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Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 23, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I went out with some male friends last night, hit up several (PRICEY!) bars in our downtown area.

Saw some small groups of ladies out. A few times I watched a random guy approach and engage in conversation, but they usually disengaged and left after a couple minutes, with no apparent exchange of numbers or anything. So not an obvious or dramatic rejection, but not a success either.

Question: Is "buy those ladies a drink" even a viable tactic anymore?

And if drinks are super fucking expensive ($14+ for a cocktail these days, so buying 3 would run you $50) how could you possibly justify the cost unless you had a legitimately decent odds of success?

I suppose "viable" is subjective, but I'd say it's quite relatively inefficient. Hence why it's been years since I've stopped regularly going out to do nightlife approaches.

One night stands with a ballpark "looks match" (much less looks match+) are rare, even if you're an attractive guy who knows what you're doing.

Suppose we set aside the consideration of buying chicks drinks. You're still sacrificing time, money, and energy to go out to a bar/lounge/club to court-jester and monkey-dance for girls and their friends. And even if you obtain a number after said court-jestering/monkey-dancing, there is no guarantee she'll reply to your text afterward, much less a guarantee she'll agree to and show-up to a date.

Buying chicks and (much less) their friends drinks only makes the deal worse. Pray they do not alter the deal further. It's a form of merriment for girls to see how much time, money, energy, they can squeeze out of guys. "Oh teehee thanks for the drink, but my friends look like they need one too..."

Nowadays, the attractive girls you'll meet in nightlife venues (or anywhere, even on the street, grocery stores, malls, etc.) are also thotting around on online dating sites and Instagram. Might as well just save your time, money, energy sending messages instead of lumbering around a nightlife venue. Especially if your online presence can better leverage female mate-choice copying.

Thats been my assumption, any girl out doing nightlife stuff has a guaranteed 12+ guys in her phone via dating apps and thus maximum optionality.

If you are male model quality or can flash ridiculous levels of wealth you have an in.

Otherwise, you exist in her life only for the exact amount of time her attention is on you.

You can extend that time a few minutes by buying a drink or whatever, but I suspect there's no magic set of words you can utter in that time that will change anything about her opinion of you she formed in the first 10 seconds.

And of course buying drinks CAN signal you're a mark which the more predatory types of women would simply milk as long as possible.

I am amazed how we've seemingly let the behavior or the "bottom" 20% of social actors poison every single interaction the rest of us have.

any girl out doing nightlife stuff has a guaranteed 12+ guys in her phone via dating apps and thus maximum optionality.

Probably but you have to consider the following:

  • Half of the guys she matches with won't ever message her
  • Half of those who do will open with something like "You have a really nice face but it would look much better smashed up against mine".
  • Half of the ones who don't are incapable of texting anything other than "Hey" or "How's your weekend going?"
  • Half of the ones who are capable of texting aren't capable of maintaining a conversation in real life
  • Half of the ones who actually can maintain a conversation can only do so for about an hour before changing the subject to all the nasty things they want to do to them
  • The remaining 1% or so of men, knowing they're in rarefied air, think they're God's gift to women and act like it.

At least this is the impression that I get based on conversations with attractive women I know who have tried it. And that doesn't even include guys who will text for weeks without asking the girl out. So if you meet someone in a bar you can at least speed run to the final step without being burdened by the inherent douchiness that affects guys who are too successful on dating apps.