of the need to succeed, because in the training, there is no problem in failure. Pickup artist A pickup artist (commonly abbreviated PUA) is a person who practices finding multiple sexual partners. Such a person purportedly abides by a certain system deemed effective by that community in his attempts to seduce partners. The use of pickup in this context, slang for making a casual acquaintance with a stranger in anticipation of sexual relations, was popularized by the 1970 book How to Pick Up Girls by Eric Weber, and by Pick-Up Times, a short-lived 1970s magazine, and the 1987 semi-autobiographical romantic comedy The Pick-up Artist, written and directed by James Toback. More recent works of pickup artist culture include Neil Strauss's book, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists, and the 2007 VH1 reality television series, The Pickup Artist, starring the pickup artist Mystery. The former pickup artist Roosh V, who has since recanted his past and converted to Oriental Orthodox Christianity, previously had self-published 14 books describing techniques for seducing women. According to Salon, such books are the "cash cow" of the pickup industry. The term pickup artist is also associated with a male heterosexual subculture which strives to improve sexual success with women. Routines and gambits are developed to stimulate purported "attraction switches", sometimes combined with mental-conditioning techniques such as neuro-linguistic programming. Members aim to improve their seductive capabilities through the development of various lifestyles. The culture surrounding pickup has spawned an entire industry servicing those who want to improve their social and seduction skills with consultations and in-field training. Pickup artists receive mixed to negative responses from the press and general public, with many regarding both the practice and theory as immoral, sexist and ineffective. In 2014, following widely supported public petitions, U.S.-based PUA speaker and instructor Julien Blanc was denied entry to both the United Kingdom and Australia after he published YouTube videos explaining and demonstrating behaviors such as grabbing women by the throat, and forcing their heads towards his crotch. Pickup artists have also been parodied, as in the March 2011 The Scott Mills Show. BBC Radio 1 debated Neil Strauss' The Game on many shows. Psychologist Petra Boynton has stated that there is "no evidence of effectiveness" for any claims of pickup artists. Research by Nathan Oesch of the University of Oxford Department of Experimental Psychology, however, confirmed attraction and seduction principles, as