Planet Zongo
Irradiated by LabRat
So when reason comes around to comment on the “Pick-Up Artistry” community within my local monkeysphere region of the blogosphere, the commentary from us is invariably disparaging, and the comments that follow usually contain at least one of the following themes:
1. “Game” works if you’re using it on the right women, who presumably have bought the same 4th edition of the manual everybody is operating on.
2. PUA isn’t all bad, it teaches men things like basic social skills and confidence and the idea that rejection happens. (For the record, that’s not the part that bothers us. It’s the part where it *also* teaches men to view women as interchangeable objects rather than people. I also hear you can learn some decent survivalist techniques in a separatist neo-Nazi compound.)
3. There has to be PUA because otherwise guys with average looks and status would never have sex ever and women already view men as interchangeable objects so they gotta in pure self-defense because otherwise they might be ignored to, um, death. (The answer to why you would even want someone you believe has already dehumanized you is presumably ugly.)
Themes number one and three rather perfectly encapsulate the reason there’s such a huge gap between people who think PUA is anything other than pure bullshit and people who don’t. The reason for this is that we don’t just think it’s a toxic mindset/community because it’s dehumanizing, we think it’s a silly one because the rules and worldview they come up with bear no resemblance whatsoever to the reality we inhabit. It’s like getting dispatches from an alien world to hear what the world is “like” from the PUAs, because wherever it is, it’s obviously not here.
On Planet Zongo, where the PUAs live, human attractiveness is a unitary trait that can be measured and codified to the point where it can be placed precisely on a numerical scale. (Really. I’m not remotely exaggerating about this.) On the planet I inhabit- which I will arrogantly deem to be Earth just because it seems like there are a lot more people living here with me than on Zongo- there seems to be a lot of disagreement about what constitutes attractiveness, with some concentrated agreement at the extremes of physical perfection or disfigurement but far less so at non-extremes.
On Planet Zongo, only extremely numerically beautiful women are worth any effort from a man, and if a man is not extremely numerically attractive himself through a complicated formula of looks and status, he will die a virgin unless he develops advanced techniques and the persistence to hit on 300 high-scorers and get 299 rejections. On Earth, more people of both sexes have both short-term sexual flings and long-term romantic relationships than don’t no matter their gender, often average-looking people are in relationships with above-average people regardless of whether they used any special technique, and people broadly agreed to be very above average are sometimes- not even infrequently- lonely and feel like they can’t catch a break in their love life. On Zongo, the average guy with an average job is celibate and extremely bitter about it; on Earth, the average guy with the average job has a girlfriend as often as not, if not a wife.
On Planet Zongo, women experience a state of constant sexual Nirvana in which anything she wants is available to her at a come-hither gesture. On Planet Earth, some women are lonely and experience dating and even casual sex as challenging and often unfulfilling.
On Planet Zongo, the amount of sex someone has is readily predicted by mathematical formula by status and attractiveness. On Planet Earth, some average-looking and even conventionally ugly and not particularly high-status people are having mind-blowing amounts of sex and need a flowchart to keep track of their relationships, and some very conventionally attractive and successful people are lonely and wish their love lives were better*.
On Planet Zongo, if sex isn’t doled out on basis of deserving or earning it, it’s because there’s something wrong with society. On Planet Earth, assholes and bitches sometimes get lots of sex and even lots of long-term relationships, and great people sometimes don’t get much of either. There doesn’t seem to be a relationship to deserving, just connections formed and sex drives involved.
On Planet Zongo, most sexual relationships are begun in clubs after an elaborate series of skill checks and many rejections. On Planet Earth, most sexual relationships are begun through mutual circles of friends, employees, and other non-sexual social contexts, and begin as friendly association.
On Planet Zongo, only people strongly fitting a stylized version of gender roles have heterosexual sex. On Planet Earth, effeminate men, tomboyish or even outright butchy women, the androgynous, genderqueers, nerdy, awkward, and other misfits have all kinds of sex, with heterosexual being the majority by sheer weight of sexuality.
On Planet Zongo, gender relations are a competitive game which, in any given interaction, one must lose and one must win. Men win by having sex and then leaving, or else having a long-term no-strings arrangement; women win by marrying. (Which, somehow she ALSO wins by then dissolving.) On Planet Earth, casual sex both parties enjoyed is a win for both, and marriage to someone really awesome you want to be with all the time is actually the goal for many. Sometimes both people lose when things blow up or bad decisions are made, though. Usually it’s still either win/win or lose/lose.
