---
title: Episode 29 Pickup Avoidance
episode_number: 29
era: early
source_file: Episode 29 Pickup Avoidance.mp3
audio_size_mb: 56.9
duration_sec: 1865.1
duration_min: 31.1
language: en
provider: deepgram
model: nova-3
diarized: true
confidence: 0.996
transcribed_at: 2026-05-27T17:14:51Z---

# Episode 29 Pickup Avoidance

**Speaker 0:** Tom Torero, podcast 29 back in CD Soho back in London, back in my old room which is now occupied by John from the other podcast. Hi, John. Hello, Tom. Alright, mate. It was roughly thirty days ago. I think we're over thirty days now. Maybe thirty two days ago, thirty three days ago. We were sitting in Baker Street, drinking beer, drowning our sorrows in your cake stories, masturbating, not literally, mentally masturbating over the pain and sorrow that is the daygame journey. And it was a very popular podcast.

**Speaker 1:** Well,

**Speaker 0:** I'm surprised to hear that, but thank you for that. No. Like we said, guys love the pain. It's too suspicious when the journey is just so perfect and clean. So it's good to be back. We've just had a greasy fry up in the middle of CD Soho. It's it's weird being back. My mind's all over the shop because I don't really know where I am, what the time is. I'm still wearing these same clothes. I'm on my way back to Cardiff, but I was gonna catch up with John anyway. So we thought, fuck it. Let's put a mic on. And John's gonna you're gonna ask me some questions about the tour. I am. I've just finished watching your previous video, your strange

**Speaker 1:** little bagpacking Porn. Video. Your bagpacking geek porn. I enjoyed that very much. Travel porn, mate. Although you didn't itemize exactly how many underpants and socks That's coming. You were carrying, but I left that in the comments for the next one. But I really enjoyed watching your your videos. Real lifestyle porn, fantastic music, fantastic editing. You have hidden talents. How was it? How was your tour? Come on. Tell us.

**Speaker 0:** It was it was fast. It went by very quickly. Thirty days sounds like a lot for people. You know, when you go on holidays that are seven days to the beach, thirty days seems a lot. But when you're constantly pushing it, I was constantly doing some kind of hustle, whether that was like video editing, waiting for a train, a shitload of coaching, too much coaching in retrospect, especially in New York City that was mental. It was wake up, coach, and then sleep.

**Speaker 1:** Is daygame is it really popular in New York? Yeah.

**Speaker 0:** So first message from this tour, where are the world hubs for daygame? Well, obviously London. That talk we did in London, there were over 100 guys. New York was massive. Not, I would say many active guys, but there's an interest. Guys that are hobbyists. Then weirdly, number three would be Sydney. Sydney has a tiny city center in the CBD. Weirdly, there's thirty, forty, 50 guys who are pretty active.

**Speaker 1:** So they're the global hubs, you like. LA less because it's so spread out. South Africa, tiny. New Zealand, tiny. I'm surprised that you say not many people do it in LA, Tom. I thought that would have been all the rage there.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. You'd think so with the game and all that. It's weird. It's like there's a time machine going on on the West Coast Of America there. I guess club game's massive. I saw a lot of funny indirect game going on. I saw some boot camps with, you know, really old school game happening in Santa Monica. But what we do, the London daygame stuff is how many guys did I see? Maybe two, and one of them I knew. A mate of mine, Jeff, who's very good, lives in Las Vegas. So yeah, it's there for the taking. But logistics in LA, pretty shit. New York, unbelievably good. LA,

**Speaker 1:** I guess it's spread out when you have to drive everywhere. So none of these meet the girl at Oxford Circus, cup of tea, and pick a daily walk her down to your pad on the embankment type scenarios

**Speaker 0:** are possible, right? Yeah. Just car culture, people living in bubbles. There's nobody lost walking around. I one day just went for a walk in West Hollywood and a guy ran down his window and asked me if I was okay because I was walking.

