Too many guys are obsessed with becoming great at daygame or brilliant at night game or amazing at Tinder game, forgetting that it is not the method but the results that really count. Rather than wasting valuable energy focussing on perfecting a particular game “craft,” men should instead simply focus on becoming “that guy”—the man who is “sexworthy” as a result of his being prepared to hit on women under any and all circumstances.
As most readers will be aware, game is a discipline that is really as old as time but which has been documented and studied seriously by men since Eric Weber’s How to Pick Up Girls and then some two decades later Neil Strauss’s The Game . Since then there has been a whole plethora of game material released, some of fine quality and some less so. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that game has become a legitimate area of intellectual inquiry.
Most early game books focused on ways to talk to women in traditional pickup environments, such as nightclubs and bars. What we’ve seen in the last few years, though, is a schism within the pickup cognoscenti, with some men producing content largely related to night game, while others concentrate solely on daygame. I am not sure that this is wholly of benefit to men learning pickup.
Does daygame work? Yes, absolutely. Are there techniques and tactics to be considered that you wouldn’t use in a night game situation. Again, yes. Is daygame therefore worthy of books and articles dedicated to it solely? Yes.
An issue arises, however, when men begin to fetishize classic street daygame above all other types of game and treat it almost as something religious, where to run any other type of game feels sacrilegious. For there are daygame writers and content creators who disdain online and app game and will sometimes disparage night game as though it were little more than a matter of securing the best table in the club and buying the most champagne.
These men have websites, You Tube channels, books, and other products all solely dedicated to daygame. Some of it is of a very high quality, but there is a danger that men who are impressionable will come away with the idea that daygame is the only way to meet girls.
Daygame, we are led to believe, is somehow purer than other forms of game, more authentic. Simply a superior way to get laid.
Now, if you are pulling 1+ new young, hot girls a month consistently through daygame alone, then good luck to you. If you’re not, though—and a great many men, even those who go out a lot, aren’t—then perhaps you would be well advised to supplement your daygame with other methods.
The overarching problem with the cult of daygame is that it encourages a fan base of guys to run around the streets of major European and U.S. cities attempting to outdo one another in imitating their YouTube heroes. In London when the sun comes out, you will see loads of guys in their identikit black leather jackets and tight jeans and boots—some of them well groomed, many not—hitting on young women out buying terrible clothes in Primark. In many cases, these men would be far better advised to keep in mind the endgame—actually getting laid rather than imitating YouTube videos—and working up an efficient strategy for accomplishing this goal.
Far better to practice “always on” game. Far better to simply become “that guy” who always hits on women regardless of his surroundings.
It is often observed that alpha males get away with far more than their beta male counterparts when dealing with women. This is because when a women meets you she will automatically, within a few short minutes, put you into a box, or category, in her mind. Once you’re in this box, it’s very hard to climb out, and if she sees you behaving in a way that suggests you’re trying to, she will get freaked out.
If she sees you—like most men she comes into contact with—as a pleasant but unchallenging beta—you will soon be consigned to the friend zone box, which means that while she may like you, find you funny, and enjoy your company, she will never, ever have sex with you.
If, though, when you first meet she finds you cocky, arrogant, funny, challenging, and a little inappropriate, she will put you into the “potential lover” box. Once you’re in this latter box, you’ll be able to get away with a lot more—rude comments and jokes, sexually suggestive lines—even if you never end up hooking up with her.
As an example, there is a man at my workplace whom I’ll call Jamie. He has reality TV show looks and dress sense, is a lad who likes a drink, a football game, and a joke with the guys, and is loved by a bunch of the girls we work with. He’s what you might call a natural at game.
To my knowledge, he has actually had sex with only one girl in the office (the prettiest “good girl,” funnily enough), but because he is “that guy” he is able to get away with the most outrageous flirty banter with the others, even in an environment ruled over with the iron fist of a female-led HR department
Do you seriously think a natural like Jamie cares where he meets the girls he sleeps with? Of course he doesn’t. The office, the street, the pub, the club, Tinder, Bumble—it’s all the same to him. Girls are girls, and he is “that guy” who flirts with girls wherever he finds them.
In fact, I suspect that if you told Jamie that there are men who make it their business to meet girls only by approaching them while out shopping during the day he’d find it more than a little odd. After all, where is the sense in limiting yourself to only one source when there are so many others available?
It is possible to learn a lot from naturals simply by watching the way they operate in the sexual marketplace. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with learning game, if there are men out there, who—like child prodigies expert at playing the piano at an extremely young age—“just get” how it should be between men and women, why not emulate them?
How do you become “that guy.” A whole book could be written on that subject, but the first thing you need to do is to start viewing women everywhere as potential conquests and approaching them as such.
As with most forms of behaviour, if you start “doing” first, the “becoming” will follow on quite naturally afterwards. Why not pick out a natural like Jamie that you know and start copying some of his behaviours. As you now view girls as potential sex partners rather than “that girl in the bookstore” or “that girl in the lift in my building” or “that girl standing by the cigarette machine in the restaurant or hotel lobby,” when you speak to them, this will communicate itself naturally, and you will find that these interactions are more sparky and flirtatious.
You need to understand that it’s not just girls who put guys in boxes—guys put girls in boxes too. Think about it for a second. “She’s a shop assistant. I couldn’t approach her.” “She’s selling programmes at this theatre. I won’t approach her.” “She’s working in the cloakroom at this restaurant I’ve come to with my client. I won’t approach her.”
For a gender who supposedly wants to get laid all the time, men pass up so many opportunities. It’s almost as if we don’t really want to have sex, given the number of women we will mentally label as off limits.
From today, then, stop thinking in terms of daygame, night game, Tinder game, or whatever. Instead, keep your eyes open, and remember that every woman you come into contact with could equally be moaning with pleasure in your bed and behave accordingly towards her. Limiting yourself to one type of game makes no sense. Becoming “that guy” and creating opportunities everywhere will give your sex life a much-needed boost, so stop shooting yourself in the foot.