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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   13800 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 8, 2025

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Just to nitpick: the Red Pill/PUA community, to the extent that it actually existed*, was pretty much a GenX phenomenon, and a ‘90s/’00s phenomenon in particular. All the prominent PUAs are GenXers.

I don't think so. All of these things existed before. For instance the PUA community has perfect overlap with rockstar or yuppie lifestyle from 1970s and 1980s. And of course the archetype is way older than that such as a dashing American soldier picking up young desperate girls in occupied Germany using chewing gum, can of beans and coffee, or even in 19th century literature where young noble or soldier picks up local village girls doing the deed in haystack, and leaving them with bastard babies. Or you can go even earlier with literature of conquistadors and pirates and sailors having harem of wives and lovers in every port - the OG "passport bros", such as no other than Hernán Cortés who allegedly killed his own Spanish wife for nagging him about his harem of lovers and concubines, and for being too low status as an official wife for his elevated position. Andrew Tate is just a pale image of this Chad. It is all over the literature either as a cautionary tale, but also as a tale of promise for young brave men.

It still is structurally quite different. PUA is based on the idea of a stranger seducting women entirely with social trickery. This wouldn't have worked historically; Men in a social group generally guarded the women against strangers, and the women themselves were often even more wary of strangers. Inside a social group where everyone knows everyone else already, PUA falls apart as well.

The examples you cite have primarily two mechanisms they used: Actual status, and (the threat of) violence. As a peasant, you couldn't openly dismiss a noble unless he very blatantly broke with established rules, the way you would with a stranger. The social status itself also, of course, made the nobles more alluring for the women, and peasant men that would otherwise guard them also might try to curry favor with the noble instead. Not to mention that more critical literature of these individuals often strongly insinuates that their allegedly awesome powers of seduction was to a large part just plain prostitution. This is proven at least partially true by what frequently followed; A peasant women with an accepted noble bastard child would usually get an alimony that far outstrips any other stream of income usually available to her. But also for sex more generally, if a noble offers a women coin upfront, and the sexual encounter is revealed against their wish & expectation, both parties can save face by claiming that it actually just was a seduction. The women becomes a hapless victim, the men an awesome seductor. Much better than a whore & john.

For the soldiers/conquistadors/pirates etc. taking advantage of their physical power, almost everything above holds true as well, just that the arrangement is usually less voluntary in nature.

I agree on 70/80 rockstar/yuppie life. Male hippies, even if they have a different political connotation, behaved in practice quite similar as well. It's all imo quite evidently downstream of the sexual revolution. PUA simply couldn't exist without it.

It still is structurally quite different. PUA is based on the idea of a stranger seducting women entirely with social trickery. This wouldn't have worked historically; Men in a social group generally guarded the women against strangers, and the women themselves were often even more wary of strangers. Inside a social group where everyone knows everyone else already, PUA falls apart as well.

What a silly thing to say, as if people in the past were so different from people now. Let me introduce to one of the OG pickup artists, one young Venetian commoner, son of two actors back then when the word actress was a synonym for a whore: Giacomo Casanova. In his memoirs he named 100+ women that he slept with in 18th century, ranging from commoner farm girls or courtesans, nuns, through daughters of merchants and patricians to high nobles such as Madame d’Urfé - who was probably not right in her head as she was obsessed with occult and other weird shit, something like modern liberal Wiccan widow of deceased startup entrepreneur.

He beguiled them all using wide range of PUA strategies, which were then rigorously employed by his fans, while retaining his head on his shoulders from vindicative male relatives and rivals. If anything, he played the PUA game on Nightmare mode and "won" by that metric, living to age 73 in comfort and fame. Many other examples like that.

Now you're talking about someone entirely different than you did before, though. I was talking about the people you yourself mentioned: Aristocrats, soldiers, pirates etc.

Secondly, Casanova is someone with a high enough social standing & wealth that his family could afford to send him to study law at a university, at a time when such education was extremely rare. That tells you a lot more about his background than just saying his parents were "two actors". He also is a classic general-purpose con artist, as evidenced by the wikipedia entry you cite yourself. He not only regularly, successfully impersonated aristocracry, he also directly tricked aristocrats themselves. And he evidently was genuinely rich, even if it was ill-gotten & regularly frivolled away. Obviously, such a person can take advantage of a similar playbook as the actual aristocrats.

