We’re all aware of the sad, lonely, angry corner of the internet known as the “Seduction Community“, where self-described pick-up artists coach one another on how to “score” with women. We’ve all read the think-pieces linking pick-up artistry and other facets of the so-called “Manosphere” to the radicalization of young white men. We’ve all speculated about how online meninist spaces draw from antiquated and pseudoscientific notions of bioessentialism to perpetuate racism, misogyny, and general anti-social antipathy.
Above all, we’ve all turned our noses up at the pick-up artist community’s unwavering (and unwaveringly racist and sexist) fascination with Asian and Asian American women — a fascination that motivates some to write articles extolling the virtues of the submissive Asian woman (whom they describe as the solution to western feminism) while it encourages other to travel to Asia to engage in on-camera street harassment.
And still: most of us harbour a twisted fascination with knowing just how absurd and ridiculous pick-up artistry and other anti-feminist subcultures are. We all wonder: how seriously can people who label themselves “pick-up artists” — and who do so with no hint of irony — really take themselves? After all, pick-up artistry is a self-styled self-help community that insists they exist to help romantically-struggling men. So, what does pick-up artistry self-help really sound like?
Today, comedian Kristina Wong took one for the team, and compiled a group of powerful and funny Asian American women to find out just how deep this rabbit hole really goes.
In the first six episodes of her new webseries “Kristina Wong’s How to Pick Up Asian Chicks“, Wong is joined by porn star and author Asa Akira; actor Amy Hill (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend); actor Aubrey Anderson-Emmons (Modern Family); comedian Helen Hong (Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me) and many others to read and review six books published by pick-up artists that purport to reveal to presumably white male readers the ‘secret strategies’ for picking up, dating, and sexing Asian and Asian American women.
And boy, these books are as racist and sexist as they are ridiculous. Choice quotes include praise for McDonald’s for the trend of ‘Chinese girls’ breasts have filled out’; advice that Yelp is a great place to pick up Asian women; and the insistence that Japanese women have the ‘neatest, best-combed, sweetest-smelling’ pubic mounds (uhm, really?). Thank god that Kristina Wong and the other women of “How to Pick Up Asian Chicks” are here to shut this shit down.
Hey pick-up artists, you hear that sound? Yes, that sound. That’s the sound of millions of Asian American women laughing their asses off at you.
Says Wong about her inspiration for the series:
I’ve infiltrated the pickup artist scene for years, crashed their conventions, and made art about their ‘techniques.’ These guys spread misinformation on Asian American women, and their books are ripe for dissection. It’s time to flip the script on the submissive Asian woman stereotype and upend its root cause–white supremacy.
All six two-minute episodes are available on YouTube, and each will also be released weekly on Facebook. To celebrate the launch of the series, Wong is inviting Asian Americans to share their own shitty advice for how not to pick up Asian women in the hashtag #HowNOTToPickUpAsianChicks.