On Planet Zongo, if someone says something mean and disparaging to you, it’s either a come-on, a test, or both. On Planet Earth, if someone says something mean and disparaging to you and isn’t *very clearly* kidding, it means they don’t like you and you should go away.
Really, I do get that there is a subculture out there that operates by Zongo rules and that some women as well as men live on Zongo. You don’t have to explain that to us any more than you have to explain the existence of very religiously orthodox communities where opposite sexes talking to each other is a Big Huge Hairy Ritualized Deal. It’s when you try to tell me that Zongo is Earth when it’s very clearly nowhere I live, or try to explain why you have simply no choice but to stay on Zongo when there’s lots of people on Earth and moving is as easy as adapting to the new local norms… that’s when you lose me. What’s so fantastic about Zongo, anyway? I’ve never met anyone who lived there that seemed happy.
As a somewhat side closing note, I HAVE known a rare few people that seemed to enjoy nearly unlimited sexual and romantic success, both as measured by number of contacts and number of relationships that ended amicably. The thing is- and the thing that baffles me about the Zongo dwellers’ ideas about the formula for success- is that none of them have been all that conventionally attractive or financially successful or famous. The thing they all had in common was none of the conventional “alpha” stuff, but rather that they were tremendously gregarious people who genuinely liked and were interested in nearly everybody they met. They were all nice without ulterior motivation and did things like remember everybody’s birthdays and details about them and their families as though it were as second nature as breathing. (I suspect, to them, it was.) Most companies and offices have someone like this, it’s just not all of them are that interested in also having sex with lots of people in addition to talking and laughing with them. I doubt it can be imitated or aped- god knows I wouldn’t have the energy, or the sheer sustained interest in so many other people- but it’s what seems to actually “work”, if anything does.
*This has been consistently borne out in my own social circle, anyway, and the older I get the more true it seems to be.
January 17th, 2011 at 6:21 pm
We have a close friend who has spent most of his life on Planet Zongo. Nice fellow, attractive in a general way and successful in the financial world. He got into PUA in a big way when he was young and over time it turned into a way of life.
Pushing 50 now he’s said for years that he’d like to settle down and I believe him. The thing is that in 30 years of treating sex as sport he never learned any of the skills one needs to have a long term relationship.
January 18th, 2011 at 12:21 am
File this comment under category #2. Maybe throw in some “tl;dr” on top of it. Brevity is not my strong suit - I apologize in advance.
The nice thing about… oh, let’s call it Zongoism, is that, if you’re the type of guy who assumes that women are inherently pure, superior, and so forth and insist on engaging in creepy-grade “chivalry” (i.e. not treating the woman as a person but instead as a holy relic), having someone whisper in your ear that women are, in fact, flawed and human might help balance things out. Of course, those tendencies usually exist in an environment of extremely poor self-esteem (“I’m unworthy”) mixed with extreme objectification of women (“Women are universally good and pure, irrespective of the actual woman I’m thinking of”), so you’re basically substituting one form of objectification with another. The hope is that, in the process of improving your own self-esteem and learning to deal with women as flawed creatures instead of sacred objects of adoration, you might actually learn how to deal with women as human beings along the way. Sometimes it works. Other times it just works better than creepy chivalry, which is still progress, at least of a sort.
I’m not going to lie - I’m a fan of PUA techniques in much the same way that I’m a fan of, say, Ayn Rand, or perhaps Newtonian physics. What this means is that I view it as a “good start” for discussion and understanding, in that it provides testable hypotheses, a systematic approach to the understanding of human relationships, and some moderately accurate general guidance on “what works when”. Be gregarious, be confident, and don’t treat every “no” as a dagger pressed against the soft flesh of your soul. So far, so good. Also, women want sex just as badly as guys do, and, far more often than not, if you deal with women the same way you would deal with men (i.e. if you wouldn’t put up with it if your best friend did it, don’t put up with it if a woman does it), it’ll go much better for you than if you shower her with gifts and attention, regardless of her behavior. Sensible stuff. At the very least, it’s better than nothing, and certainly more accurate than random guessing or clueless aping of social conventions first outlined in Sir Walter Scott novels.
