I want to address three main topics here:

  1. Why the bulk of 'Seddit' material is useless or counter-productive;
  2. Why the place many of you are coming from is unattractive;
  3. My general advice on how to proceed in life and with women.

WHY PICKUP MATERIAL WILL HURT, RATHER THAN HELP YOU

The two chief motivating memes in pickup are 1) that it's a numbers game, and you just need to be really sociable and 2) that the material works on all women and will improve your results across the board.

Together, these two ideas create a kind of religious synergy, because if you approach a girl and your results don't work, you just say it's the numbers game at work. If you get lucky and a girl responds, you attribute it to the pickup material.

The same logical fallacy is at work in prayer. If I pray for a red bicycle for years and years and eventually my parents buy me one, it would be incorrect to attribute the red bicycle to my prayers when in fact, year after year, my prayers did nothing. Likewise, if I attribute the time I picked up a girl to the pickup material I learned, it is going to white-wash the fact that in at least 9/10 cases it doesn't work. But if I falsely attribute my success to pickup, then I'm not going to learn the lesson of what I did do right - if anything - on that 10th try.

An additional issue I see here a lot is the idea that if what you're doing isn't working, you just have to try harder. ("If God doesn't answer your prayers, you just need to believe more!") If I do something and it doesn't work, I try a different approach.

And realistically, for all of the field reports you guys post where you have a success, I bet you've got 20-30 where you don't get anything.

YOUR INSECURITIES AND ARROGANCE ARE NOT ATTRACTIVE

Most people - including some friends of mine who've been sucked into this subculture - come to pickup from a place of incredible personal angst and insecurity. They've never been successful with women and, because of their behavior, view women with skepticism or hatred and see them as 'manipulative' or 'powerful'. I see a lot of posts here as well positing that women have leverage over men and can someone make them do their bidding, with pickup being the man's secret weapon to 'even the odds'.

I have the feeling a lot of guys here go on 'seek and destroy' missions, with each successful field report being a little personal triumph. Typical 'notch on the bedpost' behavior. Who really wants notches on his bedpost the most? The guy who has none. A lot of other posts here are aimed at covering up this fundamental insecurity. You've got to be 'alpha' and 'in state', you have to have 'inner game' and develop 'abundance mentality'. In other words, you're psycho-conditioning yourself to ignore your own lack of confidence. Fake it until you make it, etc.

Outsiders looking in, like me, don't like pickup for this reason. You're actors at your core, and the only way you're able to get laid is to be really stealthy about the fact that you don't actually believe you're as awesome as you pretend to be, that if you had your choice, you'd rather be at home reading a book than prowling around a mall chatting up random strangers (because let's be honest -- someone who has a successful social life doesn't do that stuff, and if you do, you are being creepy whether you admit it or not). You invent stories, true or not, to 'demonstrate high value'.

Scratch the surface and there's a very troubled soul underneath.

Women are people as well. Treating them as 'targets' is not only profoundly misogynistic, but misanthropic. Half of the human race is not your enemy. They want fun, exciting relationship as much as you. Approach women like that - as equals, offering your personality honestly and straightforwardly, without playing games and you'll attract someone to you who finds you authentically enjoyable. Put on an act, like you're doing, and you'll attract the sort of women who like your act, and will dump you as soon as the real you is revealed.

SO, FINALLY, MY ADVICE:

I'm assuming you all want high quality women. A girl who is loyal, beautiful, kind, trustworthy, intelligent, successful. I'm wary of being prescriptive, but don't you think that girls like that will have discerning taste and will quickly see past superficial appearances?

Then again, it's not rocket science: be a strong, honorable, decent, humorous, generous, sociable, moderate, fair, open, courageous, industrious man. Embody masculine values. Be educated, have hobbies, work hard at what you love. Find friends who share your values and want to do good in the world -- make common cause with the best men and women mankind can produce. Maintain high ethical and moral standards at all time, because nothing else is less attractive than a sleaze, a liar, a cheat.

Approach other people, men or women, as equals and try to see and understand them for what they are, and try to see what they want and need. Don't try to please everybody or fuck anyone who moves just for the sake of writing up another field report. A man is also judged by his enemies, not only by his friends.

Do what you enjoy. Fix a motorcycle. Travel, read some books, educate yourselves, take up new hobbies, and you won't need to memorize dumb routines that only work on people who don't have any of the above - which is, sadly, a big chunk of the population. You'll be able to have a real conversation with people about topics you care about. Girls whose chief reading consists of Cosmo need not apply.

As for the rest, there are just a few easy rules (remembering, as always, that rules were made to be broken): 1. always ask for the number; 2. be assertive; 3. show respect and decency.

IN CONCLUSION,

who do you think is more attractive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_humboldt

OR

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Strauss

"Happiness is activity in accordance with the highest excellence." - Aristotle