I am in the process of writing a book about the things that men and women should have been taught in life, but somehow didn’t get the right training for. As such, one of these areas was regarding some of the older notions of how to meet the opposite sex. As I was a child of the 1970s, graduating in 1977 from high school, I was from a generation of young men who had next to no training on how to meet women. I remember a book I once read, from that time so long ago, called “How To Pick Up Girls.” Written by a man named Eric Weber, it was a cult classic of the day and a cultural phenomenon that is remembered by many to this very day. In fact, Weber’s books are still popular.
How To Pick Up Girls sold over three million copies, making it a cult classic of 1970s literature and helping a lot of young men learn how to talk to women at a time when no one even dared approach the subject in print.
The language in How To Pick Up Girls is VERY dated now, and the terminology used is cannon fodder for those in today’s highly charged politically correct magazines. As I was doing my research for my book, having started reading some of Eric’s old works on Archive.org and my Kindle, I happened across an article that was, in my opinion, more of a hit piece to discredit Eric’s book, than a balanced review of his work. At forty years late in reviewing the book, Isha Aran’s review of “How To Pick Up Girls” was a case study in biased writing taken to the extreme.
Reviewing The Reviewer
Isha’s article, titled “This 1970s guide to getting girls will scar you forever,” was so biased, I HAD to comment in rebuttal. I would have commented on the website it was presented on, but their site would not let me login or post a reply. So, I came to my website to lodge my disagreements and thoughts.
I did a brief look at Isha’s works. Very left-of-center writing. It was not surprising to see her politically driven points of view, given the single article I read from her. I refrained from any direct quotes from her “This 1970s guide to getting girls will scar you forever” piece. I leave that to you, Dear Reader, to suffer through on your own.
I had to laugh at this completely one-sided review. Yes, Eric’s work is dated material, but none of the context of the 1970s, which I grew up in as a teen, are even commented on by Isha as she takes a 2015 cultural point of view and tries to apply it in a retro-review of Eric’s book in a manner that comes off unfairly and decidedly angry in it’s tone.
It is easy to cherry pick someone’s writing. Harder to be fair and objective in the interpretation of decades old material
The cherry picked language the article author selected from How to Pick up Girls which was then permissible at the time, and a part of 1970s culture, is targeted in the modern era from an Feminist point of view. Isha does so rather savagely from my perspective after re-reading her review several times.
The trouble with the 2015 article is that it fails to recognize that there were a LOT of desperate teens and young men in that era that lacked the confidence to speak to women. It was Eric’s writings that gave them the techniques and courage to even approach girls and women with techniques that actually worked! A lot of men met their wives and girlfriends because of Eric! He even talks about the cultural phenomenon that How To Pick Up Girls spawned in his updates to the book, letting us see into his mindset and the reasons for writing it.
Isha proceeds to treat Eric’s efforts as a first-time writer negatively. Eric was addressing a real need, but Isha attacks his work as being the ravings of a social pariah rather than a serious self-help book for nervous young men who were lonely for a girlfriend.
The unfortunate truth is that Isha seems to resent the more timeless truths this book talks about that translate well to the present day. All the reader has to do is to witness the Men’s Movement reacting to the less savory writings and practices of the Feminist movement and one starts to understand the mindset behind this 2015 review taking such a one-sided swipe at Eric’s work. It is too bad that this article didn’t have a more balanced approach tied to it with a male reviewer who also would review the book without an agenda that they were playing to.
The best part of the 2015 article? The fact that nowhere in it is there any mention that Eric Weber sold 3 million copies of the book and authored a series of books along similar lines.
Success, it seems, breeds jealousy.
In the end, it is all about the money… And at $5 a pop in 1970s and 1980s dollars, Eric made about $15 million dollars from the book and likely is still realizing royalties from it. One wonders how much money Isha made from bashing Eric’s work – LOL – I suspect it was far, far less than Eric took in. The old saying is, you catch more flies with honey then you do with vinegar…
A quick note to Isha: I read How To Pick Up Girls in my late teens… and I read your article in my early 60s. Sorry to inform you, but I was not scarred in the least all those years ago. Neither were millions of other men and women who read How To Pick Up Girls. In fact, I met a lot of beautiful women because of Eric Weber’s courage in writing a book that young men sorely needed. I have no idea why you arrived forty years late to review Eric’s work, but I can say that I disagree with your review. To be blunt, your article is what scared me. Not Eric’s noble writings.
One does wonder if $15 million for Eric’s writing (plus a movie) versus a few hundred dollars for an article few people took seriously, is an example of a just and true God having the last laugh! LOL. For you young men, needing to learn how to talk to women, I’d recommend giving Eric’s books a look. Ignore the critics and forgive the dated language. You’ll see good advice in his writing and learn a thing or two about meeting beautiful women. Enjoy.