I am a hunter. I haven’t actually hunted for several years, but like any addiction I am a hunter for life. Don’t get me wrong, hunting is a wonderful addiction. Some of my fondest memories are sitting perfectly still high in the Rockies with my black powder rifle half cocked, waiting for an Elk that never actually comes in range. We get up an hour before first light and silently hike a mile or more in the dark past the point where our trucks can’t take us. We set up as a team hoping this will be the morning. We care little about the weather except to select our clothing and ensure that we don’t get trapped in deep snow in the back-country. If we are lucky we at least hear a big bull across the meadow or over a ridge answering our infrequent calls. If we are really lucky we actually get to see them. Hearing them and seeing them makes our hearts pound and forces us to control our breathing. We recheck our lines of fire and the readiness of our primitive rifles. You may have heard a bull Elk bugle on TV. Or maybe you heard one at Estes Park or Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. If so (and you aren’t a hunter), you probably think you know the sound I’m describing. But that sound wouldn’t prepare you for the sound a crazed bull Elk makes when he thinks you are a rival bull and he is convinced he’s about to kick your ass and take your women. At less than 100 yards an infuriated bull elk can sound more like a raspy mountain lion roaring than a bugle. He’s the master of his domain, and he’s about to deliver a hell of a beating. Or so he thinks.
Sorry for the digression. Like I said it is an addiction. Maybe more accurately an obsession. Depending on what part of the country/world you live in, you may already fully understand this. And for most hunters once they start it becomes a year round activity. If you doubt this, note the number of men fishing in the cooler months wearing camouflage. My wife used to complain that there was always something in season. And she was right. From what little I’ve studied about Evo Psych, this shouldn’t be a surprise. Men were built to be hunters.
So what does this have to do with Pickup Artists? As natural as sex is, and as obviously important as it is from a selection perspective, it strikes me that the modern PUA is an extremely novel niche from an evolutionary perspective. I think even Citizen Renegade acknowledges that it is the strange intersection of our formerly patriarchal society with feminism which created this highly unusual situation. The fact that very few men are what CR would call “Alpha” would seem to reinforce this. Historically being “Alpha” by CR’s definition wasn’t a particularly effective strategy. Certainly there have always been “Sneaky F*ers”, but what is going on in the world of PUAs is orders of magnitude greater numbers wise than I would imagine a wildly successful Sneaky F*er would have been able to accomplish in the past. Do it too much and it stops being sneaky.
But reading CR and the comments section, it is clear that they feel an addictive pull to always bag that next quarry. They become obsessed with their quarry’s habits and movements. They learn to admire everything about it, just like a hunter does. If you’ve ever been in the field with a hunter one thing you know is they see all sorts of animals you would have been totally unaware of. I suspect the same happens for PUAs and their targets.
You could explain the PUA addiction as any generic addictive activity, and that probably would be sufficient. Certainly sex in any form is a powerful motivator. It appears that the modern PUA’s stable quarry the carousel rider becomes addicted to the activity without any parallel to hunting. Being prey isn’t a selected for trait. But as a fellow hunter, something strikes me as extremely familiar when PUAs describe their craft. The obsessive studying of prey, habits, and habitat. The simultaneous admiration of and mastery over the prey. The identification, the stalk, and the close. CR seems aware of this because his writings are liberally laced with hunting terms.
This is purely speculation on my part, but I’m guessing there is something to it. What do you think?
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