---
title: Episode 154 Worst Pickup Advice
episode_number: 154
era: late
source_file: Episode 154 Worst Pickup Advice.mp3
audio_size_mb: 48.2
duration_sec: 1580.0
duration_min: 26.3
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.998
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T17:03:30Z---

# Episode 154 Worst Pickup Advice

**Speaker 0:** The Tom Torero morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. Wherever, whenever you are listening to these soothing sounds coming through the microphone into your ears. It's a mind explosion of daygame, of street hustling, of texting, of dating. It's your weekly dose. I tried to make it weekly. So thank you if you're downloading these on iTunes. Don't forget you can. They're not just a static boring slide on YouTube, but I admire your persistence if you just stare at a static slide. Today's podcast is on the worst pickup advice out there. It's, out there a lot. Some of it's getting worse and worse, muddying the waters. Beginners can't see the wood for the trees. Even, guys that have been in the game a long time, they'll put their hand up in a seminar, and they'll say, what about this? I hear this a lot on YouTube, or another guy said this. So we'll go through ten today, maybe more will come out as we go on. Forgive the coldiness, the sound of my voice, my blocked nose, my itchy eyes. It's not a cold, it's just an allergy. Perhaps an allergy to Polish girls. I've come from Slovakia into Poland, and I'm and I'm waiting to cross the border into Ukraine. But sadly, I don't think they're gonna let the van across. So plan b, always have a plan b. It's a bus. And I wanna get to Ukraine before the uni season finishes and all the girls go back to their villages or to the coast. That's my last FSU daygame for a while. And then we'll switch it up. Don't forget, gentlemen, that you don't need to stay in one place just to do the your daygame. Right? You should test your mettle in different arenas. So, sure, I like Slavic girls, but I also like South American girls. I like bitchy, bantery, New York City girls. Yeah. I love dreamy Kiwi girls. I love the sparkling summers in Scandinavia of Swedish girls on Karl Johan in Oslo. I love London. London comes into its own for coming in July and August. It's the best time for British daygame, best time perhaps for world daygame in London in July and August when all the summer school students come and the language students are there, and the tourists, and the bored girls looking for secret society adventure. So perhaps we could add that to today's list about the worst pickup advice of just stay in one location. Just, pick up one type of girl. No. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Catch 22 that you'll be stuck just picking up the same kind of girl, and your game will atrophy. It won't improve. So the plug for today, cha ching is the on stealth seduction. It's all over the fucking world. I can't even remember how many nationalities are on there, but I'm I'm daygaming, dating, and sleeping with British girls, American girls, girls in Middle Europe, girls in South America, girls in Japan, there's extra audio of a girl in South Africa, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Alright. Nagging over in no particular order while I'm sipping my Polish coffee. The worst pickup advice currently out there. Some of it, you'll know some of it is creeping in, as I said, more and more. The first one, the classic one, the mister nice guy one, the mainstream one is be yourself. Number one, there is no game. Be yourself. And you might remember me talking about this in the game denialism podcast, a 114, where we say, look, there's no game. Your SMV, your male sexual market value, my friend, is fixed. So why bother? Right? Just be you. Be the sweet, nice, polite you. And the results that you've got, you'll keep getting. So I don't need to explain why just be yourself is bad advice. Now I should have said the caveat for all these 10 today is that sure, eventually, on the meta level after years and years of surfing or playing the piano or doing pickup, you can be yourself. Right? You'll you'll be an evolved version of yourself. You'll be delivering your sexual market value correctly, and then that advice is wonderful. But it's absolutely useless for the first few years of your pickup career. So, no, that's why you're here. The old you didn't work with girls, the mister nice guy didn't work. You've suddenly realized that your sexual market value can change, and it can be relative, that there's a skill set for learning game, which is essentially just learning how to apply the principles of evolutionary biology out in the real world. Okay. So step one is to understand the evolutionary biology of dating and mating. And step two, which is the game part in field, just apply it. It's not that complicated, and thank God there's so much information out there. But also, as I said, there's all this crap out there that's muddying the waters. So don't be yourself, learn game. Number two. This one's certainly alive, in the manosphere, the