This is beyond cliche
I got into a new group of friends that were all about their ‘personal brand.’ Every occasion was started with a good ten minutes of silence while they checked-in to Yelp, Foursquare, snapped photos of the venue / table / food, and tweeted bullshit along the lines of ‘having the time of my life!’ — I spent the time looking for typos and leading errors on the menus. It was exhausting. Everybody was there, but nobody was present. Even the meal itself was dull because of the endless obsession with creating something it wasn’t.
But this is essentially modern life. On the forum, we used to talk about the dating apocalypse
- Broadband Everywhere – internet is fast enough that it keeps you engaged
- Smart Phones – Internet Everywhere
- Social Media – How people connect nowadays
- Dating Sites – How they often date
Each of these things on its own basically has been distorting changing human relationships. But combined?
You’re new to the game. You’ve been socializing all week in your day to day life. Talking to friends, strangers, shopkeepers and clerks. 5 minutes of sportscenter in the morning to talk to the guys, 5 minutes of TMZ (or The Media Take Out if you prefer black women) – and you’ve got enough pop culture to pepper into a normal conversation. Fresh fade from the barber, new shirt from the clearance rack, and your combination of intermittent fasting, paleo, and ketosis is doing damage to that slight beer belly, posture looking better because you only do three olympic lifts…. You’re primed to spit some game.
You hit up the venue an hour earlier than most and catch some of the early birds to the party. A group of three walks in, one finer the other two, but any of them will do….Step over confidently….got one jewel of an opener you’re about to drop – and then they all get on their phones. Sephora’s latest is now painfully illuminated by AMOLED.
It’s one thing to run up on a chick with her headphones blasting and her sunglasses on – and basically intrude in her living space. Though that behavior shows “entitlement” and “male privilege” – being able to talk to one another is human. You have a right to talk to her, just as she has a right to talk to you, to ignore you, and to keep it moving.
But there’s something about the phone that is different than just general day to day life.
People are pretty much addicted to their phones, so much so that when they are in public spaces – spaces designated for mixing and socializing – their addictions take over.
When you approach a girl who’s face is buried in her phone – you’re competing against digital heroin.
From the Guardian
Justin Rosenstein had tweaked his laptop’s operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook. But even that wasn’t enough. In August, the 34-year-old tech executive took a more radical step to restrict his use of social media and other addictive technologies.
I don’t have any tried and true solutions for this.
You can always barge in to her space, you can always basically “break her state” – but the second that you’re not engaging enough, she returns (or drifts away mentally)
This is the modern era.
-Archie
True shit.
Go out these days and everyone is doing more to look like they’re having a good time for Snap and the gram than they are actually looking for a good time.
For my money it’s just another thing to use to set you apart from the rest of the dudes at the club but I’m actively looking for girls that know how to ENJOY themselves on a night out vs be in their phone.
If she’s checking her likes and views drunk at the club how much fun is she gonna be 1 on 1
“I don’t have any tried and true solutions for this.”
That’s scary. If you don’t have a solution, then I don’t think anyone else does. What’s even scarier is that I think smartphones will get more productive. There will new apps that women will be into. There will be more reason for women to use their phones. The closest thing I’ve found to a solution is to mention it after you had sex with her. Just tell her about a date you had with a woman who was on her phone constantly. Tell her that you left the date immediately because she was obsessed with her phone. You just have to hope she got the message.
We are actually fortunate Archie. The women we try to date didn’t grow up with smartphones. Its only a recent phenomenon. You should feel bad for the next generation of players who are going to date the 13-17 years old currently who only know of Iphone’s. The article below is the scariest trend I’ve seen in a while. It describes the life of teens today and how so much of it has changed just since 2012. These young girls lock themselves in their rooms and text/snap their friends all night. No in person communication whatsoever. I don’t know how a young player will be able to navigate that world unless he has a big snapchat/Instagram presence. Game 1.0 is going to be useless on the hypnotized by smartphone generation.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/
The bruteforce way for headphones and smartphones is to “motion”.
*guy motions to pull his headphones off*
*guy pretends to have conversation with phone*
But it’s not elegant…
Hey Archie, if game skills could be quantified the same way sport skills do, how would you envision what ‘expert’ or ‘world class’ game look like? basically the best of the best. i’m asking cos sometimes i read through old YaReally posts and see him mentioning an RSD instructor or someone of similar experience running ‘standard game, nothing special’. Well even professionals still have to play the simple passes, don’t they?
That’s a good question. When i started this, I thought it was possible.
Now that I’ve been doing this forever, there are so many things to measure (I guess like sports, huh)
But the measurements aren’t trust worthy.
How do you gauge if I guy has game?
You have to see him in real life turn situations that *you* think look bad, into positives.
Converting the most hostile of chicks or the most indifferent or the most scatterbrained – are good metrics – if I could even quantify those emotional qualities of the chick.
…But what does that mean for the guy coming up in the game?
The learner has to have some metrics, even though game isn’t a “numbers game”
– how many times did I go out this week
– how many “off” nights
– how many “on” nights
– how many days
– how many venues, how many types of venues
– how was my rap
– how many times did I get stumped by the response
– how many chicks did I let go
– time between chats..
Quantifying the whole thing – I’m all for – but I don’t have that level of diligence.
The other problem is that a lot of the guys learning game are of the programming persuasion – and will try and find “truth in the numbers” – instead of making more substantial changes. Shout out to my machine learning peeps!
2 common newb questions
– how many approaches to bang
– how many chicks to girlfriend
Add in the tendency for guys that don’t get it to think of women as “hard 7’s”, “soft 9’s”..
It’s a male predisposition that hurts the game.
Keeping track is important, but just like Cars – you don’t let the accountants take over engineering.
Another thought…
There’s a lot to learn from the folks that make the latest and greatest social media.
Mostly…
Grabbing attention.
Hook.
Repeat.
BJ Fogg method is a start.
But there’s a whole rabbit whole to go down there.
These guys are spending hundreds of millions a year to optimize that cycle to drive eyeballs and engagement so there are some insights to get (especially cause of how well it’s working). Similarly there is a lot of good research (deep academic shit) that came out the ad men era.
The other thing is that I tend to think simple rules/heuristics are better than more complicated shit.
For example, a simple set of rules to define your investments (S&P 500 index) does way better than most super professionals when it comes to ROI.
So figuring out the simple algo for the Game, is basically what I work towards.
Doesn’t mean it works 100% of the time, but if you put a few girls through the whole series of steps… you’re bound to end up with a banana split.
I need to write the steps down to get it out of my head at some point. But it’s all the usual stuff with some tweaks.