I too found it interesting and not at all offensive.
That’s not really fair. It was really just me and maybe one other guy.
TheWhoToTheWhatNow, you talked a little about the community vs. commercial “The Game” stuff - could you give an example of the former? It’s, uh, for a friend.
Seriously, though, I’ve had a couple friends who read The Game, but that’s about all my experience with PUA. I do like the idea of having a gameplan, and more or less practicing being social (I’m definitely a ‘read the manual’ kind of guy, and it helps to have an outline when I’m doing anything I’m not yet comfortable with), but I wouldn’t know where to begin telling the guys who read The Game and now consider themselves fonts of wisdom from someone more legit.
A few years back, before pick-up became mainstream, I’d say most of those guys were working on themselves and just uncalibrated but ultimately good-intentioned…but now that pick-up has become a big part of our culture (pretty much any guy in a bar has read The Game, seen Keys to the VIP, seen The Pick-Up Artist, watched Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother, watched Californication, etc.), there are a lot of guys who just figure if they use the same lines those guys do it’s going to make you drop your panties.
A lot of it actually comes down simply to congruence. When my natural buddy talks about girls he’s hooked up with, you believe him, because he exudes the vibe of a guy who gets laid regularly. When my shy buddy tries to talk like him, it feels akward and embarrassing because you know he’s not REALLY getting laid and it’s incongruent.
Generally a “nice guy” who’s the extreme at one end will find pick-up and embrace it and try being a “bad boy” but take it all the way to the extreme at the other end, which is generally when you get stuck meeting them…they’ve grown enough balls to approach, but they haven’t learned to calibrate and interact normally. They’re in for a long road of rejections and snubs until they slowly learn what’s wrong with the vibe they’re giving off and learn to be more normal. Down the road they end up somewhere in the middle, where they’re a nice guy who can push the boundaries a little here and there…and that’s an extremely attractive guy to women.
I’m a super nice guy in person, I even like to compliment girls. But I also know when to call a girl out on silly behavior or move in for a kiss at the right time or simply stand my ground on an issue if it’s something that’s important to me instead of going “yes, yes, you’re absolutely right, you’re perfect!” hoping to get in her pants, and I’m not apologetic about any of that.
No worries, I’ve been lurking on the SDMB for like 12 years haha The snark is part of what I like about it. Besides, any snark I get in this thread is nothing I haven’t heard dozens of times from people over the years. It’s just white noise to me. 
Glad a few of you enjoyed it and made it through all the blabbing!
Just to preface, I have no major involvement in the community. I don’t make any money off anything and I don’t teach, I’m just a guy who’s done a LOT of reading and experimenting with different pick-up systems as a hobby.
The pick-up community is kind of in a weird transition phase, there’s a lot of garbage out there now…people trying to re-invent the same concepts and re-sell them, or slagging other systems to promote their own, blah blah blah. The worst is the “drill sergeant” mentality that’s becoming more popular where the response to any question is other guys who don’t get laid shouting “Just MAN UP!! Grow some balls and just fuck her!! RARRR!!” Ugh, I hate that stuff.
For someone new to this, I’d have to recommend the Magic Bullets book by Love Systems. You can read an excellent free preview of it here. It’s not super complicated, and it’s a nicely cleaned up non-misogynistic version of things (VS the seething-rage type Roissy stuff). One of the instructors, Cajun, was on Keys to the VIP and did an excellent job, especially considering he’s not a jacked up 6’4" rich metro jock like most of the guys they put on the show. You can watch the episode here. Interestingly, his competition (his cousin) is the PUA most people run into…the creepy incongruent new guy who hasn’t learned to calibrate his teasing and can’t tell when he’s made the vibe weird, and basically comes off like a douche. So you can see a demonstration of a competant PUA VS a creepy one side by side.
Pick-up is very attractive to analytical thinkers. A lot of programmers and IT guys end up in it because it makes sense to them. Social interaction is very fluid from the outside, so when you can say “if you do steps A, B, and C, you’re likely to get result D”, that’s pretty attractive because it’s making sense of something that seems organic.
My natural buddy wouldn’t be able to explain what he does, and he would consider all of this overthinking things WAY too much…he just goes in and expects good things to happen. But if you sit back and watch him you can see he’s completely unintentionally building social proof, reading signs of interest, teasing, escalating, etc. PUA is a reverse-engineering of what guys like him do.
