Hubris as the basis of the PUA scam

My wife recently skimmed my blog and remarked that I surely have a lot of bad things to say about women, and that I let men off easy. She pointed out that there were plenty of "fat, short, and ugly men hitting on young girls in clubs who consider themselves to be God's gift to women". She had a point, and as I thought more about this scenario, it dawned on me that without male hubris, in particular the failure to see yourself realistically, the whole PUA scam never would have gotten off the ground.

Let's first contrast hubris as it's present in both genders. Women may think that there is the proverbial knight in shining armor that will save them from their misery and accept them because they've got such fabulous personalities, even if they are physically unattractive and actually have rather obnoxious personalities. Not wanting to face reality, they keep pining after attractive guys, or fuck some average dudes, but it's all just to keep them busy until their own personal version of Mr Big steps into their lives. This normally doesn't quite work out so well, and the well-known result is that those women end up being rather desperate 30 year-olds or, in the worst case, single moms who no guy with options would go near.

But just as women delude themselves, so are there plenty of guys around who neglect the importance of looks, money, status. Before discovering PUA, they hoped that somehow some fabulous chick would accidentally end up riding their cock, and so they roamed bars and clubs just to ogle chicks, and also hit on any woman they meet through work, no matter how far out of their reach she may be. You know, maybe they'll get lucky by chance.


However, the only way to increase the odds, as I've stressed over and over, is to fix your fundamentals, and put yourself in a position that makes it easy for you to meet women who might be interested in you. I've fleshed this out in great detail in Minimal Game. Yet, this "method" requires two things that are rather unappealing if someone is lazy, feels entitled, and is unwilling to leave his comfort zone:

• taking stock of your assets (good and bad)
• getting your life in order

Superficially, the alternative is much more appealing. Instead of working hard to improve your lot in life, you could just believe in fairy tales. This is where PUA came in. It's easy to tell a guy with such a predisposition that looks, status, and money don't matter, and that with a few magic tricks and elaborate "routines" he'll get the hottest chicks. It takes an effort to work on yourself. On the other hand, memorizing some bullshit stories amounts only to a minor sacrifice, and is certainly easier than, say, losing 20 pounds. The PUA recipe didn't work out so well, and thus the PUA scene has been in death throes for years.

While PUA is nowadays pretty much dead, entitled and unattractive men still abound. Looking for a new savior, they turned away from Mystery and David DeAngelo, only to worship at the altar of Roosh V. Roosh's message is simple: "It's not your fault that you can't get hot chicks because in the Western world, hot chicks don't exist anymore. The Third world is where it's at instead!" On a side note, I find it humorous to compare PUA and the manosphere with regard to the frequency of hot chicks. While every third sentence out of the mouth of a PUA drone contained the words "hot chicks", as if nine out of ten girls where highly attractive, the manosphere takes the opposite stance and feverishly talks about "fat bitches", as if nine out of ten women in the Western world were morbidly obese or, in general, the embodiment of every white trash stereotype.

But let's get back to the manosphere: again, they don't tell guys to get their f*cking act together. Instead, the message is that they are okay. They are okay, but the Western world is to blame for their misfortunes. All they have to do is find a "pussy paradise" somewhere in the Russian hinterlands where all the women will just jump on their cock because they are, um, white guys who couldn't score in their home countries. Seriously, how retarded can one be?

The core group of guys who were exploited by, first, the PUAs, and later the manosphere are simply people who never learnt to challenge themselves. The dating market is competitive, and "just being you" normally won't cut it. The two most reasonable outcomes are to either settle for what you can reasonably expect. This is not necessarily an attractive option. The other one is to work hard on improving yourself, so that you'll get a shot with girls who may be out of your reach right now. However, this option is quite unattractive for everyone with an unjustified sense of entitlement. "Hey, weren't we supposed to get hot chicks just like that?", they are thinking, and calculate how long it would take to save up money for another flight to Thailand.

