Guest post: Pick-up artists and sociopathy

It occurred to me while reading your posts that the pick-up artist (PUA) community essentially teaches "normal" people sociopathic behavior, or at least something really similar. They borrow heavily from theoretical frameworks like neuro-linguistic programming and other areas of psychology/psychotherapy in order to systematize the art of manipulating and seducing women. As an adjunct, there's also a body of concepts dedicated exclusively to disarming any male competition/protectors/significant others. Here's a slice of the mental flowchart involved in something like Bait-Hook-Reel-Release theory:

"A Hook is when she genuinely answers a question, complies, or responds to the artist’s DHV [demonstration of higher value] with an IOI [indicator of interest]. If she is not hooked, neg [throw a light backhanded compliment] and roll off [start to break away to bait them into chasing you]." (http://www.pualingo.com/pua-definitions/bait-hook-reel-release-bhrr/)

As you can probably tell, the community is blighted by a juvenile obsession with its own jargon, BUT many of the core concepts are field tested and sound. One big side effect of becoming proficient at pick-up is that you come to see people as predictable, exploitable, and inferior systems--mere concatenations of switches to be flipped before some utility can be produced. Unsurprisingly, charges of teaching sociopathy are not unheard of from within the PUA community:

"The whole thing is set up to make you view women as unreal, and merely as objects for your own sexual gratification and validation. People you aren't sexually interested in are supposed to only register as possible obstacles to using a girl for sex, if they register at all. . . . So you're always leading on chicks you aren't interested in, just to "practice" or "socially proof" yourself, or maybe use her as a gateway to her friends?" (http://www.puahate.com/showthread.php?t=6051)

If you haven't already, I can recommend reading "The Game" by Neil Strauss for an entertaining look into the minds of both fledgling and veteran pick-up artists. Because of the notable similarities between the methods/goals of pick-up and sociopathic behavior, it might be useful (and easy) for sociopaths to add some PUA tools to their arsenal. My apologies if this is already quite obvious to you--I didn't see much writing on the subject on your blog, so I figured it couldn't hurt to e-mail you about it.

Best,

Aspiring Sociopath