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    Published: 2022-10-21
    Vol. 29 No. 1 (2022)

    Pickup artists as a subculture of postmodern risk

    Artur Malec
    Academic Journal of Sociology
    Section: Articles
    https://doi.org/10.21697/ucs.2022.29.1.04

    Abstract

    The aim of the article below is to present the phenomenon of the subculture of seducers – ‘pickup artists’, whose activity began in the United States and mainly thanks to the Internet, appeared all over the world, including Poland. The presence of the seducer subculture is the result of the changes that took place in postmodern times and is part of Ulrich Beck’s concept of ‚risk society’. The article describes the main features of the PUA community, which has its own way of describing (language) and a world of values, which allows it to be perceived as a kind of subculture, as well as the contemporary masculine movement that meets certain expectations of men in the sphere of building intimate relationships with women. The history of the development of the pickup artists phenomenon as well as the controversy related to the activities of the seduction community are also presented. The very pattern of the seduction process, which was taken from one of the seduction textbooks, is described using the dramaturgical concept of the interactionist Erving Goffman, which depicts the seducer as an actor and describes the seduction process as a theatrical performance.

    Keywords:

    seduction, pickup artists, society of risk, masculinism, subculture, theory of dramaturgy

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    Citation rules

    Malec, A. (2022). Pickup artists as a subculture of postmodern risk. Academic Journal of Sociology, 29(1), 37–44. https://doi.org/10.21697/ucs.2022.29.1.04

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