Seduction communities and NLP

rubygeek · 2010-06-10T15:58:00+00:00

A lot of the "seduction community" techniques etc. are more or less considered by many to be "training wheels", and increasing confidence is indeed a large part of it - having a fallback to give you something to say, and rituals to follow, works for many to boost confidence, or at least to hide their lack of confidence until they can get enough positive experiences.

Some training wheels and increased confidence alone will get you very far. The biggest problems guys have are 1) that they don't approach, 2) that their entire body language and way of acting gets fucked up and creepy because they are worried about rejection. You can verify that these two things makes a difference by doing a few small exercises yourself: Approach, and test different body language (slump forward, vs. pull shoulders back; smile at people vs. frown; stead eye contact vs. shifty eyes). In other words, these are testable.

Fix the confidence issue, and correct some body language, and what remains is largely skills that are easy to see the results of, such as conversational skills combined with simply learning to understand social cues. They are also easily testable: Try going up to random people and ask interview style questions vs. making statements, note their reactions, for example.

A large part of the community does advocate spending time testing things in field as opposed to blindly accepting things.

But you can safely assume that a good chunk of what's being sold as good advice by this community is pure and utter bullshit. But a lot of it is good too, and based on experience and testing.

Really, your best bet is just to put yourself out there and try various techniques and figure out which ones work for you. Preferably before you start putting down money for programs and books etc. There's so much basic material around freely that covers most of the major methods that you should have no problem getting an idea of what's good and what's not. I'm saying that rather than make claims about specific companies because I think a lot of the different methods work differently for different personalities and for people at different stages.

intjpua · 2010-06-10T19:07:07+00:00

I haven't seen very much talk of NLP or patterns in seddit. I don't think most of us are of that particular school of thought on pickup and seduction.

In sort of the same genre, I've seen conversational hypnotists do really interesting things, and I've been reading a little about it just because it's interesting. We know hypnotic suggestion is real, so it's interesting to study, though we also know that hypnotic suggestion isn't really a means for long-term changes (hypnosis to quit smoking or lose weight, for example, isn't any more effective than any other placebo effect based treatment). So, you can definitely momentarily mesmerize someone into saying or doing something somewhat out of the ordinary...but you can't make them fall in love with you, or keep them in a suggestible state throughout the night long enough to sleep with them (thankfully; that would be a really scary world).

I'm also highly suspicious of anything that derives from "self-help", and even more suspicious of people who claim to understand the human mind well enough to "program" it. A lot of self-help gurus make big claims of being self-made and having turned their lives around...but, in a lot of cases their big successes in life involve merely selling a self-help program to desperate people, which isn't really all that impressive; you can sell anything to desperate people if you talk to enough of them (see Shake Weight for an example, but any diet and exercise product that advertises on late night TV is probably also an example).

NLP, and the language and cult-like organizations around it, reminds me a lot of Scientology, though there does seem to be a bit more intellectual competence in the people who created it (vs. LRH, who was merely a pathological liar, and probably a paranoid schizophrenic; though NLP does seem to be the same sort of hodge podge of science+pseudoscience that made up Scientology, only a few years later and so a little bit more advanced along the timeline).

In short: I don't know. I'm not an expert on NLP, and the examples I've seen of it being used in seduction strike me as creepy and uncomfortable, so it's not something I've spent much time with. It's pretty hard to test. Some girls will like you no matter what you say, as long as you give the impression of confidence. Some girls will overlook your negatives because she's lonely or bored. So, even if NLP were more or less effective than just being confident and fun, it'd be hard to prove. That which is not testable is not science. Given that so much of pickup is reliant on the state of mind of the person trying to pick someone up, if the person believes NLP works better than other methods, if they did a comparison they'd probably find that NLP is better. Likewise is they believe NLP is cheesy and creepy, they'd probably find that NLP is less effective than just being confident and funny.

As rubygeek has astutely pointed out, pretty much everything in the "techniques" and "routines" category of advice is training wheels. It's what you do until you just naturally do the right thing. If it makes you feel more confident to have "patterns" to run, then it will help you in the field. If it makes you trip over your words and nervous about remembering a bunch of stuff, then it will hurt you in the field. I found that canned material of any kind (whether pattern based or otherwise) generally hurts my game, because I'm not good at delivering memorized scripts, but I'm pretty good at telling stories (I'm a published writer, so I have some practice) and being interesting and challenging in conversation.

Sublomino · 2010-06-10T21:15:23+00:00

I have a moderate amount of experience with NLP, and yes it does work if you use it with common sense. The aggressive marketing tends to over-promise, so when you actually learn NLP you tend to get into it with a sort of delusion about how powerful it's supposed to be. But when you get down into the details, in my experience, at the very least, 4/5 of everything in NLP can be backed up by sound psychological research. NLP practitioners take this science and transform it into an art, and at that point what matters most is the effectiveness of the person who uses it, not the effectiveness of NLP itself. That's where NLP practitioners take the science and re-jigger it into bizarre techniques that, well, may or may not be effective, depending on the experience of the practitioner.