There are guys who don't want to work on themselves, and their entitlement can show in many ways. One way is indeed the "short, fat, and ugly" guy who hits on some hot young girl in the club. But there are also those who think that the Western world is to blame for their lack of success with girls. They all fail to acknowledge that some girls are, objectively, just out of their reach. Getting in shape is one option to fix this, another one is hitting on another ten girls on the weekend and getting nowhere, or to organize trips to Russia or the Dominican Republic with other guys they've never met. Somewhere, somehow, they've got to find their princess who just takes them for who they are...

What's your opinion? Let me know in the comments below!

Who came up with the "sex is the greatest thing in the world" nonsense?

Did you ever watch any of those teenager movies like American Pie, or did you ever skim one of those magazines that are aimed at teens? Or did you just listen to what other people say? If so, then you may have gotten the idea that sex was absolutely fabulous, like, the totally best thing in the world. However, once you have had sex, you realized that it isn't all it's cracked up to be. Sure, it's nice, but it's hardly a step up from masturbation. I'd argue it's different, but not better or worse.

Sorry, that wasn't quite right. Sex can be worse than rubbing one out. I've had "lays" that were infinitely worse than my worst wank. I don't think I ever failed pleasing myself, but that's not something I could say of all the girls I've met. In fact, I've found myself questioning whether pulling girls just for sex was really worth it. I think any guy who has the option of being with many women --- this only applies to a minority of guys --- eventually gets to the point at which he'll simply get tired of sex. The reason why guys pursue meaningless lays, though, has often more to do with a sense of validation, but even that gets boring after a while.


Let's look at the big picture, though: How does a guy feel about sex who lives in an oversexualized society that offers HD porn at his fingertips and shows him tits and asses in pretty much every ad, but who has very little experience himself? If he's a virgin, he may think he's missing out on something, and feel miserable about it. (This is quite common.) On the other hand, if he's one of the desperate ones who gets laid once every four years, he might think that sex is special just because it's so rare for him to do it with a woman.

I think that the image of sex being oh-so fabulous puts tremendous pressure on guys since they normally play the active part. A woman can always just lean back and let the guy do all the work, even if this leads to a piss-poor experience for all parties involved. On a side note, passivity on behalf of the girl might explain a lot of those "statistics" according to which 30% of women don't orgasm. They're just lying there, not moving their pelvis, not contracting their pussy, not doing anything else either, so how great can that be?

You could almost describe the myth of sex as some kind of elaborate societal scam, intended to encourage boys and girls to experience sex, and to get the average guy to buy into the "system". Imagine you spread the message that sex was barely better than rubbing one out, or that most women suck in bed? Surely then little Jimmy wouldn't feel quite so bad about himself if he was a virgin, or if he hardly ever got laid. He would know that he isn't missing out on much. The irony, though, is that he isn't missing out on much, but doesn't know it.

If the previous paragraph sounds too absurd to you, then please remember that some countries have set up a non-free system of higher education in order to yield a docile and indebted workforce. Home-ownership was also promoted with the aim to make the labor force more easily controllable. Debt is a powerful force. You could make the same argument based on the fact that health care in the US is tied to the employer. Saddled with college loan, mortgage, and health insurance that is conditional on employment, you'll probably think twice about speaking up at the work place. But what is a big motivator for guys to buy a house and make money? Well, to get chicks...

What's your opinion? Do you think sex is overhyped? Do you sometimes feel as if society dangles sex in front of you to make you act against your best interest? Let me know in the comments below!

Feminism as an excuse for being ugly

Apparently last month there was a three-day celebration of feminism at the University of Cambridge. The pictures on Facebook are well worth a look due to their concentrated stupidity. I just want to talk about one particular issue, and it might be a somewhat controversial one, at least in the mainstream media.

Ask yourself whether you have ever seen a good-looking feminist? I certainly haven't. I don't want to stoop as low as Roosh V with his post on the "ugliest feminists of America", but it's hard not to notice that the "intellectual" leaders as well as the typical follower isn't exactly the kind of woman you'd fantasize about having sex with. Somehow I get the impression that "feminists" like to influence other women to look less attractive, i.e. as unattractive as they themselves are. Why they do it I don't really know, but it could be that they are simply envious of better-looking women, which makes them want to work towards a future were all women are unattractive. This is all just conjecture, though, but I wouldn't know how else to explain this phenomenon.

