“Day Bang” Review (Plus Day Game Thoughts)

I have a question for the men reading this post right now. How much time did you spend in a bar or nightclub this past week? Answer honestly to yourselves. One hour? Five hours? Ten? Or no time at all? Now, ask yourselves, how much time did you spend everywhere else — the supermarket, the gas station, the bookstore, the office, the bus stop, at a restaurant, the coffee shop, the sidewalk, a music festival, the mall, the park, the beach, the train, the pool, etc?

You should see where I’m going with this. Most of the girls you cross paths with will be outside of bars and nightclubs. The largest reservoir of pickup opportunity is everywhere that isn’t a bar or nightclub. PUAs call this day game, for short. If maximizing your efficiency at meeting and bedding women (and maybe a future girlfriend or wife) is your goal, then you need to learn the art of the day game pickup.

Day Bang, a guide to daytime pickup, is Roosh’s latest offering, and it stacks up well to Bang, his first game book. Technically, the writing is sharper and clearer than his first book, minus a few grammatical typos. It is also blessedly free of well-worn community jargon, so you get the impression that you’re reading a cool guy talking to another cool guy in a natural setting, instead of a reformed geek giving a seminar in a hotel conference room. The book is a breeze to read and stresses practical advice as much as theory, which is to be commended. There is enough game theory in circulation, and while having a theoretical underpinning for the reasons why game works is critical to building your inner game and strengthening your resolve, ultimately it’s the field-tested tools of the trade that are going to motivate you to get out there and put it all to work.

Roosh is a proponent of indirect game, where you don’t state your intentions up front like you would do with direct game. He is especially adamant that direct game is a poor strategy for daytime pickup, for sensible reasons he outlines in his book. As he writes:

The bottom line is that there are girls who will reject your direct game that would have eventually fucked you had you gone indirect, but not the other way around.

I’ve read good arguments for and against direct and indirect game, so I can’t definitively tell you that one is better than the other in any given circumstance. (For instance, some PUAs say that direct game is more suitable for girls walking down the sidewalk because you only have less than a minute to make your pitch. Roosh does acknowledge that situations similar to this might call for direct game, but he also points out, correctly in my opinion, that number closes from direct approaches tend to result in more flaking than those from indirect approaches.)

All I will say on this hot-button issue is that I agree with Roosh’s perspective because indirect approaches better match my personality and vibe, and as a result not more than 5% of all my pickup attempts have been direct. So I don’t have a wealth of direct game experience to make a reliable comparison. If you’re new to the game, you should focus on indirect game. Direct game is simple to learn, but hard to master, and you have to be comfortable with lots of outright rejection. Although the time and energy investment with indirect game is greater than direct game, in the end you will achieve more consistent dating results with the indirect approach.

Fundamentally, day game is not much different than night game. You still have to approach, intrigue a girl, play a bit of hard to get, raise your value, and close with a number or continue the conversation with a venue bounce (aka “insta-date”). But there are some subtle, yet important, differences in how you should approach a girl during the daytime versus the nighttime.

Roosh explains these differences in his day game model. Quote:

My model has three main components. The first is the opener. It will be something basic, disarming, and natural enough that it doesn’t scare away the cat. I think you’ll be both amused and pleased at how simple they are. The second component is rambling, where we build attraction by being interesting instead of cocky. Using juicy pieces of bait, we’re going to display our value in a casual way that intrigues her and makes her want to learn more. The last component is Galnuc, a system that personalizes the interaction and helps you get the number (or more).

Two points to make about day game. As Roosh says, girls are more skittish during the day. You simply cannot approach the majority of girls with the same flirtatious gusto during the day that you do at night and expect equally good results. Second, the cocky/funny banter and negs that work so well to lower bitch shields in a nightclub are going to strike a girl as weird or insulting when she’s browsing through a discount table of cookbooks or hurrying to catch a bus. (Not that there isn’t room or need to be cocky/funny in a daytime setting; the caveat is that it’s better to deploy the big neg guns after you’ve eased her into a fruitful conversation.) A more refined, oblique approach is needed for day game, where your flirting and cockiness is toned down and your plausible deniability is ratcheted up. You must master the art of the “slow boil”, as he calls it.

Roosh gets into the exact types of daytime openers to use on girls in specific situations, and they are crafted to sound almost boring, yet maximize the odds that she will be open to continuing the conversation. For example:

She’s writing something in beautiful cursive on pages that have floral borders. She’s using what seems to be an expensive ballpoint pen. What’s the elderly opener? In this case there are two possibilities. Your instinct may be to ask, “What are you writing?” but remember, that’s personal in nature and not likely to get a warm response. She may think of you as a nosy man trying to gain access to her closet of secrets. The best elderly opener from this situation is, “Excuse me, is that a good pen?” You’ll then inquire about the brand, the color of the ink, its width, and if it’s comfortable to hold for long periods of time, all with a serious expression on your face. Almost pretend you’re a pen salesman on the first day of the job, doing research in order to eventually sell it to other people with a long-term goal of having a successful pen career.

