Biggest Text Game Mistakes Guys Make

These tactics are oriented towards text game, but honestly a lot of them are very good conversational tactics in general. This is focused on an intermediate-ish game crowd. I'm not going to waste time telling guys not to send 3 wall texts back-to-back.

1 Filling the Rapport Gap - the grand-daddy of them all. You go to say something, and in your gut you're thinking 'what if she takes it the wrong way?'. You re-read it. 'hmm, she could mis-interprete that'. So he adds a smiley. Or an lol the end. Or the infamous game grim-reaper 'j/k'. Or rather than say 'thats cool' he says 'I think that's cool'. or 'not gonna lie'. or 'if you want to'. or a million other bet-hedging actions that you say to take out an insurance policy against her taking it the wrong way. To ensure that rapport is preserved, bc in your mind rapport is YOUR burden to earn and keep, not hers.

Each one is a signal of the way she is 'supposed' to take what we said. We don't trust that of course she is going to adapt and make sure she reacts good even if she coulda reacted bad, just like if she'd make sure she laughed if her boss made a lame joke. Instead we give her a cue of how she is supposed to react. 'Hey, here comes the punchline, get ready for it' (because Im scared you might not laugh). He steers her reaction to where he wants it, because there is a place he wants her reaction to be because he has a goal. If he didnt have a goal, he wouldnt care how she reacted and wouldnt give her cues. He would just let it 'hit' and dare her to adapt around him.  

2 Emojis - Not using emojis will up your text game big time, instantly. I dont care how much you think you need an emoji... you almost always don't. The only exception is when the emoji is your ONLY response (ie its just a flame or an upside down smiley). Nearly every other time, its too rapport-seeking. Trying too hard to make sure she 'gets you', that she knows exactly how you are feeling. Removes all the doubt and mystery. Some guys honestly think she is going to see that emoji and 'feel something'. 'I sent her the rosey-cheek smile, her heart is going to warm for me'. No bro. No one feels anything over emojis.  

3 Not staying ahead in conversation - MASSIVE. They are always replying to her thread. Following her thread. Tell-tale sign of this is the thought 'what do I say back to that?'. Thats the death knell. It’s exactly like chess. When we are always reacting to their move, we’re doomed to lose. They have the initiative. There is no way we can 'respond them' to defeat. Cant win on defense. Soon you're backed into a corner like 'where can I even move?' 'I have no easy response'. Its not because you arent smart, its because you didnt have initiative. Your opponent has all the options, yours have shrank to nothing.

Examples:

Behind in Convo
Her: I think skateboarding is hot
Him: I bet you'd be a good rider (responding to skateboarding)
Her: I wanted to go to the Xgames once
Him: I just love seeing all the tricks, so much fun (responding to xgames)
Her: Tony Hawk was my fav
Him: I liked him but my favorite was Bam (responding to Tony Hawk thread)
Her: well I'm bored now so bye

Ahead in Convo
Her: I think skateboarding is hot
Him: Alicia the advertisement (new thread = ads)
Her: I'm just being honest
Him: (doesnt follow her honesty thread... either stacks on his own thread or changes)
Him: I could maybe see you on a billboard for like a dentist clinic (new thread = dentist)
Her: Sorry, you only wish you could have a dentist like me (note: this is not a shit test, this is vibing bc she is following our thread)
Him: Ahh the smell of perfume and a whisper in my ear of 'you'd look hot in some vans... you should buy some' (we head-fake like we'll follow her thread only so we can reference our earlier thread.. while leading forward with sexy visual)
Her: hahahha shut up
Him: (ignores her 'thread' of shut up... 'hey dont tell me to shut up' for example would follow her thread and kill attraction) Instead he goes with…
Him: I found them inside that bag you gave me with the free floss/toothbrush  (thread = this bag and this 'mystery' item. She's confused but curious)
Her: you found what??
Him: coupons for a free date with you if I buy 2+ skater boi shirts (hints she is seducing us, segue to date setup. Call back to earlier thread but WE chose that so its ok)
Her: you are stupid (again… not a test, she is vibing)
Him: Im giving you extra points for spraying the coupons with your perfume (new thread.. this visualization, rewarding)
Her: I am classy like that
Him: I would like to cash in my first coupon this Thursday (leading. She has been following him the whole thread so she will say yes)

NOW we are off to the races. So many options here now. Can think of ideas all day now. 

