[mhd]

Basic social science articles always read like they're written by Captain Obvious.

"1. Do initiate flirtation with people of roughly the same level of attractiveness as yourself.

2. Don’t flirt with people who are unlikely to return your interest."

But on the other hand, there's really no easy way out (writing about it, I mean). I've yet to find a more "practical" approach that doesn't read like either semi-useless and somewhat obvious statistics ("try to position yourself between 3 and 4 feet away from your flirting partner"), or just oozes sleaze ("pickup artists", ESR etc.). Getting technical about human beings and our social interaction works quite well in a clinical, observing manner, but once it's meant as actual practical advise, it's very easy to cross boundaries.

[noamsml]

As someone with borderline autism, I find this sort of guide extremely helpful, because things that may be obvious to you take me immense amounts of time to learn and internalize. Normally I find myself having large amounts of "rules" governing me that turn out to be incorrectly identified from social conduct or incorrectly inferred from the on-the-surface descriptions of things. Hell, even the concept of flirting is something I've just barely started grasping in my 20s.

I know I'm a bit of an outlier, but it's sometimes good to be reminded that yes, you can try to flirt in this or that situation, or that X or Y are a good sign of flirting.

EDIT: Of course, this is mostly still good as a reminder, introduction, or to shatter misconceptions. The only way to really learn flirting, I've found, is the same as one would learn any other culture: by immersion. As someone whose approach to such things is less intuitive, immersion may be followed by analysis to extract explicit lessons from my experiences.

[orangecat]

or just oozes sleaze ("pickup artists", ESR etc.)

They may be sleazy, but they're basically right.

[mhd]

Even if their statistical shenanigans would be scientifically "accurate" (which I still doubt), by no means would I, morally and ethically, consider them "right".

I'm the stereotypical reclusive, clinically shy geek, but I've gotten past puberty, and stopped considering penetration to be the "end game". Note that those douchebags seem to be exclusively care about that, there's no "relationship artist" trade that I'm aware of.

[barrkel]

Believe it or not, sometimes women are looking for "penetration" as the "end game". Not every encounter is expected to end in a life-long marriage.

[mhd]

I think "sometimes" is the key word here. I like cookies but eating them all the time might be a bit unhealthy. And preaching the "all cookie lifestyle" would seem a bit odd. From what I've seen of the "pickup scene", that seems to be the rule. I like the PDF here. It's a nice, social science view of flirting, and although it's always odd to view interaction in a statistical way, it's not written as how to best exploit and game things ("flirting" vs. "pickup"). I think this style is way better than your usual "how to get any girl in bed" type of book (or your average Cosmo type of article for the distaff side).

[starship]

I just don't think this is true. I think the majority of people that end up looking into the pickup stuff are normal guys, who are bad at talking to girls, and who want a relationship. Most people don't want to spend the time and money necessary to have some kind of clubbing 3-nights a week lifestyle.

The reason those books recommend going out multiple times a week, isn't to have that lifestyle per say, it's because that's the only way to accumulate enough hours at practicing these social interactions to internalize it. Once most people reach that point, they stop going to clubs and spending all that money. Then they use the skills they learned through trial-and-error on strangers to date people in their social circles.

[mhd]

I'm not condemning the readers. But are we really assuming a dichotomy between "Forever Alone" and following in the foot steps of "pickup artists"? Especially in a thread where the original article shows that you can convey the essential information without machismo self-help lingo?

If it's from sleazoid to sleazoid, okay, let them simmer in their own subcultural juices. But as you say, a part of the reader demographics is oriented towards the socially insecure, and there this approach can be damaging (and seems inherently exploitative to me). There are other books about this, from targetign the shyness angle to basic social interaction ("shmoozing") to flirting – or to bedroom performance, if you're concerned about that. You don't really have to reach for the "seduction community" shenanigans.

Apart from the moral/ethical angle, there's also little actual value in that part of the bookshelf, from what I have seen. It's bad self-help, coupled with huge amounts of self-promotion (to establish the required credibility of the author). I'm not saying that it doesn't work, mind you. Not necessarily because of the clever tricks and lingo, but because of the basic confidence boost. "You can do it!" is probably all a lot of people need. Just like lots of diets or GTD type of books work just by the customer deciding to watch what he's eating or trying to organize his life.

Still don't think you should hand your money to that sector of virtual wing men… Maybe all joking aside, we would benefit from a "advanced social skills" Hacker News (There's probably a subreddit for it already).

[kragen]

Many more women are looking for great sex as the end game than are looking for penetration. I mean, ask some of your female friends who really love penetration, and you'll find that even the ones who are most enthusiastic about it have had penetrative sexual encounters they would never want to repeat.

[barrkel]

You're taking me too literally. I used those words because they're what the parent post used. He was being dismissive of guys who just wanted to have sex with women (and, I suspect, thinking he was taking some kind of moral high ground, probably as part of a rationalization mechanism) while I was pointing out that sometimes women also just wanted to have sex.

[starship]

The "pickup artist" stuff may ooze sleaze, but as a detailed model for human social interactions it really is the best model that currently exists. This paper is extremely simplistic by comparison.

If you want to have a better understanding of all the intricacies of group dynamics, body language, etc. unfortunately I don't know of any other resource. Does it comes with a lot of BS and sleazy stuff attached? Yes, so just filter that out. But don't ignore it completely, you're doing yourself a disservice. A lot of the power dynamics and body language stuff applies to work situations as well btw...

Sorry, no citations here, just my personal experience, so believe what you want. But I can tell you its like night and day now that I know what to look for.

[te_chris]

[citation please] care to back that up?

[bmelton]

Interesting is that it seems to focus on long-term relationships as the reference point against which it gives its advice.

For shorter-term relationships (not implying anything), I've found best success with flirting with women considerably more attractive than myself. I've asked a number of my more attractive girlfriends why they were with an ugly schlub like myself and I get two common answers: Personality/humor/laid-backness is one, and the other is that it seems that the best looking ladies either don't get approached, or don't get approached with anything better than tired old pickup lines.

I do agree with their findings on pickup lines though. Some friends and I spent a few weeks testing out different ones (in the name of science, naturally), and I had, by a large margin, the most success with "Hi, I'm Barry. Can I buy you a drink?" -- obviously varied if I'm not somewhere I can buy a drink from.