The original scammer was Neil Strauss. He explained in his book "The Game" that in social tribes, your status is set in stone. But in a transient environment like a nightclub, women don't know who you are so you have a fresh start. A clean slate to rewrite your entire life history and project an aura of an attractive guy. This is why nerds and losers LOVE pickup. It gives them a chance to short circuit women's vetting.
It looks good in theory. Accept when you apply it and see that it falls apart.
First of all, there is no such thing as mistakes in nature. If you are a chump in your social tribes, you will express a distorted aura in the clubs.
Some of the time, it will come across in the form of over-compensating behavior. A PUA comes from the frame of lower value and feels like he needs to do something special to win a woman over (The very basis of all PUA game). So he over-compensates hardcore and gets blown out left and right.
Other times he's too damn needy because he doesn't have a social life and normal, organic interactions with women on a daily basis. His stink of neediness is subtle to him, but VERY OBVIOUS AND REPELLING to women.
I'll give you guys an example. A "natural" from a social tribe knows that women are already attracted to him. He has women seducing him daily. This gives him a sense of entitlement (Something PUA's do not have). So he is automatically less needy when he goes out. His entitlement also protects him from over-compensating. So he's not going to try hard. He's just going to give the woman a bait. She can take it or leave it. This is the REAL street pickup game. It is something a PUA can never pull of consistently due to lack of entitlement.
I never said that pickup doesn't work. It certainly works for me and guys like me. It just doesn't work for nerds. There is no hacking the matrix. If you are a nerd in your social tribes, then you are a nerd everywhere. Women can pick up on your sub-communications.
So now the nerd is stuck in a perpetual loop of trying to calibrate with the right "game" to compensate for his lack of frame and value. And this is perfect for the PUA marketers. It was enough for them to carve out a nice 15 year career as online seduction gurus.
No matter what the nerd does, no matter what level he achieves, there is always some micro-calibration that he missed. He is always one step behind. But rest assure because there is a product for that.