Let's have a look at this picture:

Oh, it shouldn't?

Try an experiment: Look at this picture for a few seconds, and afterwards then cover that girl's armpit with your index finger. You might find that she suddenly looks significantly more attractive to you. I would be quite surprised if I was the only guy who had this reaction.

One of the big issues with feminism is that it doesn't acknowledge biology. There are obvious biological differences between men and women. Further, men don't really make a mental effort to decide what they find attractive. It's a visceral reaction, and you just can't help it. Body hair is a turn-off, especially when it's dark. Sure, dear feminists, go ahead and stop shaving your legs and arm pits! The consequence will simply be that men will avoid you even more. Or do you want to tell us what we're supposed to find attractive?

What's your opinion? Do you like hairy armpits? Let me know in the comments below!

Sleazy, how come gurus make money if they're so shit?

PUA shills haven't pestered me much recently, apart form some dude who tried to pollute my forum. However, quite recently there was a blog comment that had an angle I wasn't familiar with. Let me just cite the shill comment as a whole:

Yeah. Just out of curiosity, Aaron. A lot of people seem to say that speed seduction doesn't work. How would you explain that Ross (but also V Kelvin, RSD, and other "guru$") is still making money and have supporters?

(This comment appeared under Romance is for Losers.)

Please take a moment or two to let the previous quote sink in.

There are at least two good counter arguments. Let me start by questioning the premise, namely that PUAs make money and have fans. As I've shown in recent articles, interest in the big names of the PUA scene has dwindled dramatically. It's also a fact that there haven't been any big releases like 20-DVD sets in years. Also, many PUAs have moved on. David DeAngelo tried rebranding himself as Eben Pagan, Neil Strauss is back to writing about celebrities, and many of the B-team either quit or moved into self-help. Some seemingly well-established names like DJ Fuji are barely hanging on. His forum has something like 500 posts...


So, how much money do the PUAs make? Surely David DeAngelo didn't decide to focus on business coaching if peddling PUA advice was such a gold mine. The gold rush is over, and what's left are some people who are fighting over scraps.

Further, just because you make money doesn't mean that your product has any validity. Let's consider a steaming pile of bullshit like astrology. Do you know how big that market is? It's at least hundreds of millions of dollars per year, if my recent Google searches are to be believed. This means it's easily and order of magnitude larger than the PUA industry. I even came across an article that claimed that Italians spend several billions a year on astrology, being an unusually superstitions people:

Amid rising unemployment and general gloom over the state of the economy, Italians are spending billions of euros a year on astrology and fortune telling, according to a report by the European Consumers Association. 

Tarot card readers and pavement fortune tellers are doing a roaring trade, with about 30,000 Italians paying between 20 and 600 euros a day looking for advice to help them out of their financial woes.

Yet, astrology is complete nonsense.

Of course, having supporters doesn't mean that you are right either. This ties in with the previous point. For an obvious example, look at sects like the Catholic church, or Scientology. They do have followers, their followers donate absurd amounts of money, yet what they teach does not hold up to any scrutiny. They are in it for the money. The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, famously said:

I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is!

Likewise, the Catholic Church found itself quickly drawn towards money and power. The historic Jesus of Nazareth was a revolutionary, an anti-authoritarian, and an enemy of "money lenders". Heck, he even supported the use of force against enemies. Mere decades after his death, though, Christianity developed into quite possibly the worst kind of intellectual poison the world has ever seen, turning into a tool for subjugation the masses, and hindering scientific progress on a large scale. It's due to the influence of the Catholic church that the Middle Ages were a dark age, which cost us hundreds of years of progress. Imagine that we've had stem cell therapy and plasma TVs back in the year 1,000!


People are gullible, and those who sell hope in whichever form do so, to a large degree, to profit from it. Those who sell hope --- be it PUA gurus, religious leaders, astrologist or whoever else --- may delude themselves and believe their nonsenses. However, many are hardened business men, which I illustrated by the example of L. Ron Hubbard. Heck, he openly said what his real goal was, and people could easily have figured out that he was merely a science-fiction author. Nonetheless, many were stupid enough to fall for him and his organization. Victims include celebrities like Tom Cruise and John Travolta. "But, wait, how can Scientology be a scam if the mega alpha Tom Cruise is a member. I mean he's rich and famous, so he's got to know better. Right? Right??"

