Are pickup artist and seduction techniques a scam?

I recently came across someone who wrote a long article in a forum about how he felt that dating advice programs were scams. And that “You don’t have to buy any advice to get better with women or to improve yourself.”

Well, after reading what he had to say, I have to admit it sounded logical.

At first.

But then my forehead started crinkling up, and I wondered… Could this be true? Could it be that guys just need to “be themselves” and everything will just work out on its own?

Do guys really need seduction techniques?

I’ll tell you my first big problem with that thought in just a minute…

The reality is that his argument wasn’t that well thought out, and if you fall for this mental trap, you can cause yourself some BIG problems down the road.

Here’s the logic of the argument:

– “There’s more than enough good free information out there…”

In a way, this is right. After all, there is a lot of stuff to be found. Hey, I even give away a ton of my advice and tips for free.

But unfortunately, what you get from a lot of ‘gurus’ out there is a lot of nonsensical rambling over their last “field report,” or a random opener he used that worked once or twice.

This is what I discovered when I was first trying to improve my abilities with women:

1) The information is almost always incomplete.

There’s no “system” or method to what you are shown. They can’t relate it to the context of the situation where they met the girl. And you don’t really get how the information “fits in” with what you might already know.

For example, in “field reports” where someone tries to relate how their approach went, they leave a lot of unanswered questions…

Was the woman with her friends? How were her friends handling the situation? How was he actually communicating with his body? His tone? Was he really establishing rapport, or was it just a momentary fluke of attention?

You need the whole picture to understand their field reports and be able to learn from them.

If you’ve ever tried to explain the experience of being at a live rock concert to someone, you know how words just don’t seem to communicate the reality of the EXPERIENCE.

2) The information lacks perspective from a grounded and character-driven personality. It usually came across as so much pickup “fluff.”

You have to ask yourself if you want to just go out there and “f*ck” girls, or do you want to be the kind of naturally attractive guy that everyone respects and admires.

Deep down, I think we all know the answer to that question.

3) The information was not very well explained.

Inevitably the person sharing their bit of pickup artist wisdom hadn’t been around very long in the community and was just desperate to show off and throw something out there to prove how they finally “got it figured out.”

It was their EGO talking, not expertise.

I remember once looking for some good information on video editing, and all I found were these little bits and pieces. I eventually just went out and bought a complete course in the topic that really trained me from the ground up.

If I’d kept watching all those little short time-wasters out there, learning bits and pieces, it would have taken me ten times as long, and ten times as much energy just to learn it the right way.

It was worth every penny to get me to my goal.

4) The information that most guys share is not consistent.

Again, it’s not coming from a complete understanding of social skills, interpersonal motivation, and how attraction works. It’s just the haphazard attempts that might have worked in that moment.

They aren’t including the BIG picture references to explain how it all worked to create a complete experience.

You also get a lot of conflicting advice, like “just be yourself” – and also “you need to change to be more attractive.”

So which is it, anyway?

5) Most of the information you see out there on the Internet is complete crap.

A lot of marketing hype wrapped around… nothing, really.

Ever read the comments on Youtube? It’s like a million kids from the third grade had nothing better to do than go out and post useless drivel on perfectly good videos.

As they say, separating the wheat from the chaff is just harder and harder these days. Finding the “good stuff” is tough.

And another argument against pickup programs is:

– “Paid products honestly don’t give you powerful, super-effective knowledge…”

This can be true, if you’re just reading the stuff that some guy slapped together into some ebook he wrote over a weekend. Look, there are tons of copycat programs out there. I’ve got guys copying what I created years ago just to make a quick buck out there.

You can generally sniff through the hype, can’t you? It’s pretty easy to make outrageous claims that appeal to desperation.

It’s quite another thing to give consistently measurable RESULTS.

Well, the fact of the matter is that I’ve been doing this since 2001, and I wouldn’t have lasted if I didn’t deliver on the super-effective knowledge you want and need to improve with women.

I’ve been fairly successful doing that for guys.

Oh, and there’s also this bit of interesting advice:

– “When guys are struggling with women, needing more advice often isn’t the problem This is very often harmful to their confidence.”

I actually agree with this one… Mostly.

Very often, you don’t need MORE information. What you really need is the ACTION to put that information to work for you.

All too often, though, we fall into that trap of thinking that the NEXT cool thing is what we need. And the NEXT one… and so on.

But in reality, what we need is simply an intelligent and easy way to APPLY what we already have so that it works for us.

Back when my forehead was crinkling up, I wondered… Could it be that guys just need to “be themselves” and everything will just work out on its own?

I realized that this isn’t the answer. It’s that false hope that if we do nothing, that everything will just “work itself out.”

Well, this can happen for you in some areas of your life, but the reality is that no one gets their inner game (or their outer game) fixed very well by just hoping that things work out.

What normally happens is that bad habits get worse, and then our self-confidence slides further and further down the drain.

In the end, what you really need is not to pretend that you don’t need any help to overcome your challenges.

What you need is just GOOD help. Not incomplete bites of information that are like pieces from different puzzles you’re trying to make fit into your life.

It sounds kind of “duh” when you look at it this way, but it’s really true.

You ever have someone just give you a dumb little piece of simple advice about something that completely improved what you were trying to do?

Maybe it was a different way to hold a pick when you were playing the guitar, or they just pointed out a shortcut in a game you were trying to beat, or they gave you a quick way around some intersection that always has traffic.

Whatever it was, you probably smacked yourself in the head and said, “Damn. Why didn’t I know about that?”

It’s these little tips – at the right time and place – that can double or triple your success and ease.

But more than this, it comes from having a complete understanding of the BIG picture.