I recently heard about pick-up, around December, and spent some time trying out techniques from "The Game" and not having much success as a 18yo college student.

Soon after that, I read Conquer Your Campus, which is something that resonated with me a lot more and I've been working to achieve since, but as always, it's still a difficult process.

I'm working on trying to develop those defining qualities of a so-called "20% man," but I definitely feel like I have some sticking points.

I created this thread so I could talk out some of my sticking points while getting some outside input/encouragement to keep me moving forward.

I guess my first sticking point is being the Leader of my social group. I've lately been more active in trying to suggest activities and stuff to do when we're all kind of bored but people always seem to shrug them off.

PS I'm not 100% sure if this is in the right forum, but it felt like the best one - Mods: feel free to move it to wherever you think it should be.

PPS Feel free to post any advice in regards to college game. I know conquer your campus is pretty old and if there's anything new/relevant, I'd love to hear about it.

I'm a 20 yr old sophomore in college, I understand a lot of things don't actually work on a college campus. Most routines are made for people out in the real job world with women they will only see once, not a closed system. Some stuff will work quite well though. Style's lying game, cube, johari window are some things that work quite well for me.

Quick advice, if your friends don't do any of the crap you suggest then they probably don't care enough about your opinion. Make more friends. The bigger your social web, the better for a closed system. It will give you more power and influence even among your friends who don't care right now. Just like in pick up, you have to be willing to lose sometimes in order to win. Make a declaration you're going to do something, then go do it with or without them.

Thanks for the advice james.

I've been putting a lot of time into trying to expand my social web and make some new friends. I've seen some success but approaching new people in random situations is always hard. Doing street/oncampus approaches is something I really need to work on.

Trying to make kino a standard part of my relationships with people (girls in particular) has been one of the hardest things so far. I feel physically awkward in trying to do this, typically because there's always a space gap between us. I need to find a way to close this gap.

I've found my confidence going up in general as of late. I've definitely had some more success with girls in the past few days, I've been making new friends and just been feeling more love from people.

James - I used the Johari Window last night with a girl with reasonable success, but the one thign that really threw her off was "favorite body of water". I'm finding that most girls have never really even thought about their favorite body of water and when I ask them to describe three traits, they don't really know what to do. How do you typically run this routine with college girls?

Also, can anyone point me towards a good post on frame control and how to improve it?

I won't lie to you, on street or campus approaches are something I rarely use. If you can find people in a dining hall that would be way easier. Most people typically have somewhere to go and would rather not be bothered and be late for class. If it is already working for you though, I'd like to hear how you go about it.

Just remember with Kino, if you go in feeling awkward about it, she will feel awkward about it. Don't over think it, pretend shes a bro. Things that worked in third grade like messing with her hair still work.

Most girls stumble a little bit with favorite body of water. I normally ask each question one at a time. Animal three characteristics, then etc. and if she struggles on water you can be cocky funny and give her a hard time about it and then give her examples like ocean, lake, river, creek and see if she picks anything out. Most girls pick ocean, and say deep, or big... Great opportunity to tease and be C&F

As far as street approaches go, I'm going to try something this week. I'll let you guys know how it goes. I'm going to keep with the mindset of it's not a pickup, it's an I want to make connections approach. Just FLIRTY and FRIENDLY and FUN. But what I'm going to be doing over this week is instead of stopping people and talking to them is if I'm walking in the same direction as someone who looks interesting, I'll just walk and talk with them.

How do you typically approach in the dining commons? I always end up running into someone I know and they ask me to sit with them. I'm going to work on trying two things now. I'm going to just find people on the way to the dining commons. If I find someone walking alone and it's around lunchtime, I'll strike up some conversation and tell them to come get lunch with me. Again I'm maintaining the connections/building my social web mindset, so guy or girl, it doesn't fucking matter.

Thanks for the advice about kino. I've been getting better as my confidence is going up.

Actually one thing I did for my confidence is even though I wasn't able to get a full F-close saturday night when I brought a girl home, I've been telling people who ask that it was a full F-close and I'm no longer a virgin. It just makes me feel more confident around other people and some of the guys on my floor are giving me less shit and everything.

Yeah James, that's pretty much what I did with the Johari window. The girl is a 24yo senior who definitely is giving me some IOIs now so I'm happy with the way that went. Could you explain Style's lying game to me? I've never heard of it and haven't been able to find anything decent on it.

Another thing I want to improve in not just for the sake of picking up girls because it's something I've always wanted to be able to do is to become more adventurous. I'm adventurous in the sense that I'm always down for anything that sounds like fun but I'm very rarely the person who says lets go do this, it sounds like fun. I have a couple of goto adventurous activities (ie climbing a nearby roof) but just being able to think of an adventure that sounds like fun (TO ME) on the spot is a trait I want to learn.

