They're the socially inept cretins in stupid hats. And they're all up in your inbox, insinuating that you're ugly while trying to get you to sleep with them.
Earlier this week, we learned how online pickup artists worked. Here are some examples of how its disciples have actually approached girls online.
Of all the ridiculous kinds of men one meets while dating – the “I’m so nice why don’t women like me” guys, the “I spent money on you so why aren’t you putting out” guys, the “Let me tell you all about my emotionally disastrous last relationship” guys – the absolute worst are the Pick-Up Artists (or PUAs). Inspired by the book The Game, and later by a painful VH1 show featuring a man who wore goggles as a headband, PUAs are men who almost universally suffer from some combination of hostility toward women, social awkwardness, basic idiocy, feelings of entitlement, over-sized egos, and under-sized self-awareness (among, um, other under-sized things sometimes). They go to conventions, they hold secret meetings, they often wear stupid hats and they trade sophisticated seduction techniques like approaching a woman in a bar to say, “you have an artless grace” or, "My friend just got two dogs, what should he name them?"
In the world of internet dating, PUAs tend to rely almost exclusively on one of their favorite real-world tactics: The Neg. The purpose of the neg is to make a "target" — what PUAs sweetly call women they want to bang — feel a little bit bad about herself so that she lowers her standards enough to respond to the PUA. Ambiguous insults, like, "Nice nails. Are they real?" or "Are you girls flight attendants?" In real life, a neg may be unnerving enough to merit a response, or at least a furrowed brow. But online? Here's a message one girl received from a budding PUA:
Nice headband, bitch.
This PUA is clearly new. The point of the neg is to be vaguely insulting, not a flame-throwing asshole.