Thoughtmagnet

Sometime yesterday, one of the guys who runs the video gaming site Penny Arcade mentioned Lovesystems, describing us as (among other things) base manipulators, and alleging (without evidence) that our programs must be designed to make you a “better predator of women”.

It’s funny, but our most rabid critics are almost always self-righteous guys with absolutely no game. I’m not saying this to diss the Penny Arcade guys, who I’m sure a really cool guys, though they admittedly have no game, it’s simply a sociological observation.

Women, (for example Tyra Banks)  tend to understand and appreciate what we do – in fact, the most common response I get from women when I tell them my job is “are you hiring?” They know that women want to be picked up (competently), and that bad-boys don’t get more action because they’re manipulative, but because they actually have something that women want. They despair a the cluelessness of the modern western male and appreciate that we’re trying to do something about it.

But some guys, REALLY hate us. Perhaps it’s because our philosophy challenges their perception of reality – the perception of reality that has caused them to have so little game in the first place. Like an unemployable liberal-arts grad student embracing communism and deciding that anyone richer than himself must be a criminal, they cling desperately to an “morally superior” ideology that has brought them nothing, and benefited no one.

But I digress.

So, I was reading this thread when, about halfway down, I discover that one of our instructors, Future, is actually friends with the guys from Penny Arcade and wrote a retort to some of the more slanderous and misinformed comments that they made about the concept of being good with women.

This was kind of shocking to me, as I had a very robust model – completely imaginary – of the kind of person who would waste his time reading, let alone befriending the authors of, some ridiculous comic strip devoted to arcane references to weird video games that I have never even heard of, let alone played (Planescape: Torment?? WTF is that?). And that’s not who this guy is, this friend of mine. He is most certainly a solid guy, he is one of us.

Anyway, Future responds to their criticism with a really well-crafted retort. It’s a few hundred words long, but I think he sums it up nicely here.

More than anything our material is about understanding what makes women attracted to men beyond the obvious answers of looks and money and power, beyond the simple snipe of “confidence”. We then help our students implement that understanding through practical application, i.e. actually trying to pick up the girls you are attracted to.

Exactly.

Update: As of this writing, there is now a 30 page thread on the subject of Lovesystems and PUA’s (not the same thing)