Prague Revisited (Part 2)

You can find part one of this post here where I cover the trip as a whole. This post is going to be about the thoughts that occurred to me while there.

Verbals

One of the bricks we carry in our invisible rucksacks is the pressure to be witty or to “say the right thing.” The problem is that trying to do so pulls us out of the moment and lessens the feeling of authenticity which you’re displaying to the girl. Everything becomes a bit off.

When someone says “good morning” to you what do you say back? “Good morning to you,” of course. The point I’m making here is that there are certain things we do automatically and these instinctual phrases are part of that.

Imagine you’d never practiced Game. Now what would you talk about with a person you’ve never met before? Where you’re from, what you do, do you like it, etc. These are all topics which exist well inside our wheelhouse and as automatic thoughts we can use them to stay in the moment.

So I decided to completely take the pressure off of my verbals. I went in with my opener “hello… [getting her to stop]… you speak some English?… Well I noticed you and thought you looked pretty… like a [insert tease].” From there, unless the conversation went off in some crazy direction I’d go into the hairdresser questions we’re all told never to ask. The important difference is that my vibe and non-verbals could carry the day and that I’ve done enough Daygame sets to open up a conversational thread on what she responds with. I’m also at a point in my journey where I know that verbals aren’t what they’re cracked up to be by most PUA coaches/companies. I don’t feel any pressure to strain myself to make the verbals amazing.

Then if something witty did occur to me then I’d say it and it happened much more often than you’d expect. By relaxing and not trying to think of something good to say, something good occurred to me to say naturally.

The Gym (and general health)

This depends on whether you’re selling yourself as the r-selected boozer or not, but using the gym becomes more important on a jaunt. The health benefits are well worth putting aside two hours twice a week. I think it’s also important to keep track with Omega 3s and eat some fish. Personally when I’m taking Omega 3 supplements consistently my eyes are much wider and feel more fresh, which of course contributes to a good vibe.

As an aside, since I was losing weight before my trip I was interested to see what would happen to it. I left for Prague at 232.2 lbs and came back at 234.4 lbs which is an increase which could easily be down to water weight.

A big part of this was because of how much walking I was doing each day which netted with me eating and drinking more. I’ve put the data into a table below and as you can see, on average, I was burning over 2000 calories a day just from Daygame. Normally I’ll walk 10,000 steps each day and so that’s over a thousand calories extra and all through super low impact, muscle preserving exercise which engages the mind in a highly enjoyable way.

	Steps	Distance (miles)	Calories
	34014	17.7	2735
	32035	16.7	2576
	26028	13.6	2093
	27441	14.3	2207
	29556	15.4	2377
	25388	13.2	2042
	23779	12.4	1912
	26928	14	2165
Median:	27185	14	2186

Forcing IOIs and Vibe

Now I understand that it can be difficult to maintain a good vibe in London. For me, I just enjoy walking and have a generally positive disposition, and so it doesn’t get to me as much as others. But certainly while abroad I could feel a slight uptick in my vibe, maybe by 10%, but when that’s combined with a plethora of available sets it feels completely different. I could start trying all that finger clickin’, hand clappin’, IOI forcin’ silliness.

I noticed that you couldn’t just go from doing none of these things to doing all of them. I had to grow the habit rather than create it. So I started with some little things, a finger click here and there, then a little head bob as if I was listening to music, then some hand claps. Then I quietly said “boom” to myself, which always made me laugh as it just seems so ridiculous, and got a little louder each time. That snowballed into a great vibe. And I can’t deny that some of the looks I got from girls was because of how ridiculous it was. The upside was that when a girl responded well to it I was already in the mood to smile at her and start a positive chain of reactions.

Another thing I noticed – and this links into my first point of verbals – is that it allowed me to better live in the moment and start grooving the streets, as it were. I plan to do a full post on this but it’s as if your time out Daygaming is like a piece of music which has minor and major notes and carries you from set to set.