monosphere as we say. Just be high value. Right? Forget about game. Just go to the gym. Focus all your attention on, what a girl would focus on. So I e looks, get the teeth, get jacked. It's all about how you look. Right? Because girls are just judging you on your appearance, they'll say. Or game doesn't exist. Just get stacks and stacks of money. Alright? And girls will come to you. The field of dreams thing where they say approaching is low value, trying to pull off a date is low value, trying to go through token LMR is low value. Look, girls should just come to you. So what's all this weird game shit? Just be high value. Okay. Again, the caveat is that if you are a celebrity or you've become super high value, then sure. There's that percentage of guys in the world where girls just queue up. Girls send you messages. Girls are outside your house. But if you're listening to this podcast or, if you're not a male model like Tom Torero, load of bollocks for now. So just be high value. Game is a way of delivering value and also amplifying value. You could say faking value. That's the whole point of game, right, to raise your value in a girl's eyes. So you do the work, my friend. Alright? Number three, which I accept is not their fault, but some instructors who are naturals say to students, say in their videos, look, guys. Just basically be me. I I get laid a lot. I've been getting laid since I was a teenager. I look like this. So, really, in my head, I'm just thinking, my students need to be like me. And I've met a few instructors like this. They're very well meaning, and they certainly get laid. And they don't understand really why game exists or why principles and techniques exist. Because in their head, they say, look, I'm just in free flow. I feel high value. I don't use lines and routines or any structure. I don't really know where I am, but I I get laid once a week. So on program, you know, I want you to dress like me, walk like me, talk like me, and, there you go. That's all you need to do. And you can see where that comes from, and you can see why, it's tough for a natural guy to break it down. They're probably the worst guys to learn game from. Good to learn from osmosis, but in terms of a theoretical framework that is repeatable and predictable, which are the the signs of a a good gamer, repeatable and predictable, tough for them to teach it. Number four, in one of the Russian boot camps, a guy who was a local daygamer, he was saying, Tom, what's with, you know, what's with the complicated daygame model? I think you should just go super direct. Now he's a Russian dude and perhaps again it worked for him. So back to number three, you know, just be me. He was saying, you know, basically, my mentality is fuck the girl or tell her to fuck off. A variation of blow me, blow me out. Yeah? So you might remember the apocalypse opener, which is great for newbies, getting over approach anxiety. Hi. Would you like to fuck? And again, successfully for that, you can go and try it in field and send me the results. Maybe for some guys it works. You might remember the classic book, mode one by Alan Roger Curry, where he talks about being verbally super direct and how it works for him. And he considers everything else, you know, a waste of time, being indirect direct or going a bit slower or, you know, being within the seven hours for pickup, etcetera, etcetera. And, yeah, it has, spread around the world that one for daygame. I've seen guys going super direct and grabbing the girl on the shoulder in, Toronto. I've seen it in Sydney. I've seen guys in Paris doing it. And if it works for you, my friend, fine. Once again, that's the caveat. If you're getting laid off it and you can do it consistently and predictably, amazing. If you can teach it, even better. But super direct is, you know, it's flash game. It's a one trick pony as we were talking about last week. And is it good for learning the mechanics of game? No. Is it gonna get you laid? Perhaps. So I'm just checking my bus times. We are good. Yeah. Can it get you laid? Yeah. But is it repeatable? Is it subtle? Is it nuanced? Is it clever? Is it, is it gonna teach you social dynamics? I would say no. Number five, two students on the program we did in Saint Petersburg said to me, I've been practicing day game, and I only open gills when they look at me first. I remember that lazy daygame video I made last summer from Croatia, I think it was, where, sure, you can open girls off IOIs. It's nice. Remember, they might not be real IOIs. You might just be shiny. It might be inquisitive. They might just be horny, but you can't fuck them, etcetera, etcetera. It's nice. They might be yes girls, and we all love a good yes girl from the daygame gods. But that ain't game, my friend. Alright? You can't just wait for an IOI. You can't just wait for IOIs of a certain type of girl. The game is in the maybe girls. The game is in the girls that haven't seen you. The game is in girls that respond quite negatively. You could say, you know, the bitchy thing that I had. Do remember that infield on YouTube where I