Pick-Up Artists, guys who are committed to studying, sharing and applying the art of pick-up – sometimes known as PUA for short – have been around since forever. That 2005 book The Game – in which 'investigative reporter' Neil Strauss chronicled his undercover findings from the so-called seduction community – became their bible, getting into the New York Times bestseller list after just two months.
A load of "lads" studied* The Game* intensely, a thousand think pieces were written about it, but we could all take some solace from the fact that when PUAs first started crossing over into the mainstream, their ambassadors were men who dressed like magicians and lived in Hollywood mansions, with names like ‘Mystery’.
Today they look more like Richard La Ruina, a well-spoken English guy in unbuttoned shirt and baggy jeans who runs Europe’s largest seduction agency, teaching the unlucky-in-love how to undo a lady’s jeans without her noticing.
At first he was fairly well hidden away, and his was a clandestine world only known to those that attended his seminars or paid for his products, such as '43 Texts That Guarantee Sex'. Unsurprisingly, his pupils didn’t want to make a lot of noise about the fact that they needed a teacher to tell them how to pull. But since he started uploading everything on to YouTube the PUA underworld has exploded online, with one of his videos – the sinisterly titled 'How To Have Sex With A Girl Without Any Chance Of Last Minute Resistance' – amassing over 6,700,000 views alone.
Watch Richard at work. (Warning: likely to make you feel very queasy)
Richard’s basically a sleazy ex-stockbroker who had never been kissed by the time he turned 21, and has been over-compensating ever since. He once appeared on Dragons’ Den seeking £100,000 of investment but was unsuccessful as the dragons disapproved of his idea of tutoring men in how to, basically, trick girls in (somewhat slimy) nightclubs into sleeping with them.
So instead, he took to YouTube to get his message out there, uploading videos from his 'Stealth Attraction' and 'Night Game' lectures, alongside one-off videos with titles like 'The Friend Zone Destroyer: How Do I Get Out Of The Friend Zone?'
And he's not alone, the internet is now awash with lustful mountebanks offering their own rules of attraction and trying to outdo themselves with tricks and tips: from Adam Lyons, whose bio reads 'once voted "least likely to get a girlfriend at School", I'm internationally regarded as one of the top 3 specialists on seduction' to Singaporean dating coach Dr. David Tian, whose lectures have titles like 'How to Demolish Your Deepest Insecurities.'
If, despite yourself, you have ever wondered what sort of things these slimy lecturers are teaching and whether anyone’s tried them out on you, we decided to watch the YouTube videos so you don't have to.
Here are the five odd ways men are taught to talk to women, and why.
** 1. Multi-zoning**
One of my mates has recently moved to Paris and – somewhat unwillingly – has been taken under the wing of a wealthy continental Lothario-type who’s in a long-term relationship but still wishes to live vicariously through others. Apparently, while imparting his wisdom over a stiff drink this man always insists upon the importance of ‘multi-zoning’: which means taking a girl to lots of different places, from pub to park to restaurant to bar and so on. The (cod) psychology underpinning this is the idea that no one wants to put out on a first date, but by bouncing around a lot of different locations it feels like you’ve already been on lots of dates and spent lots of time together.
In the eyes of the master Pick-Up Artists however this is a schoolboy technique. What they recommend instead is…
2. Future pacing
Rather than multi-zoning, what Richard La Ruina suggests – in one of his three-hour-long ‘Stealth Attraction’ lectures that he holds in front of an 18th-century painting of a garden party to a paying audience of desperate men – is ‘future pacing’. This is a lot more sordid than you could ever imagine. Rather than visiting lots of different places on a first date, wannabe-Casanovas should instead suggest lots of things the two of you are going to do together in the future, even though they’ve no intention of following through with any of them.
Richard suggests us men start by saying something like, ‘You know when I was young I used to go to the park and feed the ducks and squirrels and things like that, so I walked through the park today and I was thinking I might like to do that again. Did you used to do that when you were a kid?’ The idea is that soon you’ll be imagining all these forthcoming dates, and you’ll think you’re not after a one-night stand, even though you probably are.
3. Tongue-in-cheek Romanticism
The idea of ‘Tongue-in-cheek Romanticism’ is all about suggesting magical romcom moments. You know the sort of things that happen in Richard Curtis movies. Mr La Ruina suggests beginning with, ‘Baby look at the stars, do you know what that star is? I want to lie down in the park with you and just look at the stars and…’ Before he cracks up with laughter. Again he offers a psychological explanation: by teasing women like this, supposedly, men can make them crave real Hollywood-style romances without looking like a ‘wuss’.
You see in the world of the Pick-Up Artists men are advised to act tongue-in-cheek and to never, ever, show what they’re really thinking. In the parlance of the Pick-Up Artists we are advised to behave like an ‘Irresistible Arsehole’.
4. Honesty
In amongst all the cheeky jokes and grim advice men are advised to occasionally tell the truth, to follow up a joke with a seemingly sincere statement. Before you soften, this isn’t because the Pick-Up Artists actually advocate morality; rather it’s that they think we must conjure up an illusion of honesty and untrustworthiness. It’s all highly, highly dishonest.
5. Stealth Extraction
Towards the end of his lecture Richard La Ruina reveals the secrets of ‘Stealth Extraction’, or in scumbag terms, convincing a young lady to leave a nightclub with him; he says that this is most likely to happen in-between 1am and 2am. In short, smitten men should avoid trigger words such as ‘my house’ or ‘back to mine’ and instead say… ‘house party!’
Once on the way out we’re advised to ask non-stop questions, any questions at all – ‘Oh you like house music? This DJ's got the best house music! You do like house music, don’t you?’ – to keep you confused or distracted until we’re safely through the front door. Obviously it’s all very sinister.
The conclusion from all this grimness? If you ever find yourself in a nightclub after 1am with a man who’s incessantly telling stories about feeding squirrels in parks and bombarding you with nonsense questions, well, you may just have stumbled upon a 21st-century master seducer. So leave. Quick sharpish.
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Picture: Rory DCS
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.