Like most simple models, however, the devil is in the details. Yes, being playful is good, but the line between “playful teasing” and “insulting a stranger” is a fine one and quickly crossed. Also, there isn’t much literature in the PUA community for how to properly handle long term relationships, which is both a reflection of the PUA community’s focus and on difficulties of modeling the needs and desires of your girlfriend versus what attracts women in general. There’s still some fairly solid advice to be had there - don’t let yourself go, don’t socially clam up just because you’re in a relationship now, be friendly with her friends, maintain your own interests and friends instead of letting her life consume yours, and don’t be afraid to kick her to the curb if she thinks a committed relationship gives her carte blanch to turn into a human barnacle or a spoiled brat. Past that, though, things get complicated and that’s where the model quickly breaks down.
None of this means that Zongoism is counterproductive or useless. No, it’s not perfectly accurate, it undoubtedly generalizes far too much human behavior, and parts of it break down in longer term relationships, but it’s at least better than random guessing and misplaced superstition. We just need something better to transition to before the PUA community tries to create the relationship equivalent of String Theory.
January 18th, 2011 at 7:17 am
Oatworm,
“Also, women want sex just as badly as guys do, and, far more often than not, if you deal with women the same way you would deal with men (i.e. if you wouldn’t put up with it if your best friend did it, don’t put up with it if a woman does it)”
This might be shocking to those on Zongo, but that’s generally how it is here on Earth, too. (Although I find it interesting that you make it implicit that “best friend” ≠ “woman”. Here on Earth one is allowed to have best friends of the opposite sex.
)
January 18th, 2011 at 8:54 am
So… where can a guy get laid around here?
January 18th, 2011 at 10:15 am
Labrat - <3
Oatworm - PUA is, indeed, better than "random guessing and misplaced superstition."
It's a good thing those aren't your only two choices!
I think a lot of PUA believers' resistance to criticism comes from feeling like they're being told not to talk to women, or not get laid. I wish I could communicate some way that really stuck that PUA isn't "you'll get laid, but it's wrong"; it's more like "dude, if you knocked that wrong shit off, you'd probably get laid." Especially the really good kind of laid, the kind you get with a girl who doesn't just allow sex but actively wants to rock your world. I don't think you can neg your way into that.
January 18th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Tam: I played the odds on the “best friend” front. Besides, I’ve met more than a few guys with female “best friends” that are “best friends” with a girl because they’re afraid to ask them out. Heck, that’s the plot of more than a few rom-coms out there - if it didn’t resonate at least a little, they’d switch to a different trope to beat, bludgeon, and abuse. It’s also the subject of more than a few articles, like this one on Wired: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/05/alt-text-nice-guys-guide/
And, like anything else on the Internet, a blog:
http://www.heartless-bitches.com/rants/niceguys/ng.shtml
Holly: “It’s a good thing those aren’t your only two choices!” - Agreed! However, PUA is a lot easier to pick up, understand, and apply in real world situations for a lot of guys than “Treat a girl with respect, but don’t fawn over her, and common interests help, but not always and it depends on what interests she wants you to share with her, and be confident but don’t be cocky or caddish and why is it that some women are naturally attracted to bad boys, anyway?”
Probably the best way to think of this is that, on Planet Zongo, all gases are ideal, all physics is Newtonian, and space isn’t curved. On this planet, men wanted to meet women (and vice-versa, of course) and they were tired of trial-and-error. So, the men started sketching out some “rules” that, based on observation and experience, worked perfectly well with Zongo’s women. These rules were then broadcasted to the PUA community on Planet Earth, where they were cheerfully adopted because they explained *just* enough of female behavior and male-female dynamics on Earth to get a good discussion going.
Take this comment thread, for example.
Does this mean Zongoism is a complete and accurate picture of female seduction and healthy relationships? Of course not. Just as I wouldn’t try to set up a GPS system using nothing but Euclidian geometry and Newtonian physics, I wouldn’t recommend using PUA techniques to find and keep a long-term partner. Personally, I think it does a better-than-decent job of explaining the attitudes, behaviors, and desires of the “Spring Break” crowd of women, but increasingly breaks down as you start dealing with women that have either matured out of that phase of their lives through hard experience or as you start dealing with women that were too smart to go down that road in the first place. This makes sense, though - at the instinctive level, which is the focus of most PUA, men and women aren’t terribly complicated. It’s when you start dealing with personalities, intellect, and values that channel or overcome those base instincts that things get complicated and interesting. Trouble is, a lot of people freeze up when faced with “complicated and interesting”, so breaking things down a level or two can help.
