"Pickup is linear"

I believe that the teaching quoted above is one of the most destructive lines of thought in the whole of commercialized PU.

It's a dance. It's a river. (But it sure ain't no riverdance!)

Communication is interaction. That's a trivial truth. Interaction means that people react to each other in spontaneous, unpredictable ways.

To try and put a rigid set of rules on our social interactions is like those river training exercises that they put up in the 70s. As it turned out, many of the rivers started to overflow right because of the measures they'd put up - only, this time they did it at completely unexpected points and with so much more fierceness. And besides, those walls were just plain ugly.

You can't control it. You may be able to lead the interaction, like in a dance -  but you certainly don't have a plan in mind for every single step of the dance. A dance has no set goal. It is specifically made so that people can have fun and get to know each other. And the very same applies to PU.

If you try to control the interaction by means of routines, DHV spikes, the M3 model or what-have-you, you're nothing but a zombie. Do you honestly think that women want a zombie in bed? I mean, would YOU want to sleep with someone who has to be in control of every last word, doesn't really react to what you say, and has all their lines prepared before they even met you? Sure, it's nice and reassuring to have a few jokes ready for when the conversation goes stiff and your mind goes boink, and of course at some point you have to exchange phone numbers, but that's about it.

My best interactions with strange women were always those that started out of nowhere. I didn't even plan to approach those women - it just so happened. For example, on an escalator (ha-ha) in a book shop. "Hey, it's such a hot day and you're not even putting up a sweat, while I'm floating off like crazy. It's not fair!" Yeah, that's a real example, and we did end up having a good conversation and exchanging numbers. Imagine what our mysterious man from Toronto would have to say about that opener, huh?

Measuring sticks put the pressure on

The other reason why I don't like viewing seduction as linear is that it puts a lot of pressure on you. You can witness this in that hideous VH1 show "The Pickup Artist": the contestants(!) had to "deliver" a specific set of routines and reach a specific goal on any given night, while the mysterious master himself was sitting and watchting them.

That's precisely the opposite of how it should be.

Do you want your interactions with women to be a race against opponents, or against time? "Ouch, I did not deliver that opener correctly." - "I did not approach at an angle of 46.2°, so this set is blown." - "I failed to neg the target and open the obstacle." Oh come on, guys! If you start it like that, of course you'll fail!

You know, most of the guys who get into PU do it because they suck with women. Because they're 30yo virgins who live in their mothers' basement.

Does anyone seriously think that putting up measuring sticks for them to fail against will improve their confidence?

If a soul is already crushed, then you push your frakking army boot against their neck and push as hard as you can, time and time again, to improve their state??? REALLY???

Didn't think so.

If you make PU about failure and success, you'll make it a chore, a job, an uncomfortable obligation that you have to push yourself to.

If you are already sore and sad because you don't get the women you want, the last thing you want to do is put yourself under pressure. You want to be very, very gentle. You want to be your own best friend. You want to nudge, not force yourself. You want to make it fun, so you'll automatically come back for more.

Releasing the pressure

I contend that, when you see it as a chaotic interaction rather than a planned activity, then you place responsibiliy on both parties instead of just yourself. Sure, you still have to walk over and say hello - and, by golly, I know that this is tough enough in and of itself!

But once you're there, and she starts to react to your "opener", she takes on just as much responsibility for how things work out as you do.

So that means that you cannot possibly "win" the pickup, because their wasn't anything to win in the first place. You are just two people having fun, that's all. If you feel like it, at some point you'll ask her out. Or not. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that you had fun and have got to know another person, and have learned an awful lot about yourself.