Preparing for the Worst

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail, etc, etc. I started writing down this list of talking points as they occurred to me because it’s important to prepare for the worse: what if I don’t get laid on this trip? Now logically I know that no trip is a failure. There’s just too much luck involved. And the most you can do is walk the streets when the sun is shining anyway. But (I imagine) you can’t help but feel as if you’ve failed in some way if you don’t get that all important lay. And so I put this list together so as to bring positives back with me just in case.

“Breadcrumbing” the Date

This technique was suggested to me by Mr White and helps to bridge the gap between the set and the date, without having to come up with too much pinging in the meantime. It works by sending a new piece of information each day in the buildup to the date. So for example you meet her and send your feeler (day one), you send your first ping and after a couple of responses you agree a date but vaguely e.g. Wednesday evening (day two), you message her the time to meet (day three), you message her where to meet (day four), you message her on the day saying you’ll see her later, “bring your biggest smile” etc. etc. You get the point. Obviously you’ll want to meet a girl ASAP and so the above steps would be condensed. Unless there’s something to be gained over texting (she needs more comfort or enjoys bantering, for example) it’s better to use it purely for logistics. After all, the first date might be one to nowhere and therefore you’ve saved all that effort.

Dating

This was the first time where I was able to meet multiple girls in a short period of time and get the essence of laying the foundations on the first date. What’s useful about Prague is that girls come into and out of the city centre and so you can meet them for a quick first date – maybe a coffee or drink and a walk lasting about 1.5 to 2 hours – so as to get it out of the way. That date will tell you where the rest of them are going to go (if there will be any) and at what speed. Given that this year I am aiming to reduce my impatience it’s something which I want to bring back to London.

Burning a City

This topic was brought up by multiple Daygamers but I never got the sensation that a girl was blowing me off in the “oh, this again!” eyeroll way. However I did open twice off of what appeared to be big IOIs and after strong sets the girls never responded to my messages. Whether that’s because they were burned as individuals or whether the whole town had been jaded to a degree or because of any other reason, I don’t know.

The way I see it is that street cold approaching is losing its novelty though it will always retain some extra effectiveness purely because it’s hard to do. Girls are being approached every which way you can think of and in the street is just another one of those ways now. I actually posed this question to girls on dates: “how do you normally meet guys” and they would always say that they get talked to a lot on the street. Now it becomes a pure value equation and the girl is going to pick the guy she likes the most out of her options.

The problem with relying on the novelty of a street approach to win the day is that it is self-defeating. You can’t take advantage of any market inefficiency (guys not talking to girls during the day) without reducing its effectiveness, just like any other kind of arbitrage. The answer is not then to try and find the next novelty because then you’ll rely on gimmicks rather than the real you. Better to improve SMV up to its maximum and accept the way of the world.

Spammers and Chodes

Oh boy did I see some spammers and chodes. I saw one guy open three sets in five minutes. He literally went straight from one to the next. It made me wonder: what are these guy’s USPs? What are they actually selling themselves on? They must have a terrific amount of energy I must say. The thing is that – for me at least – doing so many sets drains my vibe and so any success that would come from approaching en masse would be reflective of the worst version of me. It would be highly unsatisfying.

Each time I Daygame I have a bank account full of vibe which I need to spend accordingly. Walking around slowly drains that vibe through pure energy expenditure and by taking a short break or drinking a coffee it recovers slightly. A good set will put a fair bit of vibe in the bank and a string of blowouts drains it dangerously so.

Then I also saw a bunch of chodes wearing their baggy clothes, walking along with girls, but maybe I’m just defining myself in opposition to them.

Girls Offering to Pay

Lastly I found that whenever a girl offered to pay that the lay was dead in the water. These were Russians (and offshoots) who absolutely know that it’s part of the seduction dance that the man pays for things. Of course the flip side to that is that as the man you choose the venue and activity and hence the cost. My theory is that they know that they are wasting your time and that you will not end up having sex and so they try to ease their conscience by offering to pay.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown