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icycalm
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Game Hack #8: The Indirect-direct Approach (icycalm approach)

Fri Sep 18, 2020 8:53 pm

Leaving aside for a moment the theoretical subject of direct vs. indirect (which I will analyze in depth elsewhere when I get around to it), let me jump into and present to you a HYBRID practical approach that combines the best aspects of both, what I call the indirect-direct approach because it starts off indirect, and then segues into direct. Now, on the face of it, this isn't a new approach, in fact that's how every indirect approach progresses: you begin with an indirect opener, about a pet shop like Roosh or whatever, and then eventually you segue into something more direct. The difference, however, is that this segue normally takes AGES, and ideally doesn't occur at all in the initial interaction. In the initial interaction you ideally shift the subject matter to social life at some point, and exchange details with the girl to "hang out later", and it is during this hang-out that you make a move on her, and thus make your intentions plain. So the whole thing takes days. That's how all indirect daygame guides are written. And indirect nightgame works the same way too, just sped up, because you're already in the "date" location with the girl, so you open her via some innocuous statement—an observation or whatever—but you're expected to make a "kino" move within an hour or two at most. The upshot here is that, since the girl isn't going anywhere, you have a couple hours to do this. In the street, on other hand, you don't, you typically have her attention for only a few minutes at best, so what I propose that you do is make the shift from indirect to direct extremely quickly, ideally within a minute or two at most.

Now this will sound weird to the reader, especially to the experienced PUA. If you're gonna switch to direct within a minute of opening, why not open direct in the first place? And the answer is that opening direct is hard for most men, and it's mostly the very reason that many men, like Roosh for example, avoid direct like it's AIDS. Roosh has written entire articles about the difficulties of direct, one of the greatest of which, according to him, is mustering up the courage to perform the open. Now, generally speaking, I have no problem with the courage aspect—at least not anymore, because when I was starting out it was of course an issue; everyone gets "approach anxiety" at first—but there are still times and days when I have less energy and thus can't muster up the ENTHUSIASM that's definitely needed for a direct opener. It could even be that the girl simply isn't hot enough to make a direct opening plausible; it could be for example that I want to stop a short plump 6 simply because I am lusting after her huge tits, and it's hard to keep a straight face opening with how "cute" she is or whatever. Moreover, there are circumstances when a direct opener is generally a bad idea, even if you do have the enthusiasm for it, for example if the area is busy and your opening will be overheard, putting a ton of extra pressure on both you and the girl about your behavior during the interaction, and especially in its opening stages—because once you have started to chat, the people eavesdropping around you will likely stop paying attention once it is clear to them that your interaction is mundane and harmless, whereas if they hear a strong direct opener which they will never have heard outside of a movie, you best believe they'll even drop their business and stay rooted on the spot to see the interaction through to the end. So there are plenty of legitimate reasons to sometimes avoid direct even for guys like me who practice direct almost exclusively.

So what exactly does this super-fast indirect-direct transition achieve?

First of all, let's understand why it's important for it to occur super-fast. As a rule, the longer you take to make your true intentions known, the weaker you appear to the girl. Think of the guy who takes ten dates to touch the girl: he probably won't even get that far because if after a date or two he hasn't made a move, the girl will be too disgusted to go on more dates. This applies also in the night venue, where the guy who takes hours to make a move will be seen as a weakling compared to guys who move faster, and the same is true in sped-up fashion in the daytime approach too. The longer you've been conversing about pet shops or whatever the fuck with the girl in the middle of the street, the tougher it will be for you to shift the conversation to more personal or sexual matters, and the fewer will be your chances of success. That's why Roosh and the indirect PUAs DO NOT SHIFT THE CONVERSATION AT ALL. They know it's hard as fuck to do it, they know they will appear as weaklings if they try it, so they keep talking about bullshit like petshops or whatever despite the fact they are bored as fuck and would rather stop talking. They keep talking however, because they want the girl, so their ideal endgame is to arouse enough interest in the girl through purely harmless conversation for her to agree to exchange details, and perhaps meet later, and it is in this later meeting that they intend to try and make a move. But this whole friggin' business takes AGES, and most often leads to "texting hell" and/or endless dates to nowhere that the direct guys like me can't stand. That's why we go direct: to make the ho say no within minutes, so we don't end up wasting days and weeks on her with nothing to show for it. And a pre-requisite of this faster, harder style of approach is the direct opener.

