
Recently one of my Facebook friends posted the following status update: “Smile, it makes people wonder what you’re thinking.” It’s another quote in a long line of hackneyed “folksy wisdom” gems he’s read or heard somewhere, and just had to share. But even as folksy wisdom goes, this advice is really atrocious.
I can think of countless reasons to smile: a friend’s face, the sun on your skin, the elation of running and jumping and climbing trees, remembering that puppies exist, or getting a new sex toy in the mail, just to name a few. But just to get a reaction from people, to seem more intriguing? Booooooooooring. I can get behind smiling out of friendliness, or to put people at ease, but this stupid cliche goes a step too far. It’s “I want people to think of me in a certain way, so I’ll disingenuously alter my behavior.”
This, gentle reader, is why we can’t have nice things.
Cilfton Overmangle texted me out of the blue recently to ask if three days was still the customary amount of time to wait to call a girl after getting her number (I don’t know why I’m the person he asks, but whatever. I’m here to help, I guess…) I wasn’t trying to be glib in the least when I responded that he should simply call her when it was convenient for him to talk and he would care to have a conversation with her. Has anyone not heard of the “three day” rule? And doesn’t it seem contrived and a touch desperate-not-to-seem-desperate when you can tell someone has purposely waited exactly three days to call? I’m not the mayor of dating or anything, but even my commitment-phobic ass couldn’t muster up a speck of contempt for someone calling me on days one, two, or four, especially if a decent conversation arose from it.
It strikes me that conventional wisdom encourages us too much to fake things, to play games with each other for social rewards. The fact that there’s a “rule” of how many days to wait before calling an individual with a pulse and a mother and unique thoughts and experiences betrays such cynacism. And you know if Quizzical Pussy is calling you on your cynicism you’ve gone too far.
That’s my major issue with Pick Up Artistry: it couldn’t be less like art. Art is human, individualistic, all about sharing a unique and fallible perspective. It’s against homogeneous rules; it runs counter to a jaded, cookie-cutter approach to people and the world. Hell, even if an artist is expressing a misanthropic point of view, the act of creation itself is the opposite of cynical.
In fact, the “art” referred to in PUA is more just at odds with being “artless”, in the sense that has positive connotations of sincerity and being unaffected.
Instead of embracing the natural, PUAs (and girls that follow The Rules or whatever the kids are calling it these days, or other con artists) devote themselves to running through life like it’s a role-playing game. And the person you’re trying to date isn’t even the princess you need to save or a member of your party. Your “target” is just another monster to vanquish on your way to your goal. So if you don’t get results with one chick, you just need to beef up your stats, or else you threw the dice wrong and luck just wasn’t on your side. Either way, you’ll encounter lots of HB9s on this level, so you’re cool… you’ll get the next one. How is it a good idea to treat a potential partner like a non-player character? Like ultimately, they don’t matter.
There has to be a better way to deal with rejection than dehumanizing people. Can’t a person not want to fuck you, yet remain fully human? Can’t social interactions be more about discovery and less about achievements? Can’t you just relax and see where and with whom you fit naturally, without trying to force perceptions and opinions you can’t control? Can’t you just smile because you feel like it, call when you want to, and acknowledge that if you’re playing a game, we’re all in it together and probably actually all on the same team?
(image source)
This is the thing that bothers me about PUA as well. I hear a lot of argument whether it works, but I don’t care if it works or not. It’s a pack of lies.
It’s not just PUA specifically. Holly linked to this article
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/05/alt-text-nice-guys-guide/, pointing out ways many ‘nice guys’ are in fact not nice they’re just pretending.
And I saw this article linked from Instapundit,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1284519/Why-modest-men-brush-women.html?ITO=1490
about how women don’t like modest men.
If you’re acting nice to get girls, you’re not nice. If you’re acting modest to get girls, you’re not modest. I try to act modest and nice, because I want to BE modest and nice; I think they are good things whether they get girls or not. And acting out a virtue when you really don’t want to is the best way to acquire it for real.
I’d rather live alone as the kind of man I want to be than die a popular liar. Now I’m not saying that someone is likely to be lonely because he or she is too good. That’s crap. My wife left me because of my vices, not my virtues. What I’m saying is that you can’t be a good person if you’re just trying to do it because of what other people think. You have to be good for it’s own sake to be good at all.
