But before we start delving into the intricacies of high-level game—or endgame, as I call it—I'd like to present a chapter on the ultimate game hack: a way to game—and game well—without having to learn game. The way to do this is to simply move to a hostel. Not visit a hostel. Not drop by a hostel to check it out, and perhaps stay there for a few days or weeks. But MOVE there, for good. Permanently. For years.
In all the dozens of PUA books and thousands of PUA blog and forum posts I've read over the last decade, I have NEVER seen hostels spoken highly of in the context of game, or any context really in the PUAsphere. Generally, they're not discussed at all, and when the subject does crop up the PUAs dismiss hostels as crappy places to be and hostel girls as "dirty backpackers".
And there is a little truth in this customary low PUA view of hostels. They CAN be uncomfortable places to be for any length of time, especially if you can't afford a private room. And SOME of the girls who frequent them ARE low-budget backpackers, but I wouldn't call them "dirty" in any way. There are perfectly functional showers in all hostels, and girls use them to great effect. I would not say that the standard of female hygiene in hostels is lower than in the street. And hostels do trend younger, so if you are in the right hostel at the right time you could be surrounded by prim young girls as far as the eye can see, and what could possibly be cleaner than that?
The truth is that hostels don't appeal to PUAs because they aren't ideal places for cold approaches. You CAN cold approach in hostels, and I'll explain elsewhere the optimal way, but the street is way more optimal, so it's kind of a waste of time for an intermediate or above PUA to spend any time in hostels.
The problem, however, is that most people will never become intermediate PUAs. Most of them will never even become beginners, because the discipline is simply too tough for most people. So what are those people to do? They can keep trying their social circles, or go online, but both those avenues are suboptimal: social circles give very few options (for most people, usually just 1 "option" that they have to take or die alone), and online gives the dregs of society, spoiling females rotten and punishing male self-esteem to an utterly unreasonable extent. Which is where my hostel hack comes in as a way to unlock PUA abundance for anyone, without them having to put in any extra work beyond packing a bag and... moving to a hostel.
Because what it comes down to in sexual relations is access to the opposite sex. If you end up in a harem, and you're the only male there, you WILL get laid no matter what you're like. So the more females there are in your life, the more sexual options you will have. Socialization therefore IS the ultimate game, and cold approach is nothing but a socialization hack: being able to socialize with total strangers from 0 to 100 in 10 seconds flat. It's an amazing skill, and I love how Krauser labels it as a kind of superpower of being able to "create something out of nothing" just by sheer will. It's perfectly suited to my character too of not particularly enjoying socializing, but not because I am not good at it, but simply because I find it boring. Occasionally though I DO enjoy socializing, and being able to ram my personality down random attractive women's throats in the street just by sheer willpower whenever I feel like it is a dream come true for me, and a hell of a drug.
But, again, most people aren't like that. Most people are slow, and thus they live slowly, whereas there's no faster and harder socialization method than cold street approach. Pick-up therefore isn't for them, but they can still place themselves in more social environments, thus giving themselves more social—and therefore sexual—opportunities. The typical advice that PUAs give here is to go to the gym and talk to people, join classes of all kinds like language classes, hiking groups, even dancing and yoga or whatever—but this advice is bad, in my estimation, or at best suboptimal. Because if the person had an interest in these activities, he would be doing them already, and if he gets into them just for the socialization, he won't be any good at them so won't enjoy them, and hence won't last long. So what's the point? Even worse is that the ROI (return on investment) in these activities is miserable: there might be just ONE eligible female in an ENTIRE class you spend MONTHS taking. This is the opposite of abundance, and typically results in typical oneitis for an average girl at best. You're better off just hiring a hooker at that point, which gives you the sex without the months of timewasting only to end up pedestalizing a frumpy yoga 6.
