Online is strangely similar to daygame in the directness of the approach, yet the two marketplaces operate according to completely different rules. The daygame market has huge, if oblivious, demand, and minimal supply. On the other hand, the internet’s great selling point – the lowering of approach anxiety to the point of non-existence – destroys it for those who most need to overcome such a barrier by saturating the market with supply.

I’m currently on OK Cupid. For the above noted reasons, I generally think it’s a sucker’s game for average-looking men like me in terms of effort expended vs reward. Fat bitches who in real life would let you cum on their face in a back alley on the first date as a bid to win commitment think they’re Princess Jasmine.

While you may get a lot of success from doing tons of approaches, I don’t like the economics of it. There’s not a chance I’m going to spend hours every week cold-approaching women and thinking up lines based on some fucking cliché, faux-whimsical bullshit profile. (By my estimate, a majority of the women claim photography as an interest yet have a webcam shot as their profile pic.) I suspect there’s something deeply humiliating about receiving rejection after rejection online. On the streets, it only makes you stronger, it forces you to work on yourself. Online, you are being rejected on the basis of a photo and a pathetic self-evaluation.

Contrary to what I’ve said so far, I have, however, had a degree of limited success from minimum effort on OK Cupid. After my first analysis of the scene, I began recommending it to girls with whom I’m friends on the basis that they could engage with it passively, replying only to men they find attractive, and thereby expending minimal resources for a decent return. My strategy has been to apply this rule to myself.

I spent an hour or so creating a mean profile description. It is catchy and full of dog whistles for a certain demographic, as well as general DHVs disguised as comments about my tastes. It is also full of disqualifiers – “I’m pretty fucking far from the perfect man”, “not marriage material”, etc. I don’t want to go into too much detail.

The other thing I did was to spend a good amount of time on a profile pic. With a good photo, you do not need to be handsome to be attractive. Thus, I got a photo of myself done with a very shallow depth of field, in black and white and with high brightness and contrast. This turned my non-handsome mug into the brooding profile of a film noir hard-boiled detective.

So in all, I think I spend about two hours putting together a profile. Then I just sat back and waited. Women come to you. Not many, but enough: “I found your profile brutally honest”, said one. A couple of messages later, a date is set up. You’re not going to be rolling in the tang, but it’s a nice little earner on the side.

I have been away for a few months. I went to live in another city in order to study, and had a lot of fun applying the game I had learnt. I am now back in London, and re-animating my daygame from its cryogenic freeze, à la Han Solo (or Wesley Snipes in Demolition Man).

While I was outside of London, I found my daygame severely hampered. Simply put, I was scared of approaching in a small city with a large student population. So I focussed on building lasting fuck-buddy/casual relationships with girls who I met through social circle and at student activities. A couple of one-night stands also came my way. I ended up with three casual relationships with undergraduate girls.

The interesting thing was that I really wasn’t trying very hard – all that daygaming shot my confidence through the roof in all areas of my life, and I found it easy to flirt with girls in a non-game setting, which I had found hard to do.

Anyway, having been back in London for a few days, I found the old itch needed scratching. London is the city for daygame. It is so unfathomably huge that you are essentially anonymous, and it is full of cute, middle-class girls in their early twenties who have moved from the provinces and are finding it hard to meet a man who isn’t a total mong, i.e. most young men their age.

I hadn’t intended to go out to pick up a girl, but as I went to the bike shop to pick up some parts I was accosted by a very cute girl with big brown eyes, dark hair and a righteous rack. She was working for a charity, trying to hook people in to some sponsorship scheme. I walk past her, then turn around and smile at her. I tell her that she’s working in a shit job, and I feel sorry for her as I used to do it too (lie).

Strong eye contact, lowered voice (inspired by Krauser’s piece on picking up girls in shops from a while back). Various chit-chat, I DHV a bit and tease, she self-consciously plays with her hair. She’s giving me a boner with those eyes, so I say I have to go and ask for her number.

She laughs, pulls away from me and says “no way”. Now, back in the day I’d have taken this as a cue and backed off, but I stay standing there and continue talking to her, I laugh a bit to show I’m not bothered, and a couple of minutes later decide to say goodbye. She falters, then says, “hey, you’re actually pretty awesome, aren’t you?” “Yes”, I say, ” I am”. And she gives me her number and asks me for mine.

Anyway, it feels good to be back daygaming.

She is one of those women who
Will never use three or four words when a couple of thousand will
easily do