What The Economist discovered at dating bootcamp

Blame Ovid. Two thousand years ago the Roman poet wrote a manual that promised to explain to his readers the “art of loving”. Its advice ranged from the sensible (pluck your nose-hair), to the slightly more subtle (brush your teeth, but not in front of each other), to the borderline criminal. When you like a woman, advised Ovid, sit close to her, pretend there is dust on her breast, then brush it off. Which might lead to love but might, today, lead to a lawsuit.

European literature has been imitating Ovid—or recovering from him—ever since. This has led to a paradox. Love has given English literature some of its finest works, from Shakespeare's sonnets to the novels of Jane Austen. It has also inspired some of the worst: a class into which most dating guides fall. It has given us chapter titles like “THE LOVE OF NUNS” (a medieval hit); and book titles like “THE GAME” (a modern one) and far too many things in capitals. It has given us a volume titled: “How to Flirt with Women: The Art of Flirting Without Being Creepy That Turns Her On!”. (For little speaks more eloquently of not being creepy than reading a manual about not being creepy.)

Dating manuals are an odd genre. They offer all those capitals—but speak of a lack of social capital. They promise triumph (hot girls) but hint at tragedy (for what man who gets hot girls actually reads them?). They slip, often unwittingly, into comedy. One modern manual advises that, to attract women, one should try “freely sprinkling your conversation with words of sex”. A breezy but opaque piece of advice (Which words? “Sprinkled” how?) that feels like it might lead to some awkwardness in the office. And possibly another lawsuit. Their advice is sometimes illiterate; often immoral; at times borderline illegal. Naturally, they sell in their millions.

For millions feel they need them. With good reason. In America, over a quarter of households contain only one person. In Britain, it is about the same. Singlehood is rising in most of the rich world. Some of these singletons are happy to be so; many are not. This matters: lonely people feel sadder, die younger and suffer poorer health than those in relationships. If singletons are young and male they are also likely to experience “the manosphere”—an online aggregation of aggrieved men who talk lovingly about protein shakes and bitterly about women.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Singleness falls on men and women evenly. But read 2,000 years of dating advice and it seems that most of it is aimed at men. Partly this is cultural: for centuries men were more literate, so they wrote for other men. Partly, it is sensible. Women “are just more emotionally intelligent than men”, says Dave Barry, an American humourist and the author of a “Complete Guide to Guys”. They do sophisticated things like washing and listening, he observes. Many men, by contrast, need “pretty primitive” advice.

Some of this disparity is biological. A frequent bleat of the manosphere is that dating obeys an “80/20 rule”: 20% of the men get 80% of the women. That is nonsense. But women are sexually far pickier than men. In 1978 researchers at an American university decided to test this empirically. Young volunteers thus approached total strangers of the opposite sex and asked them, “Would you go to bed with me?” Their paper would go on to become famous. Partly because those lines were made into a catchy British pop song.

But mainly because its results were so stark. The vast majority of men said “Yes”; some asked, “Why do we have to wait until tonight?”; the few who refused did so regretfully. “I cannot tonight,” was a typical refusal, “but tomorrow would be fine.” By contrast, every single woman said “No”. Most were appalled. “What is wrong with you?” was a typical response. As was: “Leave me alone.” The conclusions are clear: pop lyrics can come from unlikely places. And men and women approach sex very differently.

Manuals have thus, from the Bible on (often seen as the first self-help guide) stepped in, offering advice on everything from grooming (wash, says Ovid); to table manners (men should not, says one timeless 18th-century guide, “blow their Noses on their Napkins”); to their choice of paramour (do not, Leviticus warns, have “sexual relations with your mother. She is your mother”). Which is all very sensible. If not, perhaps, things you need to tell a daughter.

Despite the plethora of advice, many men feel they need more. To understand how deep the need, consider the market value of the solution. In a bright, modern flat in Miami, 12 men sit on sofas. They have notebooks, and an eager air. All have come on a four-day dating “Bootcamp” given by a dating guru who has written a book subtitled “HOW TO GET BEAUTIFUL WOMEN INTO BED”. (Subtlety, and the sparing use of the capslock key, is not this movement's strong suit.) Charging a lot is: the full course costs around $10,000.

At 12 o'clock, it begins. For men who have paid such an abnormal amount of money, the punters look fairly normal. Aged between around 20 and 60, they wear normal clothes (jeans, shirts, T-shirts), have normal-looking bodies and normal professions too: scientists, tech bros, men in finance. And though one or two describe themselves as “lucky” (Silicon-Valley speak for “stinking rich”), most seem normally paid, too.

The course is being run by a man who calls himself “the world's most famous dating guru & pickup artist”, which may be true, and gives his name as “Mystery”, which definitely isn't. His real name is Erik Von Markovik and he rose to fame in the 2000s, when he featured in a dating book called “The Game”, by Neil Strauss, a journalist.

It had chapter titles like “STEP 5—ISOLATE THE TARGET” and “STEP 10—BLAST LAST-MINUTE RESISTANCE”. Its glossary included terms like “SHB—noun” —“Super-hot babe” and “LSE— adjective”— “low self-esteem”; something desirable in a SHB as it makes her more likely to give in when you “CAVEMAN” (don't ask). It was not exactly Austen. It was a bestseller.

