How Life Imitates ‘Pickup’
By: Neil Mcdougall
Tags: Pickup, Adventure, Dating, Psychology, Meaning

“The Sure Thing”

Could There Be Meaning & Purpose Buried Somewhere Inside The ‘Pickup Community’??

My definition of a ‘mind control fence’ is that invisible urge you get to stay away from a topic as if an internal 3rd-Grade-Teacher is telling you, ‘don’t look there, there’s nothing over there’. Stefan Molyneux’s metaphor for mind control involves realizing that your ‘chains’ are actually just spider webs and once you become aware, you’re able to breakaway easily (akin to Plato’s Cave).

The NY Times 2005 Bestseller, ‘The Game’ was an expose of a ‘secret society’ of ‘Pickup Artists’ (PUAs) in major centers across the USA & Canada. It sounds seedy, objectifying, narcissistic and ‘high school’ and it is in many ways. PUAs often speak of women as ‘targets’ and meeting women as a selling exercise ‘always be closing’. Not only is ‘The Game’ an adventurous ride into this little known underworld however, just beyond some of the seediness there are pearls of wisdom in many of the social dynamics the PUAs advocate. They coach men to be much more calibrated, artful, and classy in their approach to women.

Fenced In By Perceived Social Norms

The problem the Pickup Artists seek to address has universal implications in all social interactions. They bring a very fun way of seeing everyday interactions as an opportunity to create spontaneous moments. We’re all so deeply fenced into our social norms that the subtle arts of spontaneity, humor, eye contact and finesse has almost entirely been eliminated from our daily encounters. You’ll be blown away once you see the spider-webs that are holding you back from being your natural self. This is not to mention today’s uber-political-correctness, smartphones, and overt mind-control through media and entertainment.

Think of the following scenario. You pull up to a stoplight in your new car. Life is good: Decent job, happy marriage, good future, good city, wow nothing to complain about. What happens next? Guy pulls up next to you. Your mind wanders. Hmmm….he’s a bit younger, a bit better looking, car is nicer, his girlfriend is cute, he’s heading towards a nicer neighborhood….hmmm…this sucks. What just happened? You compared yourself to a bunch of standards that are not only unhelpful and irrelevant, they’re actually counter-productive to enjoying your life.

Now, imagine the reverse. You do something spontaneous in the 3rd grade, and you get disciplined for it or publicly admonished. This will draw a line in your mind ‘don’t be more spontaneous than X’. You draw thousands of these lines over time. You’ve now fenced yourself into the absolute minimum of everyone’s standard of behavior that you’ve ever met. You’re caged. You are inside your head, in an imaginary cage that doesn’t exist. It’s an extreme standard that isn’t relevant. The real ‘fence’ for acceptable social interactions is more like the very outer perimeter of the graphic above.

‘The Sure Thing’ film was a blockbuster Rob Reiner hit in the 80s inspired by actual events and the 1930s classic ‘It Happened One Night”.

People are bored out of their minds. They’re terrified to death of being themselves in everyday interactions. It’s a twisted version of the zombie apocalypse out there. Zero creativity, and zero spontaneity. The good news is, where there’s tragedy there’s opportunity. Every moment brings a golden opportunity to create something new. A new laugh, a new friend, a new memory. Life can be transformed into an adventure one mundane instance at a time.

‘The Sure Thing’ film plays out the classic pickup dynamic beautifully. “Gib” (John Cusack) is too far into his head. He’s talking BS non-stop. He has a serious case of ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ with a Tinkerbell character (Nicollette Sheridan) on the opposite coast. Gib’s writing and his mind are scattered, and he’s bored. He meets “Alison” (Daphne Zuniga) in his English class. Alison is living from her head also. Her writing is uninspired and stiff. Her life is scheduled, and sanitized. She’s a ‘smiling necrotic’ as Michael Tsarion says. She has a long-distance relationship with a stuffy intellectual on the other side of the country. A road trip ensues, and the humor, chemistry and adventure is unleashed.

Alison ‘A Smiling Necrotic’ With Her Stuffy Boyfriend

So, how to unleash the adventure in your life? One natural authentic behavior at a time, say the PUAs. Here are the ‘Top 12 Rules of Pickup’ that have universal implications for all social interactions (credit to former PUA Sasha Daygame):

Always Maintain Eye Contact Create Original Moments of Value in Every Interaction Be Authentic & Direct Be Up-Front and Clear in Your Intention Be Present In the Moment, and Focus on Listening to What’s Being Said

6. Be Open and Alert to Your Environment

7. Calibrated Persistence Is Good Salesmanship

Learning How to ‘Shot-Gun’, Chemistry & Adventure Ensues in ‘The Sure Thing’ Film

8. There’s No Such Thing As Rejection, Only Mismatch — Filter to ‘Funny Story Category’

9. Know Where You’re Going, and Only Then Who’s Going With You

10. Don’t Set an Expectation Unless You Fully Intend to Follow-Through

11. Eliminate Limiting Beliefs

12. The Most Compelling Narrative or ‘Frame’ Carries the Day

It’s getting more and more common to hear middle-aged men say that they just don’t like people (Misanthropy). Culturally speaking, something has gone terribly wrong. What they’re actually saying is, ‘I hate the moments that I create with other people’ or more like ‘…the moments that I don’t create with other people’. In the West, we have lost the art of social graces. Our norms have become cages. We’ve lost the role of intergenerational peer groups for mentorship, apprenticeship and rites of passage and we’ve only begun to pay the price. Bring back the panache!

A Rite Of Passage For tens of thousands of years, when boys hit the age of puberty, they were forced to undergo a set of challenges. These challenges were meant to break them down, and build them back up even stronger. These challenges were meant to test them as men. When a boy successfully completed the tasks laid before him, he became a man. Our society for the most part, lacks these rites of passage. This is, in large part, why there is such a lack of masculinity in our culture — boys are never given a chance to develop into men. We have all of these 45 year old man-child’s running around for a reason: there exists no institutionalized rite of passage in the West. …I believe that learning (to approach women) is a form of initiation. It contains all of the traits necessary to turn a boy into a man: Destroys your ego, Requires you to face your fears, Forces you to be decisive in times of uncertainty, Develops confidence, ferocity and a strong will. Game is a Modern Rite of Passage That Helps Turn Boys Into Men, Jon Anthony

Neil McDougall is a global nomad expat father of two, who believes our shared reality is our shared responsibility.