As an aside, I’ll note that even the PUA community is souring on “negs” - from what I’ve gathered, they’re becoming overused, misunderstood, and misapplied. The idea behind them was to display some wit, humor, and observational skills while making the initial conversation less serious for everyone involved (things like saying, “Hey, nice shoes!” to a girl wearing ratted sneakers, for example, instead of something cheesy like, “Wow - you’re so beautiful! Can I buy you a drink?”). Somewhere along the way, that was translated into “Engage in misogynistic peacockery through gross insults in socially inappropriate situations,” which was never the point in the first place. For most women, insufferable obsolete saline-filled feminine hygiene products are just as unpleasant to deal with as creepy white-knight “nice guys” that really, really, REALLY want to talk to you.
January 18th, 2011 at 11:55 am
Sorry, I’m never going to come around to the view that the way out of treating a woman as one kind of alien object (pure virginal goddess) is to treat her as another kind of alien object (bitch slut). And I have never, *ever* gotten the slightest impression from any kind of PUA site, community, or self-appointed guru that the eventual point was to come around to seeing women as human beings very much like men are- rather that the point was to sleep with as many high-number ones as possible. I’ve heard guys like you tell me that this point was mysteriously in there somewhere- and more believably that they came to this view on their own- but if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, flies like a duck, and fucks like a duck, I’m inclined to believe it is, in fact, a duck. “In some ways better than complete hopeless alienation” does not in fact equate to “beneficial”.
Tam: I played the odds on the “best friend” front. Besides, I’ve met more than a few guys with female “best friends” that are “best friends” with a girl because they’re afraid to ask them out. Heck, that’s the plot of more than a few rom-coms out there – if it didn’t resonate at least a little, they’d switch to a different trope to beat, bludgeon, and abuse.
This being part of the point/problem- women as a mysterious puzzle lock on sex, no matter *how* you go about trying to monkey it open. The point of having friends is to have friends, not to “play the odds”, and if you’re always playing an odd then you’re not a friend, you’re an asshole. I realize you’re making the “nice guy” syndrome point- and I’m no fonder of “nice guys” than the PUAs- but I see them as two points along the same “HOW DO I BREAK THE LOCK” attitude. And as Holly points out, this attitude is in itself fundamentally alienating to women, once they pick up on it. The ladies of Zongo haven’t necessarily yet, or else are so cynical they don’t care anymore.
I understand your point generally- and like I said I *have* acknowledged some women do live on Zongo and it more or less “works”- but I’m never going to agree with “immature guys who see women as prizes and objects need to have their worldview coddled and reinforced in order to grow out of it, because some of them do eventually”.
January 18th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
“The point of having friends is to have friends”
Yes. Which is why “friend” = “not a sexual prospect”. Which is, yes, an oversimplification. As is equating “women” with “possible sexual prospects”, which he also did. It’s not so much an assumption that all women are sexual prospects as an acceptance that all women who are _not_ sexual prospects are irrelevant to a conversation about prospecting for sex.
The PUA thing annoys me, simply because it feeds into the very problem to which it purports to be a solution. Not all guys are assholes, but too many are. Not all women are asshole-magnet sluts, but too many are. And by acting as if within-epsilon of all members of a given sex conformed to the modern stereotype of that sex, we’re only encouraging the marginal member of the stereotype-defying population to go ahead and jump in. Which helps, approximately, nobody.
But for the practitioner, who’s willing (indeed, sometimes eager) to define his life that way, it works. Just because peeing in the pool that the rest of us have to swim in is rude and destructive doesn’t mean that it doesn’t accomplish the objective.
January 18th, 2011 at 1:30 pm
It’s not so much an assumption that all women are sexual prospects as an acceptance that all women who are _not_ sexual prospects are irrelevant to a conversation about prospecting for sex.
The assumption that this is such is, in my mind, part of the problem. One of the issues with PUA is they put ALL interactions between opposite-sex people as either prospecting for sex or irrelevant waste of time. My issue with Oatworm was that he immediately framed simple friendship between men and women as failed prospecting for sex.
Sure, it works if all you want is sex with people as object-minded as you are. As a model for interacting with people, period- which includes people who do not have the same bits you do- it sucks donkey balls. PUA doesn’t just tell you “here is how you have sex with Spring Break club-hoppers”, it tells you “this is the secret to how normal men and women work and anyone who doesn’t know it is a sad loser”.
