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"A woman to whom you're attracted" is an odd term to use in in a society-wide analysis. Attraction is fundamentally situational - like everything human, it adjusts to its environment. If you were stuck on a desert island with your grandmother, she'd become appealing after a year or two. If you spent a few years surrounded by only supermodels, you'd find something unappealing about many of them.
Consider - a quarter of America is obese. Of all the very fat, ugly men who date very fat, ugly women - nothing could biologically make you like fat women just because you're fat, if you could go after models you'd find women as viscerally disgusting as I do. But, for the most part, fat people manage to get it up and desire sex with each other. People adapt.
This isn't really a cause of sexlessness or dating woes, though. And I don't think sexlessness is that big of a problem anyway. To whatever extent it does exist, the cause is probably a combination of physical proximity not happening on the internet, pornography, and whatever other right-wing social ideas you want to add to that.
How is pickup artistry fraud or manipulation? Everyone, admit it or not, both consciously and instinctively, practice and train their speech and behavior to get the partners they desire. PUA stuff is kinda just an explicit and well-done version of that. Which doesn't mean you have to like the consequences, but it's not any more 'manipulation' than makeup or 'asking a friend what you should text'. Semi-deceptive or semi-adversarial techniques aimed at getting sex or a better wife aren't new features of the 21st century, or even modernity.
Can't speak for all PUAs, but Julien Blanc specifically advised lonely men to falsely claim that their father had recently died in hopes of securing a pity fuck. Numerous women shared screenshots of him trying this exact strategy on them, months apart.
The entire concept of pursuing a "pity fuck" contradicts the fundamentals of PU Artistry.
Maybe so, but that doesn't mean that certain professional pickup artists aren't above suggesting it as a strategy.
I was pretty disgusted when I read about it (and not just it's because cheap, deceitful and manipulative). Surely when men are laying out that much money for a seminar, they expect better advice than "lie to women so they'll feel sorry for you".
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