aneeshm
Deity
I'd like people skilled in social interaction to critique my game:
I was attending a robotics-related event organised by the electronics department of my college. It was open to students from other colleges. A 5-set from a girls' engineering college was seated opposite us. All of them were between seven and nine on the scale.
I broke the three-second rule by around one and a half days (two-day workshop), because I couldn't work up the courage.
Note that all the canned openers are useless in this scenario, because of the different social norms prevalent here. I had to improvise, and use a situational.
I had it all planned out - walk by and ask over the shoulder if $ACTIVITY was going on (I knew it wasn't, so that I could stop there), continue that thread for a few seconds, and then ask to see their circuit board (I knew they had completed it correctly) to compare it against mine so I could check for correctness, thus prolonging the conversation (I'm quite decent at fluff talk) (comparing it would have been a long process, because there were a hell of a lot of connections), all the while injecting small demonstration of high social value spikes, sitting down for the sake of convenience (smoothly), putting a time constraint by saying that I had to return to my friends so that there was no fear of overcarry (which was true), and finally trying to close by finding out the name of the college they attended, and their year and branch. I had a target in mind, too, who I would try to isolate and get the number of if I did it well enough.
I went and opened the target directly, with an over-the shoulder question, facing in such a manner as to give the impression that I was going to walk away any minute, but without appearing restless (I can control my body language to a great extent) so as not to telegraph interest, with the intention of then implicitly playing the cat-and-string game by ignoring her after the opener, and focussing on the rest of the group instead. I did that. But my approach anxiety got the better of me - I simply FORGOT the self-canned material for the next stage. There was a pause of around a second, which started to become awkward, and as I realised that I was losing social value and that there was no way to regain it, because it would take too long to remember the next step, I ejected. Not very gracefully, I must admit, but at least I did it instead of standing there like an idiot.
Also, I found that I could easily get everyone's interest. In fact, the group opened up to me immediately. I had succeeded in building initial/hook interest, and breaking the initial barrier (it appears I shattered it to smoking smithereens, actually, from my post-field analysis). Even without any trying, the girls were qualifying themselves to me. In fact, they were looking expectantly to me to go to the next stage, and that was probably what did me in - the expectant eyes and faces all turned towards me, all waiting. Scrambled my brain.
Hell, they appeared positively disappointed that I didn't progress to the next stage, so it appears that I left with quite some social value intact.
This was the first time in my life, by the way, that I have tried anything like this. I have NEVER approached a set before in my entire life, much less one of such high value. So please keep that in mind before mocking me mercilessly.
I was attending a robotics-related event organised by the electronics department of my college. It was open to students from other colleges. A 5-set from a girls' engineering college was seated opposite us. All of them were between seven and nine on the scale.
I broke the three-second rule by around one and a half days (two-day workshop), because I couldn't work up the courage.
Note that all the canned openers are useless in this scenario, because of the different social norms prevalent here. I had to improvise, and use a situational.
I had it all planned out - walk by and ask over the shoulder if $ACTIVITY was going on (I knew it wasn't, so that I could stop there), continue that thread for a few seconds, and then ask to see their circuit board (I knew they had completed it correctly) to compare it against mine so I could check for correctness, thus prolonging the conversation (I'm quite decent at fluff talk) (comparing it would have been a long process, because there were a hell of a lot of connections), all the while injecting small demonstration of high social value spikes, sitting down for the sake of convenience (smoothly), putting a time constraint by saying that I had to return to my friends so that there was no fear of overcarry (which was true), and finally trying to close by finding out the name of the college they attended, and their year and branch. I had a target in mind, too, who I would try to isolate and get the number of if I did it well enough.
I went and opened the target directly, with an over-the shoulder question, facing in such a manner as to give the impression that I was going to walk away any minute, but without appearing restless (I can control my body language to a great extent) so as not to telegraph interest, with the intention of then implicitly playing the cat-and-string game by ignoring her after the opener, and focussing on the rest of the group instead. I did that. But my approach anxiety got the better of me - I simply FORGOT the self-canned material for the next stage. There was a pause of around a second, which started to become awkward, and as I realised that I was losing social value and that there was no way to regain it, because it would take too long to remember the next step, I ejected. Not very gracefully, I must admit, but at least I did it instead of standing there like an idiot.
Also, I found that I could easily get everyone's interest. In fact, the group opened up to me immediately. I had succeeded in building initial/hook interest, and breaking the initial barrier (it appears I shattered it to smoking smithereens, actually, from my post-field analysis). Even without any trying, the girls were qualifying themselves to me. In fact, they were looking expectantly to me to go to the next stage, and that was probably what did me in - the expectant eyes and faces all turned towards me, all waiting. Scrambled my brain.
Hell, they appeared positively disappointed that I didn't progress to the next stage, so it appears that I left with quite some social value intact.
This was the first time in my life, by the way, that I have tried anything like this. I have NEVER approached a set before in my entire life, much less one of such high value. So please keep that in mind before mocking me mercilessly.
Just learn to improvise, like you would in a conversation with anyone else you know. Since you seem to have no trouble getting her attention, that's really all you need.
excellent post, Till!
