Tactics Tuesdays

By creating a vortex of value, you can suck girls into chasing you. Yet you need two (2) key elements to NOT become the dancing monkey / friend zone guy…

Here's a little technique I like to call the 'value vortex'.

I didn't invent it, but I haven't seen it named before (or if I have I don't remember what others have called it).

It's a suspiciously-simple sounding strategy that's very easy to get wrong. Therefore I do not recommend it to beginners. Beginners will see this and want to use it, but it will backfire for them. I'll explain why below.

The basics of this strategy are that you run a seduction in such a way that you only provide value to the girl's life -- heaps of it -- while sharing next to nothing about yourself. You must also be initiating touch and getting compliance as you do it, but only in the context of providing more value to her.

The effect, if executed well and on a girl who is not immune*, is that the girl you use it with will start to chase. She will at first be intrigued by you, then she will start to chase you harder, then harder.

If not used the way I lay out in this post, however, the strategy will backfire, and you will quickly friend zone yourself.

Disclaimers out of the way, let's open up the hood on this vortex and talk using it to seduce.

Both compliments and negs are part of a quadrant, but few men use them right. Most use the OTHER (far less effective) side of the quadrant: flattery and insults.

I want to talk about a dichotomy today I've not seen spelled out anywhere:

That is negging vs. complimenting.

Most guys in the community these days have largely abandoned both: they won't neg and they won't (or only poorly) compliment. Yet both tools can be quite powerful... when used correctly.

Much like many things in this space, both have fallen prey to misuse and recategorization as several waves of unskilled seducers have clumsily attempted to adopt these seduction tools, giving both bad names in the process.

This article isn't necessarily a re-taking of these; I have one coming on compliments soon that I think will give you a different perspective from both the neo-direct "simple direct flattery-based compliments" style and the more indirect "don't compliment her much/at all" style.

However, in the meantime, I wanted to make a quick piece detailing the 'quadrant' negs and compliments lie on... and give you a better idea about how and when to use each.

People are becoming pricklier, and women are no exception. To succeed with them, you must at times disarm them first. There are 4 different ways to do that.

Lately I've been dealing with disarming.

The concept sprung to mind most recently as I realized more and more of our readers are men stuck in the 'standards zone' -- a place where they cannot get the women they want because they don't meet those women's standards. Rather than disarm their concerns (because I wasn't really treating them as part of our target audience before), I argued with guys that women's standards are not actually high... which of course just makes guys who are of this mind close up and dig into where they already are.

Now, arguing with people obviously is not an effective way to open up communication lines with them.

Arguing is what you do when you want to bludgeon someone, either to make an example of him, or to win him over by sheer force of argument... which usually won't carry much farther than a single interaction, and tends to burn through good will.

The thing is, people across the board are becoming more argumentative -- and that goes for women.

People are more opinionated right now then I've seen them since I've been alive. I wasn't around during the anti-war protests in the 1970s, so maybe it was worse then, but at least in the years since the 1980s this is the most prickly I've seen it.

Women in particular are being dosed with all this propaganda about a 'battle of the sexes' going on.

Not all women are equally susceptible to this programming. Some are very, some are a little, some aren't really at all.

However, you will encounter women who are.

To succeed with these women (or, as a less ambitious goal, to avoid unpleasant encounters!), you must be able to disarm their prickly defenses.

You must, in other words, be able to take them off their guards.

A fun little way to break conversation patterns… and get women to chase you. Intrigue her, interest her, and help her realize there are mysteries about you to uncover.

Just a small little tactic today:

Pattern interrupts you can use to break rapport.

A simple tactic that makes gobs of difference: just be friendly. Opening’s easier, hooking’s easier, and social proof becomes well-nigh automatic.

Here's a deceptively simple tactic:

Be friendly to every person you encounter.

Just yesterday we talked about conflict escalation and the dog-eat-dog world inside the prison system.

The good news is, you're a free man, and you're not in that kind of world. In this world, unless you venture into a bad part of town, you can and should be friendly to everybody.

Any time I've felt some rust or a renewed sense of approach anxiety, "be friendly to people" is the primary tactic I use to shake that off. Alek followed this same advice recently when he sought to warm up his social momentum after over a year of almost uninterrupted citywide lockdowns. It's simple, basic advice but it really works.

"Be friendly" has a ton of upsides for getting yourself approaching more easily with a lot less fear.

If you've only been doing targeted approaching -- where the only people you approach are sufficiently good-looking girls -- you may well find this alternate tactic a breath of fresh air.

Self-monitoring allows you to adapt yourself to the people around you. It’s a good thing… but too much of it can really cramp your style (and the naturalness of your interactions).

If you've gone through my charisma course, Charisma In A Bottle (which, incidentally, I'll be re-releasing soon), you're familiar with the concept of 'self-monitoring'.

A self-monitor is someone who keeps a mental eye on himself, observing his own actions, making sure he is acting in 'correct' ways and not screwing things up.

Charismatic people are high self-monitors. While they might seem to be the most casual, relaxed folks out there, they are in fact carefully monitoring and adjusting their social presentation.

Dating is another area that turns men into high self-monitors. You go out to approach girls and you focus relentlessly on:

• How nervous vs. confident you seem
• Whether you approach from the right angle
• If you're delivering an opener she'll respond to
• If you're getting enough compliance from her fast enough
• Whether you've moved her soon enough
• Whether you're dominant enough
• Whether you're bantering enough
• What your value is relative to hers
• What your attainability is relative to hers

... plus a whole bunch of other things you are doing or that are about you.

And while this is useful for spotting your weak points and improving on what you want to improve at, it hobbles your ability to truly be in-the-moment with a girl and interact with her in a truly smooth, natural way.

Thus, some of the time, you are going to want to do things the opposite way, and turn your self-monitoring way down.

Give a girl a way to recall her attraction to you with an “attraction anchor.” Attraction anchors are things you do or get a woman to do that she’s likely to remember later.

Have you ever approached a girl, who was clearly attracted to you, done everything right with her, left her smiling, had her contact info in-hand as you did so, and then... never heard from her again?

Sure you have. It's the pox of every even halfway active dater.

It can send you into a tailspin trying to figure out what went wrong. Everything seemed perfect. You executed the approach perfect. The girl responded to you perfectly in every way.

So why did she vanish once you left, and never respond to your texts, voice/video messages, or calls again?

The answer is because attraction has an expiration date, and if you fail to make a strong enough impression, that expiration date may often be "as soon as you leave her side."

What can you do to prevent attraction expiring while you're away from her?

Anchor her attraction to things likely to stick in her mind.