It’s now three weeks since I’ve done an approach since I’m staying in the boondocks at my parents place while I resupply on a few essentials, catch up with my folks and prepare for a long trip to Europe. Without the distraction of daygame, I find now is a good time to be an armchair expert and take some time to reflect on recent experiences and jot them down.
Let’s start with the good stuff: stats!
Stats
Most of my international approaches the last year were in Spanish-speaking cities, between Latin America and Spain. English levels were similar across the Atlantic, yet my stats not:
I did about 100 approaches each, in LatAm and Spain, and the results couldn’t be any more different. I think it’s best to look at the number of dates from these sets: 10 in LatAm vs 2 in Spain, and that’s really only part of the story. What’s more important, and cannot be captured from the numbers alone, are the sense of attraction I felt in set and on dates. I rarely saw girls with that excitement or sparkle in their eyes when I approached them in Spain; the attraction and reception just wasn’t there. So as much I enjoyed the history, food, architecture and city layout of Spanish cities, I don’t expect I’ll return for the sole purpose of dating.
My last date in Buenos Aires was with an aspiring actress. She was the second least charismatic person I’ve met, the first being an aspiring actress I met from daygame in NYC when Midwest was in town. Needless to say, when I asked about what kind of roles they prefer, neither said “comedy”.
Cheap and tawdry
A cousin reached out to me while I was down there after she saw an Instagram story I posted of Messi painted on a wall. She put me in touch with a couple of her friends, them being sisters, who were also on a LatAm trip. We met up for dinner and drinks, where one of them told me she’s also a bit of a digital nomad. She asked me about dating, I evaded it. She brought it up again, only to tell me how she likes to use Bumble when she travels. Ok. She brings up the topic two or three more times throughout the evening.
It’s clear this girl likes to “date” around. It’s here I should point out she’s overweight with short hair, and a bit of a girl boss that’s some sort of exec at a startup and couldn’t stop telling me about this friend or that ex-colleague that just raised X millions of dollars. Though not dating material, she and her sister were quite pleasant and the conversation flowed between the topics of travel, our bits of shared social circles, music and food.
This girl reminded me of another plutonic interaction I had at a wedding a couple of years ago in San Fransisco. She was another overweight girl, though with nicer hair and skin. Upon learning that I lived in NYC, she went on to tell me about how she had so many adventures in that city because “when you match a guy on Tinder, you can just spend a nigh…a day with him without any commitment to see him again. And he’ll take you all over the city to impress you!” Read between the lines with me: she’s a 5, would be a 6 if she lost weight, and could possibly be a 7 if she really cleans up well. So here we have a 5 that easily matched with guys that took her out on adventure dates. She then proceeded to tell me that SF, on the other hand, is a good city to find the kind of guy to settle down with. All of this was discussed around a table with her fiancé sitting next to us, drunk out of his mind, though I doubt he’d spot the red flags even if he were sober.
Again, pleasant young lady, despite her being a bit eager to tell me about her debauchery.
There’s no real purpose to this bit; just highlighting some views on dating from liberal, American women and the ease (and transparency) with which they match with guys.
Along these lines of understanding the modern women, I heard something interesting from a coworker in Buenos Aires as well; her and her 2 sisters are between the ages of 37 and 43. All are career focused, none have kids or are even married. They’ve all convinced themselves that having kids would ruin their lives and that getting married is giving into the patriarchy.
‘Tis what it is.
Sniping solo
I started my travels still training jiu jitsu, so 2-4 times I week I would go into the gym, get in some training and shoot the shit with the other dudes. But my time in Buenos Aires was different: I completely stopped jiu jitsu to let recover some injuries with resistance training. I also headed down there not knowing anyone, barring a couple of colleagues that I’d see once a week or so. This, by itself, was not sufficient to keep my social gears greased.
Fortunately, we live in the modern age where digital communication is a commodity. I texted my wings more often to chat game, dates and sessions; I tweeted my day-to-day as I wandered the shopping center, and I wrote up some blog posts. That maintained my baseline vibe throughout the trip. The couple of lays helped a tad bit, too!