What's your opinion? Let me know in the comments below!

Romance is for Losers

A big mistake inexperienced men make is that they believe mainstream dating advice, and then there are of course those who believe the equally nonsensical advice of PUAs. It is not true, as PUAs claim it, that you can get any woman you want if you just used the right technique. However, following mainstream advice by being courteous, and not too pushy, taking girls out on dates, and waiting for at least two weeks before attempting to have sex with her will also guarantee that you won't get much action.

Plenty of girls don't mind if you waste your time or money on them, though. Why time? Well, it equals attention, and a plain average girl would rather have some average guy drooling over her than none. It doesn't mean that she can't wait to rip his clothes off, though. What guys who take girls out on dates don't realize is that there is a much faster route. It's just not necessarily available to them. Based on my experience, I am tempted to say that girls make the decision to have sex with you very quickly --- if they are attracted to you. Then there are guys that just don't do it for them at all. However, there is an unfortunate third category that can be exploited for material gains. This is where dating and diamond rings come in.

I found it quite startling that some girls were openly mocking the guys they were dating when they hung out with me. This also ruined any notion I had of women being kind. One particularly materialist bitch in London viewed some middle-aged guy as nothing but a walking wallet, and thought this was all good fun. Once she even asked what I think he should buy her next. I didn't quite manage to develop a lot of respect for that woman. However, I'm undecided whether that guy deserves pity or ridicule. He only has himself to blame since he should be perfectly aware of the fact that he's not getting anything in return. Still, it struck me that they were willing to fuck me so quickly, while they only dangled a carrot in front of some other guys.


Sure, some girls fuck those losers. Gold-digging can be a rather lucrative profession, after all. What is noteworthy, though, is that you can get all of that without the slightest notion of romance. It was rare for me to even take a girl out on a date. In the few cases I did, it was normally a short 30 or 40 minutes before heading back to mine. Heck, even a nonchalant rhetorical question like, "Why don't we just skip this and head back to my place?", or when calling on the phone, replying to her probing question where we should meet for dinner, "You can drop by at my place in about two hours" normally did the trick as well. Some girls don't necessarily want to lead you on. Instead, they are only familiar with the typical dating protocol and think they have to meet you for dinner first. Those can be quite relieved when they can skip that ordeal. This only applies if she's sexually attracted to you, though.

If you don't push the interaction towards sex, you'll have a hard time getting laid. On the other hand, if you put the offer on the table, and the girl knows that she won't be able to mooch off you (or that you won't wait long for her to change her mind), you can force a decision quickly. She's either going to have sex with you or not. She knows that you'll be gone if she turns the offer down. However, letting a reasonably hot guy just walk off isn't such an easy thing to do. So, what's the conclusion? It's simply that if she likes the idea of having sex with you, then chances are very good that she will --- even if this might mean that she won't wait as long as she normally does. Maybe it's a bit uncomfortable for her, but she'll soon find comfort, so don't worry about it.

On the other hand, if you have no spine and think that a kiss on the cheek is enough compensation for an expensive dinner, nothing much is going to happen. If she let's you wait, then she's simply not that interested in you. She may still enjoy the attention. It's not romance, though. Yes, the losers will think it is. For women, "romance" means steamy sex. Candlelight dinners or long walks with polite conversation are quite the opposite of that.

Lastly, let's not forget that many girls find it more comforting to be able to say that they are
seeing some guy, even if he doesn't mean anything to them, than admitting to their girlfriends that they are single. Nobody has to know that she's not fucking him. Heck, some guys told me that they have sex with their "girlfriends" once every six to eight weeks. I'm sure they've got plenty of romance, though. A guy who does not pose a sexual threat is perfect for that category. He's easy to please, and for girls they are convenient, too. Nominally, they aren't single, and can still conveniently look for some other guy who gets their juices flowing. Without the notion of "romance" such a charade would be impossible.

What's your opinion? Let me know in the comments below!

