Something that can be a great deal of fun to deploy when talking with some new girl is playful banter. You can quickly find yourself in a riveting, electrifying back and forth that leaves both you and her smiling and excited with this fresh new person you've each just met.
However, if you haven't spent as much developing your technique, playful banter can, instead of being a lot of fun, end up being downright headache-inducing. Pop the aspirin and break out the Alka-Seltzer -- you'll need it (or maybe she will).
And even if you have put time into building good wit, there's a good chance -- particularly if you're newer or even intermediate -- that you haven't learned the timing of using that wit and banter in a conversation with a new woman yet -- and that you may very well go over the top, or go for too long, straying into the land of the socially awkward or even calling up out-and-out auto-rejection via over-gaming, thereby costing yourself a girl who otherwise might've been yours.
For that reason, figuring out the rules of bantering properly ends up being quite important for your early game -- you're not always going to deploy your wit in full force with every young woman you meet, but you will with enough of them that having it honed more or less to a razor's edge can end up making the difference between making it to the mid-game with that new pretty girl you like, or having to bow out early.
Thus, this quick and dirty guide on getting down some of the basics of bantering playfully with women.
3 Mistakes Men Make with Bantering
Three mistakes most guys make with playful banter:
- Being competitive,
- Being insulting, and/or
- Dumping it in
I'll explain.
Being competitive means the banter takes on a "you vs. me" tone. Like so:
Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now.
Guy: Oh really? Well, I've been surfing for about 5. Take that!
Girl: [laughs] Yeah, you got me there. But I'm pretty good.
Guy: Bet I could kick your butt.
Girl: I don't know about that...!
Guy: Come on, let's do it. We're going to have a surfing competition, and I'm going to win. You'll be riding my wake the whole way to shore.
Sounds fun, right? You might even see that and say, "What's so bad about that?"
Well, the reason competitive's a problem is it because it makes the interaction not so much about the two of you joining forces as about her trying to beat you. Which is fun... until the competition ends.
And it ends by either her winning -- in which case, it's "mission accomplished" and onto the next adventure for her, which, since she's done what she wanted to do with you (win), that likely won't include you -- or her losing -- and then she just ends up going cold on you because you "beat" her.
If you lose, you lose. And even if you win, you still lose.
Our next point, being insulting, is when the banter is stuff that's just mean:
Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now.
Guy: So in other words, you're a total California girl. Shouldn't you be using "like" every other word and bleaching your hair?
Why's that bad? Well, for the simple reason that people don't respond well to being insulted. I don't think there's anyone out there who intentionally insults women, but a lot of newer guys fall into doing this in an effort to be funny (an effort that, needless to say, has gone horribly awry).
Dumping it in basically means where your entire conversation, more or less, is banter. No getting to know a girl, no building an emotional connection, no deep diving, just straight up plowing her with banter and hoping that's going to get you somewhere.
Which, very, very occasionally, it will. But, the vast majority of the time, it won't do anything but tire a girl out and make her run away.
So those three things -- being competitive, being insulting, and dumping it in -- those'll kill you, from a making-good-progress-in-an-interaction-and-ultimately-having-it-lead-somewhere perspective.
Having good playful banter means cutting those three things out -- and replacing them with their opposites.
The 3 Elements of Good Banter
As you might suspect, the 3 elements that comprise good banter we're going to highlight are the things that stand in opposition to those 3 mistakes we mentioned above.
They are:
- Being cooperative or self-deprecating. Instead of pitting her versus yourself, use your banter to position the two of you together -- or even joke about her beating you at something that doesn't really matter. Like so:
Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now.
Guy: Wow, so you're pretty experienced.
Girl: Yeah.
Guy: So if we went out for, like, a big surfing competition, you'd probably kick my ass.
Girl: Maybe.
Guy: Or at least we could join forces and kick everybody else's asses.
Girl: Definitely!
Guy: Let's form a coalition surf team, then. Our team launches today. Deal?
Girl: Deal!
Guy: All right. Don't back out now, because I'm totally counting on you to be there to save my ass when the other surf teams try and gang up on us.
- Building her up. Rather than tearing her down with insulting banter -- as many inexperienced men inadvertently do -- instead, seek to build her up with value-giving bantering. Joke around with her in a way that makes her look good. That'd be like this:
Girl: I've been surfing for about 3 years now.
Guy: No way! So you're pretty good, then.
Girl: I'm not bad.
Guy: By "not bad," do you actually mean, "I kick everybody else's asses so hard on the waves that they give up and go home early?"
- Sprinkling it in. Sprinkling it in is when you're using banter intermittently throughout the course of an interaction with a girl. You don't want to lay it on super thick all the time -- you don't want to dump it in and suffocate her in banter -- but instead you just use it a little here, a little there, and give her some fun and some lightheartedness throughout the interaction. This keeps things from getting too heavy during the deepest parts of conversation, while also avoiding making it seem like banter is the only thing you know how to do with women.
Sticking with these 3 rules -- be cooperative or self-deprecating, build her up, and sprinkle it in -- will keep your banter fresh, exciting, and invigorating for the women you meet, and it'll help you make sure they stick around and keep talking to you and enjoy talking with you.
Talk to you soon.
Chase
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