And with a low approach rate (on average 1 per hour) while sniping for sets, I found that I had to nearly delude myself into boosting my vibe up between approaches. I constantly reminded myself to hold a grin while thinking uplifting thoughts. Thoughts like past dates or mischievous undertakings I’d imagine with the girls I’d see out and about (since sets were few, this meant I’d take in the eye candy present in groups). Such rumination would turn my grin into a sinister smirk, and set my mind in the right seductive state.
I’d also play wingman in my mind: making observations about shops, cars, people’s clothes, a couple’s arguments, cars, motorcycles, music over bar speakers, the absurdly low price of juicy steak, the smell of coffee...whatever it was. Then I’d internally reply to my observation and orchestrate a full blown conversation. It was my internal dialogue, which at times evolved into a tweet.
Other times I’d put on a Spanish learning podcast, essentially knocking out two birds with one stone. Other than the practicality of speaking the local language, I find the academic challenge enjoyable. I’ve tried listening to audiobooks from my long list of books, but can’t get myself engaged enough since I have to rewind too frequently for it to be worthwhile. Maybe podcasts would be different?
I also open less often while applying a more selective pre-approach filter when I’m solo. Blowouts and sets that go bad are easier to shake off with a wing. To minimize sets going awry due to external influences, I avoid doing approaches next to outdoor dining where the spotlight effect is higher, or when there isn’t enough room on the sidewalk so she doesn’t feel intruded upon.
The overall effects are likely small, but every little bit accumulates to sustain that indefinable, evasive thing we call vibe. Vibe, baby. Vibe.
Yearly lessons
Some years ago my brother asked me at the beginning of a new year, “what was the biggest lesson you learned these last 12 months?” Though simple, it was a profound question. At the time, I told him “patience”. Good things take time and effort to come to fruition. I had just finished my first six months of daygame approaching and could feel my progress, but had also realized how much further I had to go. I didn’t have any assurance whether or not I would make it.
Asking myself this question today, the answer to the big question is “variance”. It’s one thing to hear about variance, it’s another to experience it. And it feels particularly sharp in daygame. There are months with no lays, then months with 2 lays. There are weeks with no dates, then weeks with 2 dates. There are days with no numbers, then days with 3 numbers. And perhaps what I didn’t come to appreciate until more recently was how true this variance is on a microscale: there are hours with no sets, then hours with 3 sets.
Down to the hour, walking the streets solo during the troughs in volume, is where I really felt the weight of variance. Though once I realized it’s the same with anything: performance/motivation at work, training at the gym, reducing weight, learning a language; it took the pressure off and this goes to back to the vibe management mentioned earlier. I was surprised at myself at how well I was able to maintain my vibe, and I believe it was in part by accepting variance.
Over the next year or two, I expect the answer to this big question will be…
Efficiency
It’s one thing to know how to draw results. It’s another to do it well and within a time frame we find acceptable.
During the learning stages (of anything) we slip and stumble, having to take our time through our actions and reflecting over failures. It’s a slow, painful process with the few positive results we achieve being more due to luck than anything else. Around this time I read something by Krauser, probably in Daygame Infinite, about time wasters. He talks about available, but uninterested girls accepting a date knowing full well that they weren’t going to allow the interaction to blossom into a tryst. And that such girls are evil to the brim (maybe I’m exaggerating his words, but I don’t think I am).
At the time I simply thought “I don’t get it, if a girl is spending time with us, how is that not a net positive?” I didn’t appreciate the value of the experience we were offering to girls, so I still saw attention from a girl as sufficiently exciting. The flip side is that “the cost of our attention is escalation”. And that is where I am today.
I can sometimes sniff out these time wasters in set; they keep the conversation friendly and cordial while evading my proximity and brushing off my teases. By far, the best way to filter them out is escalation, though we don’t want to lose girls who just need more time. It’s an art. I expect I’ll have this down in another year or so.
