I went with with a friend to Karoke recently. It was mostly girls I never met before with my friend being the only one I knew and us being the only males. Some things happened which I don't understand why or what they really mean. I am mentioning only important parts; any other time either there were no interactions or they were mundane. I will insert questions and a bit of my thought process behind everything and I hope they are answered and critiqued respectively.

As a note, I am focusing on two particular girls. There were more, but those interactions were normal and friendly.

- When we met up with the two girls, one HB 5 and one HB 9. I shook their hands to introduce myself. I somewhat made fun of both of the girls from the get-go. We entered the HB 9's car to drive to a friends house for some pre-karoke fun. After a bit into driving I tried to playful mock the HB5. She said she was "Lady Thor" do I said she should use her powers over lightning at the moment. She did not seem to appreciate the comment. It was my attempt at a cocky gambit, while expressing my distaste for people's aggrandizements, in order to establish a sort of dominance in the social situation early on. It did not seem to go over well.

- The HB 9 had repeatedly alluded to using violence to get rid of drivers who were annoying her on the road. At one point, when the car was supposed to be stationary, she was not holding onto the break and the car started to slide back since we were up hill. When it did I said something like "Before she was talking about shooting people for bad driving and now she is sliding down the hill." She laughed a bit.

-When the two girls expressed their opinions of liking the most recent SPAM movie and Nolan series in general, I expressed that I thought they were ok and that I didn’t see the most recent one. They seemed to react poorly to this. They were very much fans of the movies even going so far as listing The most recent one as being in their top 5 films. They were also big comic book movie and anime convention fans and I firmly, but not excessively, expressed that I am not a fan of comic book movies and the like. Question: Is it a good idea when meeting someone to express, bluntly and directly, that your taste disagrees with them? My current thought process leaves me debating between thinking that saying it sets a precedent and impression of honesty, individuality and dominance by not backing down while tending to agree more often gives the image of being similar and makes people like you more. I am unsure of which is right or how to strike a balance.

- At this point we were arrived at a friends house and agreed to play some board games. When we were all learning to play the game something occurred which indicated a common point between me and HB 9. I jokingly/excitedly said "we are finally finding some common ground" to which she responded "Yea (sarcastic), don't get too excited." I have no understanding of why she would say this. This is not the first time a girl has, in a very short amount of time of meeting me, expressed a disdain of the subject of us bonding. Why did this girl, and girls in general from experience, act in this way?

- During a board game we were playing when I was just about to win and the group tried to prevent me from winning. One thing in particular that was annoying was when HB 5 said "I don’t want him to win even remotely." It was a rude thing to say and offensive based on the tone. I believe this is based upon a negative impression she had of me or the fact that everyone else was a close friend and she would prefer them to win, but I am unsure where it could have even come from.

- The HB 9 changed were she was sitting at one point and I grabbed her old seat since it had a better view of the TV. When she saw me sitting, before we were going to leave for karoke, where she was sitting she asked pointedly "Are you sitting on my stuff?" I responded with no and expressed that I was sitting beside it, not on it. She then said definitively that I was sitting on her stuff and as I passed it to her she he said "You sat on it. I am kinda disgusted." I didn’t respond because I didn’t want to offend and at the same time I was not exactly sure the most optimal way to respond. Also, I had no idea where it came from and I was baffled, partly trying to figure out why she would even say something so rude.

- During karoke I noticed several little body language things that were bad with the HB 9. While we were singing at one point I pointed the mic toward her and sang in her direction as we were sharing a mic. She kinda backed away in a strong manner. She was shy about singing in general and it is possible that is what accounted for it.

-At one point I was looking in her direction and I thought she may be confused that I was looking at her (insecurity) and I said "I am looking at that" pointing at the TV screen. She responded with "O, so you are not looking into my eyes?" I didn’t really know what to say or what she was really implying. What does, in context, such a comment mean?

-Through out the upcoming dinner, I noticed her eye contact and the people she directed her conversation to others. In order for her to look or talk to me I had to engage her. While this a textbook negative sign, I do not understand the basis for it.

- At the very end when goodbyes were being said, they hugged my other guy friend (beta as hell), but simply waved and said nice meeting you to me. I font think this particular one has much significance, but I put it in for thoroughness sake.