The direct opener, however, has several issues, that have already been noted by Roosh and others:

1. It requires balls. So it's inherently off-limits to most PUAs and PUA students.

2. It requires energy and enthusiasm, which aren't always available even to the top PUAs.

3. It cannot always be performed, due to situational constraints.

4. It can often scare girls into rejecting you who would otherwise have given you a chance.

And this is where my indirect-direct approach comes in, to solve ALL these problems, while STILL retaining the ultimate benefit of direct, which is supreme efficiency that no other daygame approach can achieve (or game approach in general). And that's why my indirect-direct approach can be exceedingly useful for ALL levels of PUAs: from rank beginners, all the way to world-class masters like me.

So without further ado, here's how it works. I will first give you the optimal version as I do it, and then modify it for intermediates and rank beginners, so you can start at the very bottom and work your way up to mine as you improve. This is such a unique approach and I perform it with such regularity, and I understand it so much better than anyone else, that we may as well call it the "icycalm approach".

Depending on where I am, I pick some well-known landmark to ask directions for. It could be the train station, or whatever. So when I see a girl I like, I run up to her and stop her, and ask her with a big smile on my face "Hey excuse me, I am looking for the train station" or whatever. It doesn't really matter exactly how I stop her, which direction I run from, how exactly I get her attention, or any of that stuff. PUAs have written entire books on that stuff, and I am not saying those books are useless, but when you stop an old lady on the street to ask for directions, do you really need any of those books? Not really. Any kind of approach is acceptable if your intention is merely to ask for directions, and that's precisely what I am doing at this stage. With one caveat: the big mischievous grin in my face. This is the high-level technique that can really skyrocket your results if you can do it, and do it right: I look at the girl with a kind of look that says that I am making fun of her, that my request is bullshit. I mouth the words about "the train station" or whatever, as if I don't give a fuck about it and as if I am performing a prank on her instead; as if I am badly acting, and enjoying it. Now, you would think that girls would catch on to this and refuse to take me seriously and give me serious directions, but this has NEVER HAPPENED. Remember that these interactions happen in such a short time, that the other person has no time to think rationally about anything, and merely responds on instinct. If you ask for the time, they will give it to you, if you ask for a landmark that they know, they'll point their fingers and give you some directions. Only a very tiny minority of people will not react this way, and you want to steer clear of those anyway since they are rude and maladjusted to society, so by their rudeness they are doing you a favor. The vast majority will comply with whatever polite request you have of them, and though they will note the weird funny expression on my face, they will not under any circumstances comment on it within the few seconds that this whole business takes. So as she's describing to me the location I asked for and pointing towards it with her finger, I make sure to ignore everything she says and wherever she's pointing to and instead stare into her eyes while grinning so widely as to be almost on the point of laughing. And then, once she's finished with her directions, or even before she's finished if she's taking too long, I interrupt her by saying, again with a shit-eating grin on my face "Actually, I know where the train station is, I just wanted to stop you and say hi because you look nice today".

Now, you will be wondering why I didn't just say that from the beginning, but that's because you are inexperienced with these things and don't understand how much harder and demanding that would be. The experienced PUAs, meanwhile, will understand the genius of this approach, since it combines the super-easy zero-approach-anxiety of an indirect approach, with the unmatched boldness and efficiency of the direct approach while circumventing the entire drawn-out awkward phase where the indirect PUA is spending hours and days trying to find a "natural" way to transition to direct without seeming like a weakling. Stopping people in the street to ask for directions is the easiest thing in the world, and there's no anxiety involved with it at all unless you're pathologically anxious (in which case you shouldn't be practicing PUA, but solving the anxiety with the help of certified medical professionals). This means that even a complete beginner can start using this approach from day 1. Of course, he will fail in the entire prank-like attitude that skyrockets the results, but he can at least perform the FIRST PART of the approach, so he's already on the path to success with zero possibility of failure.

