The Most Dangerous Aspect of Pickup

I liked this post on Pickup101's blog about some of the effects of learning pickup. I might not agree with everything, but I think the message rings true.

The most dangerous part of learning pick-up occurs when you start dehumanizing the people you talk to.

One way to do this is to use jargon to create an alternate reality. Now you’re not talking to a cute girl, you're sarging an SHB11. Whom you hope to f-close.

And it doesn’t matter if she rejects you, because she's not rejecting you, she's rejecting this alternate personality of silly clothes and other people’s routines.

The other easy way to dehumanize your interactions is just to have too many of them. The reason you can't find 50 girls a day is because you shouldn't be talking to 50 girls a day. Talk to 5 girls a day, but make your interactions count for something.

Hell, take it from me, if you resolve to talk to the hottest girl you see, every day, no matter what, that mission is pretty hard in itself.

Remember that the women you're talking to are people, too. At some point in your interaction you will be trying to make a real emotional connection with them. Those who forget this turn into what Neil Strauss ('Style') called "social robots".

In Art of Attraction we have several exercises that we use to overcome approach anxiety. No jargon, no dehumanization, no objectification. A few hours after they arrive at the workshop, our students are out there flirting with cute girls and making them laugh.

In the long run, I think dehumanizing the people you talk to has even worse effects. You need to internalize that these are other people, with their own hopes, dreams, and insecurities. They’re normal people, just like you, who want to meet fun strangers and laugh with them. If they're "HBs" and "targets" you’ll think of them that way forever.

So start small. Say hi to people and smile at them. Oh my God! They smile back. Give them a sincere compliment. Oh my God! They smile bigger. Practice a standard opener that you really like. Yeah, it's a crutch. There's no problem with that because you're going to use it to make a cute girl laugh, not "pump an HB’s buying temperature through the roof". Try it on friends first and make sure they laugh. Find a supportive wing and get out there and the most important thing is...

have fun!

Niels