Day 20/30 post-Bootcamp

After taking yesterday off, today I’m suppoed to be celebrating the “take-off” phase of my new going-out habit.

But, the City of San Francisco and myself served up a double-fail.

Trackstar, DP & myself hit up the mall at about 5pm for some daygame.

There were NO targets. I can’t make this shit up. DP – who is usually all about SF women – even was like WTF is going on. After doing a round of the mall we were both bummed and decided to go eat dinner.

On the way home from dinner, I missed two opportunities to open – no one to blame here for but myself, and I’m going to start forming a new habit which I’ll explain below that will fix this.

The first was an OK-looking Asian girl who basically eyefucked me as I walked past. The second was the cute black girl waiting for the elevator in the lobby of my building (cute black girls are even rarer than the one-in-ten-thousand cute girls in SF, so I really messed this one up). We made eye contact and exchanged Hi’s, but I didn’t push conversation. She obviously wanted to talk to me as when the elevator stopped at her floor she was like “Oh, see you soon!”. The best I could muster with my headphones on was “sure” and a smile.

All-in-all, today really sucked.

To take something positive away from today, I’ve been noticing two things. 1) I don’t really make an effort to push interactions for some sort of close, 2) I haven’t made that much of an effort to integrate pickup into my everyday life.

I’m going to start making habits of both, so…

1. When I’m in an interaction and am about to leave, I’m to stick in for a couple more minutes, and try to run another routine or escalate.

2. Every time I see a fuckable girl give me an AI, I *must* talk to her. Whether she turns out to be nothing more than a gatekeeper or a hot date, not talking to her negates the chance of her becoming anything. So if I’m in line at Starbucks and girl looks over at me, I’m to go talk to her. If I pass a girl on a street and she smiles and makes eye contact, I’m to go talk to her. Apart from getting me to approach more, this also has the advantage of me integrating “getting into state” and “approaching without state” into my game more.

- whim

Day 19/30 post-Bootcamp

Took Sunday off to clear some personal affairs.

Went out for Daygame for an hour downtown with DP & Trackstar today. We coined some new vocabulary for the community:

• Chat: to replace “ug” or “uncool”. Think “female chode”. This is Sydneysider-term.
• Dead Seagulls / Fuertes: So DP & I were talking about Derek P Girls (girls who look under 21, or who are under 21), and Trackstar misheard us and thought we were talking about Dead Seagulls. So, we started calling Derek P Girls Dead Seagulls. Fuertes is a Norwegian term I believe, describing 14 year olds who date 18 year olds over in Scandivania.

On to the daygame.

We met up at Union Square. There were like 3-4 sets/girls I could have approached here, but didn’t. Slap on the wrist for that.

We head towards downtown, we send DP to chase a Dead Seagull.

Get downtown, in front of the mall. Spot 2 Asian girls. DP says he wants to open them. I say if he doesn’t I will. He tells me to. I open direct, flirt with both of them, DP comes in to wing (more on this below). I want to leave the set (more on this below), DP stays in, so I end up staying in as well. We could have pushed this set further but at the time we considered it a warmup.

Walk around the mall a bit, talk to some girls, bounce over to the Gardens.

We sat and chilled for quite a bit, practicing reads of people’s body language in the park and picking out the various ethnicities of girls sitting around (damn, we are good at this shit).

As we’re leaving, I open a FOB-looking girl sitting with her headphones on.

Because she had her headphones on, I wanted to try some of the compliance framing stuff that ET talks about (there was a specific compliance stack that I was thinking about). Unfortunately, I hadn’t learnt the stack, so I improvised. Something like this:

whim: Hi. (motion for her to take headphones off)

FOB: (tries to ignore me – you think someone who’s standing in front of you is going to walk away just because you pretend you didn’t hear them?)

whim: How’s it going? (sit) What kind of music are you listening to? Actually, first let me ask you something.

FOB: (turns to face me, headphones still in)

whim: What kind of work do you do?

FOB: But I don’t know you.

whim: I’m just being friendly. (pause/vacuum).

FOB: (silence)

whim: I’m interested. I find that with the work that I do, when I work I can’t listen to vocal music, because I can only focus on one thing at a time.

FOB: I’m listening to Pop. Who are you?

whim/FOB: (some chitchat about work and the city)

whim: Oh cool. You know, your English is really good, but you have a slight accent. I’m going to say that you’ve lived in America for a long time, but you grew up somewhere else. Probably Japan.