think we're in Costa? And I really have to crack through that shell. She looks like a no girl. As she's sitting down, and I think she's a gym instructor. I can't remember. Or and, you she's an English teacher and also a fitness instructor, but she's she comes across as really bitchy. But now a good gamer will know that it's often those girls that you end up sleeping with. The girl who gives you the, the flashy IOI and smiles and seems to hook easily and she's chatty or she's super on, you often don't fuck them. Alright? So false positives. I made that video from Kiev years ago about not just, thinking that this is a numbers game and you're walking around looking for yes, girls signals. It's nice. Do I approach girls who give me IOIs? Yeah. But it's the icing on the cake. And it'll also lead if you just do that, it will lead to a self fulfilling prophecy of only being able to open off IOIs, and therefore, only opening a certain type of girl who gives you those IOIs. So then you're stuck with, okay, I can only open in a certain country. Fuck. Because I only get them in Bangkok or I only get them in Rio. So I'm gonna go to Rio and just wait for the IOIs. It often means the student has approach anxiety. It's a, you know, clever excuse, like, she's not hot enough. I can't approach because she didn't look at me. And it certainly won't stretch your game. It will atrophy your game. But once again, the caveat is that, if you're very good at game and you're out there and you're feeling lazy and lethargic, you have approached apathy rather than approach anxiety. Sure. Do a few IOIs, but it's certainly not the staple of my game. Number six, the Zen one. Do you remember that funny video I made on well, I I think it's funny at least. Me, humming with candles and incense. The one about in a game. The one about zen spirituality. And guys say, look, there should be no outcome. Right? Have freedom from outcome. Align your chakras. Meditate. Go out there, and we're not out there to get girls. We're not out there to have sex. No. No. No. No. We're out there to be on a higher plane of existence. No, my friend. You're listening to this podcast. I do day game. I game because I wanna fuck hot girls. And I go out there on a mission, still today. I'm in flow, and sometimes I have that lovely dreamy feeling when I'm approaching, but still in my mind is, okay, Tom. What are you here for? You're here to try and get the same day lay, or you're here for the bounce back, or you're here for at least the number, or, you know, what are you doing, Tom, on the date? I say to students, where are you on the date? And he says, I have no idea. I say, well, what's the objective? Come on. Are you ready to bounce? Do you have compliance? Is this venue one? Venue 2? Are you into kino? Have you got your logistics sorted? I am like a military officer, and I made that video last year from Kharkiv about, what did I call it? Being on the ground, basically, sorting your logistics to the nth degree. So I really disagree with freedom from outcome, but I get it. In that higher meta sense of life, yes. Should you rage against the dying of the light or just have that unbearable lightness of being? It's nice to have the latter, but humans usually have the former. And for your game, no, my friend. Don't have freedom from outcome. Be, very set on what you want. Have very set goals. Okay? This is how men think. This is how men act. This is how we get results. If you're top, top, top, top, top of your game, okay. You can be on that higher dreamy plane of Roger Federer, but, you get what I mean. Number seven, without snotting all over the microphone. A guy in Moscow came up to me. He was very nice. He was Russian, and we were just chatting around the street. And he I said, wow. It's amazing. I've seen such good quality in the clubs because I I was going out for the boot camps with Mystery and Baxter and the students in clubs. And I said, it is cracking. You know, all this concentrated quality in clubs and results have been good, etcetera, etcetera. And I said, what do what do you think of the clubs in Moscow? And he he said, I don't go. I'm only a daygamer. I'm strictly a daygamer because my inner game's not ready for night game. Those were his exact words. My inner game's not ready. And we had a good chat on the street, me and, the Brazilian coach I was with, and this dude saying or trying to show him that you face the dragon by leaving the cave and fighting the dragon. You don't sit in the cave and meditate on how to fight the dragon or read books on how to fight the dragon, then I will be ready. No. The dragon comes out of nowhere. You fucking fight it head on, and what do you know? Your inner game is sorted. So I certainly don't deny inner game, but inner game comes from outer game action. You take the action, you pause, you reflect, of course. But, that's how you get over your fear of spiders or claustrophobia, your fear of talking to girls, your fear of night clubs. So don't be a daygame one trick pony. You can only jump in front of girls on a certain street. Oh, step one is to