Message from a Reader: The Consistency Trap

Below is a message from a reader: Max describes how he got caught up in PUA, and how he managed to free himself from the negative influence. Please pay particular attention to what he calls the "consistency trap".


Hi there. My name’s Max, and I was into PUA for a few years. Even though I learned through experience that it was unnecessary, it was your site and PUAHate which convinced me that it was really ridiculous. Weirdly though, I found it hard to let go of it. It took me a while to figure out what the issue was. I eventually realized it was something I call the consistency trap.

Basically, you can encounter PUA because you were searching for “solutions” with girls, either because you wanted more or because you feel bad. I was in the second category: at that time, I had been heartbroken by a girl I really liked and didn’t like me back. I felt awful, and discovering the PUA thing was a revelation: if I could just master “social dynamics”, be alpha and a master PUA, I could probably fix that! And moreover, this could enable me to make sure that I would never suffer from that again.


So I did some PUA and saw results pretty fast. This led me to become pretty arrogant, but also quite lazy, which inevitably led me to drop some PUA nonsense, and then realize my results didn’t vary as long as I made a move. It was not long after that for me to find your website and PUAHate, and decide PUA was idiotic.

The thing was, I couldn’t really let go. Even though I would not do PUA, I would get stressed in social settings, and in my head, I had all these permanent fantasies about out-alphaing other dudes. I was constantly in my head. It took me a while to realize that I was stressed because there was one thing I had not rid myself of: basically, that there was a certain type of personality or behavior that was universally attractive, and that not being in this character (alpha, super social, always witty, etc) even for a second would mean permanent loss, which in my case echoed to the suffering I had felt when I got into PUA.

I call it the consistency trap because it comes from the fact that PUAs convince you that there is one way of being which you need to learn (generally a narcissistic sociopathic sex-crazed social retard), otherwise you will fail for sure, and if you don’t fail, it will be temporary because, ultimately, the foolproof way of not suffering with chicks is to become like the guru.

This fucked me up for a while: it led me to question my behaviors, thought patterns, “limiting beliefs”, view of the world, values and even reasoning abilities! I wento to hypnotherapy first to try to change myself to fit that mold because I thought that my upbringing had fucked me up since I was not up to the standard! I even blamed my parents for it. Fortunately, at some point, I figured out something was wrong and worked instead on breaking the link between the pain I had felt in the past and the PUA pseudo-logic.

That is some toxic stuff. Humans will try to avoid suffering by using anything that seems to remotely make sense if it just promises it might help. I discovered that the hard way, and I believe it is the most fucked up thing PUA teaches: that basically doing things your own way means you are doomed to fail.

Thanks a lot for the good stuff Aaron! And also AlekNovy.

Max, thank you very much for your message!

Do you find most women attractive?

In the discussion following Do women really hold all sexual power? an anonymous reader made the following statement:

Most men find most women somehow attractive (not my case, but so I hear).

I questioned this statement, and so did others. However, it is a position plenty of women and men seem to hold. Women think that men would fuck anything that walks and while the guys I personally know all have personal standards, they might still think that others are less discerning. However, it seems to be much closer to the truth that unattractive guys, as well as guys who don't know about their market value, might stick with a relatively plain looking woman. I do hope, though, that they find at least some attraction for them.

Please note that this myth is also used to justify this inane talk about male sexuality being worthless, which was at the core of the article I linked to above.


My suspicion was that this was more of a mass media myth than reality, so I consulted out the prime authority on that topic, TV Tropes. Look what I found:

Anything That Moves 

If they can have sex with it, they will. This character has nonexistent or remarkably low standards within the borders of their species and orientation's NORMAL sexual interest pool. They can be hetero, gay, or bi. This trope doesn't mean they're willing to lay children, animals, or inanimate objects; it means that things like age, personality and attractiveness restrict them much less than the average person. Such a character may get around a lot, but not necessarily; sometimes, it just that their standards are low.

I couldn't help but think of people like Vince Kelvin or Jeffy from RSD when I read the last sentence. What follows on TV Tropes is a list with hundreds of examples from all kinds of media. Please also note the phrase, "less than the average person". I would assume that it is exceedingly rare for a guy to try to have sex with anything that has a hole with it.

Would you do any girl? Please comment below.