Good stuff. And proof that you can productively talk about almost anything with a girl as long as you say it with confidence.

What about segueing from the opener? Roosh covers that, too.

I have a good idea of one way I’d segue out of pen conversation: I’d make a brief comment about how it’s important to have a suitable pen for “my career.” If I did a proper job with the chat and she was open, she’d either ask about my job or respond with how pens are important to her, which would allow us to start talking about something else.

Like Bang, Day Bang is filled with this sort of readily accessible and easily adapted pickup advice, some of which Roosh gleaned from his time with students taking his pickup workshops. But be warned: if you haven’t read Bang, you are likely going to be somewhat lost reading Day Bang. Consider Day Bang more of an adjunct to Bang, a continuation of the series, rather than a standalone book for newbies. You’ll want to get the first book under your belt before you tackle Day Bang.

There’s much more covered in Day Bang, in generous detail (conversations are often replayed exactly as they occurred in real life), including how to respond to or initiate eye contact, coffeeshop and public transit logistics (with helpful diagrams), street pickup, clothing store pickup, bookstore pickup, pre-openers, optimal facial expression, voice tonality, calculated pauses, body positioning (you should never face the entrance of a venue because you want arriving girls to settle in before you hit on them, and you want to be able to see them leaving), baiting the girl to ask you questions, “going personal”, fitting your style and vibe to your target demographic, the value of ambiguity, the art of rambling, closing, and his GALNUC system (GermanAgeLocationNameUsuallyCool), among others.

I thought the book was excellent on openers, logistics and rambling but maybe not quite as comprehensive on closing and follow-up dates (this is where having read Bang will help you). Nonetheless, while the game theory isn’t groundbreaking or heretical in Day Bang (female nature hasn’t changed in ten years), Roosh’s presentation of the theory, and practical application of it, is. In my opinion, it’s not a stretch to consider Bang and Day Bang worthy entries to the canonical game literature, right up there with Mystery Method and Magic Bullets. You read Roosh’s advice, and you can actually see yourself saying it.

More information on Day Bang here.

PS: Roosh’s stories about his time with his younger 14 year old brother were heartwarming. I wish there were more of them. It must be a great feeling to properly guide a young man to understanding the nuttiness psychology of women.

PPS: It’s inevitable that you will eventually tire of the nightclub scene. Nightclub enthusiasm tends to peak for men in their early 20s, and gradually wane after that. If you plan on living a fulfilling, exciting life sharing the company of beautiful women, it is in your interest to see the light on day game and learn it well. Life is full of change. Embrace it.

Hot Vs Sexy

Take a look at the very hot Betty Draper (aka January Jones):

She is a raving beauty with a sexual philtrum.

Now take a look at the very sexy Rachel Menken (also a Mad Men character):

Don’t you just want to bang her on a kitchen counter after playing pattycakes with her ass cheeks using a spatula?

If you averaged the ratings of 100 men, there’s little doubt that Betty would score about a point higher on the looks scale than Rachel, and their scores would roughly converge around a 9 for Betty and an 8 for Rachel. (Please spare the readers your personal preference. Averages are what matter in the sexual market.)

Yet, I predict that a majority of men would find Rachel to be “sexier” than Betty. Why is that? What nebulous traits imbue a woman with the alluring glow of sexiness?

I’m sure a man steeped in aesthetic sensibility would craft an enlightening essay full of power adjectives and stirring metaphor as a paean to what constitutes female sexiness, and boy will it sound good on paper. But it won’t mean a goddamned thing. Empty words to flesh out a reality that doesn’t exist except in the glorifier’s head. Which pretty much sums up the whole of modern art, come to think of it.

No, sexiness has little to do with face shape, or eye sparkle, or energy, or chi, or mouth curl, or the way she holds a cigarette. Instead, what sexiness means in the minds of men is a lot more pedestrian. When men say a woman is sexy, they mostly mean she is ATTAINABLE.

The average man looks at a hot woman, and he lusts for her, but he entertains scant possibility that he will be able to bed her. But when that man looks at a perceived sexy woman, he couples with his appreciation a genuine feeling that, given just the right ecological conditions, he could actually seduce that woman and enjoy her sex.

None of this should suggest that sexy women aren’t also good-looking women. Nerds, intelligent but mousy artist types, white knights and feminist apologists for plain janes love the “sexy” label because they value its utility as a loophole and ego massager against the unrelenting and immutable beauty standards of the sexual marketplace. Show me a man who calls an ugly woman ineffably sexy, and I will bet you that he is himself an SMV loser.

Sexy women are never the unattractive (or even marginally attractive) totems to an imaginary equalist dating market that fembots and washed up cougars wish they were. Quite the opposite. While sexy women are often not as hot as genuinely hot women, they aren’t much more than a point lower on the universal looks scale. What primarily distinguishes the sexy woman from the hot woman is that she possesses just enough in the way of physical flaws that she catapults from dreamy but distant object of beauty to alluring but attainable perfumed girl sharing a drink with you.