Just understand that it’s a long process. The end result is great, but it’s not a matter of just memorizing some lines…even when that stuff works to get the girl into bed, like others have said if you haven’t fully changed yourself, you’ll have trouble maintaining a long-term relationship. Once you’ve got the mindset though, it just becomes a part of who you are and it’s no longer a bunch of lines or routines. There’s no “act” anymore, it’s just who you are.
Thanks for the posts, TheWho, it’s been an interesting read. I’m quite sure you and I don’t have the same goals, but you do sound like you’ve worked very much on this skill and know what you’re talking about. Just one question: how old are you? You said you didn’t start learning any of this until you were 23, but how long has it been since then?
I’m sorry, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t feel bad about wanting sex, and I’m certainly not deluding myself into believing that I don’t actually want sex with the women I’m friends with. (I said it in another post in this thread: I tend to find my female friends sexually attractive, possibly because the simple fact that they are my friends means there is already some sort of interest or attraction there. From there to sexual attraction isn’t such a great step.) So if I’m friends with a woman, it’s because I want to be friends with her and get a benefit from it. But sometimes I’d want the same thing, plus more physical contact, including sex.
In other words, it’s not like I don’t want to be friends with them but pretend I do in the hope that I will eventually sleep with them. I want to be friends with them, but would also want to sleep with them even though I don’t know how to express it to them. That’s not really dishonest.
What’s this scenario all about? Is it some sort of recognized tactic in the PUA community?
Once again, no. I don’t think sex is wrong and hurtful to women. It largely comes down to fear of rejection, which I’m quite aware is the first thing someone has to drop, but it’s also the fact that I don’t know how to flirt. I like talking with people, I think I can do a fine job at driving a conversation (though I prefer when it flows naturally and I don’t have to think of things to say on the fly) and I’ve been told more than once that I’m a pretty funny guy. But I just cannot flirt. And I’m not very good with physical contact either. Other than handshakes, I don’t tend to naturally touch people I don’t know well. Even the custom, somewhat common in my culture, for two women or a man and a woman who meet to kiss on both cheeks – with no actual contact – is something I have trouble with.
As a consequence, I don’t actually force women to decide whether they want me or not. Since they don’t have to think about it further, they don’t.
I also don’t believe this. At this point, I don’t think there is any societal objection to women making the first move.
I’m 29 now, I’ve been doing this for about 6 years now.
My apologies, the mindset I described is much more common so I was going by the common case! Usually a guy has to work on his “inner game” (mindset, beliefs, etc.) in your situation but since you’re cool with sex and just don’t know how to show it, you’d want to work on your “outer game” (stuff like kino (the art of touching a woman in a socially acceptable and calibrated way), leading the conversation toward sex, smoothly dropping innuendo in a fun way, etc.).
The biggest thing you can do verbally is learn to use innuendo and misinterpret what the girl says as hitting on you. On vacation you’re talking to a girl and she says “What hotel are you staying at?” Instead of saying which one it is, you say something like “Woah, hey, we’ve just met. I need trust and comfort before we can do anything like THAT!” as if you thought she wanted to go back to your place. She gets flustered and giggles and goes “OMG I didn’t mean THAT!!” and now you’re flirting sexually.
The show Californication has a lot of great examples of misinterpretation and innuendo. Duchoveny drops it in in a really smooth way where he’s being a little outlandish but it’s in such a calibrated way that he comes across as funny (if a little boundary-pushing), instead of creepy.
Touching is important on the physical side. The biggest first step for a guy is learning to touch the small of a girls back in a loud bar as he talks to her. It’s hard because we’re told that’s creepy, but it’s only creepy if it’s uncalibrated. If the girl is interested in you, she’s happy you’re confident enough to touch her. If she’s not interested, it’s creepy.
The problem is most guys do the infamous HOVER HANDS dun dun daaaaa!! They want SO bad to touch the girls, but they’re scared of that rejection and they end up looking like this. We’ve all done that, haha I was brought up not to invade people’s personal space, so part of how I learned to become comfortable with it was to touch people as I walked through an elbow-to-elbow crowded club. For girls I’d lightly push the small of her back like I’m trying to keep her from backing up into me as I pass and say “Excuse me, thanks!”, and with guys I put a hand on their shoulder and tap saying “Excuse me, thanks! Sorry!” It helped get me more comfortable with the concept of actually invading other people’s space and not getting horrible reactions.
If you watch a confident guy, he’ll go up to a girl who’s into him and put his arm around her as he says hello. Or think about how you would act with your girlfriend, you wouldn’t be scared to touch her because you’d know you weren’t going to be rejected. Confident guys assume they won’t be rejected.
