It’s not a good time to be a pick-up artist, or the sort of bloke who relies on his “wisdom”, or whatever it is you’d call that noxious guff they emit on a regular basis, like a cow with irritable bowels. On one hand you’ve got Julien Blanc, provoking such a strong backlash with his seminars on using violence to attract women that he’s literally being thrown out of countries. On the other, you’ve got the Dapper Laughs, with his ITV2 show about how to chat up women being cancelled, along with several live events, following a campaign and footage of him saying some horrific things to a woman at one of his gigs.

The perils of “banter”, eh?

But overlooking the wider social implications of these events, the immediate consequence is clear: two powerful figures in the world of the pick-up artist have been seriously limited or eradicated altogether. This leaves something of a power vacuum. And what if you’re a man who wants to fill it? Perhaps the thought of there being thousands of women going about their day without being the target of lechery or harassment brings you out in a cold sweat, and you want to do something to prevent this.

Despite their apparent complexity and widespread use, the methods of pick-up artists are largely pseudoscientific nonsense, so what better way to achieve dominance (which is the most important thing, after all) than by using actual science?

What follows are some simple but scientifically valid techniques to help you become the sort of person your mother would have likely hated.

Confidence

A pick-up artist needs to be confident. There’s no chance of you controlling a potential sexual partner if you’re riddled with doubts and anxieties. You may have noticed that many well known pick-up artists resemble a walking bag of sadness that’s been sponsored by Gillette, but they don’t seem to care. And why not? Confidence, that’s why.

There are many psychological approaches to improving your confidence, but the best way may be to exploit the Dunning-Kruger effect, which shows that less intelligent people are more confident and certain in their opinions and behaviour. The obvious solution, therefore, is to make yourself less intelligent. Stop thinking about anything beyond your own immediate needs or wants, ignore the views and input of others, and avoid exposing yourself to anything that might suggest you’re wrong in some way. Before you know it, you’ll have no idea why you shouldn’t be confident.



This intelligence lowering can start whenever you like. If you read to the end of this piece and feel that it is helpful advice, then you’re well on your way.

Priorities

It’s important, to be a pick-up artist, to get your priorities right. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, often referenced in discussions of human motivation, places “sex” at the very bottom, among physiological needs, meaning it’s one of the most basic of human drives. While this position is often deemed controversial, you should actually increase the emphasis on it. All other physiological needs (food, water, sleep etc) should be considered as necessary for the obtaining of sex. Because without regular sex with random partners, how can you call yourself a man?

It’s really easy, actually. Obscenely so. But let’s not dwell on that.

Entitlement

It’s not enough to just want sex and feel confident enough to get it; you have to believe you deserve it. A sense of entitlement has many consequences for behaviour which will make being a pick-up artist easier, so you need to convince yourself that you’re not violating the rights of innocent people via harassment and aggression; you’re simply taking what is owed to you. After all, you’re a man, stood there with a penis and everything, and it would be a crime to waste it.

But then, it’s also a crime, an actual and much worse one, to force yourself onto another human being who does not wish you to do so. Which leads to the next point …



Objectification

A successful pick-up artist will need to get rid of any existing notion that women are independent humans with autonomy or free will or anything like that. A human with free will might use it to say “no”. So it’s important to reduce women to something less than human.

There are many routes to this, but society itself helps via objectification theory, which argues that objectification of the female form by society leads many women to develop a sense of inferiority and lack of self-worth, and thus they end up prioritising the needs of others and reducing autonomy. This allows a pick-up artist to use moral exclusion, where groups of others (in this case, all women) are thought of as inferior or sub-human to the point where the moral standards don’t apply to them. So you don’t need to worry about moral concerns regarding your behaviour towards them.

You can keep this objectification maintained via things like emotional prejudice. Subtle, complex secondary emotions are the preserve of real humans like you, whereas cruder, primary emotions like fear and anger can be demonstrated in animals. And women so often express these primary emotions, eg they’re always angry around you, for some reason.

Dissonance

One problem with wanting to be a pick-up artist is that you probably have some sense of self-worth and think of yourself as a decent person, but being a pick-up artist isn’t really compatible with this. So how do you justify these ridiculously awful behaviours towards women?

You could argue that you’re just not confident with women, and the techniques and methods of a pick-up artist are an effective substitute for what you lack in confidence. After all, they work don’t they? Arguably yes, some do claim pick-up artist techniques do work. But so does anthrax. The effectiveness of your methods doesn’t excuse you for using them.

Resorting to pick-up artist techniques because you’re intimidated by women is like using heroin to treat a toothache because you’re afraid of the dentist. It may provide a short-term solution and some fleeting pleasure, but you’re actually doing yourself a great deal more harm in the long run, and your rotten tooth is still there.

Perhaps you feel validated because women have hurt you before and don’t deserve respect or consideration? Hate to have to break it to you, but that’s not what happened; some people hurt you, perhaps brutally, and they happened to be women, a type of human, and humans can be awful. Your own negative experience, however traumatic, doesn’t justify stripping rights from half the human race.

Perhaps you actually do feel that pick-up artist techniques are fine because you really are an awful person.

Fair enough, at least you’re honest. Now please go and be repugnant somewhere else.

Some pick-up artists or their supporters may be angry about this piece because it makes crude and unfair generalisations about a large group of people for the purposes of fleeting entertainment. Not fun when that happens, is it?



Dean Burnett says this entire piece is actually an elaborate example of “negging”, so any pick-up artist who complains is basically admitting their methods don’t work. He’s on Twitter, @garwboy