I can provide any details about the interaction, but those were the highlights. I am posting this because the interaction is actually typical in terms of how I act in front of women and the responses I get from them. Understanding the mechanics of what happened in this reaction will shed light on past interactions and help me improve my game overall.

from what you're writting here it sounds like you started losing ground in the car (unless you made a terrible first-impression but let's assume not), and never really got accepted into the group.

From the Lady Thor banter it seems like you might come across as a bit too cocky/arrogant, and establishing social dominance in a social group you've just entered should probably be done more through humor/playfullness as you might otherwise come off as being very domineering (not good).

Your joke about HB9's poor driving smoothens things out I think, so at this point you're recovering a bit. You could maybe have used the situation to befriend HB5 more with a comment like "Can we let lady Thor drive? I'd feel more safe with her" but of course still delivered in a joking, warm-heartedly manner.

Discussing the comic books / SPAM film, I get the impression you lose a LOT of ground here. this is not to say that you shouldn't stick to your guns, and if you're not a comic book fan then you're not a comic book fan and it's perfectly fine to state this, as long as you don't give the impression that you're disrespecting/insulting their interests. You shouldn't agree with them just to built similarity and make them like, sticking with your individuality is always the right choice. Again, being funny/playful at this point is the best way to establish yourself in the group.

Depending on the situation / your goals, there a several routes you could take here.

Say you decide to go for HB9, you can try and friendzone HB5 by telling her something along the lines of "I'm not really into comic books/SPAM, though I do like how it idolizes heroism / portrays good vs evil / follows the classical adventure narative, I don't know about you but I feel that..." aand you're off into building rapport. You can of course tell HB9 this instead, but whoever you built rapport with at this point, you're more likely to friendzone since you haven't built attraction with the yet.

If instead you want to keep both options open or just want to take a different route you can use the disagreement as a way of trying to make them qualify themselves to you by qualifying there interests. for example "I've never really been into comic books but I've never given it much thought either, why is it so amazing? / sell it to me / win me over" and of course, keeping a light and playful tone is still important here.

Everything from here pretty much looks like the result of getting off on the wrong foot with the group early in the interaction. After the car ride you should probably have tried to friendzone either one of them in order to be better accepted in to the group as you're unlikely to have a shot with any off them otherwise.

Hope this helps, ask away if something isn't clear, and good luck going forward (:

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Chances are 10% of your actions are causing 90% of your problems

Yea, I asked my friend to, indirectly, ask about my impression to the HB 5 and she said that she thought I was funny, but she took the SPAM comments negatively. I asked my friend if there was anything about how I said it that made things offensive or something like that and he said no. We both couldn't really understand why it was viewed negatively other than that I disagreed.

I suppose you are right. Being more playful is a better way to gain acceptance into a group.This leads to a question though: When and how does one show dominance and all those every so important alpha traits? I am also curious about the specifics in the other interactions. I still do not feel I have a good enough grasp of what happened.

I decided to send HB 9 a message asking her if she was ever interested in working with me to make a indie film (she is an aspiring aspiring actress). She said she was interested and asked me what it was about and I sent a somewhat lengthy message back telling her some of the topics my friends and were talking about. I put in little bits trying to qualify myself like how the first idea changed into something I want to make into a graphic novel and how the other idea came from an award winning article I had written for my college's newspaper (both of which is true). I ended it by asking if she had any feedback or questions about the idea and, also, if she knew other people who work on these types of things. That was on Monday night and it is Wednesday night and she has not responded. What went wrong?

First of I have to say that unless your friend is a ball-busting confidant of yours, you can never really trust his input about stuff like this, people are very timid on this.

About being alpha, being playful & light-hearted and being alpha is in no way mutually exclusive, alphas will actually usually have these traits, as it signals not taking life too seriously as well as confidence. A lot of guys have this misguided idea that being alpha means being this James Bond like, to-cool-for-school kind of guy. Being Alpha happens solely on the inner game level and then radiates through everything you do. It's a product of how you see yourself and how you see others. If your inner game is not in it, women will pick up on the incongruence between how you feel and how you're acting right away. Anyway, if you're not already there, these are the things I'd keep in mind to practice being alpha until it comes natural to you, just remember that inner game is the biggest part of the equation so dedicate at least twice the time to practicing that.