A lot of women will tell you “If a guy I didn’t know came up to ME and touched the small of MY back I would slap him outright grrrrr!!” That’s a logical answer, but in the moment a girl will respond emotionally if she’s interested in you. It’s like saying “if I saw a burning building, I’d run in and rescue everyone!” but if you came across a burning building you’d have a flash of your children waiting for you at home hoping you don’t burn in a fire today, etc. and probably wouldn’t react the same way. Logic VS emotion. Women will deny this, but I’ve seen and done it thousands of times, even on girls who say they wouldn’t react well to it…if the guy is attractive to them, they’re fine with it in the moment.
Ya, when you start out the “training wheels” of pick-up are to ask questions to generally made up stories. “Hey, help me settle something will you? If a girl kisses a guy, is that cheating?” (girls answer) “Okay, now what if a girl kisses another GIRL? Is THAT cheating?” (blah blah blah) Basically it starts an emotional discussion especially in a group of women, VS going up and asking “so, come here often?” and hoping the girl will fill in the conversation. Down the road you ditch the fake stories for real ones (I’ll ask their opinion on something I’m actually curious about that day).
If you can talk, you’ll have no problem, like a couple months of akward conversations (this is why we practice on random bar people or strangers on the street instead of girls we’re close to) where you learn to push the conversation sexually and bam, you’re good. You’re USING the skills you need for this right now, because you’re driving the conversation, you’re just not driving it to a productive destination if your goal is to build sexual attraction.
If you ask what she does and she says she’s a student, you CAN ask what she’s studying. You CAN ask how relieved she is that exams are over. Or you can tell her you hope she saved the naughty schoolgirl outfit for later with a cheeky grin. Before you learn to calibrate, something like that will weird her the crap out. But once you’re calibrated they love it. The problem is most guys won’t push themselves through the akwardness of learning to calibrate because it involves a ton of rejection and uncomfortable conversations.
That’s because you haven’t been called a slut by other girls for wearing a slightly too low-cut blouse that you thought was cute. That’s because you haven’t been a girl approaching a guy and then overhearing him say to his buddies “haha this chick is gonna be easy, awesome” “go for it, dude!” That’s because you haven’t been scolded by other women who’ve been brought up to think the man should make the move. That’s because you haven’t kissed a guy in public and had jealous girls whisper that you’re slutty. It’s a silly thing, people SHOULDN’T judge a girl for approaching a guy, but there’s still a LOT of this going on…interestingly a lot of the time it’s the women who judge the other women. Even in these threads you see people saying “those girls are all low self-esteem bar skanks” type stuff…like really? Maybe they’re women who aren’t afraid to act when they’re attracted to someone! Nope, they gotta’ be dumb drunk damagd bimbo sluts.
Not sure where you’re from with the cheek-kissing, so the culture may be different there, but in North America this still hasn’t been fully snuffed out though it’s definately gotten better!
- TWTTWN
Some advice specifically for you because I thought about your situation a bit more!
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First off, don’t hit on your female friends. If they’ve seen you as not a sexual interest for a long time, it will just weird them out to hit on them. It sucks, but that’s how it goes. There are other girls out there!
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Now for touching, part of the reason PUAs high-five girls so often (if you see a guy high-fiving a girl in a bar, he’s probably studied a little pick-up, even if it’s just watching a few episodes of Keys to the VIP) is that it’s a way to test if the girl is into them. If I put up my hand and say “high-five!” about something there are three results:
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She doesn’t high-five me. She’s not interested, either I should give up or I just haven’t built enough attraction. If later on she returns the high-five, she’s more interested. She would never high-five a hobo, no matter how long he talked to her.
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She high-fives me and then takes her hand away. She’s not threatened by me, but she’s not super attracted yet. This is fine, just means I need to build a little more attraction.
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She high-fives me, but when our hands touch she doesn’t pull away right away. Often I can just lower my hand straight down and our fingers will interlock and now we’re holding hands. Often if we’re holding hands I’ll bend mine behind my back to place her hand on my waist, because the high-five test showed me the attraction is there for this.
For a while people would add a spin to the high-five. If the girl spins, awesome, you can even pull her into you as the spin finishes so you’re in a hug (this is literally as you first say hello). If she doesn’t spin, she’s not that into you yet.
Personally I’m over these two, and feel like a dork doing them at 29 years old, so I don’t high-five or spin them (though I did back when I was 23-25).
