The Pros and Cons of Social Proof for Seduction

In a PM, one of our readers asked the following question:

“I know there is a lot of material out there that covers this stuff. However I also know you must do things differently. For example you're probably the only seducer I've read who says you don't care about social proof. To me this makes it clear that you have incredible seduction skills, as you actually overcame this barrier. This is insane to me because so often in bars I feel like girls aren't responding to me well because I don't have social proof. And when I have girls with me they're much warmer.”

This is a an important thing to take note of, because a lot of pick-up and seduction material out there, especially when it comes to club game, emphasizes how status plays a huge role. The reader is right: I do not care that much about social proof or social status in the club. Still, I believe social proof can be an incredible tool of seduction.

So without any further ado, allow me to break this all down.

Social Proof

Let us start very simply – let us just quickly discuss what social proof is. If you’d like a more in-depth discussion on the matter, I highly recommend you to check out Robert Cialdini’s book Influence – many claim this book is the book that brought the notion of social proof into the art of seduction.

Social proof is basically all about being surrounded by either:

• People of high social value: cool dudes, club promoters, club owner (this is the epitome, I guess)

• Women: the hotter the better

When women see you being surrounded by either hot women or other men of high value, they tend to start perceiving you as high value, which can help you make women more receptive to you – if not attracted to you – before you even approach them.

Now, there is a catch here – having high social value males around you is not necessary always a good deal for you because:

• They can steal away the attention women give you

• They can turn into cockblocks

• Groups of men are not “seen” as high social value, especially when there are only men in there

Occasionally though, being seen with the club’s manager or having a cool wingman or having cool guys coming up and saying “hi” to you can work in your favor. Just don’t be stuck being surrounded by lots of males.

Now, usually when someone discusses social proof in the light of pick-up and seduction, they usually refer to it as “being seen with other women”. Now having women around you will always be a bonus, but keep in mind that its efficiency will differ according to a few key factors.

Those key factors are:

• How hot the girls around you are: if you are surrounded by whales, your social proof will not be that high

• The relationship between you and the girls around you: if it is obvious to the other girls in the club that the girls around you are women who just hang around with you because you are just a “nice guy” the effect will not be that high. I regularly see guys going out with girls from their social circles and it is clear to me that the lack of sexual tension between the guy and his girls just proves to me that he is not ladies’ man. Having girls flirting with you, sitting on your lap, kissing you on the cheek, and being obviously attracted to you is what gives you the most social proof.

• Make sure you are actually seen with other women: it doesn’t matter if you have 5 super hot women touching you if you are hidden in a corner and nobody sees you. Make sure other women can actually see you being surrounded by attractive women.

Let us now briefly discuss the many reasons for why social proof can be a good tool of mass seduction; let us discuss how it affects women and how it makes women more attracted to you.

Social proof can…

• As mentioned, make you be perceived as a high social value male, which is attractive to women.

• It can also create comfort and make other women more comfortable talking to you, because they see you surrounded by other women – which means they feel comfortable about you not being a psycho – “the other girls seems to have a good time with him, it means he is an okay guy.”

• It automatically gives you the right frames before you’ve even opened your mouth – as you’ve been pre-selected as a result of social proof, it automatically communicates to the women you are about to approach that you have multiple options and that you are most likely not a needy guy – it communicates that you are the prize and instantly sets the right chase frames.

• Most important of all, as Cialdini mentions, people are often interested in what other people also are interested in. So if women see you with women who are clearly attracted to you, in many cases this might trigger the attraction switch in her.

This means that social proof can give you a lot of benefits:

• Easier to open women: they will act less cold when you approach them. There are numerous reasons for that – one of them is that women might see you as a high social value male with many options.

• Easier to isolate: because again, social proof can help your baseline attraction, which can result in enough compliance to isolate (and sometimes even extract!) by itself.

• Can remove potential female cockblocks: her friends might not chime in, especially if they have also seen you being social proofed earlier on – women usually protect their friends from hooking up with other men, unless they feel safe about the guy, i.e., that he is a safe guy who is “worth her”. Now that being said, sometimes her friend can in fact cockblock you because they also want to have a piece of you.

• Can make it easier for you to escalate sexually as she is already attracted to you: attraction leads to compliance and compliance leads to her accepting your moves. You also make her feel allowed to hook up with you, because after all, you are a male of high value.

Now onto the question – what am I not focusing on with social proof?

Sexual Game vs Social Proof

I will never claim that social proof doesn’t work, it is clear that is has a huge effect and can benefit you a lot. Now the reason for why I don’t use it is primary for two related reasons:

• I don’t really need it to get laid

• I prefer using my time and mental energy on things I believe to be more efficient such as escalation and especially sex talk.

