Bodi's blog

My text game has gone through a baptism of fire the last three months. Time and time again I’ve lost good leads due to shit text game. Despondently I realised that street game doesn’t transfer (much) to the art of the SMS; it was time to hang up the 16oz gloves for a while and buy a gi.

Luckily for him I coincidentally am buddies with an analytical deconstructivist who happens to have spent the last few years amongst other things having hundreds of SMS interactions with girls, systematizing them and then writing them up into a shockingly deep new game book. Result. In other words the last few months I’ve regularly stared at my phone screen in confusion and asked Krauser what to do.

It’s taken a while, but finally, finally I feel I’m starting to get it. Text game is not easy. It’s an art. I knew I’d earned my blue belt when the other day I found myself sitting, chuckling writing a draft message to a new target and realised “this is not longer a chore… I’m enjoying this!”.

Let’s look at some of my old and shit messages.

This was probably my top wasted set of the last year. A hugely hot Greek girl that I got a massive IOI off at 9am Monday morning while walking in the rain to the train station. Go figure. I ran a tight four-minute walking set then easily extracted the number. The whole thing was amazing. It was mine to ruin. And I did. Let’s go over the game:

Monday

12:01 Me

Nice to meet you earlier… hope your shorts are drying out well.

[Decent ping. She seemed on, so didn’t wait too long. Callback humour to the fact it was raining and she was wearing weird little shorts.]

12:29 Her

Haha they’ve obviously left a good impression… wish me luck for hte meeting and have a lovely  day 🙂

[You can’t expect a better response than this. Super-quick reply indicates massive on-ness. She adds value by wishing me a nice day. This is mine to fuck up.]

13:38 Me

Good luck! remember to act tough… and most of all remember to get your shorts off the radiator and put them back on.

[First sentence is ok. Should have left it there. the second part is starting to be lame: I keep harping on with the same shorts joke. It subcommunicates a fear of moving on and striking new territory: which is needy, like I’m clinging to my chance. If I was doing this now I’d just send the first sentence and wait, pinging later and restacking.]

13:45 Her

Oh trust me they will know who’s wearing the trousers.. with or without shorts :p

[She still gives me a chance. This was in fact an Almost A Yes Girl (she was an 8 and 8’s are never full ‘yes’ girls. well rarely).  Notice she calls back to the shorts again. I misread this that she likes this banter, whereas now I read this as her doing what girls do: smoothing the cracks and keeping the peace in interactions]

Tuesday

Me 11:04

Oh no… I read it in Metro this morning: “Crazed Greek Girl Destroys Office in Meeting Meltdown!”

[Nowadays I’d not reopen so early. I’d have waited till afternoon. I have no sms game so I decided to use a variant on an old Jambone style message. What bothers me now as I read it is a) it’s try-hard b) I’m STILL harping on about the damn meeting.]

Her 11:25

Oh good… have they located my shorts yet? Haha

[She’s bored of this and saddened by my shit game. However it’s my job, not hers to restack, so she mentions those fucking shorts again just for something to say]

Me 12:14

They are in hiding apparently… but I know where they are. Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I’m thinking a quiet drink after work in Covent Garden, Friday….

[When I re-read this now it comes across as solicitous. There’s a slightly campy over-familiarity in the first and second sentences. Then I make the date offer when I have still not moved on and built any connection.]

She never replied.

What I needed before the date offer was one or two micro-connections. I describe a micro-connection as:

1. I say something
2. She acknoweldges it, likes it and shows it.

or even better:

1. She says something
2.  I acknowledge and stack
3.  She likes it.

You can conceive of each one of these little sequences as a magic bean or a ‘point gained’ or something. In the dialogue above we had a micro-connection on the original shorts/meeting callback humour but there was really not a single stack in a new direction with a new micro-connection. I’d have needed a few of these before trying for the date. Too much, without enough foundation.

Krauser views the exchange and tells me it’s excrement. I’m disconsolate with fucking up such an amazing lead and can’t face trying to re-ping later. At that stage I couldn’t have done anything with it anyway. I do what all true daygamers should do: not beat myself up, move on and get more leads.