The proof is in the huge disconnect with the way you guys (and girls) talk about them, saying explicitly how sad and pathetic they are for doing what they do. It shows that none of you have the ability to relate to them or their desperation.

You’ve got us confused with someone else. I never said they were sad and pathetic for doing what they do. Not recently anyway. Nor did Xian or any other male regular on this forum. In fact, we all posted several posts and podcasts on PUA in order to give them space to explain their method. In the end, most of us were dismayed at the dishonesty, lack of ethics, and lack of respect for the opposite gender, not just by the leaders but by the general population of vocal students.

As for people who are so desperate that ethics go out the window–I wouldn’t use the word “pathetic.” I just think it shows moral weakness.

The proof is in the huge disconnect with the way you guys (and girls) talk about them, saying explicitly how sad and pathetic they are for doing what they do. It shows that none of you have the ability to relate to them or their desperation.

[rant]
I’ll clarify this time, the PUA’s are the only ones here who can craft a real solution, because they can physically take with their hands their students and put them in field situations where they approach pretty women in real life many many times. Because for someone who has NO EXPERIENCE with women, these kind of oppertunities come so rarely by themselves that it is worth every single fucking penny to drastically cut down what could have been a next to impossible learning curve on one’s own.

With PUA you are in essence paying someone to hold your hand and PHYSICALLY PUSH you into those situations that test SOCIAL ANXIETY and FEAR. These things can NEVER be intellectually taught with a worded solution over the internet, a working solution can only be taught in real life so no one including myself has the ability to make a working solution.

Overcoming these barriers is so extremely important for someone who is held-back, that at that stage even considering morality, ethics and other things becomes a an active impediment to making ANY sort of progress. With the way the mind works anyone can easily use morality, ethics etc.. as a way to mask their fear and rationalize themselves into staying within their comfort zone by doing nothing and subsequently stagnate miserably for years, decades, and learn nothing.

Everyone also has a mind and conscience of their own, and everything in life is transitory, just because someone takes a PUA course doesn’t automatically mean they’ll become an asshole PUA for life. It’s an unwarranted assumption.

[/rant]

No offense taken. I welcome the diversity of opinion.

But how do you know that I haven’t been waylaid developmentally? This idea keeps coming up again and again, with me, with Xian, with anyone else who comes up with a solution but is not part of the PUA system.

How do you know?

Unless you yourself as well as others don’t just say to be confident, but actually craft a successful program which works and brings results by taking men who are hopelessly debilitatingly crippled by shyness with women and teaching them REAL courage by DOING, showing by example, and actively pushing them out of their comfort zones, like the PUA’s do out in the realworld and in the field. Just saying a bunch of words on the internet is completely ineffectual.

I wrote this piece a long time ago (7 months, which is years in internet talk). Since then, I’ve come around to believe that PUA is indeed a wrong and misguided “solution” that creates far more problems than it creates. As I’ve mentioned to Will, APB’s system has a 100% failure rate when it comes to long term relationship. 100%. That’s a pretty big failure rate considering how many desperate Asian men have forked over $1,300. Not to mention the…um…ethical issues. (While I was dismayed by William’s conduct, the behavior of the other PUAs proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the problem is within the philosophy/institution.)

Anyway, as I mentioned, my views in this post are a bit dated. See my final thoughts on PUA here:

http://www.bigwowo.com/2008/12/the-post-pua-era-of-the-asian-american-blogosphere/

First thing tho, I would very much like to disagree PUAs being labeled as ‘assholes’. I can see how this can be true because the PUA community teaches men to objectify women and adopt behaviors that can be perceived as jerks but I believe the majority of men that enter the community are usually the overly nice type of guys who for the sake of their niceness just can’t seem to get girls.

I myself was in this category, I had good grades, was extremely nice, and in general put women in a pedestal all throughout my life up till high school until I found this so-called ‘community.’ I was raised in a very hard working Korean family myself and was taught that good grades and hard work ethics was the most that mattered, but that really put me in a awkward position in social situations. I couldn’t relate to people all that well.

I think teachings from the PUA is definitely not the end goal that should be sought in personal development, but as an intermediate step to help those that are so socially out of place that they cannot get back up on their own feet (like how I was nearly three years ago), and having studied Mystery, Sean, and various dating gurus that that teach different perspectives on dating, I definitely agree that not referring to girls as ‘targets’ nor overtly referring to the number rating system is the most ethical and self-help-wise best approach as well, but I think it’s going change due to the nature of the community itself.

As for the Asian man issue, I think Asian men are being misrepresented in the media and there should be more awareness brought up about it. And I also believe the PUA community can definitely help with this just by educating Asian men how to be more socially normal and up to date. (ps: I don’t think just because some of these PUAs are using sexist terms and immature number rating systems will do so for the rest of their life. C’mon! the initial reason why these guys got into this whole stuff was because they felt socially awkward and was in desprate need of help to get rid of their inner wussines! lol, give them some love, they’re just like everyone else and in the end, realzing how how stupid their ego-based adventure was, will want to, in the long term, seek a long lasting, fulfilling relationship, and have a normal life instead of having to live their widowed life or unfulfilled life as they would have destined to be otherwise.

I know the PUA thing gets flamed a lot all the time by people who don’t understand it or already have socially normal lives and having never felt the need to really ‘learn’ about their approach to women, but I think, from the PUAs I have known up till now, that most are overly nice guys who just can’t help themselves, and although the PUA community will carry many of its wierd and immature characteristics for a long time to come due to its nature, that it has a positive intent behind it.

Well, I’ve been honest with my thoughts and I hope I have contributed to this discussion.

That having been said, I’m going to change my stance on the PUA issue a bit. I’ll admit that when I wrote my posts I did not read any PUA blogs or read up at all about PUA other than what Kwak told me but after listening to that podcast on BAM I can see why many find it upsetting, especially women. The attitudes that the 3 men were displaying were pretty insulting and frat boy-like and I hope that the average PUA user isn’t like that. And while there are segments of the PUA community that aren’t all about objectification, what I heard was pretty bad.

I do like the fact that PUA can open more opportunities to meet women for AM’s but at the same time if it fosters this player lifestyle then there definitely needs to be other options for growth and progression.

You’re going into extremes, but only selectively. A man who is 5′ or less is extremely uncommon (http://www.halls.md/on/men-height-o.htm). For men who are that height, the women who are in the same percentile for WEIGHT are truly overweight. Do you think women in that percentile for weight truly are able to attract that many more suitors than a man in that percentile for height?