Stop Being Dull, Robotic and Boring (Improving Your Verbals and Basic Structure)

I recently tweeted the below and it got a bunch of likes so I thought I’d go through it in more detail and add a bit of discussion at the end.

A big sticking point for beginners and some lower intermediates is running out of things to say, but they usually don't do anything to solve their sticking point.

If you're not a naturally creative guy and/or don't know how to banter you are going to have to do your homework 🧵

— Thomas Crown (@CrownDaygame) October 16, 2023

I’m probably more excited for the discussion at the end – this post is more for beginners and those lower intermediates who fumble their way off the back of a few lucky lays – because there are a lot of guys out there who are just a bit… boring. Nice, but boring. More on that at the end.

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You’re Either Creative Or You Ain’t

In my experience there’s a rough, 50/50 split in the guys who try their hand at Daygame: those who are creative, or at least know what teasing, joking around, bantering, challenging and flirting is, and can attempt to recreate it, and those who aren’t. This is a post for those who aren’t. And if you are part of the “aren’t’s,” well then you’re going to have to pull your finger out because I need to break it to you: approaching a girl and “err, err, err-ing” your way to the close is going to lead to a tonne of flakey numbers (at most) and even more “I have a boyfriend” or “I’m not dating right now” style objections (which are really just polite rejections so she can get on with her day). It’s not that “you failed her shit test” or that you spoke too quickly, it’s because both what you say and your vibe is boring.

Put simply, you’re no fun.

Pull your finger out (British idiom): to start working hard, especially after a period of low activity.

Learn To Make A Sandwich

Each set is like a sandwich: two pieces of bread (the opener and the close) and the filling (the conversation). First you learn to make the most basic sandwich possible and then once you can do that reliably then you work on making the sandwich bigger, better and tastier.

The structure that I describe in this post is very basic but that’s all you need to get started. As I said, learn first to make the sandwich, then improve it.

The First Piece Of Bread (The Opener: The First 30 Seconds)

Every good opener has four stages:

• Get her attention (“Excuse me”)
• Filler sentence (let her orient herself to you; this can be anything you want)
• Strong authentic compliment
• (Optional) Teasing observation

For example (swap out these words for whatever is appropriate in the moment):

“[1] Hey, excuse me… [2] can I say something very cheeky?… [3] YOU… Look very beautiful today. [4] BUT… this jacket does make you look like a detective.”

I understand that I’m writing that in a vacuum where the girl isn’t responding to you but, of course, in real life, she will. This is just what you would say if it was written in one statement. You would change elements of the opener given the location – for example if I was in Eastern Europe I would swap out the filter sentence simply for “you” and leave it hanging so she knew I was about to say something about her – or if certain elements stood out to you – maybe you would start with a tease or a challenge rather than a compliment or combine the two.

But the point remains: you should know what to say and how to say it on every open. But people still make the same mistakes:

• Don’t speak too quickly, have pauses between each statement, and…
• Speak confidently and at a measured pace but not too slowly (it comes off very scripted if you speak way too slowly)
• Use a compliment specific to her e.g. beautiful, adorable, elegant, stylish, sexy, feminine, etc.

If you are falling foul of those basic points then do this: as you go into each set tell yourself you only need to get that one thing correct. The rest can be awful, but you need to ace that one thing.

And some more notes:

• The words in capital letters are these to build suspense from one phrase to the next
• Skip out all the “I just saw you” crap and get to the point; she doesn’t care about you because you’ve only just met her. She doesn’t care that you were “just walking with a friend back there and had to come and stop you.”* This is a massive pet peeve of mine: when guys get to the intermediate stage and they are still repeating the same phrases they used as training wheels as beginners such as the aforementioned and “when I think of Italy I think of [list three things].” But again, more on that at the end.
• The teasing observation is listed as “optional” because I don’t want people to hold off on approaching because they can’t think of anything good to say, however…

* This is another pet peeve: using Game words when you’re talking to a girl. You should not be using the word “stop” or “approach” when talking to a girl!