In other words, you can more easily envision your dick in Rachel’s vagina than in Betty’s vagina, and that makes all the difference in perception.

There are other, relatively minor distinctions that make a sexy girl stand out from a hot girl. Obvious markers would include sluttiness of dress, throat-raspiness of flirting, expertise in lowering the eyelids to half-mast for long periods of time, and mastery of the good-to-go vibe. But before you ugly and plain chicks start practicing your eyelid lowering technique, know that no amount of sexy mimicry will transform your face into one that men want to spermally defile. You still need the looks, and for that you have only your parents, and to a lesser extent your self-discipline to push away from the table, to credit or blame.

There are those rare ultrafeminine creatures who coalesce both ethereal beauty and feral sexiness in one package (before she crossed the Rubenesqueicon):

Overselectivity And Anti-Game: Like Oil And Water

Recently, a nerdgirl who works for the nerd site Gizmodo and has a lazy nerd eye and crooked nerd face wrote about her disgust at having dated a nerdguy who, she found out during the course of the date, was a grand champion at some nerd card game called Magic the Nerdering. Dalrock has a good round-up of the nerdy non-affair.

In delicious comeuppance, it turns out our intrepid nerdgirl with her 463 bullet point checklist rejected not just a nerd with nerdy hobbies, but a wealthy hedge fund manager. And if you want to call this revenge (of the spastic sort), brigades of sympathetic nerdboys stormed the Blogstille to throw their venom-tipped Chinese nerd stars at nerdgirl’s soul. (I can’t be bothered to spell out nerdgirl’s real name, such a vapid nonentity she is.) In good nerdy form, she skulked away to lick her wounds.

You might think this is going to be a post piling on nerdgirl’s ridiculously trumped-up standards. After all, nerdgirl is a 4 in beneficially dim lighting, so the only standards she can plausibly hope to meet in men are mental stability and merely intermittent halitosis.

Nerdgirl is the classic entitled American feminist shill and princess wannabe (try squaring that circle — you’ll need a hamster) who suffers from a psychological disorder known as overselectivity (you heard it here first!). She demands for herself from men what she has no ability to give in female value. Result? Dateless, alone, prone to neurotic outbursts on blogs and/or self-mutilation, and a creepy maternal love for all things feline.

Truth, but that is not where your focus should be. Nerdgirl’s public rejection — a type of rejection women only do when they are so thoroughly turned off with a date that they feel a need to lash out in penance for their own lack of judgment — of a man who, on paper at least, is way out of her league, proves a core tenet of game:

Maxim #49: If you have no game, or worse, anti-game, little else will compensate for your unattractiveness.

Nerdiness in style, mannerism and behavior is anti-game. It is even worse than having no game. You can actively repulse a woman who would normally think you a possible match if you run anti-game on her. Men with no game at least get lucky sometimes by steering clear of major fuckups.

Despite his riches, sterling character and good manners, hedge fund nerdguy was a nerd to the bone, and his every verbal and nonverbal tic likely telegraphed that unpalatable fact to his date. The way to bet is that a grand champion of a nerdy hobby is a nerd in most facets of life, and it was his nerdy charmless demeanor — not his involvement with a nerdy pastime — that disgusted nerdgirl and motivated her to libel him, (and inadvertently out herself as an ugly bitch to be avoided).

Need clarity on this point? Sure. Take a guy with game and tell him he has to mention at some point during a date with a hottie that he won a championship playing a nerdy hobby. Do you really think this stipulation will deep six his chances? No, it won’t. If anything, a pickup artist will reframe this tidbit of normally unsexy information in his favor, getting to the girl qualify herself to him that she’s smart enough and adventurous enough to understand the thrill of winning competitions. And she’ll lap it up. Know why? Because everything else about him will be subcommunicating CHARMING BASTARD.

And that’s the moral of this nerd tale of woe. Nn matter how kind you are, how much character you possess, how easy on the eyes you are, or how much money you make, a nerdy personality and anti-game will render you unfit for mating by a pig-faced 4 with delusions of high sexual market value.

PS: Here is a picture of Good Dog Greg, for your amusement:

UPDATE

An astute commenter noted that sometimes these plainer and uglier girls have something to prove that hotter girls, with their more secure belief in their hotness, don’t. So, paradoxically, a high value man might find it tougher to game a 4 into bed than an 8. In this case, that could have happened. Nerdgirl wants the world to know — really, she just wants to convince herself — that she is hot shit, so rejecting nerdguy helped assuage her tattered and frayed ego, giving her an imaginary SMV boost that won’t last past the next pump and dump she endures at the hands of an even nerdier guy.

