A Brief History of Pickup Artists & the Seduction Community
From the year 2 CE until the present day, there is a long, rich history of literature directed at helping heterosexual men seduce women.
The seduction community is unknown to many despite its global reach and commercial success. The present-day community has precedent: it emerged from a rich cultural history of seduction literature spanning at least two millennia. The advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s was transformational and led to the development of the present-day seduction community.
The seduction community, including participants and community leaders, is predominantly male. The community is focused on supporting heterosexual men to develop their skills as pickup artists (PUAs), sharing tips, strategies, and tactics to initiate sexual interactions with women. A pickup artist is “a man who is knowledgeable and competent in the ways of attracting and seducing women” (Almog & Kaplan, 2015, p. 7).
Historical Origins
Literature provides an extensive historical record of seduction techniques written for a male audience. Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (written c. 2 CE) is one of the earliest examples of such literature in Europe (King, 2017). Ars Amatoria, or The Art of Love, provided suggestions for where to take women on dates and how to stimulate sexual…