**Speaker 1:** That's unbelievable. But but surely there are naive, starstruck young actresses working everywhere.

**Speaker 0:** There are indeed. That's what that's who I stumbled upon. I I can't remember the number of the video, but that was a lovely little weird serendipitous moment as I showed a student project Hollywood or what remains of project Hollywood just by Mel's Diner, which in itself is a legendary venue. A dreamy yes girl appeared. She had moved to LA to find her star on the Walk Of Fame from San Francisco. Very hippie ish, so esoteric. It was unbelievable. She ticked the Neil Strauss boxes of palm reading cube. She was fucking asking me about astrology, you know. She wore a thing around her neck like a lucky pendant, and this was yards from the house of the game. I was like, know, somebody's smiling. Neil Strauss is smiling. This is

**Speaker 1:** quite unbelievable. So you had time for your own extracurricular

**Speaker 0:** pursuits during your world tour, am I to understand? It was hard. That's what she said. But it was I did I do any solo daygame? No. Probably not. But because luckily I was teaching, I always had an excuse to an to an approach to do an approach. Students ask you to approach. You know this thing about there's a weird you get a weird boost of energy when there's a student anyway. However lethargic you are, there's pressure because they think you're the person that they've known about. However jet lagged you are and tired you are. So, yeah, many the times I got laid this tour were thanks to students, often students pushing me into set. That girl on that street. A student pushed me into that one. Oh. So what were the guys like that you met? This international

**Speaker 1:** secret society of daygamers. Tell me a bit about the guys.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. It's very interesting to That was one of my aims of this tour, to see the daygame community around the world to work out what's going on. Because in London, we obviously know the guys are active. In New York, like I said, more hobbyists, so interested, but not very active. Sydney, active. And then just little niche communities in Auckland and Cape Town. I think, you know, when guys come to the talk, they must therefore be interested in daygame. Yeah? You wouldn't come to a daygame talk unless you sat on some level you were interested in in daygame. I mean, you could be interested academically, but my guess is you're interested in pussy. And I said that to all the guys. So we are, on a global level, underestimating approach anxiety. I mean, that clearly hasn't gone away. That's clearly a horrible beast of burden. It's crippling. Let's say out of all the guys that came to my New York talk, you know, a tiny fraction were actually doing it most days in New York. And what a city to live in and not do it. So therefore, by definition, all the other guys in the room had AA because they liked daygame. They were interested in daygame. They wanted to do daygame daygame, but they didn't do it. So AA, the ego, whatever you wanna call it, it's a it's a beast. And yeah, I was joking to you about this before. There was a few guys in every audience, from London, even in the small venues, even when I did Cape Town and Auckland. There's a couple of guys and they'd wait till the questions or they'd even wait till the beer afterwards come up to me and then say something along the lines of this like, I'm here not because I do daygame. I used to be interested in daygame or I used to do daygame, but now I'm beyond that. I'm building my life, I've got this going on. I like to integrate into my life for when I see that girl at work. I like to one guy said, I'm in it for building connections. He said, Tom, what are you really in it for? Define really what success with women is because for me, it's about building connections. Blah blah blah. And if you've listened to my other podcast, that might ring like alarm bells, white knight alarm bells.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. This sounds a little gamma

**Speaker 0:** Gamma y. You talk a lot about gamma definition. Gammas are You'll have to define it for a lot of Gammas are are the sort of cleverer than average

**Speaker 1:** nerdy guys who tend to think they're always right about things. They do jobs like IT or they like having a secret little system of which they're better at than everybody else. Intellectualizing the answer? Yeah. Intellectualizing things. They're very female in a lot of their mindsets and emotions. They they tend to change try and change the reality of the world around them rather than change themselves because they have a lot of deep self esteem problems. They're the they're the guys who who take up weird forms of kung fu that don't require them to ever fight anybody or set up the the Christian society at university or, you know, you might go to, like, a language exchange evening in in your local city and find this there's one of these characters that's running the place and stalking around bossing everybody about. It's like his own little kingdom.