FOB: (wide-eyed and coyly) Maybe…

whim: (feeling no particular reason to stay and wanting to leave) Haha, my friends are waving to me. I gotta go. (kino)

So I pretty much messed that one up. Rereading the material, I missed the frame (open-minded), didn’t verbalise her objection first (“So you’re probably a bit startled that I’m asking you all these questions”), and didn’t really bait all that well. But it was a cool learning experience anyway. I could have stayed longer in the set by saying that I had dated a Japanese girl before and dropping in some cultural facts (this forms a lesson below).

My main lesson out of this was that if I suspect a girl is FOB, drop the framing, keep it simple and go in dominant instead.

Other lessons from today:

• Stick in sets and push them more. I should have some default material to just spit out whenever I feel a set is going stale. I am usually pretty good at reading where the energy of a set is at, and usually if there isn’t a super-strong hook I’ll leave. This is a bad habit that needs to DIE… I just need to plough.
• Learn my stack more.
• Got some very cool body language tips from Trackstar.
• Do more approaches.
• It’s fucking weird to go from “out of state” to “in state” immediately after saying hi to my wings – I should be able to make that transition myself.
• Going direct on 2-sets during the day is fine, as long as I keep talking.
• There is no real smooth way to introduce a wing during the day – just do it… if you go direct in the first place the girls know what’s up anyway.
• Need to dominate my sets more.
• Need to present my stereotype better (it actually works pretty well for SF).

- whim

FR & thoughts for 12/13/2008 – Daygame

I haven’t been out for daygame for a while. In fact, I think it’s about 1.5 months now. So today was interesting for that reason. It was also interesting for the reasons that I’ll discuss below. But first, the sets.

Warmup girls

Set: First set. I don’t want to do it, but JB pushes me. I go. 2 set of white girls. Open direct. Say hi, introduce myself. She tells me that her ex-husband had the same name and can’t talk to me. She is engrossed in texting on her phone. Her semi-ugly friend is giggling. I took the comment as a blowout (no one in the US has the same name as me, or at least no one pronounces it the way that I do).

Good: Opened, despite not wanting to.

Bad: Relatively quiet opening. Didn’t engage the set at an energetic level.

Loss point: Upon opening. I was lower energy than they were and going direct – bad combination.

Improvements: Open higher energy. If she brings up the comment about the ex-husband, tease her and stack forward.

HBSomethingIsOff

Set: Blonde girl with her mum and grandmother. I almost wasn’t going to open her, but she waited outside the store as her mother/grandmother went inside. Open, overly direct. Lock in. Question, talk, convey a story. Question, talk, convey a story. She is not giving back to the interaction. Her grandmother comes out of the store. She says she has to go.

Good: Opened. Normal talk.

Bad: Opener wasn’t well calibrated – from the way she talked and acted she came off as a little strange, my guess is she’s a mismatcher. Her image of herself and the SOI I gave her were likely disproportional.

Loss point: Fluffing and not leading the interaction.

Improvements: Less direct opener. Cold read/tease. Stack forward into a frame. Pay more attention to the obvious time constraint (her mother/grandmother shopping) and go for the #-close.

HBAsian

Set: Another girl who disappeared into a store. She re-emerged, and the guys sent me after her. Opened. She immediately asked where I was from. I stopped momentarily as I introduced myself, but she kept walking. Followed her into another store. She told me she was looking for her boyfriend.

Good: Opening. Stacking forward. Light teasing.

Bad: Didn’t stand still and lock in. Normally it’s fine to walk with girls, but in this case she was sprinting.

Loss point: Walking with her and letting her lead.

Improvements: Open strong/higher energy. Grab her slightly, pull her in to talk to her. Walk on my terms. If boyfriend objection emerges, tease her about it. Stack into frames.

HB40

Set: JB sent me after her. Opened, noticed that she was 10 years older than she initially looked. Delivered opener, ejected.

Good: Opened. Locked in against a wall.

Bad: Leaving set.

Loss point: Leaving set.

Improvements: Should have bantered just for the heck of it.

Thoughts and Observations

• I have no problems approaching, even if I haven’t done it for a while. Just a couple of warmup sets makes everything good.
• My issues with not wanting to push the interaction forward that extra 5% are definitely showing through. I could have #-closed the strange blonde girl if I had paid more attention to the logistics and pushed for it. Ditto with HB40.

And that brings me to the title of the post: I have decided to leave the Community temporarily. I’ve realised that my life is not a series of parallel tracks but rather paths that intertwine and interconnect. Attempting to separate them has caused more undesirable effects than desireable, so I’m choosing not to do that any longer. Basically, there’s other stuff in my life that needs to be sorted out, and I need to take the time and do it.

The great thing is the last time I did this (took time away from the Community and focussed on the rest of my life), when I came back, my game improved really rapidly. I expect that the same thing will happen when I return – all the advances made in the rest of my life will filter through into my game.

This will mean no going out “just for sarging” anymore. It means that I’m not going to go look for FBs to replace the ones that I haven’t called back. Sure, I can (and will) talk to girls in my everyday life. I will continue to learn NLP skills, as those have a broader application my life. I will continue to lead the framed routine stack group I have running, as I’m commited to that. But no more sarging for the sake of sarging. At least not for a while

- whim

FR for 11/07/08 – Streetlightgame

Met up with Murti and Grifter in the evening. It was already getting dark, so the streetlights were on and it had a weird “bouncing between bars” feel to it.

After Juggler’s talk earlier in the week, I decided to read up on some of his theory a bit and found it pretty interesting. I think it forms a good foundational base of conversational and social skills, something that I’ve never had. I’ve gained *some* social skills simply through involvement in game, but the way I see things having “game” is just having a subset of a wider skill set which is social dynamics. I’ve decided that I’m going to give Juggler Method a try for a while, and slowly blend it in with what I already do. So my aim for today was to open and continue conversations Juggler-style.

It was my first time out with Murti so we spent a bit of time talking about game, approaches and all that good stuff. We all did a couple of approaches.

Girl 1

Set: Asian girl wearing fuck-me boots walking down the street. I thought she was a FOB. Opened direct and turned out she wasn’t. We talked a bit, I tried to ask some open-ended questions but kinda messed it up and ending asking leading questions. She was warm and friendly, no idea why I left the set.

Good: Opened. Attempted to go into an open-ended question. Kept things light and non-gamey. Used the situational (hand-drawn map in her hands) to bounce into her internal conversation.

Bad: Probably gave a bit too much attention to her up front (offered to give her directions). Did not do an easy stack into a number-close.

Loss point: Leaving early and not number closing.

Improvements: I would have asked her a question about what she’s shopping for, then create a vacuum based on that. I would then have told her that “look, I’d love to get to know you better but I really don’t want to go shopping with you at the moment. Let’s exchange contact details and we’ll get a cup of coffee sometime”.

Girl 2

Set: Girl standing by herself outside the mall. Opened direct, and just as I was finishing my opener a guy walks up and says hi to her, who I assumed was her date – he was dressed in a full suit and tie. My opener kinda went… “hey, I wanted to come over and tell you that you look absolutely adorable… I’m whim… (guy walks up)… and this must be your date for the evening”. Said hi to her date (who she interestingly introduced as “this is just my friend”), wished them both a good evening and left. Murti and Grifter were watching in the background cracking up lol.

Good: Opening. Not flipping out when her date walked in.

Bad: Could probably have chatted with them for a bit longer (?)

Loss point: Leaving set.

Improvements: Not really sure. I have no idea where I could have taken it given that they were clearly on their way to dinner or something.

Analysis

Juggler Method is cool. I need to read up more on it (still don’t really get the theory/structure) and maybe list out some examples to try out. As usual, I also need to be pushing my sets further and further.

I have cut back my gaming to 1 night and 2 days out per week. That’s my bare minimum commitment at the moment, I have too much other stuff going on in my life to do substantially more.

I would eventually like to build up a strong foundational skill set in Juggler-style conversation – it’s light, it’s witty and it really is the basic building block of person-to-person communication. On top of it, you can layer all sorts of things – more sexually-charged SOIs, conversational framing, advanced pacing and leading, speed seduction patterns, attraction routines, banter…

- whim

FR for 10/25/2008 – Daygame

Extreme Daygame Day #8

Today was an interesting day. I spent about 2pm-8pm out around union square, doing daygame and other things. What was interesting is that I’ve reached a tipping point of sorts – I know what is going wrong with my game and what needs to be done. I have also been able to call myself out on a point of self-deception (which is always a scary yet relieving feeling when I do it).

As a sidenote, I am still sick and my voice wasn’t all that great during the day (and even worse at night – see the FR for nightgame), but I tried.

But first, the sets.

HBStar

Set: Yes, her name was Star. I felt like I was screaming but all my vocal projection came out really soft. She had trouble hearing me, and I had to repeat things a few times. I found out a bit about her but I didn’t get that sense that it was going anywhere – the set was not hooking and she was not really giving anything back, so I left.

Good stuff: Opened, tried to talk loudly.

Bad stuff: Ejected.

Where I lost the set: When I left.

Things to do differently: Kept on ploughing, stacking forward into frames and other pieces of material.

