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I'm "tarring" the technique, not the people who use it.
You say this, so please respond to my previous point of:
But if a number of techniques that you deem useless actually help someone feel and become confident, then what does it matter if the routine itself isn't great?
The issue I have with techniques as they are panaceas or 'quick-fixes' if you will, rather than offering any real positive change. Techniques and routines cannot supplant or make-up for any perceived shortcomings you may have, rather they only perpetuate inauthenticity. There's no supplement for working on yourself and being an authentic person and techniques and routines will never be able to afford you that, in fact they'll do quite the contrary (in imbuing with the notion that what you have to offer is never good enough); in some sense relying on this is like chasing a phantom and a form of enabling behavior that will have you relying on others for material in order to maintain a relationship that's been built on inauthenticity.[/quote]
I understand where you're coming from, but from my experience and experience of others in 'the game', the techniques are a mere building block towards being more confident with your own identity. For me at least, there was a natural progression from the reliance on techniques to not using them at all. I think you may be misconstruing the use of techniques; they are not there to fill a gap and be a quick-fix, but to help a person towards a long-term improvement.
The vast majority of PUA material is designed to ACT, rather than BE a certain way. You can't really teach somebody to be cocky funny if its not in their personality to begin with, no more than you can force an more introverted person to be extroverted. Most of the people using these techniques are in fact using them to avoid doing any meaningful work on themselves, and sadly many of the techniques and routines are counter-productive as they make you look stodgy, manipulative, or just socially aloof. In addition, many of the techniques are designed to make the target feel insecure about herself, or at a minimum embellish one's value in implicit or explicit ways. Giving a woman an off-handed compliment is typically one of the worst ways to win her over, to any guy who has actually had success with more than a few women.
Techniques such as false barriers, or qualifiers are hardly even techniques - do you really need a book to tell you to qualify people? It's actually called having standards, and to have volumous chapters dedicated to this PUA 'concept' is laughable, but perhaps intended as a tool for the socially inept.
Most PUA material will hamper a guy with decent game as its far too regimented (a physically escalation ladder? REALLY???), and requires a guy to be constantly 'in his head' to figure out what to do next on countless possible behavioral responses by his target. PUA is probably one of the worst things I'd encountered with respect to 'gaming' women. Being authentic and jettisoning this crap to the garbage from whence it came was the best thing I had did pickup-wise over the past year.
But hey, don't feel the need to convince me. Be daring, try actually being yourself for once and see what kind of results you get, perhaps you'll be surprised.