I haven't watched this but am very familiar with pick up artist techniques, and I think I was recently approached by one in Leicester Square. The location would make sense, as he asked me if I was foreign at first, so probably hangs out there looking for women travelling on their own, out of their comfort zone, more willing to talk to people and less familiar with the language and culture. The conversation wasn't too bad at first, although he did have a habit of trying to 'categorise me' - 'oh, so you're the kind of girl who does blah blah blah', which got my guard up, and then when he shook hands he held on too long which was creepy as hell. Nonetheless, I was travelling on my own, and I didn't feel in danger in the middle of the day, so out of curiosity and to have someone to chat to for a while I went into a bar with him. I even asked him 'so are you a pick up artist?' to which he was kind of evasive (rumbled). In the bar, he told me he was a surgeon, to which I prodded him until he had to admit that he was actually a dentist (although that could have been a lie too). He was very arrogant and patronising, and his technique seemed to be to push boundaries and make me doubt myself, using a kind of Queer Theory approach in a way. Somehow he got onto stating that pain isn't an indicator of the possibility of death, and that women in the past didn't feel pain in childbirth, pain is culturally specific and tried to put the burden of proof on me to claim otherwise. There were nuggets of truth in things he said, that he used to tr to persuade. At this point, pick-up artist or not it wasn't my idea of a good time and I'd had enough, so I got up mid-drink and left, telling him he was a patronising arse who wasn't as intelligent as he seemed to think he was. I'm older than I look and am well-aware of the gaslighting these kinds of men use to weaken women's defences, but would these techniques have worked when I was younger and more vulnerable? I think the ONLY instance in which it would work would be if I actually found the guy attractive in the first place. That's why pick-up courses are selling such a lie. I think these men can't bear to think that they are unattractive to women or they perhaps need to change something about their behaviour. There's a denial that women are visual creatures too (we often hear 'men are more visual' - really? Or women just socialised to be more generous? You also get men shaming women for not wanting to go out with/sleep with guy because he's unattractive, as though it's a woman's duty to open her legs to any man who approaches her. Similarly 'all women are bisexual' er, no...). This kind of pick-up culture puts these fears about women's agency to rest and makes the men using them think they've found some sort of magic bullet which makes women's preferences irrelevant. I hope you don't mind my contribution to this thread, don't mean to derail as I haven't watched the documentary and honestly don't know if I can stomach it. I find this kind of thinking, particularly among younger men, to be rife, and as such remain contentedly single.