Canary Beck is writing lots of Second Life related interesting stuff lately. Or maybe it is just that I’m following her blog now and seeing it now. Whichever, she has an article about how men can pick up women or at least how to approach them and improve their odds of success: How To Approach A Woman In Second Life.

Here’s an idea… by Canary Beck, on Flickr

There are mistakes guys make in Second Life that are not made in real life. Canary touches on most of those. She also has quite a collection of bad pickup lines to avoid using. Those alone make it worth a read. 

One of the dichotomies of pickup advice is the idea of honesty. Seems there is always advice given to men to be sincere, real, and honest when talking to a woman. Of course that is a great idea for all of us. But, we resist that because we have learned it doesn’t work as well we would like, for either sex.

There is the problem of what guys want, sex. I’m not saying this is the totality of what guys want nor is it their goal all the time. But, the desire for sex is often the primary motivator for approaching a woman. So much so women can reach the point they believe that is all guys ever want. So, being honest and just asking for sex while following the advice of being honest doesn’t work well. One suffers lots of rejection.

No woman, at least that I know, wants to be thought of as just an easy lay. So, we tend to resist a too direct an approach, unless we are out looking to get laid. Even then there are varying degrees of how direct an approach a woman will accept. As Rene Russo as Catherine Banning said in the Thomas Crown Affair, I hate being a foregone conclusion. To complicate things further, a woman changes. Mood and desire shift.

I assume a step in learning how to score with women is trying out the advice to be honest and that is why I often get a direct opening line like, want to have some fun? Or on occasional, wanna go f__k? I know that from time to time such lines work. Women get horny too. I suspect when a bluntly direct line does work it stunts the learning process and then some guys stay with an approach that worked once.

Canary does not touch on the basic difference between men and women when it comes to sex. There is a psychological and physical difference in our perception of sex. I think it important in understanding something about women.

Consider. While people will willingly pickup almost anything with their hands, we are very selective about what we will put in our mouth, at least once we are old enough to know not everything is food. A woman  has some measure of that same reservation about which men she allows to enter her.

There is also a difference in risk. Guys are not going to get pregnant. They can squirt and walk away. For a woman what was taken in fun can turn serious. Technology is reducing that problem in RL. So, our thinking is changing too. In SL pregnancy is completely controllable, no accidents. So, while it is less of an issue in SL, logging in doesn’t magically change a woman’s way of reacting.

There are social risks too. As modem as we are becoming, promiscuous women are still facing social challenges and negative stigma. So, we women evaluate the risk of sex differently because the risks are higher and often longer lasting for us.

Approaching a woman with a goal of getting her in bed is a matter of navigating all the mental, physical, social, and transient mood factors in such a way as to meet her considerations and mood. Walking up and directly asking for sex is honest. But, unless she is horny enough to only be interested only in sex, that likely won’t work. I suppose in Second Life there may be more women ready to easily spread as the risks are less. So, there is a better chance it will work in SL than RL. But, learning to negotiate and understand a woman’s risk evaluation process in SL is going to improve one’s odds of getting laid in SL and RL.

The ability to talk a newly met woman into having sex is no doubt a delicate art. There are those men, and women, that are good at it. I think it is their ability to read people and perceive their mood and nature. They are called players for a reason. In The L Word the character Shane McCutcheon is such a person. I’ve met RL people just as talented.

Reading people in RL is easier than reading them in SL. Our body language is severely limited in SL. To some extent High Fidelity will improve things by adding more body language. For now both sides of an exchange have to work harder in SL to communicate well enough to make a connection.