You can conclude from this theory that men who are beginning to shed their worst beta habits by adopting game would have more success trying to pick up hotter girls than they’re used to, instead of sticking with the nasty little frumps they have become accustomed to thinking that’s all they deserve.

Why Chicks Dig Egotistic Men, &c.

You can judge who’s nice and who’s a dick simply by looking at them. We humans have tells, and some of those tells are outside of our conscious control, like the shape of our faces. Other tells, such as smiles, are difficult to fake convincingly without willful effort.

Further analyses of Oda et al.’s data show that the key to detecting altruists is genuine smile, which is under involuntary control and is therefore difficult to fake. Altruists genuinely smile more frequently than egoists during natural conversations.

And this is where game comes in. We all know by now, thanks in part to the illumination provided by this blog, that women are sexually attracted to men who are self-centered egotists; in layman’s nomenclature: assholes, dicks, douchebags, pricks and masters of the universe. The kinds of men women swoon for possess the “dark triad” of personality traits: narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. It stands to reason that women would be drawn to egoists, and that, at least according to the science, one way in which a man feeds the perception that he is an egoist is by smiling less frequently than niceguys would smile during natural conversations. Which leads to…

Maxim #39: Stop smiling so much! Girls will think you’re ingratiating. Girls prefer men they can ingratiate themselves to.

So you have another weapon to add to your arsenal of seduction. Work on suppressing the smile instinct when you talk to a girl. Be especially wary when she flatters you or flirts with you; that’s when you’ll be under the least amount of voluntary control over your smiling reflex. A smile should be tamed to a barely perceptible upturned mouth corner, and limited in its dispensation so as to maximize the effect it has when it is deployed.

Note for the recently lobotomized: During the non-ovulatory phase of their cycle, women do feel some attraction for altruistic, beta providers. It should go without saying that the best seducers balance the asshole with the altruist. Within that balance is the key to unlocking a fountain of women’s love.

***

Women remember your words better if you speak them in a deep voice.

[T]he authors found that women had a strong preference for the low pitch male voice and remembered objects more accurately when they have been introduced by the deep male voice.

Smith concludes: “Our findings demonstrate that women’s memory is enhanced with lower pitch male voices, compared with the less attractive raised pitch male voices. Our two experiments indicate for the first time that signals from the opposite-sex that are important for mate choice also affect the accuracy of women’s memory.”

This confirms a lesser known game concept that men who speak slowly and deliberately are more attractive to women. When you speak slowly, your voice pitch lowers, which raises your attractiveness. Try it sometime. If you want a girl to remember something you consider helpful to your goal of getting her to sex, be sure to deliberately lower your voice when you say it.

***

I was right about cutters. They do it to because it distracts them from their worries and alleviates stress and depression.

The majority of people involved in self-injury do it to deal with anxiety or emotional pain, Adler said. It “self-soothes” and gives people a sense of control. And it helps many people get over a rough patch in their lives.

I contend that cutters are probably the fastest lays you will encounter. If you catch sight of the telltale stigmata, push for a same night lay.

***

File under: No duh! A lack of a father in the home is bad for children’s future prospects.

Despite the widespread assumption that paternal investment is substantial in our species, previous studies have shown mixed results in relation to the impact of fathers on both offspring survival and reproductive outcomes. Using data from a large representative sample of British men, we tested whether father absence is associated with the timing of reproduction-related events among boys, while controlling for various cues denoting early childhood adversity. We further tested whether the loss of the father at different childhood stages matters, so as to assess whether early life is the most important period or if effects can be seen during later childhood. The results show that father absence before age seven is associated with early reproduction, while father absence between ages 11 and 16 only is associated with delayed voice-breaking (a proxy for puberty), even after adjusting for other factors denoting childhood adversity. We conclude that fathers do exert an influence on male reproductive outcomes, independently of other childhood adversities and that these effects are sensitive to the timing of father absence.

You kind of have to read between the lines in this study to get to the meat of the issue: if you like living in a prosperous, civilized nation, you want boys to reach sexual maturity later in life, as such late bloomers are a sign that more parental investment into learning and developing is taking place. K-selection strategy, in other words. If you want to live in a shithole, you can’t go wrong in a place where boys are sprouting pube grass and wolf whistling by age 9. The scourge of single momhood in the USA and other Western nations is an early warning sign that our once great nations are headed down the path of shitholeitude.

***

If you want a quick and effortless path to sex, you should focus on gaming girls when they are alone and away from their peers.

Peer pressure? It’s hardwired into our brains.

A new USC study explains why people take stupid chances when all of their friends are watching that they would never take by themselves. According to the study, the human brain places more value on winning in a social setting than it does on winning when you’re alone. […]

The researchers found that the striatum, a part of the brain associated with rewards, showed higher activity when a participant beat a peer in the lottery, as opposed to when the participant won while alone. The medial prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain associated with social reasoning, was more activated as well. Those participants who won in a social setting also tended to engage in more risky and competitive behavior in subsequent lotteries.