The one that got away
The prime daygame area in Buenos Aires is a bit small. Since I prefer sniping as it is, I didn’t have to make any adjustments to my approach rate to avoid burning the place, drawing the attention of shop keepers, restauranteurs or the many cops that take patrol out there. By the end of my six-week stint, I recognized a fair number of the regular staff in the area. I kept a low profile so I would be surprised if more than a few would be able to pick me out of a line up. Only once was I white-knighted and the girl just brushed him off.
Despite these precautions, I did approach one girl twice. The first time she quickly left the set telling me she had a boyfriend. I didn’t recognize her the second time I stopped her, and though she still had that boyfriend she did open up with those big eyes we like to see. She was interested, but unavailable, and I tested it with asking her for a drink. She said yes, but only with her boyfriend also in attendance. I didn’t bother taking her contact info and we politely hugged good bye, joking that we’ll run into each other again since she worked in that area and I lived nearby.
Some weeks later I saw the backside of a girl in all black with tight stretchy pants. The proportions were perfect; the body, stride and style of what I’d call an 8 though I hadn’t seen her face yet. It took a couple of blocks for me to catch up to her, then another couple of blocks for enough sidewalk space to open up for a solid front stop. Sure enough, it was the same girl. She opened up with even more 🔥 in her eyes then before, but the boyfriend problem came up again. She insisted that this time I take her Instagram so I can go out with her friends sometime in case one of them fancy me. I took it, only for her to block me a couple of hours later. I hadn’t even sent her a feeler.
My guess is she went home and told her boyfriend about me, who then wisely asked to see my Instagram before mistakingly deleting me from her life. Well done, bro. I’d have done the same.
Milestone in mentality
During a trip to Medellín with Midwest, we were discussing the +1 rivalries that Krauser and Torero wrote about in their books. To some degree, they were friendly competitions that pushed each other to greater heights, but both admitted that there were some real feelings of jealousy whenever they received a +1 text from the other.
Midwest was the first to get a lay on that trip, and though he was an excellent wing and helped me work through my numbers and dates, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of jealousy towards it. I knew it wasn’t appropriate, and I didn’t understand the feeling either.
Near the end of the trip, after we’d both gotten a couple of notches, I confessed my own confusion at that emotion. He said he was surprised and didn’t get that sense at all from me—I hid it well!
In retrospect, it wasn’t jealousy. It was pressure. Midwest’s first lay proved that it could be done, and be done in a time-efficient way, so I had no excuse not to pull. It was pressure I put upon my own shoulders, but also the externally-referenced pressure of gaining the respect of others. I believe this was an unavoidable stage in my journey: it was a manifestation of my drive to improve and attain what I was learning to be possible.
And I use past tense above because these days I can read a +1 tweet or text and feel positive emotions for the author. When a wing pulls, it’s a group win since we all hold the same philosophy to game: deliver our authentic selves as the sole value proposition. No more, no less. Tricks, lines, deception, evasion, etc are not useful. The kind of girls we’re after can see right through these crude manipulation tactics—I know this because I started out copying and pasting what the “gurus” were selling!
I hit the point where I’ve proven my value to myself and the women that I’ve dated. I can also sense the vibe off wings who can deliver charisma, and am confident in my ability to lead a yes girl through a memorable experience. WAGMI—of course, many of them already have.
Surprises ahead
If you made it past the stats section and suffered through the introspection spiral down to here hoping for something more exciting…well that’s on you. It’s mostly a checkpoint for myself to log. I’m stilling climbing the mountain, and every once in a while it’s satisfying to look down at my progress.
Alongside bigger travel plans for the rest of the year, I’ll also be contending with uncertainty at my job. I expect upswings in my dating life and slumps in my professional life. In either case I’m sufficiently aware of life’s variance and am prepared to weather the storm whichever the winds blow.
Cheers, ol’ chaps.
Speaking of climbing the mountain, the fire of newer guys can be quite exciting as well. This one in particular comes to mind from that phrase: https://scalingthemountain6.wordpress.com/2023/03/12/chapter-one/