January 18th, 2011 at 2:15 pm
There are a lot of male/female interactions, including PUA, and polyamory, and other things that seemed like really, really good ideas when I was in my early 20’s, but seem exceedingly silly now. With maturity comes experience and the ability to treat people as people. While having lots of sex is great, there is no way to make it happen. There is no way to make people like you, or hire you, or desire you. Contrariwise, there are many ways to irritate and annoy people.
And yes, the whole “one is either prospecting for sex or wasting time” is peurile. Basically, people are not the means to an end-even if that end is as enjoyable as sex and companionship.
January 18th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
I was raised in the South, so I respect the ladies WAY too much to pull and of that PUA crap. I just treat ladies as ladies… If I can’t sit down and have a decent conversation with someone, I’m sure as hell not going to push; also I’m old enough that I don’t really give a s**t about playing games…
January 18th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
Honestly, I wasn’t trying to imply that all non-sexual male-female friendships are “failed prospecting for sex” - I just didn’t want to get lost in English pronoun ambiguity and figured that, since we were talking about PUA techniques, which focus almost exclusively on male interactions with females they’re sexually attracted to, I’d play the odds conversationally-speaking that most people have best friends that are the same gender as them and that those who have opposite-gendered best friends would at least get the point I was trying to make (namely, if you wouldn’t put up with crap from a friend, don’t put up with it from a romantic interest). I also noted that there are enough mixed gendered “best friends” that are not actually “friends” in the platonic sense that going out of my way to choose more careful semantics to make that point in a more or less friend-gendered-neutral way could sacrifice clarity or impact (“Well, I’d let *that* ‘friend’ treat me like dirt, so what’s the problem if I let this person that’s actually reciprocating sexual attention with me treat me like dirt too?). In retrospect, I was probably mistaken.
LabRat, I do get where you’re coming from, and criticism is certainly valid of any field that claims to operate from scientific or methodological principles. Since the PUA community likes to claim “science” is on their side, or that they’re at least applying some methodology behind their work, they’re certainly not exempt from that. I’ll also concede that, like many faddishly popular models of human behavior out there, it glosses over some very important details along the way. Adding insult to injury, some of the better publicized advocates for its techniques make some ridiculously bold, sweeping claims that, if they’re true at all, are only true at the most superficial level in a very particular set of circumstances (Roissy’s amusing in an Adult Swim/Will Farrell sort of way, but I wouldn’t recommend taking his advice on anything too seriously). It kind of reminds me of chiropractic medicine - the good behind it gets lost by every screaming idiot/charlatan that claims they can cure cancer by popping your back in place. Unfortunately, many of the critiques remind me of how people dismiss chiropractors out of hand because they assume all chiropractors are over-educated masseuses with delusions of medical grandeur, and that, by extension, anyone that does business with one is a chump.
That said, let’s assume PUA is a counterproductive waste of time that feeds the egos of men that view themselves as objects and thus, by association, cannot escape viewing the rest of their fellow humans as objects, too. What’s the alternative? How do we teach men to act confidently, even when they might not be? Let’s face it - if you lack confidence and your actions and mannerisms reflect that, there’s a good chance that you’re going to get stuck on a really unpleasant vicious circle. At least if you can fake some of those mannerisms and habits, there’s a better chance that you might be placed in more situations that might build your confidence in yourself.
January 18th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
That’s the thing though, I’m not just talking about PUA techniques- I find them more silly than anything else and if a little mental game or script helps, then I see no harm- my post was about the PUA worldview. That’s the nasty, toxic part. It doesn’t just teach you how to approach women, it actively filters the entire world through all sorts of rigid filters about status, value of people, and a general sense that men are entitled to sex and silly society just makes them jump through hoops to get what should really be theirs by right. This is why I have a problem with “well, but some of the techniques work on certain people, so you can’t say it’s worthless”; you really can’t separate out some handful of the techniques from the overall misogyny of the community as a whole. Some of the scariest shit I’ve ever seen has come out of the mouths of these people- and if you want a type example, look at the way they’ve made a kind of mascot out of George Sodini. Of course the poor bastard shot some bitches, they wouldn’t give him the sex he deserved, if only someone had taught him Game.
As for “what instead”… we already have a lot of community structures that are basically designed to civilize us as we grow up. Church, school, basically any activity or community that encourages us to interact with each other like good little humans. If some men (and women, they do exist too) never learn that the opposite sex are people rather than objects… that’s a failure of parenting and society as a whole, not a reason PUA needs to exist.