What do I mean by that? I mean that if EVERY daygame approach you perform begins with a harmless request for directions, then there's no reason for you to AVOID opening, and hence every ATTEMPT at an opening will be successful! The rest may fail, but at least the OPENING is something that can succeed every time! And in fact, if you take this approach a bit further, even the REST can succeed every time. What you can do, as a beginner, if you balk at the idea of switching to direct as I do and hitting hard on the girl, is simply skip that step. Ask for your directions, hear her out, and then thank the girl and walk away from her. Even I do this from time to time, when, on closer inspection, I decide I don't really much like the girl after all. Daytime approaches often begin from considerable distances, and it's quite a common occurrence to spot a girl from a distance that looks like she MIGHT be attractive, but on closer inspection ends up being old, for example, or even ugly, or just not my type for whatever reason. In those cases, the icycalm approach gives me a few seconds' face-to-face time, while she's giving me the directions, to decide if I am into her or not, and either press on with the rest of the approach, or bail.

What the icycalm approach essentially does is DELAY the hard DIRECT opener for a few seconds so that you're not COMMITTING to it before you've even started running towards the girl, and before you've even properly seen her. This simultaneously accomplishes all of the following:

1. It KILLS approach anxiety, as you're just spending almost your WHOLE daygame time asking for bullshit directions, not professing your undying love to strangers or whatever in the middle of the street, which is awkward and weird and ridiculous as fuck. There's simply nothing holding you back from asking a hundred girls a day for the exact same bullshit directions, and those are a hundred new girls that you will meet every day that you never knew before.

2. It gets the girl AUTOMATICALLY responding to you immediately, thus getting her in a social mood which is very conducive to whatever may come next. That's not the same with the direct approaches where a good percentage of the girls are instantly weirded out and won't even respond or even stop for you. With the icycalm approach you can basically say goodbye to the super-awkward interactions where the girl just ignores you and keeps walking. And if one out of a HUNDRED girls does this, SHE'S the weirdo because only weirdos react to people in the street like that, and moreover it doesn't feel like you've been REJECTED because YOU HAVEN'T MADE A MOVE YET, all you've done is try to ask for directions! So say goodbye to the cratering feeling of being a weirdo loser every time your opening fails to get off the ground, which happens a lot especially to beginners and intermediates.

3. It throws in the trash the entire "cold-reading" dimension that the PUAs think is so essential, and which PREVENTS beginners and intermediates especially from opening because they have trouble figuring "what to say". Now you know EXACTLY what to say without Krauser's retarded diagrams about "greyhounds" and "giraffes" or whatever, and moreover it can be the EXACT same thing every day all day, so you can get really good at it. And since you have it hard-wired in your brain, it means you can respond to tiny windows of opportunity in the street, and miss no chances. Hot girl is about to duck into store and you JUST saw her two seconds before she does it? You can STILL stop her in those two seconds and blurt out about the train station or whatever with a huge grin in your face. There's no need for strategizing or second-guessing or doubting yourself and the situation: just ask the damn question, and if you don't like how it goes say thank you and head for "the station"! Which brings us to,

4. It MASSIVELY increases efficiency, which is what world-class game is all about. Once you have mastered all the lower levels of game, the final frontier is efficiency, aka "the numbers game" (which I will explain in depth elsewhere). And there's no more efficient way to "turn over stones" until you hit the jackpot than the icycalm approach. It is the ultimate low-key low-investment spam approach that can be used in a busy popular street to get close to thousands of hot girls in the space of a mere few days/weeks, and see wtf is up with them. If you are a rank beginner who's terrified of showing his intentions, you don't even have to try and transition to direct at all: merely asking hundreds of girls for directions will sooner or later cause a few of them to ask a question about YOU, which is what indirect PUAs call the "hook point" in the interaction. As long as you are decently-looking and not a complete disgusting loser, SOME girl or other will take an interest in you sooner or later, and ask you a question before you walk off with your directions. At that point, it is SHE who is hitting on YOU lol, so it should be easier for you to handle even if you're a complete and total weakling. You'll still fuck it up, probably, but at least you'll get some experience, and then a few hundred low-effort approaches later some OTHER girl will take an interest in you etc., and you might get somewhere this way. So regardless of whether you are a complete fearful beginner or a world-class PUA, this approach scales perfectly for everyone and delivers the ultimate results.

