Posts
That dispenser of wisdom to would-be pickup artists known as RooshV has posted some videos of himself, I think for the first time.
The first thing I thought was, "Wow, his hair is even WORSE than it looks in stills!"
The second thing was: even if I were an aspiring PUA, I'm not convinced this guy would have much useful to teach me. Sure, the techniques he recommends sound plausible and may, in fact, work for someone like himself. But what the videos, taken in neither a sexual nor even social context, indicate to me is that he is already building on a base of raw charisma that would be extraordinarily difficult to teach or fake. It's hard to articulate the source of the charisma. The tenor of his voice, at a minimum. The structure of his face. Maybe body language is involved, in that he didn't do anything obviously off-putting. The point is, the attraction for women is obvious. I can totally believe his tales of conquest; what I don't believe is his claim that the psychological manipulation he employs would be met with the same success when used by people without his natural advantages.
UPDATE: While I'm slumming at PUA sites, I may as well link to Roissy's high-octane rant about John Edwards.
5 comments:
In regards to Roissy's Edwards rant, how exactly is it that in the first case it's Elizabeth Edwards's own fault for marrying such an awful man but then the beta man getting left by his wife on the other hand is a victim of her treachery?
Either we are ultimately responsible for who we marry (and thus EE and the beta are to blame for their own problems) or good people get screwed, in which case he should not be so tough on EE.
That's certainly not the vibe I am getting from Roissy and most particularly his commenters. Instead the presumptions seem to fall against the women and in favor of the men.
Trumwill: this is an excellent point; indeed, this reading of Roissy would make him the mirror image of the feminists (broadly speaking) that would excoriate Edwards while giving a pass to the woman who abandons her more-ordinary husband.
But I read Roissy to be saying that female loyalty has little to do with male behavior and much to do with our place in the hierarchy, and that in this respect, our social "rules" are fundamentally amoral.
For my part, I doubt that status always predicts female behavior in the way Roissy says, but it does often enough to give Roissy traction. That we realize this should not prevent us from socially enforcing a lot more fidelity all around.
Take a look at the guy called Hoobie (he starts at 4:11 in the video) who is now an instructor with the pick-up instuction company Real Social Dynamics. Even now you wouldn't think of him as a really charismatic guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBJFqF-vOrI
In the rest of the video, Hoobie says that it took him 11 months to get his first number out of this. He had to practice at this stuff.
Also, take a look at some videos of Neil Strauss (writer of The Game) on youtube and you can see he still has a pretty nerdy persona too.
I actually do not think it takes that much to stand out from the mass of ordinary guys to succeed with women. Remember, you aren't competing with George Clooney or Brad Pitt, just a bunch of ordinary slobs.
Here is the company advertisement for Transformations, with before and after photos:
http://www.becometransformed.com/index.asp
I know a guy who went to Queen's University with Tyler Durden, the main RSD instructor, and he apparently really was this squeaky voiced, uncharismatic guy.
I guess he could just be making it up to sell books, but Roosh claims that he used to be really bad with women. A key component of virtually all seduction strategies is that you have to "fake it until you make it," since success begets genuine confidence, which in turn begets more success.
So it's possible that his charisma is in fact a deliberately acquired characteristic. Though as Thursday points out, not all PUAs appear so charismatic. I saw a video of Mystery once and was struck by how uncharismatic he seemed.
Post a Comment