… this is where you stop being lazy and actually do some homework! There are so many guys out there who have the same problems every single year. And would you like to know why? They are lazy. Pure and simple. So please, stop being a little bitch and get to work. Here’s an exercise you can do to work on your observational teases:

• Make a list of colours
• Write down two or three associations you have for those colours

It’s as simple as that. So when you’re next out, and you see a girl wearing blue, well, she’s a little blueberry. Or if she’s wearing multiple bright colours, she’s a parrot who escaped from London Zoo. The point of these teasing observations is that you get a chance to show off your (growing) creativity when you’re making your first impression and stand out from the rest of the chodes who usually talk to her.

Most importantly, it gives you a chance to inject a little bit of fun into the set right from the start! And that’s what we have to generate here: fun! I’ve heard a few infield recordings of guys before where they are way too serious and I think to myself: “yes he can talk confidently but why would the girl want to go out with him?” In those cases the guy sounds like he’s trying to make a business transaction based on logic rather than something fun which the girl readily wants to move forward with.

Before moving on I want to stress this: if you get the first 30 seconds of the set done well then the rest of it is like sailing with the wind. Get it wrong and you’re shipwrecked.

The Filling (The Three Topics Of Conversation)

If the conversation goes off on its own tangent then let it. I understand that as men we don’t often enjoy letting conversation happen without structure but let the conversation run wild if it wants to; learn to enjoy it and learn to not mind there being loops left open. However, if it doesn’t, then as the man you need to be the one taking the reins of the conversation; I mean really driving it. You can always have these three topics in your back pocket:

• Where she’s from
• What she’s doing right now
• What her job is/what she studies

Yes it’s basic but these are usually the topics by which people get to know each other. It’s not rocket science and so don’t treat it like that.

I don’t care how you get into these topics, just get into them. It can be through a statement such as “You’re definitely not from London then” or a question “So, where are you from then?” It doesn’t matter, just get into the topics.

At the end of every set you should know these three pieces of information. With no excuses. “Ooh but I forgot what the topics were,” the Daygamer whines. HOW CAN YOU NOT REMEMBER THESE THREE THINGS?! They are so simple! Are you an idiot? “Ooh but Daygame is really hard,” they continue. SHUT UP. Daygame isn’t hard. You just suck! Please cry your eyes out and come back once you’ve grown a pair. Now we can work on you sucking less.

More homework:

• Write down all the most common nationalities/region/cities you encounter during your Daygame sessions; if you’re in London your list will be quite long; if you’re somewhere like Warsaw then your list will probably be “Polish, Ukrainian, Belarusian and (probably) Russian.”
• Write down two or three teases for each nationality/region/city*

* I recently had to go through with a student what a tease actually was: a tease is not a logical statement of what she could be doing; it has to have an outlandish element to it so that it’s obvious that it’s a joke:. An example I gave on Twitter was:

Bad example: oh you work in a makeup store? I thought you were going shopping. (Not a tease, just a logical statement that could easily be true)

Good example: oh you work in a makeup store? Are you good at it? If you had enough time can you make me look like Samuel L Jackson?

— Thomas Crown (@CrownDaygame) October 19, 2023

As well as teases, convert each one into a challenge: a challenge is simply a tease expressed as a kind of jokey, qualifying question:

Tease: you look like a polar bear

Challenge: did you really look in the mirror this morning and think “Yes, today is polar bear day?”

Even more homework:

• Do the same for the other two topics: write down the most common activities girls are doing when you meet them and the most common jobs/subjects studied
• Come up with two to three teases for each one

Lastly, yes, more homework:

• Write down five points of conversation you can make for each topic, for example:

Where she’s from:

• Why did she move here/why is she holidaying here?
• Has she been here before?
• How did it feel to move away from home?
• Does she like it here?
• What does she think of the locals?

