Between my 2nd and 3rd years at Uni, a friend an I got into pickup. We watched videos, read books then went out in the evenings to practice. Pickings were slim since Bath becomes a ghost town during Summer, but we persevered.
I was pretty good with women beforehand, and certainly got better afterwards, but at a certain point during our training, my focus shifted from pickup to something more akin to 'reading, understanding and influencing people better'.
I think that's what pickup is really about: improving how you interact with people in general.
So yeah, some people will hate it for a number of reasons and that's ok. There are other ways to work on people skills. But pickup has a little additional incentive for you to work harder..
In my mind, it's the difference between having a singular thread of execution vs multiple threads.
The people in the aisle are units of work that need executing. In back to front, only the unit that is right at the front can actually be completed since only she is blocking the people behind her, who are in turn blocking the people behind them.
In a random setup, say the first person goes right to the back of the plane, there's every likelihood that the person behind her is not sitting next to her, which means that 2nd person can immediately reach his seat while she does the same..
Multiply this a good few times, and you'll see that a number of people proportional to the total number of passengers will always be getting seated at one time instead of just 1 or 2..
Lets thank the comical Michael McIntyre for that!