HBWeird

Set: Over at the Square, she looked like she was searching for someone. Standard open, tap-and-spin, direct. She gave me a blank stare. I ploughed a little, pacing her situation (looking for someone). She looked irritated. I told her “hey” to get her to stop and actually pay attention and she told me it was weird that I was talking to strangers (???) and walked off. As an interesting note, just looking over my FRs this is the first time I’ve been blown out by a white girl for daygame (every other time I’ve left the set myself).

Good stuff: Opened. Ploughed a bit.

Bad stuff: Nowhere near high energy enough or loud enough to hook her attention just from opening. Not ploughing more.

Where I lost the set: Where she said it was weird to talk to strangers (I admit, that one threw me off balance) and walked off.

Things to do differently: Open high energy with a funner vibe. More early kino to get her to stop. Be super-enthusiastic.

Girl on a mission

Set: In the mall. Ran down the escalators to catch up to her. She was holding things in both hands. Stopped her, went direct. She liked it. We walked and talked a bit, she said she was on a mission shopping. I teased her for it, then force framed it as her going for what she wants in life (note to self: need to reward her slightly when laying this frame out there). She kept on walking and I ejected.

Good stuff: Opened. Stacked forward. Force framing. High energy vibe.

Bad stuff: Leaving set too early. Not locking it. Walking – James Bond actually asked why we started walking. I have always rationalised it as the girl looked like she was about to start walking so I walked first to make it look like I was leading. However, more recently I am thinking that this is not always a good idea (especially after watching him, Alchemist and Derek P in set). From now on, I am not going to start walking again if the girl stops to talk to me – I am remaining stationary.

Where I lost the set: Arguably by ejecting but also arguably when I started walking again.

Things to do differently: Not starting to walk again. Locked in against the barrier. Started a sexual framing routine. Offered to hold one of her bags to get in extra kino. Gone for the number close (probably Soul’s “I don’t want to go shopping with you, but…” line).

HBCute

Set: Cute white girl sitting by herself on some steps. Walked over directly, making eye contact as I approached. Opened with a friendly and warm “Hi”. Told her she was adorable (she was), sat down, chatted a bit. Did a cold read and set a decision-making frame. Talked a bit more. Then did the world’s worst number close (done entirely as statements in up-speak no less). She actually took my number, and was about to leave but I insisted that she dial me and I save her name in my phone. I don’t think that this made the number any more solid though (that and she wouldn’t give me her last name so I could find her on facebook, hmmm).

Good stuff: Opened. Went direct. Did the cold read and frame setting. Went for the number close.

Bad stuff: Poor number close routine. Could have done a bit more kino. Could have teased her more.

Where I lost the set: I didn’t.

Things to do differently: More kino. Sat closer to her. More teasing. Stronger number close. Maybe set a roleplaying frame.

General observations and calling out self-deception

My general feeling about the past few weeks of gaming is that I am actually going BACKWARDS in my daygame. Before I could pull off number closes and instant-dates fairly easily… now it seems like I can do neither. Here are some reasons why.

Just looking over my past week of FRs, I have noticed a recurring pattern: leaving set too early. I am therefore going to go out from now on with the notion that I will not leave a set until either 1) the girl runs away, or 2) she blows me out (tells me to fuck off). I am to stay in the set, and plough plough plough until something happens.

I have tried to find out WHY I am leaving set early – in most cases, it is a subtle shift in the vibe that makes me leave the set. The opening vibe is as it always is – fun and exciting. But when the vibe start to go “stale”, I leave. And by stale I feel like I am throwing a lot of things out there, but the girl is not giving anything back at all. I am rationalising this as me getting bored and frustrated that I am putting myself out there and delivering value and the girl is too LSE/messed up/unaware/socially uncalibrated/whatever to see that and respond. The problem with this rationalisation is that it assumes that I am looking for a reaction from the girl to continue the set. And this is bad. So, there needs to be some inner game work done here. And of course, my new rule above (plough until I am blown out) kinda fixes this from an outer game perspective. But I still do wish that I understood more about why certain sets go stale.

The other thing I am seeing more too is that I’m not stacking into my additional material properly. To correct this, I need to do some practice in terms of delivering it and in different ways of combining it to make the delivery smoother in-field.

Watching JB in field has also made me realise yet another crucial piece which used to be in my game but is now missing: I no longer chase girls (with energy and FURY). So… next time I am out and I see a girl, I am gonna jump (figuratively) and chase after her. RUN after her if necessary and open with gusto and energy.

Actions to take

• When in field: chase girls, run every set until blown out.
• Refine and practice delivery of material at home to get it right.
• Inner game work on needing some reaction out of the girl.

- whim