Men Suck, Monsters as Men, and Why Are We Like This? would all be suitable alternatives to The Pickup Game, a documentary from Neil Strauss that gives an inside look at the emergence of the global pickup industry. The film depicts a thriving, resilient billion dollar industry that generates profit off the desire of men to manipulate women through whatever techniques deemed effective. Like other more traditional self-help fields, students can sign up for live seminars, personal coaching, and take online courses, all designed to make it easier to get with women.

The film features a whole cast of smarmy characters, many of them long-time gurus who built the business and have since achieved idol status among their peers. One such titan of industry is Ross Jeffries, author of a 1992 self-published book How to Get the Women You Desire into Bed, who is a lot like those over-the-hill movie kingpins that yell “at least we had a code!”

Despite successfully explaining and exploring this relatively underground world, the film remains oddly apolitical. It’s always a challenge to expose contemptible ideas without providing a platform for the people pushing them, but the apolitical and almost wholly uncritical approach is a questionable choice given the context.