What I advocate instead is simply... moving house. I advocate picking up your entire life, and TRANSPLANTING it INSIDE an environment of FEMALE ABUNDANCE. Remember, this book is called Endgame, it's about THE COOLEST, MOST EFFECTIVE AND EFFICIENT pick-up ideas ever. So I am not gonna tell you to join a yoga class like every other PUA ever. Fuck yoga, it's for women and faggots, I'd rather cut my penis off than join a yoga class JUST FOR THE FEMALES. With my solution, you don't have to change anything fundamental about your lifestyle. You know what you like to do, and how you prefer to live your life. You know the activities you enjoy. I am not telling you to change any of that. All that I am saying is... move house, and do the exact same things you did in your old house, but now you're doing them inside an environment that SERVES BRAND-NEW FEMALES STRAIGHT TO YOUR LIVING ROOM 24/7.
Because nothing else matters if you don't get exposure to females. I am very good-looking, but I've spent entire years of my life without a female because I've spent entire years of my life living alone and interacting with next to no one. So it didn't matter how good-looking I was sitting in my living room alone, playing videogames or reading or whatever, because there were no females there, and none were randomly knocking on my door to get in. If I had simply taken my laptop and moved to a hostel for all those years, I could have been playing my videogames and reading my books ALL THE WHILE meeting random females without any extra effort.
Because this is what the difference is between street approaches and a hostel. In the street, talking to strangers is WEIRD. In a hostel, NOT talking to strangers is weird. Do you grasp the difference? Hostels practically FORCE socialization on you. If you aren't very well socialized, hostels will socialize you one way or another. They are like school or college in this respect: it's very hard to go through them without acquiring at least a modicum of social skills! Sit in the common area for long enough, and someone will come up and ask you where you're from. This is the opposite of pick-up: instead of opening people, people open you. Forget about the awkwardness of the street encounters: they aren't for you, they're for fierce, headstrong individuals like me. And if you aren't fierce and energetic, at least be smart about it, and place yourself in the optimal environment to achieve your goals. And if your goal is females, the optimal environment to unlock female abundance is the hostel.
Of course, there are challenges and drawbacks, I mean not related to socialization but to logistics. If you currently live with family or own your home, moving to a hostel will cost more. Simple routine activities like cooking or washing clothes take more time and planning, and a little bit more money too, when living in a hostel. Relaxation is also at a premium since, no matter what part of the hostel you go to, you will never be entirely alone, or alone for long—unless you have booked a private room, which can be as expensive as a hotel, and quite a drag on your finances in the long-term.
But at the end of the day, do you want a girl or what, dude? If you want a girl, and you don't want to expend the effort and energy to find her in the street, this is the next best option, as far as I am concerned. Social circle would be the one after that, and online would be the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel option for me, ranking all of them above all according to FEMALE QUALITY you can expect to get. Social circle can net you fine girls, BUT VERY FEW OF THEM to the point where you often get maybe 1 or 2 options PER YEAR. So if you're particular about the kind of girl you want, social circle is an extremely inefficient crapshoot way to find them, and without necessarily costing less. Think of all the late nights out that social circle entails. Think of all the drinking and so on. Isn't it just easier to play some videogames in a hostel lounge while occasionally saying hi to attractive girls as they pass by? And no other venue can match the hostel for sheer numbers of girls, not even college, because college refreshes every year but the average hostel refreshes EVERY WEEK. A top hostel at a top tourist destination like St Christopher's Inn in Barcelona refreshes PRACTICALLY EVERY DAY, and you can live there for about 200 euros a week. And while that's not exactly cheap considering all you're getting is a bed, it's not too expensive either, considering you'll be living smack in the center of one of the coolest cities in the world, inside essentially a dormitory for some of the coolest young people alive. Hell, when you sell it like that it's practically a steal. And at the opposite end of the scale there are hostels in Eastern Europe that cost €50/week, which is basically free, and that's including all bills. If you can work remote, that might be a great financial move to make on top of being a terrific social and sexual decision.
