Seduction Community - Media Coverage

Media Coverage

The seduction community has received increased media attention, since the publication of Neil Strauss' article on the community in The New York Times, and his bestselling memoir The Game. Response to the seduction community has been varied; it has been called misogynistic, and a review of The Game in the San Francisco Chronicle characterized the community as "a puerile cult of sexual conquest," and calls its tactics "sinister" and "pathetic." According to the review, "if women in the book are sometimes treated as a commodity, they come out looking better than the men, who can be downright loathsome — and show themselves eventually to be pretty sad, dysfunctional characters."

Feminists tend to be critical of the seduction community. Beatrix Campbell has stated that The Game "sexually objectifies women," arguing that "Nowhere from its description do you get a sense of men being helped to be human in an easy and agreeable way...it's not about having any rapport or relationship... the only thing that will help them in relationships is empathy and liking women."

According to an article in Eye Weekly, some feminists believe that pickup "isn't just cheesy; it's offensive." The article cites a proposal put forward by a feministblogs.org writer as an alternative to the formula used by expert PUAs: "Shake my hand. 'Hi, my name is…' Treat me like a human being. Avoid seeing women as conquests and men as competition."

An article in the Houston Press claimed that the seduction community "isn't the lechfest it might sound like." The article quotes the webmaster of fastseduction.com defending the community: "It's no more deceptive than push-up bras or heels or going to the gym to work out…This isn't just a game of words and seduction, it's an overall life improvement." Strauss says, "I really think all of these routines and manipulations are just a way for a guy to get his foot in the door so that if a woman connects with him, she can still choose him," and that seduction techniques "can be used for good or evil!" He argues that "women are incredibly intuitive — the creepy guys with bad intentions don't do nearly as well as the guys who love and respect women."

Several writers describe observing men in the seduction community first-hand. Some women recount experiences with men they believed to be pickup artists who tried to "pick them up," and some men recount trying out pickup techniques. A columnist for The Independent describes a negative experience with a man she believed was a pickup artist and used a lot of "negs" on her: "The problem is that some guys clearly don't know when to quit."

An article in San Francisco Magazine recounts the experience the blogger "Dolly," who is the "author of the popular sex blog The Truth about Cocks and Dolls" had with the seduction community. According to the article, Dolly was:

put off by PUAs at first. But after she met more, including two from San Francisco, she wrote a letter to the Village Voice defending them, in response to the paper’s negative article on the subject in March. “PUAs try to create a fun, positive, and exciting experience for the woman,” Dolly wrote. “The credo many follow is ‘Leave her better than you found her.’ What’s so bad about that? That they want to get laid, too? Guess what? Guys have always wanted sex and will continue to want sex. You can’t fault them for finally discovering methods that are successful. —

After spending three days immersed in a Mystery Method Corp (now Love Systems) seminar, Gene Weingarten expressed his uneasiness about "a step by step tutorial for men in how to pick up women, make them comfortable in your presence, and bed them, ideally within seven hours of your first meeting" and wondered aloud, "Is there something inherently wrong with the notion of seduction as a classroom-taught skill, complete with a long hierarchy of 'lines' that work, seemingly spontaneous topics of conversation that are anything but spontaneous, tricks for seeming 'vulnerable', and tips on how to behave so as to deliver subtle but effective nonverbal inducements to intimacy?"

For an article for the Times Online, Hugo Rifkind participated in a seminar by Neil Strauss. Rifkind describes initially struggling with seduction techniques, eventually learning to attract women's interest, and then feeling guilty. Rifkind writes, "After a little more practice, my 'game' is improving dramatically. I can open with fluency, and there’s an injection of confidence which comes from knowing exactly what you are going to say next." When he attracts a woman's attention, "she is — quite honestly — looking at me like I’m the most fascinating person she’s ever met. As a human being and, perhaps more crucially, as somebody with a girlfriend, I feel like absolute scum."

Prominent "pickup artist" Roosh V has been called hateful and a misogynist for his views on women and sex by the Southern Poverty Law Center, though writers at Reason and National Review mocked his inclusion.