A few weeks ago Roosh was in town so me and my buddy Steve had a few beers with him. It turned into quite a spirited chat on travel, girls and game. One topic was on what I label “value-based game“. Much of pick up teaching is focused on the in-set technical behaviours that are meant to shuttle you through the stages of your model. Taken to extremes this can lead you to becoming an approach machine, obsessing over micro-managing your technique and over-thinking it all. I’m all in favour of getting the technique right but lets not kid ourselves over it’s importance.

Men can mentally undress women in seconds. No amount of makeup and careful fashion styling can fool a sober man in the cold light of day. We are hard-wired to deconstruct a woman’s facial symmetry, proportions, posture, body fat, skin elasticity and so on. Where her grooming hides something we are instinctively attuned to watch for any movement, gesture or ray of light that fills in that blank. Put simply, men know how to assess the physical value of a women very very quickly. And once sussed out, 90% of women have already been screened in or out. It’s only in the grey areas, at the fringes of indecision, where grooming is make or break (extreme faux pas aside).

Women are the same. They are hardwired to sniff out your value. If you don’t have it, all the technique in the world won’t save you. Being overly reliant on technique makes you one of those clowns running up and down Oxford Street opening 100 women in order to get one lay with the 95th-ugliest of them. As I’ve said before, you do have to put the time in. Just keep it in proportion while you also work on your value.

Unfortunately, marketing a PUA method towards the Technique Junkies is an easy sell. It requires the student ask few hard questions of himself and make few changes to his life. You may think you are giving it 100% by going out several times a week but unless you are assessing your whole life pattern, chances are you’re setting yourself an Ego Trap to avoid dealing with the main issues, issues that are still to painful to address.

The PUA industry has created its own little sub-ecosystem of junkies and enablers. Small companies of pretenders use smoke ‘n’ mirrors marketing guff to get technique junkies to pay to feel like they are really making changes. Think of it as the PUA version of a strip mall ninjitsu / tae kwon do club – the teachers pretend to teach and the students pretend to learn. If enough cheques clear, the student advances up the belt structure until he’s a fully-fledged blackbelt…. who can’t fight. This business model works because it requires little skill from the instructors and neatly sidesteps all the tough grind for the students. In sharp contrast, the attrition rate in a BJJ or boxing gym is horrendous. The brutal ego destruction students receive first time they step on a BJJ mat is enough to send most of them back into the fantasy world of the Karate Kid.

Youtube is full of promo come-ons for rubbishy instructors. My dear readers should be sufficiently savvy to recognise a two-bit operation when they see one so I’ll resist the urge to point and laugh. Women can sniff out the men who aren’t getting laid. Before you hand over money to a coach just size him up and ask yourself “does he look like the kind of guy a hot woman would fuck”?

* EDIT – I removed direct references to one particular company and instructor.