So there are definitely challenges and drawbacks to moving to a hostel, but there are also many opportunities and benefits, and you just need to learn how to take advantage of the latter while managing and minimizing the former, as with anything in life. The potential for networking in hostels, for example, is immense, even beyond females. I have met and made friends with lots of guys while staying in hostels. The first hostel I went to was in Huntington Beach, Orange County, California, in the summer of 1996. I got into the room on checking in and my mattress was rolled up because, according to a Norwegian guy in the same room, it had bedbugs and they were changing it. I turned around then and there and left the hostel and got a hotel room, and spent the rest of my holiday in hotels—but I became friendly with the Norwegian guy, and we went surfing and skating and hanging out together just from that 10-minute interaction in the room! If the bedbugs hadn't freaked me out, and I had stayed in the hostel my entire 6-week stay, imagine how many more guys, and girls, I could have met and hanged out with! I am not regretting anything, mind you, that was my first summer learning surfing, and surfing is very difficult to learn, to the point where after a full day in the water I just wanted to eat and pass out in front of the TV. So I probably wouldn't have had much time left for socialization even if I had had the opportunity. But I am just sayin': 10 minutes in a hostel, and I made a friend, versus 6 weeks in hotels afterwards, and meeting no one. So if your top priority is socialization—which it SHOULD be if you're after female companionship in your life, because females' ENTIRE LIVES revolve around socialization—then there's no better place for you to be in than a hostel, aside from a college dorm. But there is only a narrow period of life when you can be in a college dorm, whereas you can spend half your life in a hostel, if you want. And in fact, if you're one of the unlucky who never experienced life in a college dorm, moving to a hostel will give you a good taste of what that life is like, on steroids (because in hostels no one has lectures or exams, and every day is like the first day of college, year-round).
Now, hostels aren't created equal, just like anything else, and they range from tiny makeshift operations set up in people's homes to massive corporate complexes with included bars, pools and restaurants where people party 24/7. Which ones are better for our purpose? Above all, you want a hostel with a pleasant common area where people like to spend time and socialize. If you don't have that, it doesn't matter how nice the hostel is, because it'll be harder to meet people there. BUNK Utrecht—a converted church next to a river in the center of the Netherlands' largest college town—is the nicest hostel I've ever stayed at (also the most expensive, it costs as much as some hotels), but it has no common area aside from a restaurant that functions like a normal restaurant, so in the month or so that recoil and I stayed there in the autumn of 2019, we didn't meet anyone. We weren't TRYING to meet anyone, mind you, and we were busy with stuff all day. We COULD have met people if we'd tried to; but this is what I am getting at: in a normal hostel with a normal common area, you don't have to TRY to meet anyone. You meet people by default, whether you like it or not. For example, in Stockholm's Hostel Dalagatan, where I stayed for about 6 weeks in the summer of 2018, I met dozens of people because it has a small common room that doubles as a kitchen, and everyone needs to spend part of the day there even if only so as to have breakfast. The lobby is right there as well, so everyone checking in HAS to loiter in the common area for a while, so it's very easy and natural to chat people up. I can tell you many tales about those 6 weeks at that hostel: I had more adventures IN the hostel than OUTSIDE of it, because I spent most of my time inside working or working out. It wasn't a particularly fancy hostel either, nothing like the luxury of BUNK. But it was smaller and more cosy, so the social factor intrinsic to hostels was amplified through the roof.
