European literature has been imitating or deriving from Ovid ever since. This has created a contradiction. Love has given some of the greatest works to English literature, from Shakespeare’s sonnets to Jane Austen’s novels. It has also inspired some of the worst people: a category that most dating guides fall into. This has given us chapter titles like “The Love of Nuns” (a medieval hit); And book titles like “The Game” (a modern one) and lots of other things in capital letters. This has given us a section titled: “How to Flirt with Women: The Art of Flirting Without Being Creepy in a Way That Turns Her On!”. (Because very few things are said more clearly about not being creepy than reading a manual about not being creepy.)
Dating manuals are a strange genre. They offer all that capital—but talk about a lack of social capital. They promise triumph (hot girls) but hint at tragedy (what man who gets hot girls actually reads them?). They often enter comedy unknowingly. A modern manual advises that, to attract women, one should try to “sprinkle one’s conversation freely with words of sex”. A brief but opaque piece of advice (what words? “Spray” how?) that sounds like it might cause some awkwardness in the office. And possibly another lawsuit. His advice is sometimes illiterate; often immoral; Sometimes the borderline is illegal. Naturally, they sell in the millions.
Millions of people feel they need them. With good reason. In the US, more than a quarter of households have only one person living in them. It is almost the same in Britain also. Loneliness is on the rise in much of the rich world. Some of these singletons are happy to be like this; There aren’t many. It matters: Single people feel more unhappy, die younger and suffer worse health than people in relationships. If single, young and male, they are likely to have experienced the “manosphere” – an online aggregation of tormented men who talk lovingly about protein shakes and bitterly about women.
Should I compare you to a summer’s day?
Loneliness affects men and women equally. But read 2,000 years of dating advice and it seems most of it is aimed at men. Partly this is cultural: for centuries men were more literate, so they wrote for other men. Partly, this makes sense. “Women are more emotionally intelligent than men,” says Dave Barry, American humorist and author of “The Complete Guide to Guys”. He observed, they perform sophisticated tasks like washing clothes and listening. In contrast, many men require “very primitive” advice.
Some of this inequality is biological. A frequent complaint of the manosphere is that dating follows the “80/20 rule”: 20% of the men get 80% of the women. that’s crap. But women are far more selective than men when it comes to sex. In 1978, researchers at an American university decided to test it empirically. Thus young volunteers approached complete strangers of the opposite sex and asked them, “Will you go to bed with me?” His newspaper would become famous later. Partly because those lines were made into a catchy British pop song.
But the main reason was that the consequences were very harsh. Most of the men said “yes”; Some asked, “Why do we have to wait until tonight?”; The few who refused regretted it deeply. “I can’t go tonight,” was a common refusal, “but tomorrow will be fine.” On the contrary, every single woman said “no.” Most people were frightened. “what is wrong with you?” There was a specific reaction. Was like: “Leave me alone.” The conclusions are clear: Pop songs can come from unlikely places. And men and women view sex very differently.
Thus, from the Bible stepped the manual (often seen as the first self-help guide), offering advice on everything from beauty (wash, says Ovid); to table manners (men, says one timeless 18th-century guide, “shouldn’t blow your nose on your napkin”); According to your lover’s liking (Leviticus warns, “Do not have sex with your mother. She is your mother”). Which is all very sensible. If not, maybe those are the things you should tell your daughter.
Despite lots of advice, many men feel they need more. To understand how deep the need is, consider the market value of the solution. Twelve men are sitting on a sofa in a shiny, modern apartment in Miami. He has a notebook and an enthusiastic air. All have come to a four-day dating “bootcamp” given by a dating guru who has written a book titled “How to Get Beautiful Women in Bed.” (Subtlety, and sparing use of the CapsLock key, are not this movement’s strong points.) There are steep fees: the entire course costs about $10,000.
It starts at 12 o’clock. For the men who paid such an unusual amount, the bookies look quite normal. Aged around 20 to 60 years, they wear normal clothes (jeans, shirts, t-shirts), have normal looks and have normal professions: scientists, tech guys, finance guys. And although one or two describe themselves as “lucky” (Silicon-Valley speak for “stinking rich”), most also get paid modestly.
This course is run by a guy who calls himself “the world’s most famous dating guru and pickup artist”, which may be true, and gives his name as “Mystery”, which it definitely isn’t. His real name is Eric von Markovic and he rose to fame in the 2000s, when he starred in a dating book called “The Game” by journalist Neil Strauss.
It had chapter titles such as “Step 5-Isolate the Target” and “Step 10-Last Minute Burst Resistance”. Its vocabulary included words such as “shb-noun” – “super-hot babe” and “lse-adjective” – “low self-esteem”; Something desirable in SHB as it increases the chance of it bending when you “cave” (don’t ask). It wasn’t Austen at all. It was a bestseller.
