I was trying to figure out what was nagging me about this entire Pick-Up Artist (PUA) thing that Little Miss Attila linked to here and here, and it finally came to me (if you’ll pardon the pun): these PUA people are sex nerds. Which is to say, they are people who show the classic signs of nerdity – an obsessive focus on a particular topic, meticulous research, careful experimentation on how to maximize their skill levels, and a fundamental indifference to how larger society reacts to them – but who have decided to focus on having sex with women, instead of on comic books, science fiction movies, baseball scores, or the likely makeup of the 112th Congress. Looking at the comments sections of some PUA blogs, I have to wonder how many of them have Asperger’s*. Or who would claim to have Asperger’s if they were more mainstream nerds, which is not quite the same thing.
Observing this probably makes me a hater, or a beta male, or whatever it is that PUAs call mundanes. Yup, that’s another sign.
Moe Lane
*Indeed, people who actually do have Asperger’s – it’s one of those conditions that is often self-diagnosed, which means that it’s the semantic equivalent to “I’d rather come up with a medical reason for my rude behavior than actually correct it” – might find some of these techniques almost therapeutic. Not that I am qualified to diagnose anybody, up to and including myself.
PS: Full disclosure: I am a nerd. Yes, you’re all shocked.