The key points you should be aiming for, which will skyrocket your results and make the whole thing extremely pleasant to boot, are:

-The exaggerated humoristic attitude you should maintain throughout, and especially at the start. The ideal attitude is: "I KINDA like the look of this girl, and this prank-like stop is hilarious, and I will have as much fun as I want with it before walking off and doing it again", and

-The super-fast switch to direct which is what makes this—normally extremely difficulty switch—extremely easy and playful: if you DELAY it, you've FUCKED IT UP, and probably won't manage to recover from the screw-up, not to mention that the light-hearted fun aspect will vanish, and it will bring down your whole daygame session.

It goes without saying that AFTER you've transitioned to direct, the rest of the interaction is a normal daygame interaction that follows the normal daygame guidelines you should have already learned from PUAs like GLL and Yad (the best in the field). I am not teaching you daygame in full here, I am merely teaching you the APPROACH, the OPENING, in a novel hybrid way that combines the advantages of both direct and indirect, while steering clear of their disadvantages.

So keep it fun and funny, and keep it quick, and you can burn through thousands of girls super-fast so as to find your unicorn, whatever that might be. In my case, it is hot introverted inexperienced white Western teenagers, which are a minority of a minority of a minority today. They are so few they almost don't exist, and that's why it's paramount that I burn through countless approaches to find them, and that's why I need a super-easy super-efficient approach to find them, and so far I have not found any remotely better approach for it than the icycalm approach. A couple of days of doing it full-time in practically any location in the Western world, and I will have some strong leads, and if I do it for a week or two in specific talent-rich locations, I can get my hot introverted white Western teenager, no problem, to do with her whatever I wish.

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icycalm
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Re: Game Hack #8: The Indirect-direct Approach (icycalm approach)

Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:14 am

So it turns out Tom has a video on a more advanced version of this. He calls it "situational indirect-direct":

Indirect Direct Daygame
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5c7RyhHOr0

Most of the video is introduction, plus some bs about "open relationships". The good part comes at the end. He nails it when he says that you're going indirect with your words but direct with your attitude.

I've done what he's talking about, but very rarely. That's what "situational" means: the circumstances must favor it, you can't just pop these out on demand, which is why they are less efficient than simply spamming direct or my garden variety indirect-direct approaches.

Is it possible to get good at these situational approaches and use them exclusively?

I suppose it is... The skill is closely related to improvisational comedy, so if you're good at that, or can get good at it, you're halfway there. And there is the added advantage that you can almost entirely avoid rejection this way. You're just going around town, cracking jokes at every girl you find attractive, and just hanging out with whichever ones seem receptive, then taking it from there. You aren't getting rejected because you aren't delivering compliments or asking for numbers. If she doesn't appear receptive after the joke, you just bail. So if your ego needs the protection, it can be a good approach, but I think the kind of person whose ego needs that much protection will probably never get good at making these approaches in the first place. But who knows, outliers exist, and you may be one of them.

Note that none of this is needed to get laid or get a girlfriend. The "girls love comedy" idea is overblown: girls are morons, and thus struggle to appreciate comedy. They can't produce good comedy, and they can't grasp good comedy. The comedy they can grasp and appreciate the most is rather crude. So this approach is certainly overkill for the vast majority of girls, and if you get REALLY good at it it's overkill for ALL of them (as in, they won't deserve your awesome wit).

At any rate, it's certainly good to be aware of this ultimate form of approach, and practice it from time to time. It's fun, it's different to bog-standard daygame, and it does work well if you can do it well.

I am saving this video, and all other videos of him I will be linking, and I'll be uploading them to my server if these new channels hosting him go down. Just ping me in a thread if the videos disappear, and I'll upload them and link them.

