Social Skills 101: Basic Social Skills Are 100% Crucial

This is the first installment in a reboot of our old series on social skills.

Social skills are the single most crucial skill set for anyone to learn to work with other people.

We'll use dating as our vehicle to discuss these skills. Nevertheless, as you learn social skills in dating, you'll apply them to every area of your life too.

Social skills aren't deliberately taught. You don't learn them in school, except incidentally. Most people only intuitively understand social rules, and only once they've learned them.

People shun and shame those with insufficient social skills and grace.

However, you can develop these skills at any age; it just takes focus and practice.

In this series kick-off article, I'm going to show you just why social skills are so absolutely crucial.

 

No Social Skills = Really, Really Awkward

One of our writers sent me a video the other day.

In it, YouTube personality PewDiePie showcases various wannabe beginner daters ('pick up artists') approaching women in awkward, socially unskilled ways.

It's painful to watch, for both the guys approaching and the girls fielding these awkward approaches.

It's made even more painful to see these poor guys savaged by PewDiePie and his audience.

The video:

I'm of two minds about this. Namely:

1. My personal, own-life position. I'd never have guys like these around in my own personal life. Socially awkward people are a huge burden: they miss your cues, they miss others' cues, and they do all kinds of off-base things that bring down the mood for everyone. Their heads are off somewhere you don't want to be.

2. My business & empathetic position. Guys like this are a chunk of the audience coming to us for help. They don't want to be awkward. They are out there trying to learn the social skills they didn't learn earlier in life. I've been a guy like this, making awkward approaches and making myself look goofy or annoying. I know exactly that feel, and I know it sucks.

My assumption when I watch the video is these are guys who are trying to get better.

They might not be; they could be clueless or autistic guys who are totally unaware of how awkward they're being, and never improve despite hundreds or thousands of approaches. They just keep being as awkward every time.

But odds are they're regular men with undeveloped social skills, who are trying, failing, feeling ashamed because they know they're making mistakes here. Then they're getting piled on and mocked online.

First rule of learning anything it's awkward to learn: don't publicize it far and wide on the Internet. These guys shot these videos themselves and uploaded them to YouTube, probably out of excitement that they were "finally doing it" or "starting on this great adventure." You really don't want your early stages of anything published though.

I made that mistake when I first started making music. My early music was TERRIBLE but I was so excited to be making it I published it online. The torrent of hate and mockery I received almost crushed me. Eventually I improved, and later I realized just how bad I'd been and why people had reacted how they had -- but at the beginning I couldn't fully grasp why I was getting so much hate.

When you lack social skills, anything you do socially is going to be awkward. You're going to go through a bumpy learning period. Stuff you do socially is not going to work.

People will treat you like a weirdo.

Because, to them, you will seem like one.

Learning social skills needs to be a #1 priority for anyone who wants to do anything other than sit in a log cabin in a forest reading books and meditating on life.

If you plan to have any kind of social interaction in your life, you NEED to learn social skills... just to make your whole life a ton easier, and to make yourself not a social burden on the people you interact with.

 

What's So Awkward About Socially Unskilled People?

Let's review that video real quick, looking at each guy and highlighting the many awkward things he's doing.

I'll start with the first guy and make my way through each one, highlighting his various awkward moves.

There are a lot of things to pay attention to in these clips, but I want to highlight a few recurring things:

• The girls are locked in (and the guys out) in the three cold approach clips

• All four guys get repeatedly hung up on topics that aren't going anywhere

• Each guy, sensing his approach failing, doubles down and does more of what isn't working

 

Guy #1: Leather Jacket Library Guy

First off, approaching someone seated who is engaged in something is always a challenging open. You need to approach girls sitting down the right way to not come across awkward.

This guy doesn't do that. He strolls by, then looks back, standing straight up (so he's a lot higher than her), then takes a step back toward her, already moving more than she is, putting more energy into it than she is.

He isn't animated. It isn't a 'fun' disruption. It is a guy randomly stopping by asking a random weird chitchat question when she is in the middle of something for no clear reason. Why's this guy talking to her?

Then look at the questions he asks / things he does or says:

• "Whatcha studying?"

• "Which [test]?" --> why does he need to know this? Does he have test-taking tips for her?

