(1) Beginner

Small talk serves important social functions in the early conversation. Being good at it enables you to have better, more fluid conversations with those you talk to.

In our next installment in the Social Skills 101 series (see Part 1 on why basic social skills are so key here, and Part 2 on approaching unfamiliar people here), we'll talk about everyone's least favorite part of conversation, small talk.

Small talk is the bane of many an objective-oriented conversationalist, and not always for the same reasons:

• Some loathe small talk and try to move past it or skip it entirely wherever possible

• Others view small talk as necessary, yet become trapped in it, unable to free themselves from it

Let's discuss what small talk is, the function it serves in conversation, and how to use it without bogging down in inane conversation you can't break free of.

Every learner falls into one of the four (4) learner-motivation profiles. Achievers find success, Plateauers get stuck, Protestors protest, while Onlookers hang back.

I've been teaching in this space for over a decade-and-a-half now.

Do a few things right before you approach a new girl, and you raise the odds your approach succeeds. Spot invitations, create invitations, screen, build micro-momentum, and more.

Hey guys and welcome back!

Last week I gave you my step-by-step guide on how to get back in shape, game-wise, and you learned how to get out of bad momentum.

This post links to last week’s topic. We will provide a checklist of tips and tricks to improve your opening game, focusing on pre-opening. Next week, we will cover opening.

Why does this subject link to last week’s post? The part of your game that takes the “biggest hit” when facing low momentum is your opening and hook game. (I am considering making a checklist of tips and tricks for good hook game as well). Opening hook game is the most vibe-dependent. The energy you communicate is paramount during the opening and hook.

Once you’ve passed the hook phase, it’s more about what you say and how you respond to her hoops and overall strategic calls. You’ll feel more comfortable interacting with the girl when you move past the opening and hook phase. So, despite your lower momentum, you will feel a better overall flow in the interaction.

This is not to say that you won’t feel rusty in other parts of your game. Your weaker awareness may impair your strategic choices because you have less playing room. It’s due to lower compliance from girls because of your low momentum (which affects your presence and vibe).

Now, you may be on high momentum and rocking it and just want to recap or improve your pre-opening skills. Then this post is for you.

Good pre-opening is crucial. It has direct and impactful spill-over effects on your opening game. We can’t discuss tight opening game without discussing pre-opening — you can skip it, but moving forward will be harder, on a psychological and practical level.

Maybe you are a beginner or an intermediate guy who happens to have opening as one of your sticking points. This post is also for you.

Most advice here is primarily for night game settings and bars. However, you can apply some concepts to day game with a few tweaks.

Let’s jump right in!

It doesn’t matter how slick you look or how many great tips you’ve absorbed. Good basic social skills must come first if you wish for social success.

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.

There’s one reality on the glowing screens. There’s another one in the realm of the five senses. You can only live in one of them. Which one do you choose?

The other day I talked a bit about screens warping men's perceptions and making them think women all lust after men with giant muscles.

This is not the only way screens have been warping people's perceptions, however.

It is just the tip of the screenberg.

For some years I, like most people I suspect, had been held increasingly captive by the state of the world.

Popular revolts, widespread protests, political polarization, transnational saber-rattling, and of course, unprecedented government lockdowns resulting in a rolling back of civil liberties in a way unprecedented since the flowering of modern liberal democracy.

Not to mention masks everywhere, gym closures, nightlife closures... and a bizarre new dystopian system where the initiated gleefully compete to boast about their excellent compliance with the rules, even as they label and shun those who refuse to comply with the same facility.

In the midst of this cultural collapse/upheaval, I've talked to more and more people who've become much more apathetic about things they used to care about than they ever were before.

The decline of dating is only one example; it's a widespread one, and one I covered (along with the statistics to back it up) here.

Yet even I found myself slowly sinking into a tar pit of progressive apathy, transfixed by the state of apparent global chaos. When you wake up and check the state of affairs and it's one item of shrieking disastrous apocalyptic news after another, who has willpower enough to do anything worthwhile with the rest of his day?

But what happens when you don't wake up and check a bunch of things... but instead just live your life?

For a lot of guys, approaching women’s a chore. Yet if you can make it not a chore, but instead a good time, suddenly it gets easier to do and a lot easier to do WELL.

When a lot of guys start out trying to do pick up girls, they punish themselves.

It's a whole lot of:

• Being awkward
• Facing rejection
• Doing hard things
• Wallowing in failure

However, if you look at the guys who are good with girls, they're all having fun with it:

1. Some of them are playful types who enjoy teasing and flirting with women.

2. Some are physical types who enjoy touching or dancing with women.

3. Some are talkative types who enjoy having a rapt female audience for their stories, insights, or theories.

4. Some are tacticians who enjoy the tactical and strategic game of seduction.

A lot of newer and intermediate guys miss this, and never focus on trying to make seduction fun.

But it's an important point to get to with your courtships. Because if you can't make it a good time, sooner or later you'll burn yourself out.

If you can make it a good time though, it becomes easy to game for as long as you like.

Many guys think giant muscles are the key to getting laid. But are they? Do hulking muscles turn you into a babe magnet… or are their effects subtler and more nuanced than this?

We had a commentator asking me the other day why I don't talk about physique more.

He thought it was because maybe if I admitted that big muscles were really the key to getting laid, I'd have to close down Girls Chase and start selling supplements.

After all... who needs to learn game when you can just get ripped?

Once you've got gigantic muscles, beautiful women just chuck themselves at you. Don't they?

Well... not exactly.

But he's right, I should talk more about physique.

However, like many things here, I'm going to give you a perspective you probably won't get elsewhere.

I'm not going to tell you physique doesn't matter. But I'm also not going to tell you you need to be on gear, lifting hard at the gym 3 hours every day, eating raw steaks for lunch, getting your delts and traps as ridiculous as possible.

Instead I'm going to tell you something else.