Men heard about “The Game”, thought “me too” and bought it. Women heard about it, thought “#MeToo”, and lambasted it. Pick-up is now a (slightly) chastened industry. Though not, as this course shows, wholly so. As the men take notes, Mystery expands on his technique to pick up “women of beauty”. Courting, in Mystery's telling, is less an intimate interaction than a one-man show whose tone lies somewhere between sales and comedy.

A pick-up begins with A1-3, which includes “THE ATTRACTION PHASE”. A good pick-up artist, explains Mystery, must have “openers” to start conversation and lengthier “gambits” to keep it going. In this phase you must show off, or as he puts it in the inevitable acronym, “DHV”—“Demonstrate higher value”, by bragging about your achievements. Like a comedian, your chat should be funny: “You're going to be laughing all the way to the bedroom.” Also like a comedian, you should discourage hecklers and even audience interaction. He is not “interested in them”—by which he means women—“talking”.

After you have hooked the woman of your dreams by bragging at her, then not allowing her to speak, you must pretend to cool off: “negging”. The Game's glossary defines a neg as a “seemingly accidental insult delivered to a beautiful woman” to show “a lack of interest in her”. Mystery has published a book of negs. They include—women, still your hearts—“You talk a lot” and “Ew, your palms are sweaty.”

After you've bored your potential paramour, then insulted her, you can bounce through stages C1-3: which takes in the “COMFORT PHASE” (don't leap on her instantly) before reaching the “S” levels: “THE SEDUCTION PHASE”. By this point your SHB with LSE will be so turned on that you won't need to seduce her: she will seduce you. “I'm not a seducer,” says Mystery, who practises what he preaches, peppering his conversation with DHVs. “I'm an attractor.”

The whole process is intensely formulaic. Pick-up teachers call themselves “artists” but these numbered steps feel less like artistry than the assembly manual you might get with a child's toy: Lego for legovers. It is also, for many men, arguably necessary. A constant in dating advice is men's terror of talking to women. As that 12th-century manual noted, there are men who “in the presence of ladies” are so flustered that they “lose their power of speech”.

They still do, says James Bloodworth, the author of “Lost Boys”, a book on the manosphere. He worked on a similar pick-up course and said that you couldn't tell merely by looking why the men had come; it was more “when they opened their mouth”. He saw 30-year-old virgins for whom even talking to women was “terrifying”, like “climbing Everest”.

This awkwardness, judging by the men on the Miami course, seems typical. Several talk of feeling fearful around women. Several of those your correspondent spoke to talked too much; listened too little; walked through doors first and didn't offer women seats. Most lacked that elusive elixir: charm.

It is not clear whether this course will help them. In a break, Mystery's assistants demonstrate some of their best lines on your correspondent. She does not fall in love but is tempted to laugh, as they are terrible. Such a reaction is, says the glossary, a “BITCH SHIELD— noun: a woman's defensive response to deter unknown men who approach her.” Or as women call it: “A WHOLLY REASONABLE REACTION— adv-adj-noun”.

Pick-up pays little respect to feminism. “Misogyny is baked into it,” says Mr Bloodworth. But then pick-up is not pretending to be a moral guide; it is a service. And though its prose may not be Austenian, its principles are: few knew better than Austen and her £10,000-a-year heroes the importance of DHV-ing; few have ever negged better than Mr Darcy when he muttered that Elizabeth was “tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me”.

A better question is not: is it morally good; it is: does it work? And here, both detractors and supporters would agree: yes. Partly, says Mr Bloodworth, because dating is “a numbers game”. Just as Mrs Bennet forced her daughters out to attend balls, so pick-up forces men to stop “festering at home”. Each night the men on the course must dress up, go out and speak to six to 12 groups of women. Inevitably, says Mr Bloodworth, “Your social skills will improve.” And, he adds, if you have halitosis “Someone is going to tell you.”

...or would I get better results by negging?

Going on a pick-up course may well, then, result in better breath. Whether it will result in good relationships is less clear. But dating advice is changing. People are turning from pick-up artists to another type of expert in the mysteries of what women might want: these experts are called “women”.

Pick-up offers a one-size fits all approach, but as Minnie Lane, a dating and attraction coach in London, points out, women are not a category, “a singular thing”, but individuals. Men should thus listen to the woman in front of them as she “is telling them constantly” what she wants—not just with words, but with her body. Ms Lane leans closer to your correspondent to prove the point and there is, indeed, an immediate charge in the air.

So for readers wanting some good dating advice, it is simple: do leave your house and your screen. Do put on a shirt. Don't spew out pre-prepared pick-up lines. Do react to the woman's responses. As indeed Ovid said, all those years ago. Look intently at the woman before you, he wrote, for “silent features often have both words and expression.” Although, being Ovid, he then tells his reader to kiss her anyway, whether she wants it or not. So maybe don't listen to that one.

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Source: HindustanTimes
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