Try an adopt the following mind-sets:

1. Everyone's a friend because no one is a threat. Make people feel good around you.
2. Don't take life too seriously and leave your ego at home.
3. Treat everyone with respect.

As for displaying it, the most important thing is your body language. Make this your area of expertise and don't just study it, practice and play with it in the field until it feels natural because a lot of it will feel very akward at first. Something as simple as subtly mixing up your shoulder alignment during an interaction in order to shift between negative and positive body language can have a huge impact because it fly straight into people's subconscious and when done right, they do NOT consciously pick up on it, I'm starting to learn that myself.

Sorry about the long post but I love this stuff.

About the HB9 texting, I'm afraid you slipped up here big time. You we're on the right track with some DHV telling her you're in film, but everything from there will likely have come of as you bragging or trying to impress her which is probably why she hasn't responded. Remember that displaying high value should be very subtle, while the more openly she qualifies herself to you the better. I'd probably have tried to set up a date to discuss the film and used it as a qualifier.

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Chances are 10% of your actions are causing 90% of your problems

Yea, I've known the guy for more than a decade and I can trust him on this, though your point about people being timid with this type of stuff is noted. I learned that the hard way.

Well, one thing is certain I def. need to work on my "inner game" or what I think most would call self-esteem and self perceptions. Your list of three things generally seem in tune with how I used to think before I read all this PUA stuff. I guess, sometimes reading this stuff sets up high expectations and puts undue stress on everything. I think I have an idea of what I should do next, which is, learn to relax and loosen up and be my friendly self. Being friendly is something I always feared would get me stuck in the friendzone.

Two questions from your last paragraph: How do you get someone to qualify to you? What do you mean by "used it as a qualifier" in the last sentence?

Too me inner game is like 80% of the success formula so this can never get enough work (:, if you really want to dig into try getting your hands on some subliminal messaging tapes. Sounds kind of hippie-new-age-like I know, but I've been using them daily and always put a silent one on loop when I go to sleep and I believe they work, though you can never be sure of course (:.

Friendly is great, but you should definitely look into some positive/negative body language theory as well if you haven't already, as this, in my experience, can really make the difference between being perceived as friend-friendly and fuckable-friendly.

About the qualification thing, the most straight-forward example is to ask someone what their 3 most positive dominant qualities are. Basically, any sort of question that will elicit a response where they're essentially "selling themselves" to you is a qualifier. After that, if you accept her for what she's says, she's attracted to you, sounds crazy but it works really well. You should of course remember not to do this before you've been through the first few steps of fluff talk, DHV and so, otherwise it will come off as a boring interview-like question.

What I meant with "using it as a qualifer", was this: Say you go out for a cup of coffee and you start talking about this movie you're planning. You'll briefly tell her the general idea (without trying to sell it, otherwise you're the one qualifying to her), and maybe drop some subtle DHV cues here and there, but then before you go into any detail you turn the conversation to how important it is for you to work with people you have a good connection with and throw in a few examples of qualities you really like to see in people.

Now from here you can do a number of things; maybe she'll automatically start talking about how she's like this and that, trying to match the qualities you talked about, then she's already semi-qualifying herself to you (I say semi because the whole casting-like scenario might mess things up a bit in terms of generating attraction towards you, don't know though, haven't tested this exact scenario myself). If she doesn't jump in to qualify you can lead her in by going on about a specific quality and say how you felt good about her because she seemed to possess this specific quality. At this point all she really has to do is agree (a nod is enough) and she will essentially have qualified herself to you, though the former scenario is likely stronger.

Long explanation I know, but it's important to get this stuff right (:

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Chances are 10% of your actions are causing 90% of your problems

It is almost like teaching an animal by tricking them into doing what you want. She doesn't find naturally qualify herself or want your approval so you mold the conversation so that she does. It is kinda sad really that, according to PUA I guess, women choose to be attracted to this and men that do not possess naturally compelling and attractive traits have to do this.

Haha you might have to re-evaluate your perception on attraction and women of you want to move forward with this stuff.

What you're doing is basically just displaying value by signalling that you have options, kind of an indirect pre-selection signal, the most basic evolutionary attraction trigger. I firmly believe though that if you're not TRULY valuable, high-quality women will pick up on the incongruence and leave, even if they we're at some point attracted.