The thing is, when you go out at night, you are time-pressed and you cannot really do EVERY trick in the book, and you have to choose what tools YOU prefer based on your personal experience (what works best for you), but also depending on your goals and ambitions. Remember that my ambition is not only to get laid but to open her up sexually and end up having pretty dirty sex with her. Releasing that inner beast in her requires some work, so I prefer focusing on the tools the makes her into a sexual beast rather than having the whole club loving me (so that I can cherry pick the girl I want).

Now, as we mentioned earlier, social proof can help you:

• With opening – making it easier to open avoiding cold responses

• Easier to isolate

• Removes potential cockblocks (but again can also make other women cockblock you – as this is double edged sword I won’t discuss it any further)

• Easier to escalate

The thing is that all these benefits can be achieved in a different way – ways that are not necessarily better, but less time-consuming.

For example I would focus more on:

• When it comes to opening having a tight opening system will increase your chances of succeeding with your approach even without social proof. Other things I use to increase my chances of getting positive responses when I open is to focus a lot of target selection and look out for approach invitations. If I don’t get any, I like to trigger them before I open (but not necessarily).

• The reason social proof can help you out with isolating your girl is due to the compliance social proof generates. That being said, there are a lot of ways to generate compliance (anything that generates attraction can generate compliance). I usually gain my compliance by using my sex talk to frame myself as a good lover and then giving her the sex of her life. This usually generates a lot of compliance. There are of course many other ways to make a girl compliant; some seducers with extremely tight physical escalation skills can generate compliance that way, by making her horny (horniness creates a lot of compliance, but unfortunately it fades away as quickly as her horniness).

• As also mentioned, social proof can ease up your sexual escalation – i.e., your sexual moves. Now, however I would like to point out that there are many ways (often more efficient ways) to ease up that process. First of all, having bulletproof and calibrated escalation skills is key. Secondly, being able to handle potential resistance (such as ASD – anti-slut defense) is more powerful to ease up the escalation process than social proof.

Truth is, becoming that socially proofed guy requires a lot of work – you either have to bring out girls from your social circle, which is a good strategy if you are like Hector who loves dealing with social circles – in this case you can just integrate that part into your night game… But put it this way, I go out alone most of the time… because I like it. There are lots of benefits to going out alone, such as total freedom.

If I would go the social proof route, I would have spent 1-2 hours trying building it up – i.e., going up to many women, getting them attracted, and all that. This was usually called “rocking the venue” back in the days. It does work (when you manage to successfully hook and attract a lot of women in the venue). The problem is that this is not something I really feel like doing even though as I have mentioned earlier, during the first two hours at a club you basically warm up, so you can start working the venue and get all those pivots ready (pivot is a term for female wingman or girls that social proofs you).

However there are no guarantees that those women will stay in the same venue all night – oftentimes they leave. Nothing sucks more than doing a good job for nothing. Also, another key thing to mention is that clubs and even bars can be chaotic. Chances are rather low that people (women especially) will even notice you being surrounded by hot women. This logistical issue can reduce the effect of your social proof based strategy.

So unless you are a social circle wizard like Hector, going the social proof route might be difficult and very time consuming. This is why I kind of disregard it.

That being said – I do occasionally get social proofed. I do oftentimes manage to hook in a few girls in the club, who I might re-open later (or they might re-open me). In such case I might get social proofed and that is all cool. I don’t say no to any free benefits – but I don’t actively work on getting myself social proofed.

Last Word

Let us discuss quickly before we end this whether or not one should focus on getting social proofed.

1. First of all, if you are into social circle stuff, you definitely should. Social proof based game is oftentimes seen as an extension of social circle game dragged into club environments.

2. If you simply love having the whole venue dig you, and feel like a king (because having tons of girls being into you, WILL get you into social god mode – the epitome of social momentum)

3. If you are a beginner who doesn’t really have super tight game (i.e., not that smooth at opening or immersing women into your world or getting the necessary compliance for isolation, etc.) then social proof can help you out a lot. A lot of beginners and even intermediate players like to use social proof as a way of compensating for their “game” handicaps. Back in 2007-2008 when I started out I was actually really into social proof based seduction (before I started playing around with sex talk) with great success. With social proof, you are no longer dependent of having tight game. Now, that being said, I am not saying social proof is a tool for beginners – some advanced players use it because of personal preference, and they usually takes the concept to the next level – i.e., go to clubs with 10 hot women….

I hope you found this post useful.

Questions and comments are welcome.

Alek