• He says he can't hear her, which is fine to say once she's trying to talk to you, but this whole thing is her being polite while he is trying to talk to her! This just comes across as annoying

• She asks if she knows him because, again, she has no idea why he's talking to her

• He then asks her a bunch of repeated clarifying questions about what she's studying for because I guess it's really important for him to get that right -- he's really gotta know what test she's taking

• Then he tries a cat joke, which might be funny if the test was more obscure, but saying he's never heard of MCATS just pulls him completely out of this girl's world (everyone she knows is a med school candidate studying for MCATS. The dude just stamped himself with 'DISSIMILAR' all over his face)

• He uses a little self-deprecating humor saying she's "probably a lot smarter than him", which is actually not too bad and the highlight one halfway decent move of this guy's approach

• Then he has her explaining to him what MCATS are. Is this seductive, flirtatious, or even fun social conversation?

• Then he guesses that someone studying for MCATS is still in high school, which paints him as even more clueless

• He realizes it's not going well and he is getting it all wrong with this girl, and searches around a bit for a way to recover, but is hung up on this topic of what she's studying and asks if she's studying chemistry (which has nothing to do with anything she's said so far)

• At this point she is repeatedly laughing awkwardly to try to defuse some of the awkwardness of Leather Jacket Library Guy's approach

• After she tells him what she's studying, he CONTINUES to ask her to explain to him the nuances of what it is she's studying

• As PewDiePie accurately points out, the whole time this guy's trying to force conversation by grasping at anything he can to keep the conversation going

This guy isn't pushy or offensive or anything.

He's just awkward, in a typical "new guy who has no idea how to talk to girls" way.

Most guys are going to go through this stage when they start trying to break out of their shells. But they shouldn't be publishing YouTube videos on it.

 

Guy #2: Persistent Tall Direct Gamer

This guy starts off with maybe some okay-ish high-beginner or low-intermediate-level game. It would work well on a girl who is interested, but this girl isn't interested.

Rather than switching to a different approach that might interest her better, he continues to plow with this stuff that isn't working, and it gets more and more awkward.

Take a look:

• Her little nod and "Yes" after he repeats that she is meeting with her friends suggests she isn't interested (voice intones down, nods like she's just answering anyone's question). Again, not a dealbreaker, and doesn't mean you must leave (I had a South American ex who did this to me all the time in my beginner days before I finally broke through with her and got the girl), but it should indicate you need to switch things up and what you're doing isn't working

• He asks her if he can be her friend... I'm not sure what style of game that is. It's giving the girl the power, it's clever-sounding, I guess, but whether she says yes or no it doesn't put you in a great position

• He talks about himself, about visiting Colombia... the girl's not interested (listen to her voice tone when she says "Really?" then watch how she immediately looks away, still scanning the environment, looking for her friends or perhaps an escape). This is not when he should be talking about himself; she isn't hooked yet

• He repeats himself several times about saying "several years ago" to make sure he's perfectly understood (but she doesn't care, she's only asking to be polite, and it doesn't matter if she perfectly understands). He needs to move off this topic and find something engaging ASAP, not get hung up on it

• He SOIs (statement of intent) her ("and I like you. Do you have a boyfriend?") despite her not showing him any signs of interest so far. This is all just plow, plow, plow. It doesn't seem to be working, but he's just going full steam ahead of it regardless

• "I've actually had a drink of wine and I can't remember if you told me your name" -- just heightens the dissimilarity between the two of them. If you forget if you asked, just wait for the number grab and get her name then

• He says it "would be weird" if he went with her. I don't care how weird something might be, you do not ever want to frame yourself as the weird one. As soon as you talk about yourself being weird, people will start to think of you as weird (because obviously, you know yourself better than anyone else)

• Then he does this weird crouching body language thing... I have no idea what that was about. But it sure was weird!

• He asks her "what should we do" which is in fact a good question to ask... when there's a mutual vibe going on and there's some problem you want her help to solve. But there's no mutual vibe here, and the problem is one he himself created, by reminding her she was heading off with her friends to a party then telling her it'd be weird if he came along

• Then, feeling it dying, he goes off on a compliment spree, thinking maybe that'll save it. After all, he's already been quite direct with her, and that didn't work, so maybe more direct will fix it! He talks about her eyes, her accent, her skirt, then talks about himself being forward

• He then randomly dives in for a kiss and she's forced to dodge. He tries to recover by framing himself as "very persistent" (again, thinking if he can just keep showing interest and talking about how forward he is she'll become interested) and she says she needs to go

This guy's a one-trick pony direct gamer who thinks if he just tells a girl he wants her and keeps showing her he wants her sooner or later she is going to give in and get together with him.

