Sitting at a bar in the Mission District with a couple of her girlfriends and a drink in her hand, San Francisco native Jessie Galindo is approached by a good-looking twenty-something-year-old man with long brown hair and piercing green eyes. He asks her what she is drinking and when she responds with a Long Island Iced Tea, he laughs and turns to chat with one of her friends. A few minutes later, he engages her in conversation again by asking her what she does for a living. Reluctant to respond, she hesitates before answering. This interaction of engaging and disengaging continues for fifteen minutes before the mysterious man gives her a smug smile, asks to buy her another drink, and excuses himself from the group, leaving Galindo punch-drunk and confused. Little does she know, but has has just been played by a member of the Seduction Community.

The Seduction Community is a fraternity of pick-up artists (PUAs), made popular from the success of The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-up Artists, a popular book written by investigative reporter Neil Strauss., in which he describes his endeavor to become a pick-up artist and experiences in the community. While the label implies a certain level of deviousness, the Seduction Community is not exactly what it seems. In fact, the community is the opposite of its implications. Contrary to popular belief, pick-up artists within the community have other goals in mind besides getting laid. Essentially, they are interested in gaining confidence and becoming better at interacting with women in an organized and effective manner to ultimately find a compatible partner, which to some, can be a daunting task.

"Typically, PUAs go out and approach women they've never met before, with no social context in which to do so," self-proclaimed PUA and member of the Seduction Community Brandon, who asked for his last name to be anonymous, says. "Afterward, they discuss with others in the community about how the interaction went, and how they could have done it better." He equates their male conversations to that of the female conversations in Sex and the City.

PUAs participate in the community for different reasons. Some PUAs yearn to master pick-up techniques to lure women into bed, but for most members, it is about creating an appealing lifestyle that attracts, and in the end, keeps women interested in the long run. "It's about figuring out what I like and don't like," Brandon explains. "By dating more women, I'll have more experience to determine what type of woman I want to settle down with. And when I meet her, I'll be more comfortable and have good enough 'game' that I won't mess it up."

While some PUAs emit an abundance of confidence, most PUAs are looking to gain enough confidence and experience to approach women in the first place. This is where "Hitch"-like PUA trainers, or confidence coaches, step in. "I don't teach chat up lines; I teach people how to have engaging conversations. I don't teach guys who want to get laid; I teach guys how to have fulfilling emotional and physical relationships. I don't teach them to trick girls into bed; I teach them how to generate attraction, comfort, and rapport," confidence coach Adam Carman says. "I build esteem, self-respect, and decency. I'm not interested in fueling people's egos and boosting their testosterone."
"My work is only about thirty percent focused on how to interact and engage with women," Carman adds. "Seventy percent is confidence and character building."

PUA techniques incorporate different schools of thought when picking up women; some more subtle than others, some more intrusive than others. Some techniques and skills are comprised of the Alexander Technique, which focuses on body composition, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), which links self-awareness with effective communication, and even hypnotism. The one thing they all have in common is that they were all developed by once-shy men for the intention of making the task of talking to women easier.

Some PUA techniques are ethically questionable, such as "negging," which calls for purposely insulting and giving backhanded compliments to pretty women "to take them down a notch," Kevin Chang, PUA enthusiast, says.

Like all good things, the Seduction Community is not without fault, creating a double-edged sword: it can either make an insecure guy more confident, or it can make a monster out of a poser in no time. By author and PUA guru Neil Strauss' own admission, PUAs manipulate women, often emitting a persona that gives woman a false sense of security.

"Just because you can trick a woman into liking or wanting you, does it mean you should?" asks Dominique, who asked for her last name to also be anonymous. "It has a lot to do with the origins or the original intended purpose of said technique. A surprising number of PUA techniques have a psychological basis to them, and are, more often than not, founded on common, yet overlooked, human emotional tendencies only a handful of enterprising people would be capable of using to their advantage," she says, comparing PUAs to misleading car salesmen. "The game can be demeaning and paranoia-inducing to both sexes; to one, it hinges on the anxiety of being lied to, to the other, the fear of adequacy."

"When those illusions are made for the purpose of manipulating you to do something you might not necessarily want to do, then I think the illusion becomes creepy," Chang points out. "You realize that the person isn't the warm and exciting person you thought they were but instead was calculating and doing everything for a specific reason, for getting in your pants."

Carman explains that ultimately, picking up women is all in a man's mentality. "Confidence comes from affirmation of positive results," he says. "Once a student starts to discover his sexual identity and learns how to utilize it, he will increase in confidence, and once you get better at the game itself, you stand more chance in winning your ultimate prize."

"By approaching random women, guys become a lot more socially savvy. They learn to pick up on and understand the meaning behind subtle body language cues and tonality changes. They learn how to move and talk with confidence," Brandon continues. "This confidence is also useful in dealing with classmates and co-workers."

The moral of the story is give the next guy who hits on you a chance; he might just be a Prince Charming disguised as a frog. Or is it the other way around? [X]