“These findings suggest that the brain is equipped with the ability to detect and encode social signals, make social signals salient, and then, use these signals to optimize future behavior,” Coricelli said.

As Coricelli explained, in private environments, losing can more easily be life-threatening. With no social support network in place, a bad gamble can spell doom.

In group environments, on the other hand, rewards tend to be winner-takes-all. Nowhere is this more clear than in sexual competition, where — to borrow a phrase from racing legend Dale Earnhardt, Sr. — second place is just first loser.

What does this have to do with women and ease of sex? Well, peer pressure acts on adult women too, (it’s not just a teen skaterboi phenomenon), and is particularly relevant when the woman is surrounded by her clucking hens in a mixed group environment where men are hitting on her. Taking risks to impress friends and potential mates manifests differently in men than it does in women. A man will engage in derring-do in front of a crowd to boost his status; a woman will look good to try to capture the interest of an alpha male to boost her social status.

A woman is going to feel more pressure to snag the top dog when her friends are watching, so she will have a bigger bitch shield (to more effectively screen out the betas) than she would if she were sitting alone when you approached her. Ergo, you probably have an easier path to sex if you game her when there are none of her peers around. And this tends to confirm my real life experience. Women are especially keen to avoid the slut label when friends are watching.

But I can imagine some readers reaching a contrary conclusion (and there are enough personal examples to support an opposing conclusion). A woman alone risks more if she winds up sleeping with a cad; as the study mentioned, she has no support network to ameliorate any bad decision she might make. You might, therefore, have a better shot at sex if you can successfully capitalize on her genetically wired need for social approval by instilling the fear of loss in her through jealously plotlines; for example, by disqualifying her with negs while you flirt with her friends.

The “woman alone” vs “woman in group” theory needs some more fleshing out by field testers and theorists alike. My take is this: Women alone are better same night lay prospects, especially if you’re strong in the comfort stage, but women in groups offer more opportunity (via social dynamic pathways) to raise your value and build attraction in the early stages of pickup.

And if you keep getting blown out by cockblocks, well, a woman by herself won’t have that problem. Which brings us to day game…

but that is a topic for another time.

A Test Of Your Game: The Judging

It’s time to revisit the last “Test of Your Game” and see how the commenters responded to the challenge. How would you handle an outdoor pickup attempt under the gaze of a beautiful setting sun over the ocean, briefly interrupted by a potential cockblock?

Anonymous wrote:

FIRST!!!!! :))))

I like the assumed sale. But the excitability sounds too eager.

Grade: E for effort

The G Manifesto wrote:

“The Pacific sun glared off the sand”

Being that you are on The Wessyde, spark up a Chronic jay and say:

“Stick around for a while, you don’t want to miss the sunset. It is going to be a “green flash”.

To which she will respond:

“What is a “green flash?”

Maneuver as usual from there. Final destination: your bedroom.

An excellent segue, if she isn’t a local. Actually, this is a decent topic even if she knows what you’re talking about. If she says “I’ve seen it already”, you could say “Yeah, but not with my color commentary.”

Grade: B+

DiamondEyes wrote:

“Does David know you try to pick up strange men at the beach?”

whatever she says, cut her off with –

“Your friend is kind of cute.”

There is no need to mention David at all. That’s taking the focus off you and putting it on some other dude. We don’t know if David is a BF, an ex, a herbly friend, a brother, a roommate or none of the above. Plus, this abrupt conversational change doesn’t flow well from her last words to you as she was packing to go. As for the driving arrangements hinted at by the girl friend, well, it could be a girls’ night out, so no boyfriend presence required. Otherwise, I like the flirty nature and the disqualification of this segue, and a girl who was feeling you might pick up and run with this.

Grade: Gentleman’s C

Miley Cyrax wrote:

Hesitate like a deer in the headlights, until the sight of her walking away spurs you into action. Yell “wait!,” while getting up to chase after her, before tripping over your beach chair and falling on your face.

She turns around.

Trying to DHV as you pick yourself up (flexing the triceps as you push yourself off the ground), you sheepishly ask “has anyone told you that you have a C-shaped smile?”

Neil Strauss wept.

Grade: A+ for slapstick humor

E wrote:

“How long have you and her been dating?”, completely straight faced.

Assuming she’s not actually dating that girl, she’ll probably start qualifying. If she is dating that girl, you can ask if they’ve ever shared a man.

Man, this is an ingenious neg/disqualification. But for it to work you have to say it with sincere naïveté. Any smirking will convince her you’re a douchebag. This is a line that could function in any situation where a cockblock is present.

Grade: B for balls

Marc wrote:

Flirt with the pale girl, says I. Make magazine girl, who probably already thinks she’s the shit, wonder if you might actually like her friend better. Plus y’know, if you’re in with her group, it’s less awkward to try to get her to peel away.

