Pickup Artistry, Incels, and Male Maxxing

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Pickup artists — sometimes called the seduction community or pickup community — are a group of predominantly heterosexual men whose goal is to seduce women by using psychological manipulation, the latter often referred to as “the game.”

In fact, the core belief of pickup artistry is that sexual success is achievable through learning a specific “game,” that is — a set of manipulation techniques.

Although forms of pickup artistry are probably as old as mankind, modern pickup artist practices emerge in the 1960s resulting in a variety of books, how-to guides, methods, Internet discussion forums, email lists, blogs, websites, in-person group meetings, workshops, and trainings to share seduction information and techniques.

Despite pickup artists and incels being distinct groups, it’s widely thought that the incel community largely emerged from the pickup artist community when men failed to achieve success using pickup artistry techniques.

Hence, as a result the core belief of incels emerged, which rather states that they (typically “beta males”) are unable to attract women due to unchangeable factors like genetics, physical appearance, or societal structures, and that pickup artistry is ineffective (at least for “beta males”).

Despite the defeatist belief, tone, and attitude, many (if not most) incels still engage in male maxxing practices to “improve themselves.” This is actually a contradiction to their core belief, but there are several reasons to it:

• using maxxing as a coping mechanism, that is, as a way to manage the pain and loneliness of their situation;
• still having a glimmer of hope, that is, they might escape involuntary celibacy by using the right maxxing techniques to improve their appearance or other features of their lives;
• as a kind of rebellion against deterministic factors, hence using maxxing practices as a way to fight against the “unfair” disadvantages;
• as an aspiration to the ideal, that is, attempting to emulate the ideal male type;
• as a pursuit of control, that is, by focusing intensely on maxxing practices one’s life gets a structured routine and a sense of agency and purpose;
• as a result of incel community influence that promotes maxxing as a solution to escape so-called inceldom;

Interestingly enough, various male maxxing activities are actually (adapted) forms of pickup artistry because they use psychological manipulation or are based on the same ideas and practices that were already found in pickup artistry.

As it is, many pickup artists work on their “game” by improving their understanding of psychology, their self-confidence, and self-esteem — known as the “inner game” — and their social skills and physical appearance, such as physical fitness, lifestyle, personality, fashion, styling, and grooming — known as the “outer game.”

Now, when many involuntary celibate men found that pickup artistry techniques didn’t work for them, they reframed the same ideas into “maxxing” techniques, often becoming more detailed and more extreme than the pickup artistry techniques.

The focus became somewhat less on social or psychological tricks and more on optimizing the features they believed determine dating success, which initially emphasized optimizing (or “maximizing”) the physical features they assumed women are attracted to.

Today, male maxxing techniques have evolved beyond only the physical optimization realm, with many new maxxing domains that cover other life features, but looksmaxxing (maximizing one’s physical appearance) is arguably still the foundation for male maxxing.

But, let’s take a look at how pickup artistry techniques were translated to maxxing practices.

For instance, the pickup “game” became rizzmaxxing (a form of personalitymaxxing), fitness and working out for confidence became gymmaxxing and leanmaxxing, grooming and styling became looksmaxxing, groommaxxing, and stylemaxxing, and lifestyle design became statusmaxxing, to give some examples.

In addition, you’ll find that there are quite some male maxxing techniques, which — more or less — can be categorized as “pickup trickery,” such as thugmaxxing, geomaxxing, uglymaxxing, transmaxxing, grannymaxxing, and jestermaxxing.

Hence, pickup artistry and male maxxing share several similarities — at least a common history and several techniques — but one could argue that their theoretical foundations, and therefore their focus of action are different.

Today, the pickup artistry community has diminished substantially “in favor of” the incel and maxxing communities, while other remnants persist in online coaching and dating‑advice practices.

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