1. If you actually have a valuable characteristic about you, it will be obvious to someone from interacting with you.

2. You can cultivate the appearance of valuable and attractive traits. Doing this will make you seem like you have that trait - and over time, you’ll grow into the role. Even if you’re not confident, if you act confident, you will slowly become confident.

3. You can actively demonstrate traits about yourself. You can tell a joke to show you’re funny, make an approach to show you’re confident, tease a girl to show you’re not scared of her, and so on.

Which of the these three ways of expressing value is the most effective way to pickup? This has been a subject of great debate for some time. Here’s what people have decided:

1. “Actually being confident” and “actually being funny” are the easiest ways to appear confident and funny with no effort on your part in the short term. BUT, if you’re not confident, or funny, or a leader, or quickwitted, or charismatic, it can take the longest amount of time to become these things. It takes a while to internalize things you’ve learned and are working on.

2. Cultivating the appearance of a trait: This is faster in the long term than actually becoming it, AND it helps you become it. So, it’s easier to appear confident than to actually be confident. And appearing confident all the time will make you more confident. This still does take a while to accomplish.

3. Actively demonstrating a trait every time you need to, such as going out of your way to tell a joke to every woman you meet so she knows you’re funny: This is the most efficient route in the short term (can be done instantly) but in the long term, will add up to far more time spent. This is because it is a lot of work to constantly be demonstrating things like being confident and emotionally steadfast in a relationship to keep her around, or to demonstrate traits to every woman you try to meet. Actively demonstrating a trait is one of the first steps to cultivating the appearance of a trait.

The best pickup artists employ all three of these ways of showing/having value. They’ll start by using the third way, active demonstration, to get their feet wet and experiment with their new stuff. Over time, they’ll start changing their body language, eye contact, tonality, style, and even general speaking patterns. This will lead to the appearance of valuable traits. Over time, this results in evolution into actually having these traits. Many men start by learning funny retorts to insults and disrespectful behavior. Over time, they ideally evolve into quickwitted guys.

Of the three ways to show value, they fall into two categories: Active and Passive. And entire pickup styles revolve around them.

Active: The assumption that you need to build value with a girl and working to do it.

Passive: The assumption that you have value, and it being communicated simply by your presence.

A good pickup artist, even one with a lot of Passive Value, will still actively demonstrate a characteristic about himself when it’s useful. Master PUA’s will even demonstrate things that would be unattractive coming from a weaker man, things like vulnerability or a really strong affinity for a girl we’ve just met. We do this to keep the woman thinking we’re attainable, so she doesn’t get dejected and end the interaction to preserve her ego.

Many men in the seduction community weren’t the “cool kids” when they were growing up. In high school, college, and before and after those times, they weren’t really popular. So when one of these guys hears “Just be cool” or “Wear cool clothes and act normal”, they can’t identify with it. Guys who have some level of self-esteem built, either through luck or because they worked hard for it, will have an easier time accepting this:

Every man who wants to improve himself has some passive value.

Simply by being intelligent enough to want to improve and ambitious enough to try it, you’ve got SOME value. Maybe not ENOUGH to rely on it exclusively, but you must accept the fact that you have passive value. Don’t assume you start out at zero: It’s a bad place to work from, and will result in tryhard behavior.

Instead, realize objectively what you’ve got going for you, and try to get other things going for you. At the very, very least, anyone here has a base level of intelligence, education, self-respect, and a hunger for more, an ambition and a will to get success: All of which are attractive.

The biggest place this debate comes up is regarding teaching. Whether it’s an international business doing lectures and workshops or it’s just a guy teaching his wing, or friend, or brother, people argue about where to start.

A lot of guys rising into the “new school” of natural game think that active value building is to be frowned upon. When Vinny codified and published The Transition to Natural Game, he did not mean to shun all forms of active value - I know because I eat and drink with him, and he’s said as much himself. Both Vin and I use techniques when it’s to our benefit. But it’s cool that we can throw the rulebook out the window and do pickup strictly on passive value.

A healthy system of self-improvement is one which makes its students or disciples both more actively valuable and passive valuable. That way, you’re more attractive before you speak a single word and you can choose to dial it up by sprinkling a little of your time into an interaction.