Oh lord, is this an odd article.
"When you like a woman, advised Ovid, sit close to her, pretend there is dust on her breast, then brush it off. Which might lead to love but might, today, lead to a lawsuit."
A writer for The Economist went to an insanely overpriced Miami event with a dude calling himself "Mystery" (featured in The Game, back in the day).
While there's a serious problem in Western culture in pairing up...
In America, over a quarter of households contain only one person. In Britain, it is about the same. Singlehood is rising in most of the rich world. Some of these singletons are happy to be so; many are not. This matters: lonely people feel sadder, die younger and suffer poorer health than those in relationships.
it's no wonder, therefore...
"For millions feel they need them."
but it's odd to draw attention to this dying, outdated, weird-af trend.
Despite the plethora of advice, many men feel they need more. To understand how deep the need, consider the market value of the solution. In a bright, modern flat in Miami, 12 men sit on sofas. They have notebooks, and an eager air. All have come on a four-day dating “Bootcamp” given by a dating guru who has written a book subtitled “HOW TO GET BEAUTIFUL WOMEN INTO BED”. (Subtlety, and the sparing use of the capslock key, is not this movement’s strong suit.) Charging a lot is: the full course costs around $10,000.
Pick-up is now a (slightly) chastened industry. Though not, as this course shows, wholly so. As the men take notes, Mystery expands on his technique to pick up “women of beauty”. Courting, in Mystery’s telling, is less an intimate interaction than a one-man show whose tone lies somewhere between sales and comedy.
"The whole process is intensely formulaic."
For millions feel they need them. With good reason. In America, over a quarter of households contain only one person. In Britain, it is about the same. Singlehood is rising in most of the rich world. Some of these singletons are happy to be so; many are not. This matters: lonely people feel sadder, die younger and suffer poorer health than those in relationships.
There's strangely little economics in all of these, even though there are pretty cool (read: nerdy) treatments: The Romantic Economist: A Story of Love and Market Forces, which I giggled my way through during undergrad. A missed opportunity talking about the economics of mating and matchmaking: efficiency and transaction costs, asymmetric burdens, relative scarcity (e.g., sexual practices on male- vs female-dominated college campuses), hypergamy etc.
The most useful thing coming out of this article might be the astonishment that Game/PUA is still around... and the advice to get out more, clean up etc.
(...oh, and that I learned the word "halitosis")
Glossary:
- SHB: "super-hot babe"
- "LSE" = "low self-esteem" -- a perfect target
- CAVEMAN -- undefined, best guesses?
- openers -- a pick-up line used in "the attraction phase"
- gambits -- conversation starters to keep it going
- DHV = "demonstrate higher value" (= bragging about your achievements)
- negging = "accidentally" insult women, often in roundabout ways.
Also like a comedian, you should discourage hecklers and even audience interaction. He is not “interested in them”—by which he means women—“talking”.
ARchive: https://archive.md/qqMJJ