For those of you who don’t know what a PUA is, it is short for “Pick Up Artist”. It is a movement to turn geeks and nerds that lack confidence into confident men that have “game” and can talk to women without being shy.
I had been reading PUA/pickup related material since I was in the 12th grade. Before the 12th grade I never really bothered with girls since I wasn’t interested in them but I knew that at one point I was going to have to overcome my love shyness and start to be able to comfortably talk to women. So I did some searches on Google and PUA forums dominated majority of the results. Looking back at it now I have realized that PUA set me back years from where I wanted to be socially as compared to if I just learned the game like a natural. Fortunately PUA only managed to ruin the freshman year of college for me but I ended up switching colleges. This was not due to social life alone but many other reasons.
Don’t get me wrong, the material on PUA is helpful to the 24 year old virgin who does not have that much success with women because this is the main demographic on a lot of PUA sites. For the high school or college kid PUA has the opposite effect. Let me explain how.
1. “Closing” – You do not want to be the creep that goes around campus asking girls for their numbers and I hope you have not tried to kiss close in college. When guys from Simple Pickup for example do it on college campuses they can get away with it because they aren’t students at the given university. Most of the girls they approach will probably not see them on campus again and since they aren’t students the rules of college social life do not apply to them. Now lets take an average college kid who is an enrolled student living on campus and make him do the same thing, I will tell you towards the end of the post why it will not work.
2. “Cold approach as much as you can” - For a college student this has to be the quickest way to earn the creeper label especially if the campus is small. As you approach random girls on campus you start to disrupt the flow of the environment and once you do it enough you earn the reputation of “that creep guy”. Word gets around fast on college campuses and within weeks you could be stuck with a reputation that might haunt you for a long time, especially at social events. If you have to practice cold approaches do it off the campus.
3. Using pickup lines - The reason pickup lines work with PUAs is because of the delivery and they have no pressure to please anybody. You on the other hand are a student with a reputation on the line to protect, the last thing you want to do is ruin it on a corny pickup line. In fact, just cross out the idea of ever using pickup lines from the internet at any point in your life since you will come off as fake.
4. Peacocking – Referred to as wearing something goofy to make you stand out from the crowd and attract attention from the crowd. If you don’t mind being laughed at I suggest do all the peacocking you want but please avoid peacocking if you are a sane college student. I won’t even dig deep into this one, just avoid it!
5. Negs - Referred to as “backhanded compliments” when you pay a girl a compliment but then insult her. “Your nose wiggles when you talk that’s cute!”. Do not use this on a college campus, ever. College girls have sensitive egos and this will make you look like a complete douchebag. You will be alienated from your peers and social circle.
So why should college kids avoid all of that?
The reason that PUA works for older men in the real world is because it encourages the mentality of giving it all you have on the first interaction with a woman. Chances are in big cities you won’t see the same people you see on a daily basis. In college the atmosphere is a “closed” one so you will see the same people in classes, on campus, and in school related events. Simple Pickup can go to a college campus and do all the crazy stuff that they do on their videos because they won’t have to deal with the consequences of being in a closed system since they aren’t enrolled students.
In college you build long lasting relationships with people who you will grow up with and not short useless relationships. You have to be more laid back and get rid of the aggressive mentality that is promoted by PUA. By going the PUA route in college you will rob yourself of the fulfilling relationships that college has to offer and become a total outcast.
In future posts I will give you advice on how to approach college.