That is what you want. And you might not find it in the first hostel you book, so book only for a couple of days, and hop around hostels until you find one that has the setup and vibe we're looking for. You don't want the 24/7-party hostels either, because then you'll find yourself competing for attention with horny, loud teenagers, and it can get annoying and even demoralizing, if you struggle to compete. The whole point of moving to a hostel is so that you WON'T have to compete, so avoid the super-competitive places. You don't want the forlorn place on top of a rock in the middle of nowhere in Greenland or some shit either. Yes, it looks good in pictures in that airline magazine you read on the flight in, but it has practically no traffic, and the only people you will meet there are middle-aged couples or older lone travelers who are alone for a reason (they don't like people, and people don't like them). The ideal is a reasonably lively place in a mid-to-large-size town in your preferred country. The hostel itself must be reasonably large, because that way you get to choose from a larger pool of people. The best hostel in the world I have stayed at for our purposes is the aforementioned St Christopher's Inn in Barcelona. Both the hostel, and the city, are the ideal for meeting females, and making friends in general. Barcelona is probably the best city in Europe for socializing year-round due to its mild weather and festive character, and this particular hostel features several extremely pleasant common areas so that you can cycle between them on a daily basis both as a means to meet more people, and avoid getting bored by sitting in the same spot all day. The on-site bar and restaurant are great places too, and at least last time I was there the eggs and pancakes were great for breakfast, and their burgers were superb choices for lunch and/or dinner (it's been years though, so don't hold me to it if you go there now and the chef has changed).
Second on your list of priorities after socialization should be comfort. If you're to live there for a while, it must be a reasonably comfortable place. One of the reasons BUNK is so great is because the beds are inside large cubicles that feel almost like you have your own room. You can do whatever you want in there without anyone knowing, including sleep with people. In St Christopher's, on the other hand, all you get separating you from other people is a curtain, and in most hostels you don't even get a curtain, as is the case in Stockholm's Dalagatan. Ultimately, all setups are survivable, for lack of a better word, and people can get used to just about anything if they have to. It's all about priorities in the end. If I had to choose between a month of sound sleeping in BUNK, but meeting no one, and a month in Dalagatan without even a curtain between beds, but getting with say a tiny Austrian blonde 8 that I met there—among many eligible females I met—I know what I am choosing. Of course, most of these hostels also offer private rooms, so if you can snag one of them, you're golden—though that too comes with drawbacks, because you often meet people INSIDE your room in hostels, so a private room will close off that avenue to you...
Then there is the middle option. Yes, there is a middle option. You don't absolutely HAVE to move to a hostel to take advantage of some of the benefits they offer. You can also move for example NEXT to a hostel. So, according to this scheme, you rent a normal apartment in a hostel's vicinity, and you spend part of your day there meeting people. However, many hostels don't allow in non-guests. St Christopher's is one of the better ones in this regard, because they allow you in downstairs—where the large common room is, because it connects to the restaurant, which is open to outsiders—but not to the cosier upstairs common room. So this could be an option for people who absolutely don't want to live in a hostel, but who want to hang out in one. It can be done if you find the right hostel, and the right place to rent nearby. But in my experience, if you take this route, you won't be spending much time in the hostel. You will SAY that you will, but when you sit down to sum up the hours per week you spend there, it'll be little better than the hours an average person spends weekly in a bar: 5-6 hours in total at best. Maybe 10 if you're trying really hard. Whereas if you LIVED there, as I advise you to do, you'd be spending almost every waking moment in there, and every sleeping moment. And that MATTERS, because believe it or not, in a hostel you can meet people PRACTICALLY IN YOUR SLEEP. I've been woken up by hot girls moving into my room in the morning. I've met hot girls in the middle of the night on my way to the bathroom for a piss. I've spent sleepless night hours in an empty common room diddling on my computer, only for a hot girl to walk in out of nowhere and start a chat with me. None of that stuff will happen to you if you don't live on-site, and it's not even about these lost opportunities themselves, it is about the state of constant "warm-up", of hypersocialization that they induce in you, which is lost when you move out. Because when you arrive at the hostel from your nearby apartment to settle down and socialize for the evening, you aren't warmed up, like everyone else is from constantly living with strangers, and you feel like an outsider. You feel like an impostor trying to pretend to be something that you're not, and weaseling your way into these people's lives. If you're fierce and headstrong like me, you can push through these awkward feelings and get the job done, but if you were like that you'd be approaching in the street, and we wouldn't be talking about hostels now. So for the kind of person who NEEDS the hostel to attain a rich social life at all, you REALLY should be living there if your priority is to get the job done, and get this aspect of your life handled. But still, this halfway option can be useful for people in a halfway position between me and complete pickup beginner. If you have for example a demanding job that doesn't allow you much free time, and to sustain which requires a lot of relaxation that just can't be attained in a hostel, you could do worse than spend a couple evenings per week chilling in a nearby hostel. It will be slow going compared to my full-immersion technique, but it can still get results if you're persistent. So though this wouldn't be my option, it's certainly an option for people in the right circumstances for it.