See how she is being forced to keep up with our convo? Even when she tries to assert a convo thread & brings up a sexy dentist, we only follow that enough to build upon it on our own thing. We don’t want to be always 'cutting' thread. Instead, we are re-characterizing the last thread concept into a new thread concept. The threads concepts flow seamlessly together. Signs this is done well is 'how in the world did we start talking about this subject?' and yet all the subjects are cleanly linked in a daisy-chain. It just feels like conversations with us are rich and could go for hours. We have SO much we can talk about. Why? Because we have initiative. We can move anywhere on the chess board we want bc our initiative gives us range of movement. 

4. Unconnected thread lines - his conversation doesn’t naturally flow from one subject to the next, effortlessly. He cuts thread too many times. Constantly changing subject. He might be a PUA trying to hold frame, but odds are he actually just doesn’t have social skills and so is grasping at straws to say something, anything interesting. He might even be using one-liner canned pick-up lines, sequentially. This shows her that their conversation and their chemistry can never be planted and grow. Their chemistry is stuck in small-talk land, their convos never go anywhere. Like an entire cavalry of one-trick ponies, each one thinking it will win the war by itself. 

5 Staying on one thread line or recursing thru previous thread lines - they really dont have much to talk about, so their conversation stays thin. "Wow we both really like Taylor Swift" So the whole convo is Taylor Swift. Every time he/she tries to change convo, the guy cant sustain, create, and lead that convo forward to a better one and wants to go back to the safety of what he feels was a better thread. This also happens when a guy had previously built good subjects but has lost the imaginative ability to keep staying ahead in convo. So he starts regressing backwards thru old thread topics again, in a desperate attempt to keep the fire stoked but is actually admitting he ran out of things to talk about (read: he ran out of giving himself 'not-caring' permission to 'own' anything he wants to talk about and turned on his logic which shut off his ability to imagine)

6 Answering or asking questions too early on. Questions are weird. They can both be a compliance test or rapport-seeking.  Since we are supposed to be 'staying ahead in convo', answering her question can cause us to fall behind in convo. It gives her the initiative, lets her steal the steering of the convo. Answering is also a form of compliance. So if we are too eager to jump from whatever we wanted to talk about to hop to her thread because she asked us a question and we 'should' answer it... it dive bombs attraction. She hasnt earned our compliance yet. Its too eager/needy. Thats what a guy with a goal would do. Or a rule-follower. Both of whom she would be in control of too easily. You can answer it, but you need to say your thread first, then you can very shortly answer it in a second text. That keeps us ahead w/o her feeling outright ignored. Your thread is more important.

The same of asking questions too early. If we do it, it comes across as too rapport-seeking (bc we are supposed to be leading the convo and instead are punting to her so we can play defense). Also, why are we so curious to know about someone we don’t have any reason to be curious about, who has done nothing to spark our attention? We arent curious enough to ask questions until she has won us over some and communicated compliance to us by adapting to us. She needs to earn our curiousity. Questions should be done in qualification stage, after we have attraction and compliance, which frames it as her chance to shine and impress. Before that it is too rapport seeking, looks like we want to take her reply and use that to justify why we are into her (something most guys do ‘wow you like dancing, thats so impressive’ barf)

7 Premature or un-smudged date request - typical dude's game is to bore her to death until he feels like she has replied enough times for him to feel sure enough she likes him enough for a date request. With his reacting, single thread conversation topics that don’t lead the convo forward and aren’t connected, he's just going to suddenly out of the blue hit her up for a date request. 'I've paid my dues, its time to take the shot'. He is not thinking about compliance (she's been replying, isnt that enough?) or control. Or what thread he was on before. Nope, he just escalates with a gameplan of hope. When I say un-smudged, I mean he doesnt blur and dove-tail the initial idea of a date with the previous thread (see the 'coupons for a free date' line from the example above… we blurred / smudged it so it linked seamlessly). 