My basic theory is that there are, more or less, some system of rules to follow to get almost everything else you really want out of life, and some people just cannot seem to handle that the same isn’t remotely true of getting a partner. Granted getting a good job isn’t really like a role-playing game either, but you’ll have a lot more success creating a rule structure around how to get one than you will out of getting a partner.
What I find doubly depressing about PUAs and Rules Girls is that their own rule systems guarantee getting someone completely unsatisfying on the human level. And then they have to convince themselves that a hot-looking sex partner or a nicely dressed wallet is all anyone would or could want out of the opposite sex anyway…
Hey,
I don’t think you’re right about PUA. PUA is copying what successful people do. If you look at women and you’d LOVE to be able to meet them, isn’t it nice that someone can teach you how to do it without fear?
LabRat says there isn’t any set of rules to follow for getting a partner. What do they mean? It seems like, for guys at least, there IS some basic advice that’ll help. Personal hygiene and some self-worth seem important.
The guys I know who have dabbled in game are, for the most part, in happy relationships. I think one of the reasons that this is true is that they have the confidence to look around a bit and find out what they want before committing. People without the social skills tend to cling onto their partners because they become phobic of getting rejected again and again.
Put it this way: don’t you know loads of people who are awesome, but for some reason always flop at romance? What if they could get in the door and past the first impressions by learning a set of skills?
There’s a big damn difference between “basic hygeine and self-confidence will help” and the byzantine and often extremely misogynistic bullshit I’ve seen sold as “game”.
@Monotone Juggler I’d absolutely encourage people of any gender to learn social skills, build self-confidence, and bathe regularly.
It’s possible that some people think that developing an artificial persona and lying to people and trying to run scripts on them falls under the “learning social skills” category, or that you have to have lots of sex and find clever (again, scripted) ways of keeping it all NSA. But these aren’t what I think of as healthy ways of going about these things.
There are pieces of PUA that I agree with. Don’t act desperate. Don’t take every social interaction so seriously. Try to improve yourself. Get an interesting hobby and learn an interesting skill. All good advice that will help you live a richer life. And I don’t even have a problem with someone creating a fun sort of alter ego for the club. As a lover of drag, I can see the parallels and I think that’s awesome. But doing all that stuff just so you can get laid is kind of super desperate, to my eyes. And if you’re using the alter ego to charm people, when does the act stop? It has to stop sometime or it would just get exhausting.
Most of the PUA theory I’ve been exposed to advises guys to act in formulaic ways to get predictable responses. And do I think that guys sometimes use PUA techniques as training wheels and go on to develop genuine charisma? Sure. Is it the logical product that will inevitably come from running through scripts every night? Not really.
It’s too bad there are fewer people sharing information over the internet on how to be a great conversationalist or running workshops on how to tell a great story aloud. That would probably be just as effective and a lot more honest.
Excellent post. Why can’t people just be honest about who they are and see where that takes them? If you yourself are not good enough as you are, there’s no way you’re going to be able to hide it indefinitely. Game-playing makes my skin crawl. I wonder why people cheapen their lives and waste so much time and energy. Then again, half the people you meet are below average, so…
Ick. If someone doesn’t call me for three days, I assume they’re not that interested, and like the social incompetent that I am, become less interested in them as a result. I like people who like me; it makes everything so much easier! I tend to expect a text on the way home from the date, actually, but I usually get one, so perhaps the guys I meet are not PUA players. Which is excellent!
Great post and certainly very true, it is sad that sexual desire is still treated as something that needs to be repressed rather than embraced. A PUA might dedicate themselves to ‘picking up’, but they do so through subterfuge, just as anyone following those ridiculous ‘Rules’ does – instead of admitting that what both parties are looking for could be obtaining much more easily if the rules of conduct encouraged an open dialogue about desire. That sort of dialogue is commonly found in the kink community.
I don’t agree with the title of the post though ‘Chaotic Neutral’, more like ‘Chaotic Good’ or ‘Neutral Good’. Chaotic Neutral is for madmen and sociopaths, and both The Rules and PUAs seem more Lawful Evil (for adhering both to ‘rules/laws’ but ridiculous dehumanizing ones)…
@IDiom You’re right, of course. I just like to think of myself as a badass chaotic neutral.