So okay, you're in the hostel now, all checked in, and your bags are in the room. Now what?
First off, you HAVE to say hi to everyone you meet INSIDE YOUR ROOM. Not talking to people in a hostel is considered awkward, but not talking to them IN YOUR ROOM is considered RUDE. These are people next to whom you will be SLEEPING, so you can't just ignore them and pretend they aren't there. So try to be the outgoing, extrovert guy that takes control of the situation and say hi to everyone who comes in; but the beauty of this setup is that, even if you neglect to do this, most of them will do it to you! This is why I am saying that the hostel is a hypersocializing scene, and especially the hostel ROOM. Outside the room, people are glad to talk to people, but they certainly don't expect to talk to every person they encounter. Inside they room they expect it! So you see, the hostel room is the opposite of the street. In the street, you're a weirdo if you say hi to strangers; in a hostel room, you're a weirdo if you DON'T say hi to strangers. And half of these people will be females! This is why I say that hostels are the ultimate game hack: it literally delivers women nonstop straight to your bed! Or at any rate, right next to your bed, AND THEY ARE THE ONES WHO SAY HI TO YOU! The only thing more you could ask for is for them to take off your pants and start blowing you right then and there! But that, unfortunately, they won't do. So you have to chat them up a bit and take it from there.
So for the most extreme beginners and socially awkward people, my advice would be to STAY IN YOUR ROOM. Just lie in bed all day and read a book or something, all the while saying hi to everyone who comes in. You wouldn't believe how far you can go with this "technique". I once met a German headhunter in London this way. One weird thing I remember about him is that he had brought with him his duvet, and he was looking for a place to rent long-term, as he'd just got a job. When he got his place, I moved in with him for a few weeks, paying half his rent. We would spend many hours chatting about politics at night, and we had a lot to chat about as he was an avid Economist reader too. We enjoyed chatting so much, we hardly slept. He made some Greek jokes, I made some German ones, we had fun. Another time in Stockholm I met an American guy from New Jersey. His mother was Swedish, but she'd never gone back to Sweden after getting married at a young age, and when her son became an adult he traveled to Sweden to see his mother's native land. He was a massive dude, as wide as two people, and a little slow. He carried a bunch of those huge protein tubs that body-builders make shakes with. Back then I was just starting out with the PUA stuff, so we went out to bars a lot, and we played this game where I would spot an attractive girl and point her out to him then give him 200 SEK (about $20), and if I didn't open her, he kept the money. That's a terrific way to stumble into some awkward approaches until you overcome approach anxiety, and if you're rich and $20 is nothing to you, you can raise it to $200 or $2,000 or whatever. It just needs to be an amount that stings for you, to force you to do the approach. These are just two examples out of many I could give from people I met inside an actual hostel room. With most people you will meet, you won't be particularly compatible and won't say anything beyond the initial hi, but now and again you'll immediately click with someone and spend a lot of time together, and the same goes for females.
But of course you won't want to spend every day all day inside your room, so what do you do when you go outside?
Head to the common room and chill out. Listen to some music, read a book, dick around with your phone, tablet or laptop. Above all, look around, and look at all the people as they come in and go out. At the very least, when people smile or nod at you, smile or nod back.