Men heard about “The Game”, thought “me too” and bought it. Women heard about it, thought about “#MeToo”, and criticized it. Pickups are now a (slightly) regulated industry. Although not, as this course shows, exactly that. As the men take notes, Mystery expands his technique to pick out “pretty women”. Courting, according to Mystery, is a less intimate conversation than a one-man show, whose tone lies somewhere between salesmanship and comedy.
Pick-up starts at A1-3, which includes the “attraction stage”. Mystery explains that a good pick-up artist should have “openers” to start a conversation and long “gambits” to keep it going. In this phase you should show off by bragging about your achievements, or as they call it in the inevitable acronym “DHV” – “Display High Value”. Like a comedian, your conversation should be funny: “You’ll be laughing all the way to the bedroom.” Also like a comedian, you should discourage hecklers and even conversation among the audience. He has “no interest in” – by which he means women – “interactions”.
When you woo the woman of your dreams by ranting, then not allowing her to speak, you must pretend to be calm: “Negative”. The game’s glossary defines neg as “a casual insult delivered to a beautiful woman” to show “a lack of interest in her”. Mystery has published a book of nuggets. These include – ladies, still your hearts – “You talk too much” and “Oh, your palms are sweaty.”
When you’re bored of your potential boyfriend, then insulting him, you can go through stages C1-3: which lead into the “comfort stage” (don’t jump to that right away) before reaching the “S” stage: the “seduction stage.” By this point your SHB will be so active with the LSE that you won’t even need to attract her: she will attract you. “I’m not one to get carried away,” says Mystery, who practices what he preaches and promotes in his conversations with DHVs. “I’m an attractive person.”
The whole process is extremely formulaic. Pickup teachers call themselves “artists,” but these numbered steps seem less like artistry than the assembly manual that comes with a child’s toy: Lego for legover. This, for many men, is arguably even necessary. Men’s fear of talking to women is a constant in dating advice. As described in a 12th-century manual, there are also men who become so nervous “in the presence of women” that they “lose their power of speech”.
They still do, says James Bloodworth, author of “Lost Boys,” a book on the manosphere. He worked on a similar pick-up course and said that you couldn’t tell just by looking why people came; It was more so when he opened his mouth. He saw 30-year-old virgins for whom even talking to women was “scary”, like “climbing Everest”.
This awkwardness seems normal given the men at the Miami course. Many people talk about feeling afraid around women. Many of the people your correspondent spoke to talked too much; heard very little; Passed through the door first and did not give seats to women. Most lacked that elusive elixir: charm.
It is not clear whether this course will help them or not. In a break, the mystery assistant delivers some of his best lines on your correspondent. She doesn’t fall in love but is tempted to laugh, because they are terrible. The glossary states that such a reaction is a “bitch shield – noun: a woman’s defensive reaction that blocks out unknown men who approach her.” Or as the ladies put it: “A perfectly reasonable response- adv-adj-noun”.
Pick-up shows little respect for feminism. “There’s misogyny hidden in it,” says Mr. Bloodworth. But then Pick-Up isn’t pretending to be a moral compass; This is a service. And though its prose may not be Austenian, its principles are: few knew the importance of DHV-ing better than Austen and her £10,000-a-year heroes; Few people could have disregarded it better than Mr. Darcy when he said that Elizabeth was “tolerable, but not beautiful enough to woo me”.
A better question is not: Is it morally good; It is: does it work? And here, both critics and supporters will agree: yes. Partly, Mr. Bloodworth says, because dating is “a numbers game.” Just as Mrs. Bennet forces her daughters to attend balls, the pick-up forces the men to stop “the festivities at home.” Each night the men of the course would have to dress up, go out and talk to six to 12 groups of women. Essentially, Mr. Bloodworth says, “your social skills will improve.” And, he adds, if you have halitosis “someone will tell you.”
…or will I get better results by ignoring?
Again, going to a pick-up course can help you breathe better. Whether this will lead to better relationships is less clear. But dating advice is changing. People are turning from pick-up artists to another kind of expert in the secrets of what women want: these experts are called “women.”
Pick-up offers a one-size-fits-all approach, but as Minnie Lane, a dating and attraction coach in London, explains, women are not a category, “a singular thing”, but individuals. Thus men should listen to the woman in front of them because she is “constantly telling them” what she wants – not just with words, but with her body. Ms Lane leans in close to your correspondent to prove the point and indeed, there is an immediate accusation in the air.
So for readers looking for some good dating advice, it’s simple: Leave your house and your screen. Must wear a shirt. Don’t spew canned pick-up lines. Be sure to respond to the woman’s answers. As Ovid actually said all those years ago. Look carefully at the woman in front of you, he wrote, because “silent features often contain both words and expression.” However, being Ovid, he then asks his reader to kiss him anyway, whether she wants it or not. So maybe don’t listen to him.