He didn't walk into a bar at night negging unaccompanied women until they sleep with him. He publicly displayed his wealth and status to the entire greater circle of people around the women, would woo the men around her as well, often played a long game over months that included ripping off entire social groups for money by claiming access to secret, useful knowledge. It's certainly more similar to PUA than the classic, far more common aristocrat, in that it includes social trickery aimed at women, but yet again structurally very different and far more complicated.

And also I have to mention again we're talking about the personal memoirs of a self-admitted con artist. That's really not something I'd take at face value.

Edit: And to make my own position very clear: Solely beguiling women without also having access to some genuine advantages such as high social standing, wealth or power was near-impossible before the sexual revolution due to guarding behaviour by males in her social circles. You had to successfully trick those men as well to even just get access to the women. Casanova does not disprove this position in any way whatsoever; He had a genuinely high social standing, genuine wealth, genuine education, and then also tricked entire social circles.

After the sexual revolution, women would start to regularly go unattended to parties & festivities, which made (a percentage of) them easy prey for the first generations of tricksters in the hippy movement. Since women aren't stupid, this caused a backlash quite fast and they became more wary again, which necessitated the more elaborate trickery employed by PUA. However since it's a formalized movement it's easy to recognize once you know what you have to look for, so it died in the span of just a few years again. But more generally, there still just aren't as many safeguards nowadays; Obviously, tricking an entire social group, including both men and women, over long spans of time is much, much harder than tricking a (necessarily single-sex) lone individual over short spans of time. So the general style of social trickery as employed by PUA artists is still mostly viable.

Secondly, Casanova is someone with a high enough social standing & wealth that his family could afford to send him to study law at a university, at a time when such education was extremely rare. That tells you a lot more about his background than just saying his parents were "two actors". He also is a classic general-purpose con artist, as evidenced by the wikipedia entry you cite yourself. He not only regularly, successfully impersonated aristocracry, he also directly tricked aristocrats themselves. And he evidently was genuinely rich, even if it was ill-gotten & regularly frivolled away. Obviously, such a person can take advantage of a similar playbook as the actual aristocrats.

What? Casanova was as poor as it gets at least in Venetia. He got his degree thanks to a priest who noticed him at age 9 in poor boarding school while his widowed mother was "acting" somewhere in Russia. When he showed enough aptitude for Latin and other subject to pass for priesthood education at age 12. He received his degree at age 15, not at all anything special - something like degree from some mill such as University of Phoenix today.

Nevertheless I agree with the statement that he was well "educated" by experience for life as a con artist, ranging from his actor parents through talking his way through life hardship in his early teens which translated later to his life. Which is exactly what PUA lifestyle is about, isn't it?

He didn't walk into a bar at night negging unaccompanied women until they sleep with him. He publicly displayed his wealth and status to the entire greater circle of people around the women, would woo the men around her as well, often played a long game over months that included ripping off entire social groups for money by claiming access to secret, useful knowledge. It's certainly more similar to PUA than the classic, far more common aristocrat, in that it includes social trickery aimed at women, but yet again structurally very different and far more complicated.

No, he applied wide range of PUA strategies. When he wanted to bang nuns, he applied his meager theological knowledge. When he wanted to bang Madame d’Urfé and get her money, he pretended to be an occult master. He was exactly what you in your original reply mentioned as:

PUA is based on the idea of a stranger seducting women entirely with social trickery.

Anyways, the point is that PUA is nothing new. You discarded pirates, conquistatdors, minor nobles and other players as somehow unfairly using status and violence to bang hundreds of women in order to be "true" PUA artists. Now you discard Casanova and his ilk for applying social trickery and beguiling his victims from being the same. So what is PUA artist? Only those who fail in life or in seduction of women using their perceived status, money, power, social wit and any other trick that can get them to score? It does not make any sense.