At this point, if it were me, I would be neatly categorizing everyone and filing them away. You'll have your very young people, your eager first-time travelers; your middle-aged, experienced travelers; your energetic travelers, and your exhausted ones. You'll have people who seem open to meeting people, and people lost in their thoughts and concerns who seem closed off. You'll have the happy people, and the less happy ones (it's extremely rare to see a legit sad person in a hostel, which is one of their many advantages). In short you'll have all sorts of people, and once I've decided which is which, and which I am attracted to, I'll look for an opening to start something. Like for example, if I spot an attractive solo female, I might keep her on my radar until she leaves the room, and then perhaps "run into" her in the street and say something like "Oh I recognized you from the hostel", or whatever, and then carry on with the normal "So where are you from?", etc. Or if the girl I like is in a group, I might wait for her to peel off, and then tackle her somewhere. But all this is advanced stuff that beginners shouldn't be worrying about.
A beginner should just chat to anyone in the room, absolutely anyone, male or female, young or old. Often you don't even need an excuse to begin the chat, but if you want one, requesting info on the city as if you know nothing about it always works. Ask for restaurants, bars, gyms, things to do. Tell them a plan of yours to go somewhere and see or do something, and they will tell you their plans back. You can spend almost every moment of every waking hour in a hostel chatting to people like that, to the point of exhaustion even. I have had some chats in hostels last until the early hours of the morning, with sleepy people coming in and telling us we woke them up. So if you don't know what you're doing, just chat to everyone, and you'll slowly begin to see the chips fall on their own. You will see some people enjoying their time with you, and wanting to chat more, and you'll see other people making an excuse and taking their leave from you. Do this long enough (we're talking weeks and months, if you're a beginner), and you'll start to peg people before they've even opened their mouths, as I just described that I do myself. You'll start to figure out what people are about well before opening them, so you'll be picking your targets better instead of talking to everyone indiscriminately. It's a tremendous hypersocialization exercise from which you'll derive endless benefits in many aspects of your life over the long term, not just in dating. And there is no mystery to it, as the more time you spend with people, the better you get with people, as with anything else.
The strongest example of this that I can give was a guy from Laguna Beach, California I met in Hostel Dalagatan in Stockholm who told me that he suffered from extreme social anxiety and, if we'd met a few months earlier—before he'd begun his hostel trip around Europe—he wouldn't have been able to talk to me at all. And yet there he was talking to me, and I couldn't tell the difference between him and a normal person. I would never have known of his anxiety troubles if he'd never told me about them. But he did tell me about them, including such extreme situations as his being on his school's track team and no one wanting to train with him because he was such a weirdo. People were pushing to get him off the team, because no one liked him: that's how crap his life was before he went on the trip. And there he was a few months later, in a hostel in Stockholm going off partying with a Spanish guy and some Italian girls we'd just met.
Hostels can be downright THERAPEUTIC for people with social issues, as this hyperanxious guy's triumphant example shows. Without drugs or complex methods, just by immersing yourself in a pleasant environment of naturally friendly travelers, you can achieve any social goals you want, from attaining basic social skills—if for whatever reason you lack them—to making lifelong friendships and even meeting a life partner (or several). I know I am beginning to sound like a communist, but it's all true, and it's astonishing to me that no PUA has ever said it. But PUAs themselves are undersocialized, so they struggle to grasp such things. Moreover, the hostel renders their books and techniques largely moot. No cold approach techniques are needed in a hostel, because all hostel approaches are "warm", as PUAs term them (meaning there is a social reason to approach and talk). And more than half of PUA pages and techniques are about cold approach.
So to stay with the hyperanxious guy from Laguna Beach for a moment, that guy was what I would categorize as a -1. In my cold approach methodology I categorize people from -1 to +2, for learning purposes. A 0 is a normal person with average dating experience and normal socialization skills, and he is ready to jump straight into cold approach with minimal instruction (mostly centered around combating approach anxiety). A -1 meanwhile is someone with severe social or psychological issues (or in some cases even aesthetic ones) who should therefore NOT attempt cold approach before he has got these issues handled, or at least managed. So all PUA methods are off-limits for him to start with, but he can still try the hostel! Because, as aforesaid, cold approach isn't needed in the hostel, so all that theory goes out the window there, and you basically don't need to learn anything beyond saying hi to people and chatting about random stuff.