**Speaker 0:** But the white knight thing comes into it that even though they're playing this moralistic role, why would they come to a daygame niche talk by Tom if they weren't on some level interested in pussy? And I always started off the talk saying, let's not hide why we enjoy daygame, guys. But, yeah, they were quite I wouldn't say angry, but they were they were having a go at me for this debaucherous, decadent lifestyle, almost saying how dare you treat women like trash. Why not? You know? It's shallow what I'm doing. One of them even mentioned my lifestyle in terms of traveling and not having a job as being irresponsible. So there's this but they hang on to higher values, whether that's religious, moral, very, as you said, female orient orientated?

**Speaker 1:** Well, to me, it sounds a bit like the the Shakespeare quote, me think the lady doth protest too much. Yeah. Why? People people who aren't really living congruent to their innermost values, they do they're always trying to paper over the cracks constantly. They're like in in the mind's eye, you could say, like, the blackboard of the mind. You know? They're constantly writing on that blackboard to remind themselves that what they're doing is actually right even though they feel odd flutters of terror and denial now and again. And one thing people like to do is project their worldview, especially gammas, onto other people and convince them of why, in fact, they're wrong or they're right and that You see a classic example as in comments,

**Speaker 0:** you know this very well. Blog comments that are intellectualized and long. YouTube comments that aggressive

**Speaker 1:** aggressively logical with references and long, and then they'll counter argue. Yeah. You see this this all the time. A lot of those guys are just too gamma to help. You know, they're so closed in to their own reality, and and they just they prowl around blogs. They they get a favorite blog, and they gradually, over a course of a few months, leave longer and longer comments until they get thrown off. And then they find a new blog to go, and they just try and convince the blog writer why they're wrong and in fact they are right and know everything. I had a go at one in

**Speaker 0:** Auckland. If it was you, mate, I get we finished on good terms because in the end he apologized actually and said that he didn't do game and he had tried daygame but it didn't go very well. He had issues with it. So he was angry with daygame. I think that's why he'd come to the talk. Is this the same as in the last podcast, talked about field of dreams, you know, where you create this reality and they will come build it and they will come. These guys are something different. What you call the the gamma guys in the audience are somehow darker. I know they're building a reality, but it's it's quite impenetrable. You know what I mean? Yeah. Gamma guys,

**Speaker 1:** we're all getting very sort of technical into Oh, but it's good, man. Into things here. But gamma guys are a bit different from field of dream guys. Field of dream guys are usually what would be known as higher beta guys. Fairly pleasant, usually very pleasant Yep. Successful. They've built a business. They have a good job. They're amiable. They Gym is a big thing. They go at the gym. They have money. They're relaxed. They speak another language. They've done hobbies. They can even have female friends. They have many friends. Mhmm. On the surface, when you meet these guys, think great. Yeah. They tend to get stuck in the field of dreams problem. Gammas are more nerdy, more brooding, more more intelligent, a bit darker. They fantasize more about the future and themselves. They're more brittle. They're more likely to be frame controlling or controlling or dominant or weasley when you meet them. And they but they share similar problems, which is is that they don't they don't really approach. They're both avoidant. Now now gammas don't approach because gammas have created this this eggshell of a reality around themselves Mhmm. That they're x y zed, that they are nice people, that they are very intelligent. They all Gammas all believe they're incredibly intelligent Mhmm. And that ultimately they're wrong and the whole world's sorry, they're right and the whole world is wrong. Mhmm. And that deep down they're incredibly attractive. So if they go and approach women and women say no, that's very threatening to that reality. Pretty much same thing happens

**Speaker 0:** to Field of Dreams, guys. Let's just if you didn't if you shockingly didn't listen to podcast 28, then I will I'll just come back to our definition of Field of Dreams in that it's something that's become very apparent in the community, I'd say, in the last couple of years. And from my American stint of the world tour, it's epidemic. Okay, there's blogs, there's YouTube channels, there's companies that teach whatever you want to call it, some kind of form of lifestyle game, which is in a nutshell, cold approach is over. You don't need to cold approach. It's actually low value if you cold approach. It's beneath a man. A man should never chase girls on any level. So therefore, what can you do? Well, Americans are obsessed with the gym. Young guys, especially West Coast, obsessed with it because it's you know, build it and they will come. Obviously, cars, obviously lifestyles, parties, pool parties, that's what Vegas is based on. A lot of Hollywood is based on. You need to hang around in these social circles. It's the classic American dream. Now caveat that I always repeat, there's nothing wrong, of course, with earning lots of money and being in amazing shape as I am, as John is, you know, towering figures of World's Strongest Man, obviously. And that's why we get laid. But by doing game anyway, that's why I call it the Trojan horse. A lot of that stuff sorts itself out. And as I said in the last podcast, some of the the best gamers I know are scruffy, bastards, poor, dirty, filthy, just obsessed about pussy. And that really angers the field of dreams, guys. And I had a few guys in the audience where you had that kind of question again that, know again, that's a reality check. Hang on a minute. You have that analogy with gold, you know. What did you say to your student?

