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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Beware of Pick-Up Artists

There’s a new menace stalking its way through America. It’s lurking in our college campuses, in our bars and on our streets.

That menace is a group of men calling themselves Pick-Up Artists.

Pick-Up Artistry, PUA for short, is a misogynist community that is convinced the only way to get women to sleep with them is through manipulation and outright verbal abuse.

For this disgusting group, women are frustrating puzzles that exist solely for sex. Of course, that isn’t how they would spin it. They like to think they’re improving men.

In their minds, they’re doing the world a favor by helping awkward, socially anxious men learn to feel confident and interact with other people.

In reality, they are teaching man-children how to masquerade as fully-functioning adults.

Let’s take a look at some PUA terminology, which is equal parts pathetic and frightening.

The first thing a PUA does when he spots a woman is assign her a number. They prefer to use the term “HB” followed by a number. The claim is that HB stands for “hot babe,” but I find that hard to believe. I don’t think I need to explain why ranking women on a scale of one to 10 is wrong.

Next, they divide any interaction with women into a set of maneuvers and routines.

They study and obsess over “indicators of interest” and “indicators of disinterest,” while attempting to “calibrate” their behavior for the best response.

Admittedly, this sounds relatively mundane. It’s just normal human interaction under the microscope of obsessive nerds who can’t accept that human beings are not video games where you get to press the right buttons and be instantly rewarded.

But these are just the basics. Next, we get to the interrelated concepts of the “bitch shield” and the “neg.”

The shield is what PUAs call it when a woman doesn’t like them or isn’t falling for their scam and wants them to go away.

To a PUA, this dislike means the woman thinks too highly of herself and needs to be put in her place. This is where the neg comes in.

Neg is short for negative, but translated into plain English, it means insult. Some negs are backhanded compliments, such as suggesting a woman has an “interesting” figure.

Others are undisguised attacks on self-esteem, such as mocking a woman’s teeth, hair or outfit. Regardless, the point is to make a woman feel worse about herself so that the PUA looks better in comparison.

Some PUAs claim that negs aren’t used that often, but it’s extremely easy to find lists of pre-made negs and advice on deploying them.

PUA terminology is seemingly endless.

But let’s end where the PUAs do, with the “F-Close.” Again, some say the F stands for “full” but I think we all know better. The F-Close is the ultimate goal of the PUA. Nothing matters besides getting a woman into bed.

I’m not condemning casual sex. I’m condemning a group of disgusting men who think the way to get any is to manipulate and emotionally attack the women they meet.

­— atcrane@indiana.edu

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