Why do guys develop this style of game? Because it works... occasionally. It can work with drunk girls, or girls who are by themselves and just decide "Oh, all right, I might as well go with this guy. Maybe it'll be fun."

But it's low percentage game and it's going to be awkward and off-putting a lot more often than it gets the guy wins.

 

Guy #3: Accusatory Park Bench Approacher

Clarification: commentators below plus one of our authors (Alek Rolstad) informed me the guy in this video is Todd V., a coach formerly from Real Social Dynamics (RSD). Guess I was right when I said he must be an RSD fan..! (that said, I am told he is an ex-RSD coach, with a bunch of bad blood between him and the company)

According to Alek, this approach was a demo in which Todd wanted to show students how long you could stay in-set using deliberately bad game. Alek also notes if you watch Todd's other in-fields his standard game is not like this at all and he's actually quite skilled (Alek adds that he and Halvor have learned things from watching Todd).

I'm leaving the critique in, but just bear in mind while reading it that this approacher was using deliberately poor game.

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This cat just stands in front of these two girls who are seated on a park bench and looks down and talks to them.

Bold, ballsy, and extremely low percentage. Let's have a look at what he gets wrong.

• He was okay on the opener. Obviously he should NOT just be standing directly in front of these two girls -- it puts a lot of pressure on the girl he's after and it's straight up do-or-die -- but that aside, his voice tone is fine, he comes across sort of cool initially, and his opening lines aren't bad or anything

• However, she then rejects him immediately, which, given how do-or-die the opener was, he likely should've simply accepted. He gambled bold, lost, and it's time to move on

• He cuts off her rejection to ask her how she and her friend know each other. This is a fine standard line, but he's using it to plow here. This guy is another 'plower'. She's not interested, but gosh darn it he's going to plow in anyway and MAKE her be interested! How much do you want to guess this guy and the last guy were RSD fans?

• The girls don't respond to his question, so he continues plowing with his stack. They then tell him they're having a conversation -- another brush off. Does he take the hint? Or does he find some pattern interrupt he can use to continue the conversation in a socially adroit way? No. He just continues plowing

• Then it becomes about ego, where he tries to frame them as the awkward ones, being impolite, not nice, laughing, but still staying in-set. He's the interloper; they're the ones locked in here; he's interrupting, they've nicely asked him to leave, and now he's trying to frame them as not nice for not letting him stay. What is this supposed to get him? Are they supposed to say, "You know what dude, our bad, why don't you sit down and we'll tell you everything about how we know each other"? This is pure ego-defense on his part and just makes it awkward for everyone involved

• At this point it's a confrontation. He continues asking them things, with hostility in his voice tone, asking if they're "nice people." They give him one-word answers. It's gone way south now

• They all work together to tell him to leave and he tries saying something about how he misses them because he's never met them before(?). The girls then start lambasting him, calling themselves "first placers" and talking about "second placers", which they imply he is. If you can't take a hint and won't get out when people are polite, they are going to get increasingly rude with you, especially if they have strength in numbers and you don't

• Then he goes into a sob story about getting the courage to talk to girls, talking to his therapist, etc. This almost makes it sound like this guy is personality disordered (like a borderline personality disorder) and is looking for a codependent 'savior' girl who is going to try to fix his broken life. That might work on a desperate codependent girl but if she's anything other than that she is not going to take that bait

• Then he starts telling them they need to tell him what conversation they were having that is so important they can't talk to him. The conversation isn't important at all, they just don't want to talk to him! The conversation is the excuse! You can't frame your way around that. Again, this hostility, egoism, uncharitable framing of the targets makes him sound like a guy with borderline personality

• He continues doing this framing of himself as just a really nice, harmless guy and them as being so mean and pushy, trying to push him away, when he's been so generous and nice (another BPD thing; a BPD seducer I once knew used to use this framing on people all the time)

• Eventually the girls have to leave because this guy won't leave

Socially, this guy has okay social skills, and he seems likable fundamentals-wise, but he's so dogged he cannot take a hint.

He also is a one-trick pony. He just has his routine stack, and when it doesn't work he falls back on accusing and mewling to try to get sympathy.

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Double clarification: again, to re-highlight what I said above, none of the critique should reflect on the man. I have it on good authority (albeit not my own; I'm not normally a video-watching kinda guy) his other stuff is nothing like this. That said, this 'deliberately bad game' he was using here is stuff I have seen guys actually use on girls -- if you do any of this stuff, the notes fully apply.