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Re: Game Hack #8: The Indirect-direct Approach (icycalm approach)

Tue Jan 11, 2022 4:37 am

icycalm wrote:
Tue Jan 11, 2022 2:14 am
Note that none of this is needed to get laid or get a girlfriend. The "girls love comedy" idea is overblown: girls are morons, and thus struggle to appreciate comedy. They can't produce good comedy, and they can't grasp good comedy. The comedy they can grasp and appreciate the most is rather crude. So this approach is certainly overkill for the vast majority of girls, and if you get REALLY good at it it's overkill for ALL of them (as in, they won't deserve your awesome wit).

Reminds me of what Norm MacDonald said about women and humour:
Women are attracted to funny men, it is often said. This is not true. It only appears this way because women laugh at everything a very handsome man says. So this gives the very handsome men the idea that they are funny.

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Re: Game Hack #8: The Indirect-direct Approach (icycalm approach)

Thu Sep 08, 2022 7:35 pm

I just got another idea for indirect-direct approaches, and it might be genius. Haven’t tried it yet but hear me out.

You stand in the street with a clipboard with an IQ test. And you stop hot chicks and you administer it to them. You say it’s a study for whatever prestigious university exists in the city you’re in. If you’re cheeky you can go to Sweden and if you have say an American accent you can say you are from Stanford or some shit.

This accomplishes several extremely important things simultaneously with zero effort from you.

1. It’s no longer a direct approach, so you don’t have to psych yourself up to approach. It’s as simple and stress-free as asking for the time.

2. No ego hit if you strike out since she’d be rejecting the IQ test and not you.

3. Instant neg with no effort. Asking people to take a test to see if they aren’t dumb is one of the biggest negs ever. Remember a neg isn’t supposed to be a direct insult, it’s supposed to be subtle and underhanded, and the IQ test is precisely that.

4. Especially if she accepts the test, you immediately establish a power relationship with her that’s strongly in your favor. You’re almost like her professor at that point, since who else is testing her hard like that?

5. Being sent from a prestigious university to run intelligence tests on people is an instant massive DHV (demonstration of higher value). They wouldn’t send a dumb person to run intelligence tests. You’re saying you’re smart and edumacated without having to say it, which is how it should be done.

6. Especially if your IQ is high, you’re almost certainly smarter than her, which should give you an ego boost that remains throughout the interaction. She might be hot shit at some club, but while she’s filling out those boxes she’s in your turf, and for the most part you will both know it.

7. And finally, the most important thing for me is that... I get to find out her IQ, so I can decide if she’s mother material. This is what the PUAs call “qualification”, i.e. checking to see if she qualifies to be you girl by your criteria, which girls find massively attractive because they like men with standards. Typically PUAs lack standards so they have to manufacture fake standards for the girl to fulfill, and then they pretend that she passed their tests. Well, with this approach you don’t have to pretend because you’re administering an actual test, and it’s even probably the most important one that a female can pass for the purposes of motherhood.

Of course, you’re smiling and subtly flirting through the entire interaction. The situation is funny on its own, after all. The expectation is that the whole interaction will be pleasant, especially if she achieves a good score, and that’s when you ask her out with standard PUA technique (nothing too elaborate, you pull out your phone and ask for her number as you “like smart chicks”).

That said, you will meet dumbasses who think that IQ is a hoax, or you will end up getting tangled into politics and racial discussions etc. All this is unavoidable, but it’s also another great filter through which to discard annoying bitches and morons. The girls who happily take the test and do well at it without giving you shit about politics etc. and accept your flirting and your invitation to go out will be terrific prospects, both sexually and above all for getting preggers.

I don’t know but it seems foolproof to me. But who knows, maybe it will feel weird in the street, so it must be tried. Don’t expect to IMPROVE your “success” RATE with this, only your QUALITY level, plus it will as aforesaid take all the stress of the direct approach and the rejections out of the equation. Instead of all that, you will have some unpleasant conversations with some stupid leftist bitches, which will be annoying, but won’t hurt your ego because you won’t be hitting on them (you might be hitting them though, perhaps with that clipboard on the head, so watch out for that).

I will report results after I try it. It takes some preparation because I don’t have a clipboard, nor a stack of printed IQ tests.

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