Here's a piece of advice from me to you.

Pickup is very much a part of understanding social constructs and behaviors. It follows that if you are familiar with why people act the way that they do, you have the potential to be a good conversationalist and further down, better at attracting the opposite sex. You learn why people are attracted to certain things, why some situations are difficult or not worth the time to invest in and why certain behaviours and words can make people feel uncomfortable or at ease. Ultimately, these all play a role in how you interact with different people and begin to explain why some techniques work on some and others don't.

I think people here follow rules almost too literally and treat them as if they were laws that shouldn't be broken. And if these rules are followed, the doer can't do anything wrong. There's a lot of room for error when moving from theory to application, in any field. I remember seeing a thread a while back where people were congratulating some guy for approaching an older woman who clearly gave signals that she wasn't interested like "my youngest son is 23" or "why aren't you talking to younger girls". Of course somewhere down in the comment section someone wrote that she was acting like a bitch and got quite a few upvotes.

I understand that newcomers typically don't have the greatest background in being socially adept. And the first few interactions that anyone has trying to pickup someone else are going to be awkward because you will make mistakes and not know why you made them. But this community needs to stop blindly encouraging individuals without constructively pointing out what went wrong or why people act the way they do.