The only guy I've ever known who was a true pickup artist struck me as a funny case. He's very bright and entertaining. But he's also very uncouth -- sweaty, overweight, pushy, obviously untrustworthy. And his come-on is generally laughable.

You'd think he'd have a hard time winning women over. But I watched him in action a few times and I think I figured it out. He's persistent, he's unembarrassed, and he's basically sweet and eager. If I tried his approach, I'd get shot down instantly, and put in my place within milliseconds. But with him ... They let him get away with stuff that they'd never let most men get away with.

There's a typical sequence in how they react. First, they watch him in amazement. Maybe they try to shut him down in the usual way. But he persists. And, however uncouth he is, he's also funny, and he genuinely seems to like them.

There comes a moment when they seem to register that Oh, we're not playing the usual game here. Everything shifts into a slightly different dimension. And then, surprisingly often, they let themselves be swept along. They see through him, they know everything there is to be known about him right away, they know he's full of it. But he gets to them anyway. And, surprisingly often, he walks away with a phone number and a date. Classy, smart women, too -- you'd never think he'd do as well as he does. Awe-inspiringly unashamed in his approach. I was with him once at a theater, on the main floor, when he made eye contact with a woman two balconies up, and then met her in the lobby at intermission and got her phone #.

Not that his actual scoring percentages are great. But as he said to me once, "Look, even if your batting average is just one in twenty, if you come on to twenty new women every day, that means you'll be scoring with a fresh woman every 24 hours."

He's very devoted to the chase. And in his case it seems to make him happy. He's 60 or so now, and is one of the jolliest people I've ever known. But maybe he's an exception.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on September 7, 2005 11:07 AM

Pick-up artists may be an amusing subset of the human species, but they also make life miserable for most single men by creating a form of _de facto_ polygamy. The old line that 20% of the men get 80% of the women may be an exaggeration, but it has a *large* grain of truth. If, for example, you've got a pick-up artist who's dating three women simultaneously, with none of the women aware of the others' existence and all three of them considering themselves taken, two "excess" women are off the market and unavailable to less-studly single men. If we didn't have pick-up artists, and each man limited himself to one woman, I doubt we'd see singles bars resorting to "ladies drink free" promotions in usually futile attempts to get enough women, the memberships of match.com and eharmony.com wouldn't be 90+ percent male, and there wouldn't be a thriving mail-order bride industry catering to (and frequently ripping off) unlucky men.

Posted by: Peter on September 7, 2005 12:23 PM

I think women like adventurousness and lack of inhibition. For quite natural reasons -- like most human beings, women are kind of bored a lot of the time and want to be entertained. They want someone who can bring them where the action is. Being a crazy-ass arrogant liar and poseur, if you pull it off with some style and grace, demonstrates a fun adventurous quality in a certain sense. It demonstrates energy and engagement. Women respond to that, and I don't blame them.

Neil Strauss is partially responsible for perhaps the best book ever written about rock and roll, Motley Crue's "The Dirt". Just a great, classic book. For that reason alone he deserves to get laid a lot.

Posted by: MQ on September 7, 2005 12:56 PM

Strikes me that the whole thing's a nightmare, no matter how "successful" the pickup artist may be, in that no ones being himself, herself, theirself.
How much less insane existence is without putting on an act, putting up a front -- albeit lonely (which, by the way, is inescapable -- even by pickup artists).

Posted by: ricpic on September 7, 2005 8:22 PM

I dunno, isn't this basically the "be an asshole and you'll get laid" bit? Tell me something I don't know.

Ditto what someone said above, these guys take a lot of deluded women off the market who think they're in a "relationship".

Posted by: Brian on September 8, 2005 11:15 AM

I love Neil Strauss--at least I loved The Dirt and How to Make Love. (I did not love the rather solipsistic and pointless Dave Navarro Coffee/Cracktable book. But whatevs.)

What I find interesting in these comments, and in the idea of the pick-up artist in general, is the underlying assumption that women don't want to be seduced.

Women do. I do. Why is it necessarily a bad thing that we get seduced by men who are committed to seduction?

We womenfolk are not always looking for a longterm mate. Sometimes we just want some good old-fashioned zipperless shagging.

We're supposed to expect the "good guys" to give us that ambient free-form fornication? Or is it that we are not supposed to want it at all?

Or is it merely that we are supposed to feel badly about wanting it?

I think it's the desire that causes the conundrum, really.

Posted by: chelsea girl on September 8, 2005 11:32 AM






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