push the spotlight effect with, like, my videos in stores and coffee shops in Victoria's Secret. Push it a bit more. Do two sets. Push it a bit more. Do, gutter game. Right? Certainly, bye bye mister nice going from gutter game because it's sexual same night leisure. Then push it even more and say, okay. I'm gonna try pub beer gardens. I'm gonna try lounge bars, which are, really where I I like doing night game if I'm gonna do it in a kind of a cocktail lounge place like you get in Miami. Yeah? Where you can talk. You're certainly gonna have to open girls that are in twos, in groups. That was what I got a lot from my time with Baxter and Mystery that I'm very comfortable doing one sets, but it's good for me. I remember the joy. I remember the fun from ten years ago when in London I used to do groups and merging and taking two girls on the same date and the full range of social dynamics. Because daygame is fantastic for a certain subset of social dynamics, but if you wanna understand the full picture of evolution in biology, there's no better place to do it than in talking to groups. Yep. There's gonna be a guy in that group. Or you might do a daygame set where her mom's there or her friends come in. Merging was fantastic forwards and backwards because I really saw stuff that I hadn't seen in years. Now I'm not bashing daygame. Daygame is my life and my job. I'm just saying don't be so stuck in one thing, and certainly don't think you're not ready for something. If you're waiting for the sign, if you're waiting to be ready, if you're trying to sort out your inner game from watching YouTube videos and reading books, it's never gonna be ready. Okay? Take action. Change your behavior. And what do you know? Your perception of the world, your quote, unquote, inner game changes. So that's why cognitive behavioral therapy sure. Half of it is cognitive, and that you understand you can change beliefs. But the behavioral part, the b before the t, is is being outside. So you can put your p in the v. There you go. Number eight, only approach when you're in a good state. This is a very American philosophy. I've heard it a lot when I teach in America or with American students. They say there's no point doing daygame when you're tired or hungover or you don't feel like it. You gotta pump up your state, state shifting, whatever you wanna call it. You get this magic window of state, and that's the only time you can do daygame. No. Day game in itself is very low energy. That's why day gamers are fearful of nightclubs because nightclubs, you really need higher energy and a lot more attraction material. But day game for me certainly works better when I'm a little bit tired, little bit hungover. It calms me down. It lowers my voice. It slows me down. And you shouldn't have to rely on being in good state. It's good when you start out and you need that boost of state to be able to, pump out your attraction material and get the hook, but after a while, you should be doing it in those low energy environments of museums and girls sitting by fountains and on steps. And when you don't feel like it, it comes down to most of the time, I don't feel like going out and daygaming, certainly today with my snotty nose. And first one's the worst one. I always say, even though I've been doing it for ten years, I rarely wake up and go, woohoo, daygame day. You just go, oh, fucking hell. And especially if you've got students, they've paid money, you've got to go and do it despite you not being in state. So, that's the whole point of the 10 in a session because for most guys, the first few suck. Sure. You can get laid off the first one. She can suck you off the first approach. But, yeah, there's statistical anomalies. It takes that time to to warm up. But, no, you don't need to do crazy social freedom antics of climbing up lampposts and press ups in the street. Only if you've really, really, really got severe crippling social anxiety. You can do those freedom exercises, which are pranks, basically. But you don't need to pump yourself up into crazy high state to do daygame that's not true number nine which is the the opposite you could say but it's equally wrong where they say a student I spoke to on Skype said he only likes daygaming when it's part of his normal day. He doesn't like going out and doing a specific session of daygame because it makes him feel weird and creepy. He just likes talking to girls when he comes across them. I like coming across girls, but he loves to stumble upon them in the supermarket or when he's on his lunch break or when he's on the train ride home from work. Okay. If you're a master of something, you might be able to just dabble in it. But even then, you know, a great tennis player, a great footballer will kick around balls, hit balls over the net before he plays a game. And, like I said, I've been doing it a long time for fun and as my job, and I can't just afford that luxury of only talking to hot girls, when they magically appear when I'm in a supermarket. You wouldn't have the volume. I think it's an excuse about, secret approach