As for the rest… well, it exists, and mostly it’s on the shelf labeled “self-help”. Honestly though of all the useless things that seem to be taught in schools these days, a basic course in how to act human might be good if parents aren’t doing it.
January 19th, 2011 at 11:43 am
Wow. This post and the entire discussion here in the comments are totally foreign to me. I guess getting married young, then being a single mom focused on work and school and NOT interested in partying or dating, really left me out of the loop on all this.
Probably a good thing.
I don’t get why honesty isn’t the desired/used method of approaching someone. I guess if all you’re interested in is sex, honesty could be a handicap. For those of us interested in more, honesty and open communication are the way to go. That goes for friendship, romantic relationships, and family interactions, too. Unless your family members are bugnuts, in which case be careful about being too honest.
January 19th, 2011 at 4:02 pm
I’m finding the reputation of “don’t put up with stuff from girls” a little weird. I don’t think I generally give guys stuff to “put up” with. I’m nice to guys I’m trying to woo!
If I’m being mean to a guy, I’m either having personal problems and controlling myself poorly, I don’t realize that a behavior I see as neutral is offending him, or I’m trying to get rid of him. But there’s really no “bwa ha ha, let’s see if he puts up with this” mindset.
January 20th, 2011 at 2:23 am
As the saying goes, if you see two women walking along talking to each other, the way to bet is that they are not discussing philosophy, or physics.
You, LabRat, are an outlier among the wimminz.
(like my Dear Dead Mom, who bought me subscriptions to Galaxy and Analog when I was a kid)
She could also check off all of the qualities of the Perfect Woman mentioned in Proverbs. (Made all her own clothes, canned food, home-schooled me in a week or two to help me skip a grade. She was never wrong at business or politics, and had my Dad listened to her, I would be stinking rich.)
Maybe this is one of the reasons I have trouble connecting with women; compared to my Mom, they are mostly disappointing.
Oh, and she was quite the babe, too! I have seen her high-school pictures. Being a prudent woman, she gave up her fighter-pilot boyfriends and married a reasonably steady guy, my Dad.
January 20th, 2011 at 11:03 am
Justthisguy,
“…if you see two women walking along talking to each other, the way to bet is that they are not discussing philosophy, or physics.”
Yeah, and two guys are obviously discussing Schopenhauer or pondering a Unified Field Theory rather than debating Da Bears’ chances in the playoffs and telling fart jokes.
January 20th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Aye, Tam, and I am disappointed in a lot of the guys I meet, too.
January 20th, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Second Tam said- my primary experience of random men is stupid and shallow. The only time I’ve heard random conversation about physics is eating at the more popular lunch spots on the hill.
It changes your perception when one sex is the one you’re interested in the sex with, and the other isn’t.
January 20th, 2011 at 3:22 pm
“If some men (and women, they do exist too) never learn that the opposite sex are people rather than objects… that’s a failure of parenting and society as a whole, not a reason PUA needs to exist.”
If some people are exceeding the speed limit, that’s not a reason the state police need to exist either, yet they do, and if they catch you, you’ll have a bad day.
Fact is, we _have_ that failure of parenting and society as a whole. It’s out there. And while the group of men and women (and yes, both sexes…in fact, if it were a one-sex-only problem it’d be way less of a problem for the rest of us, and more likely to self-correct) afflicted is not nearly 100%, it’s significantly more prevalent than is implied by a mere “some”.
PUA culture is a rational response to the modern mating scene in exactly the way that screw-your-buddy is a rational response to the Prisoners’ Dilemma. And predictably, the results of both are bad.
January 20th, 2011 at 4:01 pm
Matt- upon pondering I don’t think we technically disagree.
My attitude is that “it is wrong to treat people like things” is not exactly a rare message or lesson in our culture; there’s absolutely no reason not to have at least heard it if not internalized it from any of dozens of disparate authorities and institutions.
In order to get from “I’m lonely and I don’t know how to interact with the opposite sex” and get PUA, you need to be asking the question “how do I get sex” rather than “how do I figure out how to interact with people”. The latter is well covered by the self-help shelves, which are mostly innocuous and contain all the same “get some confidence, fake it till you make it, other people aren’t aliens” advice that the “good” part of PUA does, and offend nobody at all because they really are helpful.
Along the line there’s the *choice* to remain shallow, manipulative, and entitled. That’s why I distinguish “the reason it exists” from “a reason it *needs* to exist”, and why I don’t accept defense of it as valid.