I don't do pickup much any more.
I have no problem with flirting with girls per se. My complaint was the ideology that many PUAs adopt and their stage Orange attitude towards sex and life.
Flirting with girls is not necessarily at odds with long-term relationships or emotional investment. There is no relationship without flirting.
All dating is a sort of manipulation and getting your own needs met, even if you never do pickup.
99% of relationships of any kind are just you trying to getting your own needs met. You don't really care about anyone "as they really are", you care about how they can fit into your life and serve your needs.
Dating and flirtation is a skillset. All skillsets are a set of "tricks" in that sense. If you want to get good around women you need to learn the rules of how that works. Pickup teaches some of those rules of attraction. How you then use them is up to you.
Good pickup is not really about controlling girls. It's about controlling yourself.
Controlling people is not something I recommend. You can become much more attractive and confident without having to control women.
Rather than thinking of pickup as stuff you do to the woman, think of it as changing your own inner game and how you view women. Think of it as becoming a stronger, more authentic man.
There are many versions of pickup. Some of it is very dysfunctional, some of it is great. You have to learn to sort the wheat from the chaff.
As a man, dialing in your own inner game is great stuff. Learning to be charismatic, bold, and authentically expressive is great stuff. Elimimating various kinds of limiting beliefs about women is great stuff. Gaining lots of experience talking to women is great stuff.
You have to remember, most women are very social and flirt and socialize non-stop. To them it is like breathing air. They develop a lot of this experience naturally in a way that many nerdy guys do not. Which is why many guys require extra training in a way that women do not. Guys have responsibilities with initating the flirt which women do not.
And in the end all dating and relationship is a distraction from awakening.
Dating is a survival function. Dating is brutal whether you do pickup or not. People are very selfish in relationships by default. Women are also very selfish when selecting mates. Reproduction is a ruthless game which people tend to be in denial about.