8 Not recognizing compliance - if a girl is neatly following your threads, I dont care HOW much shit she is talking, she is more into you than a girl who is being nicer but is asserting her own threads (ie not following yours). Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that is a shit test... she is likely just vibing with you (in that ‘we can fuck with each other bc we are cool like that’ kind of way). If she is elaborating on your threads and helping it grow, its ON like Donkey Kong. This thread 'compliance' is one of our key indicators that she is probably going to be open to a date request (provided you segue / smudge into it cleanly). Likewise, just because she is engaging you and being nice, if she is asserting threads, side-stepping or ignoring yours, re-characterizing yours... compliance is low and she will likely turn down a date request no matter how polite or nice she is being. 

9 Not splitting texts up. I get it, you wrote up a great text. But often, that will hit harder if you split it into 2 shorter ones with a reply in between. For example, in the 'coupons with the dentist' thread above... we left the suspense in there of 'what did he find in the bag??'.  We coulda just said a lamer & less imaginative 'I found some coupons for a date with you in my gift bag' (cheesier but would still likely work). But by assuming our chess opponent isnt a novice and instead is a skilled player, we make the 'better' move of splitting it up into a suspenseful 2-text series that she must invest in first by responding. Hits way harder. Always ask yourself... is this text better as 2 texts, with her reply in the middle? Often it hits a lot harder bc we had the balls to bet that she would reply before we hit her with the punchline. Vs rushing it out just in case she got bored and bailed.

10 Gamey vibe - He's trying to be imaginative but it just feels like effort. It doesnt feel natural. The convo doesnt flow. The next thread doesnt naturally 'go there'. He's too excited to get to the next thread before it has grown. He is using big adjectives to really try to sell the joke just like a bad story-teller big-time over-exaggerates to try to really sell the story he is telling and we want to roll our eyes. 

11 "Begging" to get her to reply. Super fucking lame. Also known as ‘click bait’ texts (credit to Nash for that). Things like 'you are NEVER going to guess who I saw today'.  or 'I have an extremely important question to ask you'. All of these are dork super lame-o. All of those say you need the compliance of her reply to feel you have 'permission' to say something to her. If he is REALLY in control of the convo it could work, but usually its a guy trying to manufacture suspense to get a reply from a girl he thinks wont reply. She'll reply and then 99% of the time the next thing he says is some BS lie he made up about his day that justifies his bait-text to provoke a reply from her. This is all obvious to her btw. 

12 Always being the one left on read - note when I say 'on read' I mean 'the last person to have sent a message' whether she has actually seen it or not. Someone is always the last person to have messaged. As her share of that drops lower (ie the more time he is on read compared to her), the lower she respects him. Most chumps spend 95% of the entire 'time' of the interaction on read. I dont know the exact threshold, but anywhere from her share being 40%+ plus I find to be good. Anything over 2 days counts as 2 days. If she takes 2 weeks, it counts as 2 days.

We don’t want to always go tit-for-tat, we want to mix it up. Best time to leave her on read is like the best time to leave a blackjack table… when things are going good. Leave when its good or you’ll leave when its bad. If the convo is low (and its not because she is refusing to invest), you gotta reply faster or it’ll stall. Rev that engine up so you let off and coast with it. Get her used to waiting for your reply. But at the same time, if she knows you ALWAYS take forever to reply, she will start to reply slow too to keep her investment in balance. What we ideally want to do is to get her replying faster and with more elaborate, 'easier-to-work-with' texts. She will do this if she knows sometimes she can get you to reply faster if she gives you more investment. This is part of her earning your attention, something chicks having been training their whole life to do. 

13 Not monitoring relative investment levels and adjusting our own investment (text length & response rapidness) accordingly. We can’t seem to ever be more invested in the interaction than her. Otherwise it carries burden and flips the whole frame. (Note: this is why vibing must seem like we are just randomly talking about our current stream of consciousness, not manufacturing it to get a reaction from her. Its not effort or investment, its ‘just how I am’. See #14)

All things equal, the longer the text you want to send, the more invested in you she needs to already be, or the less invested in her you need to seem to be (shown via a longer time delay from her last reply to when you reply) to keep our investment levels somewhat balanced to hers.  If she is replying fast, and with lots or words.... its on baby, keep it 4-5 lines max and text this chick to pump it. She's invested. But if she is less invested.... you can't seem more invested than her.

