Being ill in bed afforded me only one pleasure. I watched the entire first season of The Pick Up Artist (PUA). It’s a show based on the seemingly seedy pseudo-science of how to pick up women. More specifically it follows one Master PUA in particular, Mystery and his struggle to teach the art of cool to his geeky desciples.

It starts out with your tried and true reality contest forumula. Take a number of contestants, each week give them a task and then eliminate them one at a time based on their lacking performance. It’s quite the Cinderella story with some dramatic transformations between the loser guy who walked in the door on day one to the suave chick-guided tomahawk missile that ultimately wins. To the shows credit I’m surprised they didn’t go with the usual judge format of ethnic guy, asshole guy, and washed up singer.

As an aside, in my diseased stupor I decided that I am going to try out for the show next season.

If you’ve read the phenomenally captivating book The Game by Neil Strauss (AKA. Style) then you probably have a grasp on the sub-culture. If you haven’t I recommend you do so now. Nix the misconception from your mind that it’s a Man’s book, a girl recommended it to me.

Pick up artists you say? Sounds sort of smarmy to me. Isn’t that that thing where they teach guys how to coerce women into dating them? Manipulation is unscrupulous and wrong in my book.

There is no magic about it. It’s not hypnosis or reprogramming ladies to jump on men. It’s simple, nice guys finish last so don’t always be the nice guy. Know when to make yourself seem more valuable by playing hard to get. Lastly, recognize when a girl is signaling to you that she’s interested. These are tactics that naturals, as they call them, have been utilizing since the dawn of time. In other words, all of the things that our fathers forgot to teach us.

To really understand the subculture of pick up artists understand the types of men who invest time in it. Clear your head of any notion of Chads or Dude-Bros. Yes, they do populate the community but only as a small minority. Close your eyes and imagine the dorkiest, most socially inept, pocket protector wearing, tape on the glasses, sweat beneath the armpits, anxious, boys. Some of them are younger. Some of them are older. Forty year old virgins do exist.

The kinds of men that PUAs advise are the ones who tend to languish in the treacherous friend-zone. Tragically as women around the world cry on the shoulders of confidants who are male, all the while bemoaning their asshole boyfriends, they fail to see the ones holding them. Take exhibit a. the lonely sweet guy. On the inside he’s everything that a girl could ever want. But he never gets the time of day. Now imagine if you could teach exhibit a. how to capture the attention of women while retaining those sweet qualities. You’ve just given him the tricks of the trade to get beyond the gate. Everyone wins, high fives all around!

What PUA gurus evangelize is a way of life. They cultivate what they call inner game (aka. self confidence) because unsurprisingly women love confident men. The grand lesson of the game is that looks can only get you so far, personality is key to any meaningful relationship. Mystery and his crew draw that interesting inner fellow out and show him how to create attraction.

If you were to ask the pick up artists what their ultimate goal was you might hear a few say, to get with as many women as humanly possible. On the flipside, you might be surprised to find that the majority are actually looking to meet that one special woman.

Note: I am not a Pick Up Artist myself. I’ve simply thoroughly researched the topic.