In Defense of the Pickup Artist

Before incels, looksmaxxing, and body count became household terms, there once was a type of guy known as a pickup artist. The year was 2005: YouTube had just launched, Martha Stewart was released from prison, and a writer named Neil Strauss published a book called The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. In this book, Strauss spent two years embedded with a group of guys who belonged to the “seduction community.” They called themselves pickup artists and shared their strategies for getting women they met out in the real world to eventually sleep with them. As that concept faded into obscurity, so did the pickup artist. But for a time, he played a role in our sexual culture. There was even a VH1 reality show about it.