**Speaker 1:** I had a student actually, I get I've had a couple of guys recently, and they've been field of dreams guys. And I've all I've started calling it the 40 year old man's disease because they tend to be late thirties or in their forties. And these are guys who are intelligent. They're disciplined. They've had their own business or they've done very well at work. They own property. They're fit, they have good fashion, they have they've got hobbies that they're good at. Yeah. They've got friends, they've got family. Everything's sorted through their own hard work. You know, they've this is through discipline and hard work. They're often very social. Yeah. They're very social, and they're very, very comfortable. This is the problem. They're they're so comfortable that everything in their life is in fact perfect apart from this woman problem they talk about. And they're too comfortable, and they're too far away from understanding the work rate and and and the pain and the effort that's required to get women. And what I say to the guys is you it's like you've been living in a country that uses gold as a currency. So let's talk about, you know, middle a or three hundred years ago, whatever, you know, in Europe, they've been working furiously hard, and they've saved a ship full of gold. And they've navigated to the Orient, and they found Japan or China, and they wanna trade. And they get off the boat. There's these little men running around, and they stack up all the tea and the silk. And then the Chinese look at the casks of gold and say, what's that funny yellow metal? It's worthless because we only use silver. Yeah. So these guys have spent decades honing their lives and working, but the actual work that you need to do with women hasn't been done at all.

**Speaker 0:** So to tie the two groups together, the much more introverted gammas, if you like. And we're I should point out that we we you you talk a lot about this and I talk about this because we've come from that background Yeah. Of an angry, introverted intellectual. So I'm not I'm not really, you know, bullying these guys because that's how I recognize them because that was me and that was you on some level. Yeah? But okay. What did both of these groups have in common? The the Gammers who are sitting on their computer writing long replies on YouTube and the guy who's in the sports team, you know, at the gym, but still weirdly comes for coaching. And they always surprise me when they turn up for coaching and they're in great shape and they're 38 and you you know, he's really chatty and you think, well, this is gonna be easy. And you push him in. What's the problem? It's ego defense, isn't it? It's it's avoidance. And I finish my below the belt talk by saying two things to the guys, and I think it's similar to what you were saying earlier. So I'll do my two, and I think they relate to your two. I say to the guys, if you wanna get better at daygame, number one, approach more. That's it. Because, you know, we could all approach more. Of course, the spam approaching, that's a little caveat. Don't be a spam approach. But just approach more and the laws of the universe will give you more pussy. And number two, say don't hide your dick. We all hide our dicks, you know, feel the dreams guys, gamma guys, game guys. That's a hard one. Don't hide your dick. Really, really hard. But, yeah, you were saying both those categories, where all men on planet Earth can listen to two bits of your advice that you give your clients. Yeah? Yeah. My my two pieces of advice

**Speaker 1:** are well, there's two core principles of game, which are, number one, approach. It's the same as yours. Intelligently. Intelligently. Don't spam. Yeah. Number two for me is is learn to deal with rejection. Make rejection meaningless.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. That's the inner that's inner game ninja stuff because it's that's a mindset.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. That's very important, and that is where the the field of dreams guys fall down. This is what I was on about with the gold versus silver, that they see rejection as a criticism or as a negative review of themselves and their value. They they're building up their value their whole lives, and they they don't see why women to them, I hear this a lot, why they should have the opportunity to reject them. Mhmm. It's very painful. Why should these girls who are maybe haven't achieved empirically as much as these guys have achieved, why should why should those girls get the chance to say no to their magnificence?