It’s always advisable to flirt with other girls (an alpha male is always “on”), but if you aren’t ambiguous about your intentions, or you overdo it, she might really think you want her less attractive friend and try to set you two up. But I get that this is a classic disqualification maneuver used on hot babes to make them doubt your attraction for them, and thus to slightly lower their status relative to yours. I’m just not sure that the “I like your friend” red herring tactic won’t backfire as often as it works as intended.

Grade: C-

Anonymous wrote:

A classic close I learned from this blog:

Double middle finger in the face of all. Stunner. Stunner. Stunner.

Walk away to the sound of breaking glass.

Bonus: and whistling the “Battle Hymm of the Republic.”

Double Bonus: steal her wallet. spend her money at the strip club.

Are some of you guys looking to pick up chicks or audition for the new Game movie?

Grade: Hell yeah!

Marx wrote:

As the perceptive charmer different from the rest of the pack, I can smell the moisture tingling her ‘gina. She *wants* to be late; she *wants* to dismiss David; and she *wants* to showcase her sass (and ass).

Response: eradicate that sense of urgency, prolong her stay at the beach, keep teasing, get her to jump in the water, and take the rest from there.

Me: “So you came to the beach to read a magazine? Come on… you’re more fun than that.”

Magazine girl: “No, I was tanning too. But I gotta go now.”

Me: “Yeah, I noticed the tan lines. Seriously, what’s the urgency for? Beautiful day, beautiful sand, beautiful sharks.”

M-G: “I gotta get ready for that dinner.”

Me: “Do you also have trouble telling time? You have hours before dinner. Come on. Do you know how to swim?”

M-G: “Yes.”

Me: “I don’t believe you. Show me.”

M-G: “…..”

**More witty banter to expunge that urge to leave**

Me: “I’m jumping in. Tag along.”

**I grab her gently by the hand and pull her into the water**

Commenter Ben Runkle had a good reply to this commenter’s suggestion, so I’ll just post that:

“I like this because it seems like you’re going for the same day lay, by keeping her around and moving to another spot (the water). That said, I feel like this would work better at night, after she’s already out, maybe at a bar on the beach. The thing that sucks about day game is it’s a lot harder to isolate (without coming off as creepy or pushy) due to the fact that the girl may just have a legitimate excuse for leaving. other than timing, this is solid.”

Yup, day game is a different beast than night game.

Grade: B

(Another) Anonymous wrote:

“Well, I’ve gotta go. It was nice talking about invisible sharks with you.”

This is a shit test. Agree & amplify, and get her contact info with a single retort, with a simple, efficient phrase:

“Yeah, we should do it again sometime, over drinks.”

Clean and clear and relevant to her departing salvo. Remember, MagGirl is getting up to leave. There just isn’t time or context for continuing along a conversational path that requires a lot of flirty banter. A lot of commenters wanted to press on with the shark theme, but that would sound forced. One, you’re trying to pump life into an overworked subject matter, and two, you’re forcing her to banter when she’s given the unspoken signal that a change in topic is appropriate.

Grade: B (Not the best game, but doesn’t pussyfoot around, either.)

John Ryder wrote:

“Well hold it now, I’ve got all kinds of dangerous animals to show you… not all of them invisible…”

Sexual innuendo always comes across better on paper or in the movies than it does in real life.

Grade: D for dadgam horndog!

Maya wrote:

my piece of advice.

Ignore her shit test, don’t say anything, just look at her and make a smirk. When, in the next second, she’s about to go, I’d say “Do take the cold shower at your friend’s place” (or something like that, I can’t really make lines in English, but the important fact is that she’s just met a super hot alpha guy and she needs to cool down)
Her: “Why?”
You: “You’ll cool down.”
Her: “I don’t need to … I’m not upset at all”
You: “Try it. You’ll feel the difference”
Her: “I think you’re the one who should take a cold shower, you’re seeing the sharks where there are none … this is worrisome”
Now you can change the subject of the conversation abruptly again.

It’s always interesting to hear a girl’s perspective on pickup, if only to learn what not to do. Occasionally, though, a girl’s advice isn’t horrible. This example is a little overwrought, but the catch-her-off-guard line of “Yeah, you’d probably want to take that cold shower” is pretty good if you wanted to go direct and assume that she’s into you. A risky gambit, to be sure.

Grade: Lady’s B- (so conscientious, so workmanlike, but where’s the genius?)

Killer Instinct wrote:

This is an interesting case, and the PUA is presented essentially with two sets of options: disqualification or qualification. The first decision that needs to be made is which direction to go in. Given the fact that the girl is quite hot (8-9?) and that up to that point she is relatively uninterested, disqualification tactics are the best bet. Add the fact that she is ready to leave, disqualification presents a kind of higher-risk, higher-reward method: if it works, instant attraction can be triggered. So, how to go about disqualifying? Neg can work, but needs to be very calibrated—not too strong as to piss her off, and not to soft as to prevent attraction. My tactic would be something like this:
“hey, before you go, any chance you can introduce me to your cute friend?”