Our main ways we telegraph investment in text game is: how long our text was and how quickly we sent it.  So if you want to send a longer text... holding her investment level equal... you need to wait with her on read longer to send it. The flipside is true... if the text is short, you need to send it sooner. If you wait a day to send a short text message... if she is invested at all she is going to pull back her investment and invest less to protect her ego from the power inbalance. But it can be justified in doing that, for example if she is bitchy. I saw a guy today who got 'I guess I'm lucky today’ (referencing the fact that she is lucky she didnt go on a date with him today). In that case, yes, make her wait and then give her a short reply a day later. Because her investment levels are rock-bottom, so ours need to be too. In this case 'always an optimist' sent 24 hrs later would be good. Yes, you can win over a resistant low investment girl… you just need to keep your investment very very low too. It may take weeks / months, but she is winning able. Don’t complain about it, she is asking you to do less. Its easier.

Can you double text? Of course. And you should, it allows double threads and gives her easy response ideas = higher response rates. But to do so, we need to manage our reply times vs her own investment levels. Don't forget, compliance matters a lot too. So if a girl is replying and following your threads... that is high investment level. If you reply slow and short out of dogma, you are going to push her into ego-protection mode and she will start to invest less because we are investing less. Then you think she doesnt like you bc of it and she hates you because you are a bumbling idiot.

14 Not understanding Vibing - Vibing is not something that is there to impress her. Vibing is not there to 'juice up' her emotions so she'll be impressed and like us. It is showcasing how our mental focus works and where it naturally drifts too, as a way to showcase our value and trust. We were vibing in the example above when our focus went to advertisements, to dentists, to coupons, to perfume. That tells her 'this is where his mind is focused'. NOT that it is focused on her responses and what he needs to do to improve them or impress her. In this way, vibing creates both trust and value. Trust because he is making the choice to pursue another subject and assume she will follow it, rather than focus on if she likes him or not. Value because it is fascinating and naturally interesting bc he is authentically 'expressing' himself. 

The key point here is that if he carries burden AT ALL... the vibe will flip from seeming to be how he just naturally is and the very entertaining things naturally flowing thru his brain.... to being perceived like a heavily manufactured and high effort attempt to rack his brain to impress her. Leaks in your game will kill your vibe. 

Vibe is essential because it is the 'fuel' in your conversation. You need that fuel there to be able to 'afford' to pay for your breaks. If the vibe is low, she will not be willing to pay the price that our breaks demand. If we don't vibe at all, our convo will just be breaks and heat and that is just too clunky and obvious. We need to mix our tension notes (breaks) and our resolution notes (heat) into a larger symphony that has flow, direction, variety, fits together, and is stimulating (vibe). 

15 Not understanding breaks and heat- In the example above... our breaks are calling her an advertisement, or mentioning her as a dentist. Both aren't bad but also arent exactly flattering, they are a slight risk. Those are also vibe too, bc it was creative to even think of those concepts. Our heat is mentioning her standing over us and whispering in our ear. The perfume, the coupons.  

Breaks are NOT - hard negs or power plays in the conversation. The perfect break is one where if she got mad, it really would appear to be her being a little too dramatic. A girl shouldnt get mad she got called a dentist, its an honorable high-paying profession. Being seen as an Ad, again... lots of very pretty, elite women are on ads. But at the same time, its very underwhelming. Ads aren't sexy. Dentists aren't sexy. There's a risk she can get mad. A break should NOT make her more distant or cold.... a good break should make her more engaged because the trust has gone up, she feels safer opening up. That is why I call them breaks, not 'cold' or 'pushes'. It just 'breaks' from the expectation that you are working to try and bang her. No one woos a girl by calling her a dentist.

Heat is NOT - cheesy compliments, or over-the-top visualizations. It is very light. The visualizations about her leaning over me. The perfume. Its too much if I say 'I can just imagine your sleek hour-glass figure brushing alongside my arm as you grab your clipboard with your uniquely painted finger nails'. Way too much. Lame and try hard. The point isnt too woo her with the heat itself, we are just interjecting it into the vibe intermittently to allure her to the potential of the conversation, to remind her there is sexual/romantic potential here, we arent afraid to lead in that arena either. But we can never cross the line to appear like we are carrying burden, trying to win her over with it. It is VERY hard to counter-act giving too much heat in text. 

Anyways, I hope this was all helpful. This is not totally conclusive but I think its a good start that will help counter-act a lot of the errors I keep seeing guys making. 

-Angel