 

Guy #4: Newman from Seinfeld

I don't know where to start with this one. WTF?

• He starts off by accusing her of having personality disorders, both of which she flatly denies. Lol? I guess this was some sort of weird attempt to build similarity. It's true there is an obsession in American society with self-/other-diagnosing (I guess I just did it with that BPD last guy, actually!), but this isn't typically how you want to lead in a conversation with a girl

• He then gets hung up on this topic and after she denies having a disorder in an offput tone he asks her "Well which one would you choose?" WHAT? She hilariously deadpans "I wouldn't."

• Still hung up on the topic, he asks her why she won't choose one. It doesn't matter, she doesn't like the topic, drop it and move on! At this point he's possibly being influenced by the fact there is an audience/camera on him, and he wants to 'win' (i.e., get her to comply with his question). Yet by staying hung on this topic all he's doing is digging the hole he's in deeper and deeper

• Every question this guy asks ("Are you scared of...?") shows he does not understand this woman, creating more and more dissimilarity with her and pushing her and him farther and farther apart

• He finally does get her to pick one, but rather than reward her for this he then keeps going and suggests maybe she has the other one she didn't pick. face palm

• He accuses her of "fluctuating" and not really having a "formulated opinion." This is not generally how humans talk to other humans, or at least not female humans. This guy gives the impression of having stepped straight out of his programmer cubicle at Google

• The girl just straight up tells him she thinks he's a creep. Which, yeah, given his weird obsessive-compulsive need to have her say whether she's obsessive-compulsive is pretty understandable

• He then tries a mini-barrage of normal chitchat questions with her after she's told him he's a creep and says she's talking to him because she's paid to talk to him

• The gum questions with the next girl... whew. Again, not much experience talking to female humans (or... any humans?), huh? Who does that, sharing chewing gum? Or was that supposed to be some sort of gross-out humor joke? I guess, maybe? But it's really gross -- it isn't funny!

• The handshake -- he suddenly, rapidly leans in (sudden, rapid movements startle, not attract; leaning in when she's not makes you seem like you're chasing), and grabs her hands with both of his. She instinctively jerks her hand away, trying to remove herself from that situation

• Then he asks her why she isn't wearing jewelry (why would you even ask that?), then asks if she's phobic of jewelry (what? Is this this guy's angle, try to build some weird connection by discovering personality disorders, phobias, etc. in women? Then when the woman says 'no' and similarity is all blown to hell, just keep insisting there must be something wrong with her until she relents?)

That was just the weirdest experience, watching that guy try to talk to women.

I'm not even sure what to say about that, really.

This guy needs a crash course in human interaction.

 

How Absolutely VITAL Basic Social Skills Are

All these guys were trying to pick women up.

But they were all lacking in a variety of basic social skills (some more so than others).

There were actually two things happening with these guys:

1. For guys #s 1, 2, and 4, they were making basic faux pas they didn't know they were making

2. For all four guys, things started going south, and they froze up and plowed, unable to switch strategies or exit gracefully

The third guy, while not making so many basic faux pas, instead made some other weird ones: he started arguing with his targets and trying to accuse them of things instead.

You can read all the seduction advice you want, do as many affirmation as you want, even get solid appearance-based fundamentals... but if you lack proper social fundamentals (e.g., halfway decent social skills) you are going to have a long, hard slog trying to get anything out of cold approaching women.

Many 'socially hopeless' guys seem to approach cold approach as on-the-job training. "I'll just learn social skills at the same time I'm learning to pick up," they think.

READ MORE: How to Get Started When You’re Socially Hopeless

But just like if you go out unkempt, with slouching posture, poor eye contact, and unstylish clothes and hair women will not be attracted to you no matter how much game you think you know, it is the same with social skills.

If you go out talking to women with poor social fundamentals -- if you are lacking in basic social skills -- it is just like approaching women with sloppy body, vocal, and fashion fundamentals.

Basic social skills are vital, vital, VITAL.

And they are something you need to prioritize learning if you aren't already socially advanced when you kick off your seduction journey.

Over the course of the coming installments in social skills training, I'll show you the different groups of social skills, plus show you the fastest ways to learn them, so you can avoid awkward situations like the ones these guys in the video repeatedly end up in as much as possible.

Let's turn you into a socially skilled individual, able to have smooth, seductive interactions with people instead.

Stay tuned.

Chase

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