Rejections are also super-soft to non-existent in hostels, almost as they are in social circles. You don't really hit on anyone in hostels, same as in your circles: you just tell people your plans, and they can tag along if they want. Occasionally others will also invite you out, so you just tag along, and voila: you're in a quasi-social circle environment. If a girl declines your invitation, she declines the activity, not your sexual advances, as she would have done in the street. So your ego is safe, and you don't have to deal with the massive wall of rejection in the street that cripples the weaker-willed and less self-confident.
And once you're doing all this regularly, and habitually, things will fall into place. No, Kate Upton won't materialize out of nowhere and fall in love with you, but after meeting and spending time with hundreds of people over the space of a few months, you will begin to gravitate towards people—both male and female—that are compatible with you, and they will begin to gravitate towards you. I am reminded of a little lone Polish girl I met ages ago (it was 2008) in a hostel in Florence. She moved into my room, in the bed below me, and we chatted a bit. I remember her getting out her paraphernalia to brew tea, inside the room. She talked about the changing gender norms, and how she preferred things the old-fashioned way, when men would go to work and women would stay home to raise children. I could tell she was attracted to me, but she was a 6 on a good day, and not my kind of a 6 either, so I didn't pursue her. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for me to ask her out to dinner or for a walk, but I never bothered, and she didn't have the balls to ask me out (funnily enough, I would probably have accepted, just out of boredom, and politeness; but after a couple drinks, I might have warmed to her, and something might have happened—so there's a lesson in here for you somewhere). I have not the slightest doubt that that girl would have gone out with practically anyone reading this, if they happened to be in the same hostel and the guy put some effort into chatting with her and asking her out. And there are girls like her flowing through every hostel in the world at all times of the day and night, year-round. All one has to do to snap them up is be there. And if you're after a Kate Upton-like, they are there too. They're all there, and everyone who spends the time and effort will end up with his female equivalent.
Long-term living in a hostel comes with its own set of issues, of course. The longest I've lived in a hostel was about 2.5 months in a hostel on the beach on Oahu's North Shore. That place was easy to live in for long periods because beach life is much easier than city life. You don't even need to wash clothes, as you're spending most of the day in board shorts and sandals with barely even a shirt on. I was also lucky enough to be in a room with just two beds, and for several weeks it was just me in there and a stoner surfer from California who was one of the nicest, coolest people I've ever met. He always had crazy stoner stories to tell, and I was proud to introduce him to girls as my friend, and then let him entertain all of us while I sat back and relaxed. He was also a light sleeper and you barely knew he was in the room, when he slept. We would drift to sleep while we chatted with the lights out as if we'd been best friends for years. I also got to know all the long-timers, and through them I would get to know many of the newcomers too, as we all sat on the various porches around the camp in the evenings, drinking and chatting about things. And of course I was surfing most days, and reading my books in bed, and going to the movies once or twice a week, and every now and then there was a party either in the hostel, or a nearby house, and through all my acquaintances I'd be invited too, and have a grand time. Sounds like a perfect existence, no? And it was. But there is something about long-term life in a hostel that can wear you down. It certainly started to wear me down, and I was glad, after two and a half months, when it was time to leave and start a new chapter of my life (in Seattle as a postgrad). I am talking about the constant stream of people passing through the hostel: the very reason I advise people to move there, to kickstart their social and sexual lives. It turns out that this is a double-edged sword, because it gives you a feeling of the whole world around you moving on, while you remain stationary. After a couple of months of this, there may not even be any long-timers left from when you first moved in, and you might be the oldest guest in the place. And that can feel a bit depressing. You get to realize how short-term all your friendships and connections have been, how ephemeral, to use the cool Greek word. It can feel as if you're not achieving anything.