**Speaker 0:** When I when I used used to teach boot camps, you you can guess the guys that didn't come back on the second day or disappeared even on the first day. It was the bankers. It was very well dressed, good looking, in shape guys with big egos in other areas. But just by being rejected 10 times in Central London on Saturday, that meant on Sunday they just couldn't take it because that that's really upsetting, you know, arriving and working out that your goal is meaningless. So the hustle that they are used to pulling, the banking job, the the shirt and shoes, the watch, none of that really matters in Central London on a Saturday, so it really pisses them off. Rejection fucking hurts. And that comes back to our first point about guys in the audiences all over the world. What's still the number one sticking point? It's it's the anxiety. Why have we got anxiety? Well, both me and you agree that it's it's because your ego gets a slap. It's it's reality wake up, isn't it? And we don't fucking like it. In the night, you can drink beer, but in the day, it it really hurts. And people underestimate this. So think of the guys, especially in a city like New York, they're not doing it because they're it's too fragile, man. And these guys are living in nice apartments in Upper West Side Manhattan.

**Speaker 1:** These guys, this is the the beta myth, really. These guys, this is news to them. Most guys struggle and work and fight from, you know, very very young in their lives to achieve things. Sort of implicitly suggested that they'll get their karmic payback.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. Oh, you talk about that in your book, beta karma.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. I mentioned quite extensively in my book about beta. I call it beta karma or because I was a gamma, gamma karma, which is is my my earlier model for getting girls was just live my life right, work hard, achieve, get a house, be successful, be really nice, and at some point, magically, the universe will reward me

**Speaker 0:** with girls. Build it and they will come. That's actually what it is. That's why we call it Field of Dreams. Field of Dreams, cool. Kevin Costner movie. And it's gold. And I'm sorry, but women only deal in silver. You

**Speaker 1:** need to go out and you need

**Speaker 0:** to do things which bring you closer to success with women. Well, that's the hustle. I always say hustle, hustle, hustle. And that's why casinos don't like these groups of people that can come and play blackjack on a sneaky level. Well,

**Speaker 1:** it's a hack. Mhmm. Primal the nature of Primal Man is not to approach a lot, and that rejection is is very bad. So by subverting those two primal urges, that's that's the most primitive basic effective game you can possibly do because other men don't.

**Speaker 0:** Well, let's weave in some positivity into the end of podcast 29 because it it sounds almost like we're having a go at either camp. And like like I said, to remind you, well, we've sneakily weaved in your book there, Jonathan, which oh, I I've been given a copy today, I should say. Whilst having a greasy spoon reunion with John, he's handed me what looks like a Victorian tomb. It looks like an early Sherlock Holmes or it's fantastic. It's very London y. It's very British. It's remarkable. Just a presentation. I'm gonna read it on the train back to Wales. But that book is in is the story of, you know, the gamma to the acceptance, isn't it, through through pain and it's the story of ego and ego smashing and recreation and build up. And, you know, we laugh about the other podcast we did and guys that's what guys have been saying to me. They enjoy the the pain, the cake eating story in the alley. You know? But that that this is what we're talking about. That it's not all bad news. It's not like you're stuck in beta camp in in gamma camp, and you're not stuck in lifestyle design. You can change. And cold approach is the is the cold medicine.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. You can definitely change. I've changed. You've changed. People we know like Nick have changed. I mean, you might have a couple of nervous breakdowns on the way Mhmm. Like I did, which are gruesomely described in my book. What's the book called? We I'm moving It's it called Death by a Thousand Slots.

