0 thoughts on “Podcast 025: Be The Guy Women Gravitate Towards Like The Sun w/ John Cooper”

1. I thought the part where John Cooper says that “approach anxiety” is a symptom of learning pickup is actually pretty wrong. It’s fairly obvious that lots of men (including men who have never studied pickup) have approach anxiety when it comes to trying to talk to some pretty girl you’re attracted to. This is not a problem caused by the pickup companies. It’s something that has existed for a long time. Even if you’ve studied pickup, you can just reach back into your memory and remember a time when you were younger (before you studied pickup), and you shouldn’t have any trouble remembering times when you were just too afraid of approaching some girl you were attracted to. John has a pretty good conspiracy theory going, though, because theoretically, it’s possible that approach anxiety is something (consciously or not) created by pickup companies. In reality, though, this is not a problem created by the pickup companies.
   I felt like John’s idea of “pickup” is a reaction to pickup as it existed 10 years ago, and most of his ideas are repackaged versions of ideas from RSD. At best, he seems to emphasize those particular ideas more than RSD tends to. I’m guessing that he’s read Mark Manson’s stuff, too, because Mark Manson is very big on the “win win” idea of picking up women (i.e. it should be good for both of you).

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   • Hey BC – I actually was chatting to John about this and he had a great response that made a lot of sense. I’ll get him on here to respond shortly.

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   • John wrote a post to address your question BC

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     • I felt like his response was mostly just repeating his original position. I still don’t quite understand why he can say this is a result of pickup companies, especially since guys will tell you that they’ve been suffering from approach anxiety for their whole lives — long before they ever started studying pickup. Women have the same approach anxiety. I’ve seen it among my friends. (Sometimes these girls will do things like leave their phone number on a receipt and hope that cute waiter will call them, because they didn’t have the courage to hit on him directly.) Can we just admit that approach anxiety comes from a fear of rejection, worries about not being perceived as “good enough” or “entertaining enough” or “attractive enough” and that rejection signals a blow to our ego and self-esteem? It also comes from a fear of making another person uncomfortable, making themselves uncomfortable, appearing creepy, or awkward. These are natural human emotions, not problems created by pickup companies.
       I remember a pickup video a while back where a guy said, “Would you feel awkward walking up to a girl if you had a check for $10,000 for her?” The typical answer is “no”, because you were offering her something very valuable. The problem is that many people don’t feel “high value”, and they certainly don’t feel like their interaction with that person is comparable to a check for $10,000. Perhaps John is an entertaining guy and he feels that everyone is given the gift of his interaction, but not everyone feels that way about their presence. Very often, people feel insecure and they don’t feel like the most attractive, most entertaining, most valuable person in the bar.

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       • Hi BC,
         I think I can clarify any confusion here. I agree with you that AA existed well before pickup companies. The fear of rejection has been around way longer. I think John is merely trying to say that this fear of rejection has been “coined” the term “Approach Anxiety,” and that pickup companies have exploited it as a problem that needs to get fixed. It has always been an uncomfortable feeling, but the movement here is that it’d be better to focus on yourself as a person of giving, autonomous, and playing.
         In response to your last sentence, this where confidence comes in and when you start to know that you’d be a great “catch.” Not coming from an arrogant mindset, but just being a very confident man who knows he’s valuable (not necessarily the most valuable person at the bar). And to be a confident man, I believe that’s where self-improvement and giving back to the world comes in…because you’d know that you’re working towards becoming the best version of yourself and you know you’re doing good things.

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         • Nice explanation Eman, thanks!