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Comment by thedevil | Hacker News Reader

In my early 20s, I used to meet girls at a country swing dancing place. I was really nerdy and this gave me a chance to practice interacting with women and I got quite a few dates off of it.

Some of my fellow nerds tried to do the same thing but they made this big mistake: they'd think just because the girl danced with them, they could try for a phone number. It would make the girls really uncomfortable. Other people would see that, and it made it harder to get another girl to dance with.

I took a different strategy: I danced with any girl, made them smile (I was good at dancing with beginners and I recycled the same few jokes over and over), and then move on. Sometimes the girl would show interest and that's when I'd go for a phone number.

And if the girl wasn't interested (vast majority of the time), they'd still tell their friends how fun I am, or other people would see the whole interaction and I'd quickly feel like a rockstar.

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That's a good observation. A lot of guys ask how to meet women (well everyone asks how to meet everyone). The key is to engage in social activities where you expand your social circle.

Here's the thing - most activities that expand your social circle are not actually focused on finding a date, because most people are paired up and.or otherwise aren't looking for a date. As a result, you need to engage sincerely in the activity itself, and not try to romanticize (which is the mildest form of what you shouldn't do) every encounter.

Ballroom dancing, tennis leagues (such as mixed doubles), and other activities that mix men and women are good choices. But yes, in most of these cases, the people involved not only won't be looking for a date, and it's extremely important not to treat them as events where people are looking for a date. They aren't, and people involved in them may in fact resent the implication that this is the primary purpose for their participation.

Ironically, that's why they work so well for expanding your social circle. If they were about dating, 90% of the people involved in them wouldn't be involved, and the network effect would collapse.

Also - once people know and like you, of course they don't mind that you are single and would are interested in meeting single people in the same spot. There is a time honored tradition of introducing people to each other under exactly these circumstances.

This touches on what I consider to be a universal truth about human interaction. If you have a hidden agenda / ulterior motive (like getting a phone number in your example), other people will usually sense it as it comes across in body language and demeanour, and not just via speaking. People have a natural negative reaction to shiftiness.

If however you aren't looking to gain anything w/ the interaction other than enjoying the interaction itself, you will get a positive response nearly every time.

Sometimes people might be unresponsive due to a bad mood or general unhappiness, but who cares? You had no agenda, so you have nothing invested. If you let it roll off and move along you literally lose nothing.

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