In CYC, he uses the idea of asking yourself the question, "What would be fun for me to do right now? What would put a smile on my face?" and I always have trouble answering that question. I feel like this is a big part of what creates a beta. They don't always know exactly what will make them happy at this moment, so they need someone to bring them into their reality and create fun for them. I need to get better at creating my own fun and adventure and not being reliant on others for this.

My AA is fucking killing me. Didn't do any day approaches today. Despite my whole let's just make connections mindset, I'm still fuckin afraid of being blown out.

Concrete goal for tomorrow - 5 street approaches. Or else.

I believe Style's lying game is actually a main topic on the top of the routine thread. If you can't find it send me a personal message and I will answer it.

In dining halls, most people have a ton of friends at dinner and lunch, so I don't always approach then. If I go for breakfast, I normally go by myself or with a friend who will leave earlier than me. I then sit with any random group of people, have food on my tray to eat. I say I never have ate alone and I never will. People ask why, and I say how lonely and sad people look all because they didn't have the nerd to meet new people. Conversation is normally something along those lines. Never eat alone or as Superbad reference would be , Stephen Glansberg it.

With street approaches have confidence and don't be the self conscious worried person, because whoever you approach will reciprocate with the same feelings. Never do it to people approaching academic buildings, always to those walking away from them.

Oh thanks for pointing that out. I haven't spent much time on the routines thread, so I just tried googling it and had no success. I like it - it seems like a fun game to play.

I was sick as a dog all day and it was cold and windy out so not many people were out. I also spend most of my time on campus biking around instead of walking and wearing headphones, which make approaches feel even more awkward. While I don't think I'll ditch the bike (it just makes life easier) I do need to find ways to make more approaches. I know these are all lame excuses. I need to kill my AA with a knife, stab it 37 times and then leave it in a ditch for the earthworms to decompose.

I've been spending some time in the library so I think I'll start working on library approaches and making connections there.

New sticking point - been having a tough time maintaining a flirty tone to my conversations, particularly over text, but in person also. I'm going to reread the CYC section on conversations with college girls where he goes over some general flirting techniques but I need to practice and get better at this. I think it's also a problem with a lack of reciprocation while I'm trying to flirt with the girl (aka LJBF'ed.)

3/1/2012

Was asleep for the bulk of the day because I spent all night studying for a midterm. #closed a couple girls (HB5 and HB7) my friend and I were talking to at dinner. The #close was really awkward though and Im not sure how I could have made it smoother -- here's how it went:

We sat down and we were on an 8 person rectangular table and we sat on one end, had the 4 seats between us, and then the 2 girls were on the other end. I started talking to them by bringing them into a debate my friend and I were having and we talked for 15 minutes, flirted a bit, and then I was like I've gotta run and then I pulled out my phone and gave it to them with the contact screen out and said something to the effect of "why don't you guys put your numbers in?" and then they did, but something about it was awkward, particularly with the huge gap between us. See diagram below:
me seat 1 seat 2 hb5
------------------------
| |
| |
------------------------
friend st 1 seat 2 hb7


Regardless, I have their numbers now and I'll probably text one of them with a reference back to our conversation (because they don't have my numbers). But yeah if anyone has suggestions on how to close the gaps not awkwardly, feel free to share.

so I texted the HB7 from the previous post and got blown out of the water so fast I couldn't even get my fucking feet wet. She was clearly interested in my friend (which doesn't surprise me at all, that's how the vibe felt from that dinner, so I gave my friend her number and told him to have his way with her).

It definitely was a bit of a blow to my confidence, but looking back I should've seen it coming. Major lesson - body language: I showed way too much interest in her during the conversation and she was probably bored with me. Also, I'm never gonna ever use the word 'babe' again. It just never works and it doesn't feel 100% natural either. I dont know why the fuck I tried that shit.

Last night I was up at Stanford partying. I was way out of my element there, and they weren't very welcoming to outsiders such as myself. It was fun, I tried to just make sure I had a great time and not worry about girls, which wasn't bad. I tried to game a couple of them -- one of them definitely wasn't interested, and looking back on it, the other girl was kind of into me, but I didn't escalate because I was a bitch. Fuck me.

You're at that point that most people approach when they learn alot of game: you're becoming too heady. I get the feeling that you may have gone too fast past the inner game part; many of us have made the same mistake. Take a step back and really analyze why this is so hard for you. It sounds like you may have some emotional walls blocking your success. You must demolish those if you want to become very successful with game. I see potential in you. Just take your time. Don't rush this stuff. I'll send you a PM to make sure you get this message.

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"Simple. Escalate, if she's into you, she will escalate with you, if not, you will know soon enough." - SexAddict911