anxiety. Believe in what you're doing is wrong and creepy. So get over it if you're just starting out or, even intermediate advanced. You should be having these dedicated day game sessions where you do a set number, not many because you don't wanna spam, you don't wanna burn out, you stop, you evaluate because you're recording, you've got a dick the phone like Tom Torero, and you're using that tick list at the back of beginner's guide to daygame, where, you go through, was your voice slow and low? Did you get the proper hook or was it a social hook? Did you tease and challenge? How many dodgy questions did you ask her? Yeah? What was the topic? Did you qualify her? Did you tell her things about yourself? Did you bed it down? Did you try for an instant date? Did you close strong? Did she know what you wanted? Etcetera, etcetera. And all that's very linear, very trackable in true mystery method style. So are you doing it? If not, you might be like a guy I spoke to yesterday who's doing thousands of approaches, and results are getting worse. Why? Because you're ingraining bad habits. You gotta stop. You gotta evaluate. And that's after a day game session. So coming back to point number nine, only approaching, when it's part of your day. That's the kind of nirvana Halcyon situation, and you're not gonna get the volume. Cause that's what? One or two approaches a day, perhaps a week, and a regular daygamer is doing 30 to 50. So you do the math. And number 10, before I, collapse and die into this microphone with snot. Some daygamers in Moscow said they didn't wanna go inside glitzy malls. And, Baxter and I were like, why not? That's where the the hot milks are, the barbie girls, the plastic titties are. And they said, well, daygame for me works on a certain type of girl, and, I'm not looking for that kind of girl. Now, do you spot the, the errors in those words? That kind of girl. It's coming back to podcast a 114, I think, game denialism. Game only works on a certain type of girl, aka not all girls are like that. We come back to the the thing that's really out there right now, you know. Daygame works for this kind of girl. Nightgame's about this kind of girl. I only want this kind of girl. How do you game this kind of girl? No. No. No. No. No. Girls are girls. Biology is biology. A good pickup artist can change a bitchy married woman into a same day lay. A good pickup artist can change a conservative slow five dates girl into a one date lay. Pickup, that's the job of pickup. That's the pickup artist. If you wanna go the other route, be the provider, be the be the nice guy boyfriend, be the sugar daddy in Moscow. The game you're running is one type of game. That's what pickup is. And it works across the board on different ages, different nationalities, different backgrounds, different religions. That was the whole point of stealth seduction being across the world. Chitchin, on married women, virgins, younger girls, older girls, Muslim girls, Christian girls, American girls, Japanese girls. You've got to get over this idea because it's a self fulfilling prophecy. If you're just going out and looking for one type of girl, you'll get reference experiences with that one type of girl. You might even sleep with one and then therefore, you'll say, well, for me, daygame only works on that type of girl. Or even worse, as I talk about in the purity fantasy podcast, you'll start to think there are two different kinds of women. Not all women are like that. Okay? And that will inhibit your game massively because you won't be to go into certain places like certain malls, or you won't be able to go to certain countries. Like, you'll say, I can't go to Miami. That's just for night game sluts. You'll think that girls in night clubs are somehow, you know, lower quality, cheap sluts. All this is coming back to, manosphere moans. Okay? And it's it's a misunderstanding of evolutionary biology, intentionally or unintentionally. I don't know. But daygamers, you shouldn't be online. You should just be concerned how does it affect your practical game, I e, you getting laid, p and v. And for students, it affects them massively. So approach all different kinds of girls. That was the fun with Baxter, you know. Girls with plastic titties, milfs, young students, very sensible serious ballerinas that we met outside Bolshoi, the whole spectrum. And then like I said, get out of Russia and try it in New York. Try it in South America on feisty Latinos. Try it on the seemingly squeaky clean and quiet Japanese girls. And if you're good and if you're banging these girls, you'll see that vagina is the same. Game is the same. The aim is the same. If you're good, my friend, you'll you'll see it. Right? The secret society. That's what is the secret society. Access to the secret knowledge that, with things that you do, gills behave exactly the same. I'm gonna die. I need to blow my nose. I need to get out of this, hot venue and onto a even hotter bus. And next week, I shall be in Ukraine. So I shall say from Poland, from Ukraine. I know that's Russian. And speak to you next week.