Anyways, the point is that PUA is nothing new. You discarded pirates, conquistatdors, minor nobles and other players as somehow unfairly using status and violence to bang hundreds of women in order to be "true" PUA artists. Now you discard Casanova and his ilk for applying social trickery and beguiling his victims from being the same. So what is PUA artist? Only those who fail in life or in seduction of women using their perceived status, money, power, social wit and any other trick? It does not make any sense.

I added my position in an edit since I didn't expect you to answer so fast, so sorry for that. But I think my position is pretty clear:

Edit: And to make my own position very clear: Solely beguiling women without also having access to some genuine advantages such as high social standing, wealth or power was near-impossible before the sexual revolution due to guarding behaviour by males in her social circles. You had to successfully trick those men as well to even just get access to the women. Casanova does not disprove this position in any way whatsoever; He had a genuinely high social standing, genuine wealth, genuine education, and then also tricked entire social circles.

After the sexual revolution, women would start to regularly go unattended to parties & festivities, which made (a percentage of) them easy prey for the first generations of tricksters in the hippy movement. Since women aren't stupid, this caused a backlash quite fast and they became more wary again, which necessitated the more elaborate trickery employed by PUA. However since it's a formalized movement it's easy to recognize once you know what you have to look for, so it died in the span of just a few years again. But more generally, there still just aren't as many safeguards nowadays; Obviously, tricking an entire social group, including both men and women, over long spans of time is much, much harder than tricking a (necessarily single-sex) lone individual over short spans of time. So the general style of social trickery as employed by PUA artists is still mostly viable, but was not in the past.

Thanks for the reply; I was about to make largely the same points but you were faster.

For the soldiers/conquistadors/pirates etc. taking advantage of their physical power, almost everything above holds true as well, just that the arrangement is usually less voluntary in nature.

The explanation is much more mundane, I think. "American soldier picking up young desperate girls in occupied Germany using chewing gum, can of beans and coffee"? Well, yeah. This was happening during a famine. Elaborate pick-up skills weren't exactly needed.

Rockstars? A very tiny minority of the male population. Nothing to conclude about it in particular. There will always be men who stand out of the crowd for whatever reason, and will thus command a disproportionate amount of female attention. Nothing new about it.

The yuppies, as far as I know, were also a strictly GenX phenomenon, by and large. No argument about that on my part.

PUA is based on the idea of a stranger seducting women entirely with social trickery.

I'd add two more caveats. PUA as a phenomenon specifically entails men codifying pick-up artistry and teaching it to other men.

PUA as a phenomenon specifically entails men codifying pick-up artistry and teaching it to other men.

Sure. Let me know what you think about OG PUA master named Giacomo Casanova I mentioned in my other reply. Does he fit your criteria of womanizing teacher?

Plus how does picking and fucking desperate girls not fit the disgusting PUA style? I know of a guy who back in oughts created a bot contacting all the women on dating platform with a rude message akin to - hey do you want to fuck - as an experiment. He had maybe 1 in a 1000 response, some of them even from very attractive girls, although I'd wager they were all crazy. Maybe in their manic phase of BPD or some other shit. I know of a guy from the West who rented an expensive car back in early 1990s, and who went on fucking spree in Eastern Europe for pennies, and he even evaded having his teeth kicked in by local village heroes, mostly by copious amount of bribes and rounds paid. But hey, what works works - right?

How does any of this equal paying for sex with canned beans and coffee in a famine?

In the same way inviting some local girl for a drink while flashing you borrowed Omega watches and designer cloths bought on credit works right now in a bar. A promise of stability and bright future of plenty of money/food if only they fuck you, and then discarding them like a dirty rag.

By the way, this whole PUA topic is disgusting to me as I am Christian. But there has to be some reality check.

Stability and bright future of plenty of money/food as opposed to not starving to death. Got it.

These were not whores, just regular girls. A can of beans was not payment for sex for a prostitute, but elaborate ploy in game of affection, accompanied with promises of eternal love and poetry from a married husband, who was set to leave day after tomorrow back to his family in USA to be demobilized. It was a game.

How naive are you? Or maybe even better - how cynical are you in your pretentiousness?

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