I used to think the same thing about people here on HN, but I realized that a lot of accounts are tied to peoples' real names (and professional lives). So there's a filter that keeps people from discussing anything outside of politically-correct, nice-guy stereotypical talking points. But if you went "off-the-record", you'd probably find quite a few men open up about things like PUA techniques.
I realized that a lot of accounts are tied to peoples' real names (and professional lives). So there's a filter that keeps people from discussing anything outside of politically-correct, nice-guy stereotypical talking points
The tied-to-real-name affect has advantages. It prevents the "Greater Internet Fuckwad Effect" (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/): "Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total Fuckwad"
PUA meant a lot to me at one time. I was much more of a theorist than anything else, but it really helped me get through some bad times and back into success with women.
I'm not 100% sure why you've been downvoted, I'm guessing it's the grammar. I've voted you up for asking a good question.
Like almost everyone, I had a fairly bad breakup once. I was basically engaged, we would have been except she wanted me to wait 'till after college to ask. Then one day, she left me. For one of my close friends. It was bad. I was real fucked up about it. I had sort of built everything up around our relationship, so it pretty much wrecked most of my plans.
As I tried (and failed) at getting another girlfriend, failure leads to lack of confidence, which makes it harder to attract women, which leads to failure, and the cycle continues. What PUA did for me was make me realize that I had the rules of the game wrong. I was really angry that I was 'doing everything right' and it still wasn't working out, until I realized that it wasn't that I was an unworthy dude, I was just playing by the wrong rules. Of course using the wrong ruleset leads to failure. It wasn't my fault, really, it was that I was being a bit naive. So while I wasn't hardcore following the PUA ruleset, it helped increase my self esteem a great deal, which naturally meant I was better. Eventually, success. Though PUA almost screwed that up, but that's another story...
Although the question is directed at someone else, allow me to interject and add my $0.02. I don't buy all of the PUA neg/evolutionary psychology/detach-attach etc. However, the biggest takeaway I had from PUA is handling social rejections like feedback. PUA taught me that social relations is nothing at all like Disney romance but like playing sports, music and programming. When you miss a shot shooting hoops, or a note in a guitar solo or get a compile error coding, you don't slump your shoulders and go home. You figure out what went wrong, repeat usually 100 times until you get it right. Blind confidence is perhaps the most important skill for PUA and programming. In the latter, you stay up until 2AM, Googling stack-overflow to fix that one illusive bug; in the former, you stay up until 2AM, working set after set going for that one illusive f-close.