If there's a sad part, it's that some guys lead such boring, passionless lives that no-one finds them interesting (:

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Chances are 10% of your actions are causing 90% of your problems

While I don't my assessment is inaccurate it is def. not practical. And your explanation seems to kind of confirm it; we are animals and we must impress the females in order to gain access to mating. At the end of the day though, I do not have any options and I rank low in social and erotic capital.

I am not so sure about the last part though. There are plenty of people who lead interesting, productive, passion-filled lives and women pass them by. I do not think a woman's attraction is any where near a fair assessment of the quality of a man's life. There is so much shallowness in dating and many scientific studies have shown looks are far and away the dominant trait which effects attraction for both sexes.

It seems that sort of reasoning seems to be a backwards rationalization of sorts. A person can't attract women so he MUST have something wrong with his life and he had to do something wrong in the interaction etc. We are kind of opening a separate can of worms here, but I have noticed, whether erroneously or not, this trend PUA and it is worrisome. Then again I am, in all honesty, probably in the bottom 10% in when it comes to success with women so maybe I just too jaded currently.

You are absolutely right, we are still animals. However one important change is that the provider-protector quality females seek in males that usually dominates the animal kingdom has been more or less replaced by being a social provider/protector. Which makes pretty good sense since humans have been dependent on each other to survive throughout our entire evolution.

(Quick note about your low social/erotic capital, when starting out, it's fake-it-till-you-make, and you WILL make it if you put in the effort)

I won't argue that there's plenty of shallowness in the dating world, of course there is, it's the only screening tool girls (and guys) have before interacting with someone. So while looks may be the dominant trait for sparking attraction at a distance, it won't carry you home alone (unless you're Brad Pitt in which case she will be carrying you home). The way I see it, men just have to reach a "critical mass" of decent looks, a level that anyone can reach if they will put in the effort and a healthy dose scruntiny. Now of course these guys will still get bypassed in favor of other, more attractive guys at times, but now they have a ticket to play and the name of the game from here is social skill. '

As with the backwards rationalization, I think it's half-way accurate. There doesn't have to be anything wrong with a guy's life if he's rejected as you can easily be rejected on grounds that have nothing to do with who you are. However as for the rest of the rejections, you likely did something wrong in the interaction. Keep in mind though, I'm not trying to claim that with perfect game you can attract ANYONE, some people just aren't attracted to each other, and some people are just looking for very specific things at times; must be 6'3, must weigh 300lbs etc. and these you'll just have to cut loose.

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Chances are 10% of your actions are causing 90% of your problems

Yea, I find what you said now to be far more agreeable and truthful.

I have been working on my being and appearing more socially valuable and I think over time I am slowly improving.

Your comment about critical mass in looks is especially relevant. I am currently unhealthy overweight (about 40 lbs of fat to lose) and I think that has been one of the biggest issues holding me back. I have been dieting and exercising for about a month and a half now and lost 15 lbs, but I def. think there will be a ceiling until I get skinner.

It is difficult to be patient and wait for everything to fall into place, but what really frightens me and sends me to the pits of despair is the idea that things will never get to the level I want them to be. That I will live my life restricted by looks or social skills or anything really. That my one life will be inert, motionless, dull... I know I should try to stay positive, but sometimes it's so difficult.

Thumbs up for taking action on being overweight, and congrats on the first 15 lbs, keep it up (:

We all have days we're fear or worry can get the best of us, but in my own experience these fears are always irrational, and once I notice this I'll usually go through these basics steps:

What am I worried about and can I fix it? If no, no reason to worry anyway, if yes, what's my plan? and from there I'll rationally plan how how to improve on whatever aspect of my life worries me.

With regards to being restricted, I honestly believe that looks is the only area in which you can be genetically restricted, as there's no diet or exercise regime that'll turn Jack Black into Brad Pitt, however as I said before, all you really need is just critical mass, better looks beyond this point might help, but they won't win the battle, social skill will. And as far as social skills go, I think the only limit is how much time and effort you're willing to dedicate to improve, you cannot be genetically limited in this area in my mind.

So stay positive (:

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Chances are 10% of your actions are causing 90% of your problems