Seenstr - Hacking Human Nature

Let’s talk a bit about conversation. There are a lot of techniques to make your conversation more effective (David DeAngelo’s “cocky funny”, Mystery’s neg-hits, etc), but none of that means a damn thing if the conversation fizzles out before you can even reach into your bag of tricks.

Let’s look at a common conversation thread for a moment:

You: Hi, how are you doing?
Her: Fine.
You: I’m Chump.
Her: Hi Chump.
You: What’s your name?
Her: Kim.
You: So, you come here often?
Her: Not really.
You: Oh. Who are you here with?
Her: Couple friends.
You: Oh, I see. Um… do you live around here?
Her: No, I’m visiting from Idaho.
You: Oh! Idaho… do you like it there?
Her: It’s ok.
You: Oh. What is there to do there?
Her: Listen, I gotta go.
You: Oh, ok.

Let me guess. You’ve had that exact conversation about a thousand times, right? So let’s talk about what is wrong with it — besides everything.

First, don’t ask for a girl’s name right away. For starters, she doesn’t want to give it to you. Moreover, you don’t really care what it is. So why ask? It is a waste of precious time. Worse, it creates intimidation where you don’t want any. And even worse, it completely destroys your game from the get-go, because the goal of all of this is to get her to ask you what your name is.

That’s just one thing wrong with this conversation. The main thing to notice is that, in this exchange, all you did was fire off a list of lame, uninteresting questions, and all she did was fire back several short, uninteresting responses. This conversation is a total bore. Think about it, if you’ve had this conversation a thousand times, she’s had it a million times.

There is an easy technique to remember that corrects this completely: don’t ask questions. None. No questions. Only make statements. Let’s revise the conversation now, keeping that simple rule in mind. Watch how quickly the substance of the conversation totally changes:

You: It’s crowded here tonight.
Her: Yeah.
You: You look like a nice girl, you probably shouldn’t be in a place like this.
Her: Why do you say that?
You: The people in this town are nuts.
Her: Really? I’m not from here so I don’t know.
You: You look like… let me guess… an Alabama girl.
Her: Idaho actually.
You: Oh. I totally got this Alabama vibe off of you.
Her: What? Oh my God, why do you say Alabama?
You: Alabama is actually quite nice, despite it’s reputation. I was out there last month on business, and I met some really great people.
Her: Really? What do you do?

This conversation might seem pretty boring (and it is, you will need to spice it up a bit), but notice that you are no longer probing her for information, now she is probing you. That’s exactly what you want. More importantly, that is exactly what she wants.

It’s ok to start the conversation off with a question or two, as long as you cease with the questions as soon as possible. Also keep in mind that there are different kinds of questions — there are open-ended questions which can go any number of different, interesting directions, and there are yes-no questions that can go in only two, utterly boring directions. Nothing kills a conversation like a yes-no question. Don’t ask them. Ever.

If a yes-no question is the only thing that pops into your head, quickly rework it into a statement.

You: Do you like to snowboard?
Her: yes.

ACK! Try this:

You: You look like you snowboard.
Her: I don’t, but I’ve gone before. Do you?

Hey, now she’s asking you the dumb yes-no question! And now she’s going to feel the pressure to keep the conversation going. Again, that’s exactly what you want, and it’s exactly what she wants, as well.

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