But whether you're actually achieving anything or not, is up to you. Because the hostel can be the place where your social encounters start, but they aren't supposed to end there, at least not ultimately. I mean, it's not like you'll get married and raise children INSIDE A HOSTEL lmao. Not that it can't be done! I've met couples working in hostels long-term, and also living there. But generally, once you've made a strong connection with someone—whether male or female—you're supposed to take it OUT OF the hostel. I've been invited numerous times to visit guys I've met in hostels in their hometowns and countries, same with girls. And a couple of times I even took the offers. It's up to you at that point which of those connections you will follow—and for how long. The "problem" is that success here as everywhere makes people raise their standards and become more demanding, and you can always say to yourself that you'll spend another month in the hostel to meet a hotter girl to be your next girlfriend, or a cooler guy to be your next best buddy. And if you're only interested in experiences, you could potentially live like this forever. But if you want to build something—whether that is a family, or a social circle—you will eventually have to settle on some choices, and settle down to build them up. And that means moving out of the hostel at some point, and for good.
What will most likely end up happening is that you'll do one "tour of duty" in a hostel, for as long as your body can handle it—which in my case, as you can tell from my stories, is about 6 to 12 weeks; and then you'll find yourself needing a break from that crazy hypersocialized environment, and you'll head home for a break for a few months. And then a year or so later, you'll do a second tour of duty, and a third and so on, until you've achieved your goals, whatever they might be; and keep in mind that those goals will evolve along with you, so it's hard to say where the journey will lead you, which is part of why, to me, it's so exciting and fun. But to others it may be scary, so your mileage, as with all things, may vary. I am NOT saying that this method is perfect for everyone. No method is. But if it is for you, you will know it, and if you're anything like me, you will adore it and won't be able to imagine your life without the sheer level of variety, excitement and fun it brings.
But why haven't I lived in a hostel for the many months and years that I advise people to do here? I haven't needed to. I am very good at cold approach, remember, and I meet more girls that way. This hostel method is for people who don't plan to ever get good at cold approach—and good means big numbers, lots of approaches; if you can only force yourself to run 6 approaches per day, you aren't good at it, you suck at it and unless you get real lucky it won't get you far. I know people who can push themselves to make 5-10 approaches per day, but then need to take a week afterwards to rest and recuperate from it. These people are beginners and there's no path to intermediate level for them, because they hate what they do. You have to love what you do in order to get any good at it, you have to ENJOY it ultimately. It's understandable to be stressed and anxious at first, but if these depressive feelings aren't accompanied by the elation of success—even small successes, at first, like having a pleasant chat with a girl even if it doesn't end up in the bedroom—and ultimately transformed into excitement, you'll never get any good at the activity, so you may as well stop it and look for another way forward. And I believe my hostel method can be the way forward for many of those people.
And it can also be a way to transition to cold approach, for those inclined to, far more gradually and smoothly than by blundering straight into it the way PUAs normally teach it. Step 1: Stay in your room and let people who come in automatically greet you, so that THEY are opening YOU. Step 2: Step outside the room and start greeting people in the common room and hallways, people who EXPECT to be greeted, and who automatically reply warmly to your greeting. Step 3: Step OUTSIDE the hostel, in the street RIGHT IN FRONT OF IT. Everyone going in and out will be travelers and they'll be open to being greeted by other travelers, so your approaches will still be well-accepted, even though they'll be a little more awkward, as you would expect when they're happening in the street. Step 4: Go ACROSS the street from the hostel. Many people there will still be hostel residents, but others won't be, and now you'll be opening random strangers, so now you're doing cold approach! Step 5: Go a block away from the hostel, and keep opening people. And that's it: You are a PUA now, at least a beginner PUA. Pat yourself on the back, because 99.99% of people will never get here, and it's a real accomplishment. Even if you never get any further, it's still something to be proud of, and a hell of an experience.
But you don't have to go this far if you don't want to. Just stay in the hostel and be social, if that's more comfortable to you, and have fun meeting and getting to know people. Do this long enough, and everything else will follow, you'll see.