**Speaker 0:** Part one, how to fail at pickup. My mom's gonna love it. Can I read the can I read the back? Yeah. I'll try and do it in an audio book voice. We should get somebody to do an audio book of this. Fantastic. Or you should record the audiobook. Being terrible with women isn't easy. It takes a lifetime of planning. One day, John woke up and found I feel like I'm a primary school teacher. One day, John woke up and found himself middle aged, depressed, and involuntarily celibate with no more understanding of women than a medieval peasant had of particle physics. I'm imagining baldrick in black out of there. What was to be done? Sucked into the dark and secretive world of pickup artists, he decided to reinvent himself and approach a thousand women on the streets of London. Surely one would fuck him. Several nervous breakdowns later, this is his story. Oh, the anticipation, Jonathan. I've been waiting for this book. You've been teasing me as I am now teasing the listeners. It's been quite a long time coming. We'll I mean, we're gonna devote a whole podcast to this another time because I first, I wanna read it. But I know it's full of the stories. And if it's anything like the cake eating story, oh, it's gonna be gruesomely fantastic. But it's a legitimate point. We're talking about change. We're talking about facing this beast, is reinventing yourself. Fuck this. I am enough. Be be myself. No. Guys like you and me wanted to change, and the change is quite painful.

**Speaker 1:** Yeah. It's very I can tell guys in about ten seconds how to get out of this trap. Go out, talk to women, and learn that their rejections are not a judgment on you and are not meaningful, and you shouldn't judge them for it either. They've got every right to. It's water. It'd be like water. It's water off a duck's back. You just flow. Just go out, talk to girls, and if they say no, it's fine. Just talk to some more. And why that works is because it's real world feedback. Yeah?

**Speaker 0:** The the other stuff that you can try is not giving you the real world feedback. The the the thing we don't like is when the girl looks at us, and she you know she's looking at something that you're not happy with. Yeah. The caveat to what I've just said is that if you're if you're a higher beta, this will probably be fine. If you're a gamma and you do what I've just said,

**Speaker 1:** you'll have a for a gamma frame inversion meltdown collapse Yeah. And probably have several nervous breakdowns. Chernobyl is gonna be like Yeah. It's gonna be you're gonna freak out when you realize the you that you thought you were isn't really you. But what's the alternative? I keep saying to guys. Well, stay gamma the rest of your life and marry a Japanese woman. Harsh, but fair. But if you pull through it Yeah. You will become less gamma. You'll move to sigma and you'll become a nicer guy.

**Speaker 0:** Yeah. Building something else and they will come. Resilience to cold approach, cold approach being the medicine. Alright. If you want to sample this book at the same time as me, they can buy it now, can't they, John? Can I put a link below? Is there some kind of link? Yeah. Stick a link below. It's it's on Lulu, and there's a link on my blog. There can't be many books on Lulu called death by a thousand sluts. It's very lulu though. They weren't sluts. It's just, you know, it's the Chinese death by a thousand cuts. I get it. I get it. I get it. It's gonna be great. So that's below. I'll put your email again, John, because I am I'm in Britain now. I'm in The UK. I'm in London doing oh, I'm gonna upsell something now. Fuck you. This is my podcast. I'm gonna upsell my own event. Where is it? On the next two Saturdays, Saturday the twenty second and Saturday the twenty ninth, in Central London, I'm gonna be doing two Saturday sessions. I'm calling it Saturday street hustle instead of a boot camp because I'll talk about this another time but I'm not convinced the boot camp model works that well. So I'm doing immersion sessions infield five hours two to one student to instructor ratio with the usual mic and handbook and feedback. Five hours, so twenty second and the twenty ninth. If you're interested in that coaching and it's a cheaper price than obviously one on one private coaching would be then, it's first come first served. I'm not in London a lot. In September, I'll be off again, so just email me, Tom@TomTorero.com. Like I said, John's email is below. John, you do inner game coaching. You are mister inner game ninja, aren't you?

**Speaker 1:** Well, yeah, at the minute I am. So if you wanna work on any of these issues you talked about,

**Speaker 0:** you know how to contact me. Yeah. The email's below. And that's more than enough for today. I think that's more than half an hour, but fuck it. It's another good one. The next podcast I do, I might talk more about my travels. I don't know. I feel like I've milked that to death with the videos. But I'll be back in London, like I said, and I'll catch up with John. And once I've read the book, Jonathan, I'm gonna have a list of questions. Pain, probably lots of painful stories and cake. Alright. That was podcast 29. Cheers for listening. Ta da. Cheers. Bye bye.