Opening in a Closed Society

Acolyte had a pretty interesting post in the Advanced forum of mASF about the difficulty of Opening in a “closed-off” atmosphere. I have to admit, this thread interested me because I’ve had similar experiences in certain places that I found “cliquey,” (or however you spell it). Anyway, here’s what he had to say:

Acolyte writes:
As I don’t feel this is a simple, general issue, I’m posting this in advanced. I’m sure if it were simple, my wings and myself would have worked it out already! Formhandle, if you don’t agree with this, please feel free to move it to where you see fit.

Myself and my wings have been hitting our heads time and again in-field. We live in Cape Town – a place known (not only by locals, but also by people in other cities in South Africa) as being, “cliquey”. People go out in order to “be seen”. I don’t know of anyone here that goes out looking forward to MEET PEOPLE and have a good time. The Field-Reports etc that we read here on ASF are TOTALLY non-applicable to here – the ‘scene’ just isn’t like that in our experience.

Opening here is a bloody nightmare. People here are just NOT open to it.

Where we see people making-out in clubs, its with the people they came there with OR someone that managed to by them enough drinks and was good-looking enough that she didn’t run away from his cavemanning throughout the night. And, even in those situations, we don’t see these girls LEAVING with those guys – merely kissing etc. The girls go home the same way they came.

So, how the fuck DO we meet people here? Social groups – school, college, university (and even there you can be in a class all year and never get to speak to everyone). I met many people through the band I used to manage for 3 years – networking. Basically this (as myself and my wings see it), is a result of there needing to be MASSIVE amounts of “familiarity” before people will BEGIN to be open to pursue rapport with you. Otherwise, they’re not interested.

Society here seems to (generally) be very LSE, but with many arrogant jock dickheads – these are the guys responsible for raising these girls Bitch-shields so crazy-high. We go out to clubs and see drunk jock morons groping and feeling their way through the masses, beating their chests and clinking beermugs. Sadly, our “celebrities” here are NOT musicians / actors etc. but are our rugby-players etc. Bummer, hey?

So where does this leave a guy desiring to study pickup? A lot of what we’re seeing here is reminiscent of what TD once described of sarging the high-society clubs in LA. Although, strangely, we can’t work out if we’re getting LOCKUP, or BLOWN-OUT. Strangely I feel its a combination of both.

There doesn’t seem to be any such thing as a singles club here. Even our pool-bars are too loud to talk in (and hence run game (for the most part)).

Mystery speaks of telling a girl his “back-story” (about his carreer etc) for 25 minutes as part of his game…. No. Not gonna happen. Any routine longer than about 3 seconds is waaaaaay too long in our experience.

So, the question stands – How the hell do you open here?

So then Veroxii chimes in with his perspective…

Veroxii writes:
Bullshit.

I’m from South Africa, even though I don’t live there now. I went back for a visit about 10 months ago, to *PRETORIA*, which is like a million times more “cliquey” or whatever.

Had a blast and did get some amazing action. In fact, I found it surprisingly easy to open there.

And I’ve been to Cape Town. A laid-back party-town. It’s not like it’s in friggen Northern India, or somewhere in the middle-east where they’ll cut your balls off for looking at another man’s wife. Ask anyone who travels a bit, and they’ll tell you that EVERY large “world-city” is the same. And ALL the girls are the same.

Basically, what I’m saying is that maybe it isn’t the “scene”.

It’s just an excuse. Approach more. If it bombs, it’s because your approach sucked. Or try to get into the social circles. Do you ever talk the guys in these groups. Can you make friends easily with guys? If not, then work on your general social skills too.

I think it’s more the isolation from other successful PUAs that is the problem. If you can manage it in ANY way, get yourself to a workshop. RSD, or Mystery or whoever, but seeing this shit in real life SOOO changes your perspective on things. (even though I know it is expensive with the Rand exchange-rate).

Anycase, I hope you guys are able to crack this issue soon.

I do find Veroxii’s perspective on this to be fairly dead-on. I’ve had experiences where I’ve been in clubs that I thought were EXTREMELY hard to Open in, and then turn around to see someone like Tyler Durden or Swinggcat opening one successful set after another. What Veroxii had to say about failing because your material isn’t strong enough is quite true in my opinion. If you have a good enough Opener, you should be able to approach any target and break down those barriers she erects to meeting people.

I think this also comes down to skill level as well, and being able to adapt the stuff you learn online to real world scenerios. If you’re a regular at a place, there’s no reason not to get in good with the people who work there and get social proofed. There’s also no reason not to befriend some of the guys in the area and use them to meet girls.

But regardless of all that stuff, I have found this to be a problem I’ve run into in the past. However, I’m inclined to think this is more of a “self-limiting belief” than anything else.

You can read the original thread here.