If you want to learn the most important lessons of NLP and a bit of general psychology, without all the hype, you should check out anything from the world of academic "positive psychology". I'm really into Tal Ben-Shahar at the moment. This is where the hard research is discussed in detail. Since this field was only recently created in 1999, it's much more up-to-date on all the latest research, and it will cover the majority of what's important to learn in NLP anyways.

The skeptic dictionary article is an example of what they call "fault-finding" in positive psychology. Yes, everything has it's faults, but a few faults does not negate all the benefits. Even Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves, gave a speech about how whites are superior to blacks, but we don't fault him for that. Skeptic Dictionary needs it's own skeptical article written about itself.

The biggest benefit you will get is from trying, failing, learning from failure, and trying again, which will improve your self-esteem. It's not the getting the girl that will improve your self-esteem, but the learning from failure. Thinking that you have "mind powers" actually does not produce real confidence, it just produces a big ego and an avoidance of taking action, because you don't want to fail and be proven wrong about your supposed mind powers. Actually applying, trying, failing, and learning is where the real confidence comes from. And the real mind powers you learn are not super-human, they are just the real-world lessons you learn along the way through experience.

strongoaktree · 2010-06-10T15:36:36+00:00

I bought "Neuro-Linguistic Programming for Dummies"

It set me straight about a few misconceptions.

But yeah, there are lots of tricks, but the first two steps in starting to pick up women is to always smile and to be confident. These are obviously the biggest and most important steps. Everything else are just tricks and techniques that are useful for the smiling, confident man.

2010-06-11T01:33:27+00:00

NLP is a word created by Richard Bandler to replace hypnosis, which is the word we use for "the induction of the placebo effect through talking".

One key form of the placebo effect: Instead of getting scared and feeling pulled back by yourself when you see a pretty girl, turn it around. Use the energy inside to build yourself up! That energy has to manifest, so might as well make it something positive that she can enjoy too!

rmbarnes · 2010-06-10T19:42:27+00:00

NLP is an offshoot of psychology. Psychology isn't actually a 'real' science, as the theories cannot be proven in the same way they can in a real science, like physics for example. Most psychologically theories are nothing more than opinions. That means that NLP won't be scientifically proven, however this does not mean it doesn't work. I'm not saying it does work, just that the fact that it can't be scientifically proven doesn't mean it doesn't work.

As for other PUA techniques, these are basically just ways for people lacking confidence with women to mimic the way people who are confident with women would act.

Lets think of someone who isn't successful with women, say a computer geek. If they get to talk to a beautiful woman, they are not going to feel confident. They are going to feel like the fact that they are actually speaking to a hottie means this is their one chance to actually bang a stunner. This is going to make them very self concious, resulting in lack of eye contact, and defensive body language. When the woman tries to make them jump through hoops, they will, because they are desperate to please her. When she makes fun of him he will get defensive, because he lacks confidence.

Now take someone who is great with women. I'm going to go all in and say George Clooney. He's fucked many beautiful women and knows he can fuck many more. He knows that when he's in a bar, he can take home virtually any girl there. So when he talks to a hotty, he will feel confident. He will have good body language and make eye contact. He won't take any shit from her, since he knows he can just have another girl as hot as her.

So the key is to be confident. Right. Let's tell our computer geek to just be confident, and he will get the girls. Simple! But wait. You can't just decide to be confident and it magically happens. Our computer geek first needs to be successful with women before he is confident around them.

Oh fuck, chicken or the egg situation.

So how can our geek be successful with women without being confident around them. He can fake being confident. If he gives the outward signs of confidence, he will do will with women, even if he's terrified inside. Then when he gets success through faking it, his success will mean he really is confident.

Another problem now arises. Our geek doesn't know in detail the external signs of confidence which people like George Clooney display around women. But wait. What if there were some kind of system, consisting of various techniques, each of which was designed to mimic the behaviour of people who are successful with women? Then the geek can just learn these techniques, use them when he speaks to women and he will appear confident enough around them to have some success until he actually gets real confidence.

And this is what game is. A set of techniques which allow the practitioner to mimic the behaviours of men who are confident with women.

2010-06-11T06:28:21+00:00

None of the successful PUAs and gurus I know use NLP. It's weird, it's creepy, and you don't need it. Although the principles are interesting, it's also somewhat hard to effect in others.

Save the NLP for yourself, and use it to create massively strong inner game. Check out "The Self Talk Solution" by Dr. Shad Helmstetter, wherein he teaches you how to consciously and deliberately re-program your inner running thoughts and thereby transform your life. The best and most useful book I have ever read; it saved my life, literally, and its principles are making me a better PUA and person daily. If there is ANYTHING you want to do better, this book will show you how.

Title	Seduction communities and NLP
Author	new_prisma
Upvotes	8
Comments	9
Date	June 10, 2010 2:31 PM UTC (16 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/seduction
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/seduction/comments/cdjxo/seduction_communities_and_nlp/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/seduction/seduction-communities-and-nlp.1310560 https://theredarchive.com/post/1310560

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