I use a handshake test because it’s more subtle. When you shake a girl’s hand, shake it once as you look her in the eyes with a smile and ask her name or whatever, but then don’t let go. Don’t hold on tight, but just let your fingers go relaxed and tilt your palm upward as you talk (like a gentleman who’s going to kiss the top of her hand). You’ll be amazed how long a girl who’s attracted will leave her hand there for. Other people will comment on it even, but often she’ll keep her hand there despite that. That’s a big sign that she feels safe and attracted. And then if you bust her on it and say “you don’t seem to be letting go of my hand there… ;)” she giggles and accuses you of holding her hand, etc. etc. now you’re flirting.
The handshake is something you could probably do without stepping too far outside of your comfort zone. I have no idea what this guy is saying, but the way he shakes her hand and keeps holding it is what I’m trying to describe.
Being touched is not strange to girls. They touch eachother ALL the time. It’s part of how they communicate. They’ll touch someone’s knee sitting down or their shoulder standing up to stress a point. They’ll touch a person’s upper arm to get their attention. But girls are calibrated so they touch comfortably and in safe areas. Most guys aren’t calibrated and don’t touch other people.
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Don’t look where you touch. A confident guy with experience with women knows what a woman’s body feels like, he knows where to put his hands. When you look, it looks like a weird hesitant calculated move and comes off as strange.
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Don’t leave your hand there. Touch for a second, then pull away. A lot of newbies will put their hand on a woman’s shoulder and then leave it there as they talk and it’s super unnatural and akward and creepy. But a quick touch to stress a point and then pulling away shows “I’m not afraid to touch you, but I don’t need to turn it into a weird grope-fest.”
You can find more information on kino escalation on Google, this is just the jist. It’s difficult to me now to relate to not being able to touch girls because it’s a natural thing for me now, so I don’t know how good my explanation is haha
- TWTTWN
Interesting read, TheWhoToTheWhatNow. Though I think that the stuff you are saying - which is really nothing more than training in how to flirt and how to engage in two-way non-verbal communication (big overlap there!) is all solid, sensible advice, and indeed stuff that can (and should!) be learned. Not only by men, I may add.
However, that isn’t why so many find the movement unpleasing. That has more to do with the often unfriendly-to-women tone that the advice is couched in (not by you, I hasten to add). It just seems that many practitioners of this advice are so embittered by their situation that they don’t appear to really like women very much.
What about the fact that a lot of women don’t feel comfortable saying that they’re not into something (fear of rocking the boat/looking rude) and might just go along with it, even though they think it’s creepy? I know we’ve had that kind of post on the Dope before with a poster saying, “Oh women love when I do x” and other women trying to tell him that that’s not quite how it is…
Yeah, I would not say that a confident guy always touches women. Touching other people when you don’t know if it would be welcome strikes me as taking a liberty that could well be quite offensive - though naturally, the person so offended may well not say anything at the time, not wanting to make a scene.
Way I’d put it is this - a confident guy is confident enough in his ability to know, from the flirting interaction he’s having with a woman at the time, that she would not be offended with some minor physical contact - would indeed welcome it.
Just assuming that this is the case does not strike me as a good idea.
Yeah, I handle a bunch of sales calls at work and one guy called with questions, blah blah blah. I asked for his email address and it involved the word “goo.” I said, “Could you repeat that?” He did and I said, “Okay, I wanted to make sure that’s what you said.” And he said, “Oooh, someone’s got a dirty miiind.”
And then he kept talking about it.
I was polite to him the rest of the call and I’m sure he walked away from that thinking that I wasn’t thoroughly repulsed by him. He was wrong. His later calls got routed to male coworkers.
Lots of women aren’t going to do kung fu moves on a guy who touches them inappropriately in public. There are very few polite ways to say, “Stop touching me,” just as it’s hard to call a customer creepy when they are making inappropriate comments and it’s hard for a waitress to say “I am not interested in you. I am smiling because I need tips” when the latest creep has decided that flirting with the waitstaff is funfunfun.
Of course she’s shy.
My point is that shyness in men is treated as far worse than shyness in women. No one ever, ever dings a woman for being too scared to approach a guy. Women on the other hand demand confidence in men.
Ya think? Every time men voice their grievances about the dating scene, women attack them and call them losers. You’re simply not interested in hearing their side of things. EVER. And there’s plenty of catty men who’ll jump on them, too. There is zero tolerance for guys voicing their issues.
When do guys start having a right to speak up? I mean, without being called virgins, losers, women haters, etc.?
And for a guy who has never met a woman who likes him, then what?
