Through The Looking Glass: when shit-tests are just conversations.

Yesterday, I posted a question on Twitter to gauge response to a non-hypothetical situation that I encountered on February 1st this year.

The written responses were (predictably) all cut from the same cloth: gamey, contrived and 101 in nature. Now I am not wishing to single out or criticise anyone in particular, but the general agreement was that it was ‘bad behaviour from the girl’, that a joke should be made, and if the behaviour persists, the man should walk away. Others suggested one should simply ignore it, or make jokes out of it, but no-one – not a single person – suggested that one should answer her question at face value – and just present something interesting about you. In other words – just be a normal, interesting man who displays the ability to think agile and present a brief elevator pitch about what makes him different and intriguing (5% of the voters did vote to answer the girls question – well done these men, as we will see below).

There is a cultural expectancy in the community that ‘frame’ must be held at all costs and that any sort of resistance or normative questioning from a woman that could wrong-foot a man is purposefully ‘bitchy’ ‘feministic’ or a ‘shit test’. Now I am not disputing that these things don’t occur (I do a lot of daygame in a provincial city so I can recognise it when it does and handle it better than most). But it is adolescent and emotionally stunted to enter an interaction with the underlying belief that both you and the woman are about to start some spoken/unspoken ‘frame war’ (whether implicitly or explicitly stated) and that a simple line of questioning from the girl represents a deterioration in the set as oppose to an opportunity. Recognising these differences is the art.

So should you find yourself in a similar situation where a girl simply asks you a question along the lines of sell yourself/why should I give you my number/why are you different to other men. Do you deem this errant behaviour and ignore it because some daygame manual told you to? Do you spin it and reframe it because some conventional, recieved daygame wisdom told you to? Do you embroil yourself in a puerile back-and-forth with a girl displaying your evasive/thin-skinned nature, or do you instead use this as opportunity to sell-yourself?

A couple of nights ago both Roy and I were having a late night WhatsApp Audio exchange where we discussed the importance of charisma, character, and having developed some life experience and interesting stories. Roy said he could talk for hours to a girl about interesting places he’s been and things he’s experienced. And this gets to the heart of the matter. The best guys in game have all lived a bit of life and developed interesting characters and personas prior to entering the space. In other words they can talk and regale a woman well into the evening, seducing them long before lips have met.

And this takes us back to the question posed from our February 1st scenario:

Why would I give you my number, sell yourself to me.

And so I did. For the next couple of minutes I locked eyes on her and slowly shared some of my life experiences; I wove in a travel story or two, education, interests and passions. I did this in a concise and genuine way. And that was that. A connection was made and I developed an emotional pathway to the girl. She gave me her number, and this is the third month we have been seeing each other. A gorgeous 20 year old European girl.

Congratulations if you voted in the 5% – you’re in good company.

Commiserations to those to dismissed the girl’s bad attitude. You blew yet another opportunity to create something authentic.

BroodingSea, April 2022

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