I don’t know why I never realized this before last week; but something dawned on me that had me looking at pick up strategies in a whole new way. I wanted to test this new theory out a bit and try to find the best way to describe it in text to you all before I wrote this.

Have you ever gone to a party, club, bar, etc and felt like you didn’t fit in? Maybe it was a hang out spot for hipsters, goths, thugs, white collar folks, or any other discernible genre of people which you are not a part of, and thought to yourself “How should I act? How should I speak? What can I talk to these people about? How do I meet some of these women?”? Well I had this experience last week and after a few minutes found myself basically running the room.

I’ll start from the beginning (usually a good place to start) a good friend of mine told me about a party that night and thought it would be fun to go. What he didn’t realize was that it was a fetish party. Now, for anybody who doesn’t know me I am a pretty traditional t-shirt and jeans kind of guy. So here I am in a button down shirt and jeans with my friend who was wearing a blazer, grey pants and freshly shined black work shoes. The two of us stuck out like a sore thumb in this leather and candle wax covered dungeon.

Well not ten minutes go by and I witnessed four or five guys try to make an attempt to start a conversation with a very attractive and scantily dressed young women (with skin pigment that looked like White-Out). Every time another vampire looking guy would approach her, she shot them down in different ways; each more humiliating and emasculating than the last. In fact, she told one guy she would allow him the please of buying her a drink if he gave her his favorite necklace AND bought her that drink from all the way at the other end of the bar. The sad part, was that he actually listened. After seeing this I walked over to young women and gave her the old “Pick on somebody your own size” line. She responded by trying to intimidate me like she did all the other guys; but it wasn’t going to work. After a few minutes of going back and forth like this, I finally cracked through her rock hard exterior and was able to have a normal conversation. We ended up talking and have a great time all night before I realized why I had won her over and NOT everyone else in the party, who looked like they would fit much better with her.

At first I thought it was because I didn’t back down from her or took any of her shit, but in fact it was because I ignored everybody else and did my own thing. In the book The Game, Neil Strauss and Mystery talk about Peacocking. This  is dressing in such a way that people take notice of you from the minute you walk in to the room. How ever, if you dress yourself to look a certain way and act a completely different way, the inconsistencies will be enough to have just about anybody second guessing why they are speaking to you. How ever, by ignoring how everybody else is dressed and acting, and just being yourself you will not only stick out, but will not show any signs of inconsistent behavior.

I wanted to test this out a bit so the next night I went to a bar in midtown  Manhattan usually  filled with yuppies and corporate types. Again, I went out in my jeans and button down shirt, and again I stuck out. But, like the previous night, I was able to successfully chat up and attract the one women who was shooting everyone down. This weekend I did it again at a hipster bar in Brooklyn, and like magic my theory worked again.

So, the next time you are going to be heading out to a place you normally wouldn’t think you’d fit in, don’t try to dress and act a certain way just to seem comfortable there; ignore everybody and be yourself.

Josh Rosenberg