These guys exist and they’re not all losers, psychos or hobos. Plenty have jobs and have plenty of female friends. They just never get seen as a romantic person. This affects men worse than women - women can go their entire lives not having a romantic relationship and shrug it right off. (See: nuns, for an extreme example.) Guys on the other hand get desperate. Which, apparently, makes them easy targets. Jeez, imagine how angry women would get if their emotional vulnerabilities got beat on that badly…
Because they don’t dislike women; you’re totally not getting what their issue is. That’s why you can never figure it out. PUAs, even the worst of them, simply want to be treated like romantic beings and not be ignored. It doesn’t get any more complex than that. The vitriol comes when women and other men start treating them like wanting more out of life is some kind of crime.
And, going by your logic, I must conclude that Maureen Dowd hates men, too. Yet she dates men, while writing sexist crap like “Are Men Necessary?”
Wow, you’re brave. Like a Jewish guy parachuting in the Grand Mosque level brave. 
Exactly.
And my tone is a little harsh because I know this crowd, and just about every other crowd out there, they’re all essentially the same.
Society wants men who don’t have the romantic appeal power, to know their place and fade away. You start with this assumption and you know every common sentiment or attempt at a logical argument that you will ever hear, anywhere, about dateless men in the dating game.
There is no love or sympathy for men like that. Only survival of the fittest, natural selection, weeding out the competition. This comes from our nature as animals. The scary part here is that as humans, we men have it better than the males of any other species of creature on this planet. Really.
I think this quote perfectly encapsulates how biased and narrow your thinking is. If nuns are proof that women can go their entire lives not having a romantic relationship and shrugging it off, aren’t priests and monks proof that men can, too? Or are you going to find a way to invalidate the extreme outliers from the male side but not the female side?
You’re seeing what you want to see in a big, big way.
Jaqie, baby, I would love to hear more of your philosphy of gender relations here.
Agreed. A lot of women learn this stuff naturally because women touch eachother whereas men rarely touch eachother aside from a hand-shake or giving “the rock” haha So it’s an entire channel of communication that a lot of shy men don’t even realize exists. I speak “girl code”…where girls communicate with just their eye contact with eachother, giving a “look” that means “help, this guy’s creepy, save me!!” or “omg I can’t believe he said that lol!!” or “I want to go home with him!!” Girls have mentioned that they can give “the look” to a random stranger girl at a bar and that girl will come save her from a creepy guy (“we have to go to the bathroom!!”). I’ve learned to read that by interacting with a lot of girls (although usually I’ll just grin and give her a “thumbs up” like good luck and then when the guy is done creeping her out I’ll go tease her a bit and flirt…thanks for making me look better CreepyDude!).
Most guys have no idea girls communicate that way. That’s why the CreepyDude doesn’t go away, he can’t read the cues that the girl is uncomfortable.
Oh there are definately guys who are doing it for the “revenge” aspect of it. I was lucky to find the community when I was young enough to adapt it into my regular social life. Imagine being a 45 year old man who’s had maybe 1 relationship in his life, and it was a shitty one, and for 45 years you’ve been alone and watched all your friends succeed and been told to “just be yourself, it will happen someday” and wondering when someday is coming.
Then you find some information that’ll give you a “leg up”, and the first thing you think is “haha fuck you guys I found the secret!!! I am gonna make up for those 45 years, I am gonna make these bitches pay for rejecting me for so long!!!”
It’s not a healthy mentality, and it’s not all guys…it’s just that these guys are the most vocal and stand out the most and are the ones that fall into the “you can land any girl you want with my $5000 course” marketing.
It’s kind of like the kid who’s been bullied finally taking a Karate class. At the start he gets all super cocky because he’s like “I’m gonna show you guys, you just watch grrr!!!” Over time some of those guys stay assholes and go around beating people up with their Karate skills. But most of them spend some time in the class and over time they chill out and realize that all that anger/resentment does no good, and they let it all go and quit flaunting their new knowledge as some payback deal and use it as it was intended: to feel safe and confident.
Le Jacquelope puts it pretty good…it’s not that they hate women, it’s that they hate and are frustrated with society. Unfortunately it’s easier to say “I nailed that bitch and then jizzed on her face and kicked her out the door haha” than “I’m still working on all this pent up resentment so I’m going through a phase of treating women like garbage because I haven’t got enough experience to understand there’s more to it than this!!!”
I absolutely think the movement is packaged terribly these days, and I think it preys on the extremely frustrated guys…but from a business perspective, those are the guys who are going to drop $5000 for a course, because they’ve hit rock-bottom, so that’s what they target.