This is a good middle ground that is very likely to get a response, put her in a qualifying frame, and lay the foundational seeds of attraction.

Traditional game theory does support Killer Instinct’s advice to pursue a disqualification strategy. The success of this technique hinges on, as KI mentioned, the hotness of the target and her interest level. She was hot, but how interested was she? I got the sense there was incipient attraction because she didn’t try to escape our conversation before her pale friend showed up. There was momentum. Would a qualifying number close work better? Maybe it comes down to personal preference; a lower-risk but low-backfire rate method could appeal more to guys who style themselves aloof seducers.

Grade: B+

YaReally wrote:

Jesus, it’s like Game circa 2004 in here.

1. Why did she come sit down in the first place if she were only going to stay 5-10 minutes?

Because she wants his cock. She sits by him but won’t open him because she’s a hot alpha chick and she’s giving him a chance to have the balls to open her.

2. The friend leaves, and then slightly later, magazinegirl goes to leave. If she were going to leave her stuff at her friend’s apt, wouldn’t she have left with the friend?

Because she wants his cock. She stayed behind so he could at the least grab her number.

3. Who would this David be that Maggirl would 1) see him before going to her friend’s house but 2) not leave her stuff there and 3) not invite him along to dinner?

Who the fuck cares who David is? Maggirl clearly doesn’t. He’s the guy that’s totally irrelevant. Her friend tried to toss a “remember your boyfriend” cockblock in to fuck with him but Maggirl herself blew it off. Because she wants his cock.

4. The “don’t wait up if I’m late” is a little strange since Maggirl doesn’t know where the dinner is going to be. You would think she would ask her friend where if only out of politeness so that she could have said, “ok, and I’ll try to catch up with you there if I’m late” or something like that.

That’s because they were having a girl-code conversation. Cockblock was saying “Here’s your chance to come with me to escape this guy if he’s creepy” and Maggirl was saying “It’s cool, I want this guy’s cock and I’m giving him a chance, go on ahead without me” and Cockblock threw in a last “Just don’t forget about your boyfriend!” because she knows Maggirl does what she wants and all she can do is try to guilt her a bit and make it awkward for the guy.

Anyway, in response to what to do: There’s not enough comfort for a kiss at this point since she’s all alpha and still testing you, but there’s enough for a number for sure, and possibly a small insta-date (she probably won’t blow her friends off entirely, but she’ll give you some time to build more comfort with her).

If you want the number, you just tell her “So give me your number and we’ll go shark hunting by moonlight after your dinner.” as you pull out your phone. Text her flirty but not too sexual during her dinner so she’ll meet up without feeling like she’s admitting she wants sex, and escalate in person. David and the cockblock chick might fuck it up though, so an insta-date would be better.

For an insta-date just tell her you’ll walk her to her car so she doesn’t get eaten by the invisible sharks. Once her shit is tossed in the car so she doesn’t have to lug it around and you’ve built a little more comfort, push for the insta-date and make her late for dinner.

Easy peasy.

I like YaReally’s frame (it’s good for your game to assume girls want to interact with you), but just to clarify, there weren’t that many open chairs, so she likely sat where she did out of necessity. Points (2) and (3) are well taken, and honestly ones I hadn’t thought of at the time. There’s a lot going on that’s easy to miss when your brain is revving to get a girl’s contact info with the clock ticking.

Anyhow, YaReally’s analysis and prescription sounds spot on, even in hindsight. (YaReally also has some other comments in that thread you’ll want to check out.) The only quibble I have is walking her to her car to help carry her stuff as part of an insta-date to build comfort. I was reclined in a chair with my feet propped up as she was packing to leave. I imagine it would have looked try-hard for me to get up and offer assistance, unless I offered a plausible excuse for why I had to leave as well. But hey, no guts no glory, right?

Grade: A

***

What I did

MagGirl had begun collecting her stuff and shoving it into a gargantuan canvas bag. She glanced sidelong at me for a second, full of sass and flourish, signifying everything.

She smiled, or maybe smirked. “Well, I’ve gotta go. It was nice talking about invisible sharks with you.”

I hesitated before replying, watching her pack for a full five seconds. It was a hesitation that likely cost me a number close.

Finally words jumped out of my mouth. “Hey, you learn something new every day. Before we’re done…”

My sentence was interrupted when her phone buzzed in her hand. She checked a text message and her perky face drooped sullenly. Did her mom just die in a car accident?

She quickly jerked her head around at me, and muttered “Bye”, taking off in a rush, her sandals clapping loudly along the ground with each rapid stride.

The exigencies of game. It rarely goes as smoothly as you think it will in your imagination. If you aren’t prepared to deal with the possible failure of any one pickup attempt, you aren’t cut out for this game.