Yes it’s a lot of homework but that’s what you’re going to have to do if you’re not a naturally creative person.

The point, with each of these topics, is to get to know her in a fun way. You should spend one to two minutes on each topic*. And when you go out and about and meet someone from a new place or who’s doing something interesting and new – basically anything you’ve not encountered before – then add to your database and repeat the exercise.

* Again, I appreciate that I’m saying this in a vacuum and that topics often interweave with each other. For example, when you find out what she’s doing right now it might be that she’s on her way to work or to study and so it would be natural to find out what her job/subject is. Don’t worry, you can always revisit topics later on.

The Second Piece of Bread (The Close)

Stop overcomplicating this. Stop asking her to “hang out sometime.” Stop throwing a metric tonne of “maybe” into your close. Remember, you’re a man who talked to a girl because you wanted to fuck her and now you’re making it happen. You’ve done all the hard work already, so don’t beat around the bush. The good thing is that you can say EXACTLY THE SAME THING EVERY SINGLE TIME:

“Look, I need to meet my friends now, but, like I said, I think you’re very cute*, let’s grab a drink sometime.”

Take her number if she’s up for it.

* I recommend you use a direct compliment on her looks at this point if you started the set by commenting on something else e.g. saying she was elegant, feminine, stylish, etc.

The Most Important Thing

I want to be clear here: I am not encouraging you to become an “if she says this then I say that” kind of guy. I’ve met them before and that’s a fine approach to have as a beginner as you search for some way, any way, to make this work, but once you’re beyond that stage then you have to drop it. All of the homework presented here is to encourage you to train your creative muscle in just the same way you would target a muscle in the gym. It’s not about making your sets identical, it’s to make you into a more creative person.

I’m highlighting this because I need to be frank with you: being dull, robotic and boring is a huge turn-off for women. If you are those things then women do not like you. Have this tattooed onto the back of your eyelids so you are constantly reminded of the fact:

Women find dull, robotic and boring men unattractive

Or put another way: you must have a personality to succeed with women, and doing your best impression of your favourite Game guru will not suffice. You need to build your own personality. Part of that means doing more with your life: fill it with activities; actually live an interesting life; if people ask you what you’ve been up to then you should find it easy to tell them about all the things you’ve done, places you’ve been, different foods you’ve eaten, interesting books you’ve read, films you’ve seen, etc. You NEED to have a lust for life. If your life is “meh” then you are “meh.”

When it comes to things I wish guys would stop saying, here is a list of the most common things I hear during infields which I would like to be wiped off the face of the earth. They were great for their time but believe me, girls have heard them a million times now, you must come up with your own lines which fit your own personality:

• “I literally just saw you”
• “This is so random but”
• “I was walking with my friend back there”
• “You look like a ninja/flamingo.”
• “Oh. My. God.”
• “All the girls there are very beautiful and very crazy”
• “… I woke up without my watch and jeans”
• “I don’t want to be your boyfriend” (this one makes me throw up in my mouth along with all the other horrendous “boyfriend destroyers”)
• “When I think of X I think of A,B,C”

And the list goes on and on. I think that the only times that the “old classics” should be used are in moments of self-amusement. For example, the old “I like your nails/hair, are they/is it real?” neg or the infamous “You look French” stack; and they should only be used when they’re truly applicable.

Look, I know that the literal words that come out of your mouth are low on the list of importance – the vibe, tonality and delivery are way more important – but it doesn’t mean that you should continue saying the same old crap. Chances are she’s heard it before and even if she hasn’t then you’ve certainly heard it before. Just knowing that you’re saying the same old borrowed lines makes you feel like a fraud. Instead let what you say be an expression of your personality.

Here’s one last piece of homework, and perhaps the most important one from this post:

• Write down two or three words which describe your sense of humour; not what you’d like it to be, but what it actually is. Use those keywords to guide yourself in-set in how you have a fun conversation with a girl.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown

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