This comes down to learning calibration. I creeped a LOT of girls out on the road to becoming a guy who doesn’t creep them out. There are probably hundreds of girls at the bar who remember me as the guy who touched the small of their back too soon, or told an obviously fake story trying to get them to talk, or the guy who wandered around by himself all night looking scared until he finally approached and eww what a loser he should have just come over and said hi right away haha
There are actually parts of PUA that use that “afraid to look rude so they just go along with it” mentality to an advantage.
Creepy Example: Two guys taking two girls home. One couple is on for sure and the other, the girl isn’t really into the guy. In the couple that’s on, the guy says “hmm, it looks like your friend isn’t really into my friend. Let’s just hang out some other time.” but the girl wants to sleep with him so she pulls her friend aside and goes “come on his friend is a nice guy lighten up I really like this guy!!” and the friend is pretty much putting out just to not ruin the vibe.
Not-Creepy Example: When I hold out my hand for a girl (or guy) I’ve just met to shake it, she shakes it. It would be weird and socially akward NOT to shake my hand. There are times where I’ll just interrupt a girl and hold out my hand and say my name, and if she doesn’t take my hand I’ll wiggle it and go “Don’t be rude, I don’t bite. :)” and she’ll giggle and feel silly for missing the social cue. I actually recommend for new guys, to cheers people around them…EVERYONE will cheers you back. If you look happy about something and hold your glass up and cheers to anything, people just instinctively will clink their glass with you. They might not like you or they might think it’s weird that a stranger cheersed them, but they’ll do it to just not rock the boat.
This is a great way to summarize it. It’s not that I assume every woman wants to be touched, it’s that I assume I can read the indicators of interest to tell when a woman will/won’t be receptive to my touching her. There are a ton of nuances…less (if ANY) touching during daygame because the environment is different, don’t touch a girl who’s body language is closed down (arms crossed, no smile, clearly not having much fun at that moment (though she may be a lovely person day to day)), etc.
Again learning these things comes from experience. Most guys will look for a list of signals on the Internet and then go out assuming they’ll be able to pick this up in a weekend but it doesn’t work like that. That’s why pick-up takes years of working on it…you need actual “field experience” to drill this stuff into your mind. A lot of guys will spend a year+ just reading material on the Internet before they go out and try it. I was so fascinated by this stuff that the first weekend after I found some PUA material I was out there trying it because it was so exciting to me haha
Lack of calibration on his part. You didn’t give any reason for him to start dropping innuendo like that, he was just barrelling into it. The worst part is that he kept talking about it.
The key to dropping innuendo is to not dwell on it. This is a flirty conversation:
Her: “Is that a pick-up line?”
Me: “Yes. Is it working?”
Her: “Nope.”
Me: “Well shit, I guess it’s back to the roofies!”
Her: “Lol, that’s terrible…”
Me: "That’s what all the girls say. Usually after sex. "
Her: “Lol omg. You’re bad!”
Me: “And you love it.”
Her: “…maaaaybe.”
Me: “So what brings you girls out tonight?”
This is a creepy conversation:
Her: “Is that a pick-up line?”
Me: “Yes. Is it working?”
Her: “Nope.”
Me: “Well shit, I guess it’s back to the roofies!”
Her: “Lol, that’s terrible…”
Me: "That’s what all the girls say. Usually after sex. "
Her: “Lol omg. You’re bad!”
Me: “And you love it.”
Her: “…maaaaybe.”
Me: “You have a dirty mind don’t you…”
Her: “…uhh…”
Me: “Ya I thought so. That’s okay, I have a dirty mind too…”
Her: “…ooookay?”
Me: “It’s natural, you know, to think about sex a lot…”
Her: “uhh look, we have to go.”
Me: “Wait, can’t I have your phone number?”
Her: (running away)
A guy who’s good at flirting can drop innuendo but knows not to dwell on it. Usually after something really “scanadalous” I’ll just change the subject entirely to something mundane. I’m showing I can CROSS the line, but I don’t have to STAY there.
If I get a girl talking about sex, I can switch the conversation back to the weather before it gets akward, because I’ve had that conversation before, I know I’ll have it again, I don’t have to dwell on it. But a guy who doesn’t have much experience with women thinks “omg!! we’re talking about sex!! I have to think up more questions about sex!! I NEVER get to talk to a girl about sex, this is so awesome what if I never get to talk with a girl about this again I gotta’ get it in while I can!!”
That’s not attractive.
I always flirt with the waitstaff, but it’s always very light and fun and I know it’s their job to flirt so I don’t do more than a hand around their waist and that’s only if they touch me first so I know it’s fine. The waitstaff is actually a good way to get your confidence up, as long as you understand they don’t WANT you, they’re just trying to sell drinks. I’ll always ask how their night is going and joke around with them and stuff, and they come back even if they know I’m not buying drinks that night.
Occasionally one of them will actually be interested, but it’s extremely rare…Most of the time they’re just happy to have a “normal guy” they can chill with for a few minutes here and there and not have to worry that he’ll try to pick them up.
…on the flip side my buddy has collected the phone numbers of pretty much every waitress and shooter girl at our favorite bar. I’m expecting it to all blow up in his face at some point haha He likes the chaos though.
It’s a very confusing time to be a guy. We’re told “You have to go for what you want! You have to show her you like her!!” in one post and then the next post we’re told “Don’t be TOO forward or you’re a player!!” “You’re just trying to get in her pants, you creepo!” So we’re stuck in the middle trying to figure out if it’s okay to approach a girl or if she’s going to giggle with her Sex In The City girlfriends about what a loser he was for approaching.
It’s pretty rough! Before the feminist movement there was a general “the man approaches, the woman accepts or rejects” mentality in society. Whether those gender roles are right or wrong is irrelevant, my point is guys knew “I have to approach or nothing will happen”. He didn’t necessarily approach, there were shy guys then too, but at least he knew what his role in the mating dance was supposed to be.
Now if I say “guys are supposed to approach”, a dozen women will chime up “that’s BS, I approached my husband blah blah blah” and it’s like, well shit, I’m happy for you, I wish all girls would approach, but to a guy that’s some confusing shit, because for every one of you who insists guys shouldn’t be so forward, there’s another girl saying she likes guys to be forward and express interest. The mating dance role for men is confusing now, because we never know if we’re going to get bitched out or a warm reception, and if we’re a nice guy who attributes his self-worth to the acceptance of the people around him, that’s a helluva roll of the dice to play with his self-esteem, so he just doesn’t approach and spends his life alone.
And for a guy who has never met a woman who likes him, then what?
Oh absolutely. I have a friend here who works out regularly (he’s really toned and eats healthy), is a good looking guy (all his teeth, groomed well, good smile, etc.), is out-going and social (has tons of friends), has a car, a high-paying intelligent job, dresses well, and is an awesome guy in general a really up-standing nice person, for all intents and purposes he is a GREAT catch. …but he doesn’t give off a sexual vibe, so girls don’t see him as someone they could have a sexual relationship with.
He’s had ONE relationship in 29 years, for 2 months, and hasn’t had sex in…5 years now I think?
Those guys have it the worst because they did what society told them to do. They got the job, the car, the money, the clothes, the body, they did everything society told them would lead to finding a woman to settle down with to complete “the perfect life”. But they get all that stuff and not only do they find if they brag about it, girls think they’re lame, but they watch girls chasing guys who have no job, no car, no money, etc.
I actually don’t have a car and I spent a year living off Employment Insurance, I own a single black dress shirt, I have one pair of jeans, I have a bit of a beer belly…my buddy who’s a natural is in a similar position. And yet, we get girls regularly while my job/car/money/body friend is stuck wondering why girls don’t want him.
This opens a whole 'nother can of worms: If you know you don’t need to be in shape to get girls, why bother working out? If you know you don’t need a good job to get girls, why not just work at Burger King part-time? This is a phase PUAs go through down the road, until they come out on the other side and start working out not to get girls but for their own well-being. They get a job not to try to get rich to impress girls, but because they want to do something with their lives for their own well-being. It’s ultimately a healthy attitude, but the “I can let myself go and still bang chicks!! AWESOME!!” phase can be pretty surreal.
haha no shit hey! That’s why I said it like that though, like hey, one of us is here, feel free to ask questions. I realized there aren’t many guys who study pick-up on here for these threads (going by some of the terrible dating advice I’ve seen in other threads), and the ones that do study it participate in the boards in general and don’t want to get a bad reputation by delving too deep into it all (totally understandable).
I don’t have anything to lose, and I don’t care if anyone gets into pick-up…I’ve found you can’t get into pick-up until you’ve hit absolute rock-bottom in your love life and get to the point where you’ll try anything, even changing your entire outlook of the world. Before that point, it’s all surface level but you’re still the same guy with the same socially conditioned beliefs under it. This is why very few girls see the good side of pick-up, because girls aren’t in that same rock-bottom place guys get to after 20+ years of loneliness, so it’s easy for them to reject it and tell guys not to look at it and to just “be themselves” (which is actually good advice, PUA teaches you to be your best self, but no one ever explains “What are the steps I have to take to be myself in an attractive way?? That’s the IMPORTANT part!! help!!”)
Also I’m a pretty chill, friendly guy. I can debate something without getting upset about it…part of that comes from pick-up and learning social calibration.
An interesting thing is that in theory, I was supposed to be weeded out by evolution. I was supposed to spend my life solo and either reproduce with some “low on the totem poll of survival traits” girl or just have my lineage completely snuffed out. But I’ve found a way to cheat evolution, now there’s a chance I’ll reproduce with some “high on the totem poll” girl and my genes will be tagging along in a metaphorical ferrari with the sunroof down waving their arms up in the air laughing, when they were supposed to ride the bus.
I think this is sub-consciously part of why a lot of women have a problem with pick-up. These guys weren’t supposed to be able to get with them, but now they’ve found a way to do it, now how are they supposed to tell who the “real” alphas and the fake ones are?? This is fucking up evolution.
This is why I just stick to anal, I don’t want to fuck up evolution.
…I am SO kidding there.
…hmm, I wonder if that line would work.
haha
- TWTTWN
woah, shit, the smiley faces didn’t come through on that flirting example so it sounds super creepy and I can’t edit it haha This is how it was supposed to look:
Her: “Is that a pick-up line?”
Me: “Yes. Is it working?”
Her: “Nope.”
Me: “Well shit, I guess it’s back to the roofies! :D”
Her: “Lol, that’s terrible…”
Me: “That’s what all the girls say. Usually after sex. :(”
Her: “Lol omg. You’re bad!”
Me: “And you love it. ;)”
Her: “…maaaaybe.”
Me: “So what brings you girls out tonight?”
Facial expressions are important. 
Part of why guys can come across creepy is they’re going by textual lines they’ve read so all the subtle tones are lost and they end up just saying the literal line without any of the nuances that make it work. Like how it can be hard to pick up sarcasm over the net!
- TWTTWN
:smack: Totally. And the worst part is when you’re in the moment you don’t always see it with that objectivity. I recently overdid it with someone I was really getting to like and accidentally chased her back into being a distant acquaintance because I got overeager when she actually wanted to talk about sex. I’m pretty sure there’s no getting her out of that again, either. I’ve spent a lot of my life being puritanical for one reason or another, so when it comes to actual relationship stuff I’m either off, in which case I’m not even presenting as someone who’s a potential candidate for a relationship, or I’m 100% on, in which case I come across as CreepyDude. I’ve been working on it but haven’t been able to find a good balance yet.
I have to say I really appreciate your posts in this thread. It’s a great perspective on the whole thing.
haha if it’s any consolation we’ve all been there. This is why guys who spend their time reading about pick-up but not actually being out there trying it don’t understand how important it is to actually go out and have conversations with strangers. In the moment, when she’s looking at you with a gorgeous smile, and you’re looking at her thinking “god this girl is beautiful, smart and funny, I can’t believe she’s actually talking to me!!” the adrenalynn pumps and everything goes out the window except your instincts.
Afterwards you go “oh god I can’t believe I did that…oh man it’s going to be so akward now… :(” (see EVERY hungover person going through their phone the morning after a drinking night seeing what they texted members of the opposite sex at 3am the night before when they were drunk/horny and running on instinct for an example of this haha)
You’re NOT a creepy dude, it’s just in the moment you didn’t know what to do and you went 100% Don’t beat yourself up over it haha You probably can’t recover from it, but there are lots of other girls out there to try again with!
Glad you like it! I’m just hoping to clear up some confusion because this is a really polarizing subject and pick-up is something that changed my life dramatically in a VERY positive way, both in my love-life and my general mental health.
It scares me when I think about where I might have ended up if I hadn’t gotten into it. The movie The 40 Year Old Virgin, aside from being hilarious, is a REALLY accurate look into the mentality of a guy who goes his life without success with women. He fills his life with videogames and comics and working out and work and he’s content with that (not miserable, but just plugging along happy “enough”) because at some point he just accepted that he’s destined to be alone. That’s scary, no one should feel like that!
- TWTTWN
This is certainly the most entertaining newcomer I’ve seen since the guy with that sailcart that could sail directly downwind faster than the tailwind - which was also an eye-opener and highly counter-instinctual.