Overgaming, Part 2

A reader asks:

Is it possible to win back an ex after overgaming?  My cocky/funny became cocky.  The only time I was beta was at the three week mark when I tried to ger her back – I cried.  Is there a more long-term strategy to win an ex back?

Have you ever been with a girl who was incredibly sarcastic? Where every word out of her mouth was some sort of cutting riposte, usually of the annoying “exaggerate for effect” kind of sarcasm, her sneer permanently plastered to her face? What did you think of her? You probably thought she was amusing at first, but then, after a full night listening to her bitter ironies, you became irritated by her company. She was obnoxious, and, more importantly, less feminine than when you knew her before she opened her mouth.

Girls feel the same thing when they meet a man who is too cocky. They are attracted at first (who is this guy who dares speak with such insolence!), then, as it becomes clear that cockiness is the only gear he knows, he loses his alpha allure. Finally, the girl will want to get away from him and his arrogant posturing.

Cockiness that isn’t leavened with knowing humor or calculated flashes of vulnerability can quickly burden a man with the perception that he is an arrogant, insecure prick. Or worse, a weak, insecure try-hard. These things are anathema to women’s attraction triggers. A woman is likely to think an overly cocky man to be compensating for some shortcoming. An overly cocky man reveals his flaws just as surely as a supplicating man does; approval seeking is at the heart of all insecure behavior. Whereas the supplicating man’s “tell” is obvious, the cocky man’s tell is discernible through the thick smokescreen of caustic one-liners he belches up around himself.

If you watch the great alpha male characters on TV (Don Draper comes to mind, atm), ask yourself how often they are verbally cocky? The answer is not often. (Nonverbal cockiness, otoh, is a trait that should wear on you like a custom-tailored suit wherever you are.) They will intersperse their cockiness with, in turns, humor, sincerity, wit, genuine anger and laconic bemusement. In general, per screen minute, they speak less than other male characters, but when they do speak their words carry weight. They are not dancing monkeys or butthurt douchebags, which are impressions the perpetually cocky man usually brings upon himself.

This reader has problems with his frame of neediness that go way beyond excessive cockiness. A man who cries to a girl three weeks after a breakup is a man who is far too emotionally invested and clingy to effectively imbue himself with the proper tingle-generating mentality of pussy abundance. No amount of tactical game will help him with his ex. He needs to rebuild from the ground up.

Once he’s mastered the correct frame (or masculine psychological balance, in more explanatory words), he’ll find it effortless, and natural, to tinge his cockiness with humor, to approach women, including his ex, from a place of emotional distance, and to set the stage for a reconciliation should one be possible.

In his case, I do not think one is possible. He needs to extract his ex from his life at once, and begin the journey away from her and toward other women. How will a man know when he’s got the right frame? Here’s a simple test: One hour after a breakup, are you able to go outside, meet a new woman, smile at her and have a conversation with her like a normal cool dude? And after that conversation, do you mentally rewind to yourself “Boy, I wish my ex could’ve seen me with her”, or do you say to yourself “Cool chick. I should have gone for the number close.”

Get the answers to the above right, and you’ll be in the winning headspace.

Hillary Clinton Is Wrong: It Doesn’t Take A Village To Raise A Child

This is getting to sound like a broken record. Yet another liberal shibboleth is discredited.

It doesn’t take a village to raise a child after all, according to University of Michigan research.

“In the African villages that I study in Mali, children fare as well in nuclear families as they do in extended families,” said U-M researcher Beverly Strassmann, professor of anthropology and faculty associate at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR). “There’s a naïve belief that villages raise children communally, when in reality children are raised by their own families and their survival depends critically on the survival of their mothers.” […]

In her study of the Dogon, Strassmann found that children’s risk of death is higher in polygynous than in monogamous families. This reflects the hazard of living with unrelated females whose own children are competing with the children of co-wives for limited resources.

Supporting this finding, Strassmann cites “Hamilton’s Rule,” established by British evolutionary biologist W.D. Hamilton in the 1960s. It is the first formal, mathematical description of kin selection theory, the idea that the degree to which we are willing to invest our resources in another person depends, in part, on the degree of genetic kinship we share with them.

It should also be noted that different human population groups, adapted to their specific environments, practice different reproductive strategies. In Africa, where this study took place, monogamy is less the norm than it is in Europe or Asia, and fathers come and go and have less certainty of paternity. This encourages an r-selection strategy where women pump out lots of kids and hope for the best, as opposed to a k-selected strategy in groups where enforced monogamy is the norm and fathers have more certainty about paternity. In the latter, you can expect to see more fatherly devotion and resource provision to his family, and more ill effects when the father abdicates his duty or the children are bastard spawn raised by single moms. (The author of the study commits a laughable PC error when she says that Bill Clinton is proof that kids of single moms turn out all right. No, that is proof that kids with extraordinary IQs and a particular suite of personality traits can overcome a crappy single mom family environment. Some of these social scientists should refamiliarize themselves with the axiom that exceptions prove the rule.)