something_else

That's fair, I did concede that point earlier in the thread. I got carried away arguing against it because some of the dudes here were talking about shit tests like they were this specific distinct phenomenon that you must learn about and that if you don't you'll always fail. Personally I have never really given this concept much thought at all and I've done just fine. Generally my policy has been: playful teasing / banter > tease / banter back, soft insult > laugh and ignore, hard insult > laugh and walk away, rejection > wish them a good night and walk away. To me this came very naturally without any kind of concept like "shit test" because... this is just how you talk to people. And I was not naturally sociable. I had extremely poor social skills until my early twenties. Even when I was "doing pickup" regularly I rarely consumed any theory because I just found it extremely cringy and it made me feel like I was learning tricks to get laid. It just made me feel like a loser. I always had this thought "does a girl want a pickup artist, or a well rounded, social guy?" and the answer is quite clearly the latter. If you tell a girl you practice pickup she'll dry up like the Sahara desert 9 times out of 10. I always framed it as learning to overcome social anxiety, build a social circle, learning to connect, learning to flirt etc. in ways that worked naturally for me. I think that getting lost in pickup theory is... not a good thing. Pickup theory is like the stabilisers on your bike, good for learning the basics, but beyond a certain point I think it hinders you more than it helps. It can warp your ability to socialise naturally because you're constantly analysing the interaction and trying to fit it into some concept or script, instead of just being present with the person. Even if the script becomes automatic and sub-conscious, you're still limited by it.

I think this is a good explanation. I'm still not sure it convinces me that the concept of a 'shit test' is a useful one though. Most of the time the expression of this is just playful banter, or observing people's behaviour for status cues. If someone tries to playfully tease or banter with you and you collapse and get defensive then yea, that loses you a lot of respect and makes you look pretty unattractive. And I agree we're constantly searching for status cues in others, if you give off low status cues then you won't be respected as much. But I don't think that a shit test is a useful term for either of these. They're both just normal human behaviour that you kind of intuitively get a feel for if you talk to lots of people. A shit test implies some active nefarious testing, and I don't think that happens all that often. And like I said earlier, I don't really want to deal with a girl who's actively testing me anyway. I'd rather go chat to the majority of girls who don't do that.

I mean, aside from the sweet home Alabama here, what you’re describing is just polyamory. It’s not a new concept

Yea, I can’t find my eye bleach after reading this

Wtf?

I agree. I think it has some narrow scope of value for people who have really underdeveloped social skills and need a step-by-step instruction booklet on how to flirt or banter. Beyond that it seems really bizarre and unhelpful to me. Again, I also come from a country where giving people shit is how you make friends most of the time, so maybe that contributes to my opinion on this being a dumb concept.

See I would interpret both of these as playful teasing or a direct insult entirely depending on her energy, and act based on that. If it’s playful teasing I’ll roll with the punches, if it’s a direct insult then I would just laugh and walk away. The concept of a shit test is meaningless precisely because if it is a real concept and a girl uses one, I don’t want to continue the conversation anyway. My time is better spent elsewhere with girls like 95% of girls I’ve hooked up with or dated in my life, who didn’t do this.

How do you distinguish between: an insult or rejection flirty teasing a "shit test" Conceptually I get it: teasing is "I'm playing with you," rejection is "fuck off" and a shit test is supposedly "I'm interested, but I want to see how you react." But how do you actually identify the third one? The same comment could fit all three depending on what you assume her intention is. People obviously probe each other's confidence and reactions sometimes, but I'm not convinced "shit test" is a useful category if you can't reliably distinguish it from flirty teasing, genuine criticism and rejection.

I've never really experienced this. I've had women tease, banter with or criticise me playfully, but if someone was genuinely harsh or insulting, it was usually because she wasn't interested. Maybe this is because I come from a country where giving people shit is standard part of a conversation, and is a common way to make friends. Everybody rolls with the punches here. I think "shit tests" are mostly a useful mental model for socially inexperienced guys to navigate the flirty teasing women do without getting defensive. Eventually you take the training wheels off and just read the interaction for what it is. And with your stricter definition, I'm even less convinced they're a distinct phenomenon. If we exclude playfulness, how do you distinguish a "shit test" from genuine criticism, rudeness or rejection? If you can't, you're potentially teaching guys to interpret "fuck off" as a test they're supposed to pass because actually "'fuck off' is a shit test and really, deep down she actually likes you". Which is a bit rapey, and not something we should be teaching guys. My approach to dating or chatting to girls has always just been to talk to them like human beings, be playful, be flirty, and politely accept rejection if it happens. I know deep down that if one girl doesn't like me it isn't a reflection on me as a whole and another girl will. This approach has worked well for me so far.

Again, you are agreeing with me. I don't think shit tests aren't real per se, I would just not use the pickup terminology for them because it comes with a lot of baggage. It tells you "even if she gives you signs she doesn't like you, push through, it really means she does like you". Which is stupid, girls who like you will make it clear. They'll playfully tease you, but you don't need a fancy pickup term for that, and it's almost always playful, not rude or disrespectful.

Exactly. This summarises my thoughts and experience perfectly.

I think you explained yourself pretty well tbh, but you're welcome either way For me it was the same at first, I was quite a weird and socially awkward child who was bullied a lot. Lots of trauma from that. Pure pickup helped a bit, but learning how to party, have fun, make like-minded friends, and express myself authentically was better for the kind of healing I needed. It helped my mind realise that there was nothing fundamentally wrong with me like I believed as a kid. Pickup felt like a bandaid on the symptoms rather than a solution to the root cause of the problem. The healing from that made it much easier to date successfully.

I did a fair amount of pure pickup in the past. I still do to an extent, but a more holistic version of it. I’m a holistic man-whore now, through and through The holistic approach of building a solid well-rounded life has worked much better for dating than a ton of cold approach or true pickup ever did.

The big price is paid when you build your entire identity around it, and the price is that it heavily taints your view of all interpersonal dynamics. You're viewing everything social through the pickup lens even if it isn't the appropriate lens. That then gives rise to the issues @Valach listed above. You also end up building your entire self-worth on how many girls you can sleep with, which is not ideal. It's also a huge time sink. Success with cold approach requires a lot of consistency and dedication to get results, but the skillset you are building from that dedication is quite ephemeral. It atrophies quickly, like a muscle. So you end up spending 2+ years of your life doing cold approach, you stop for a few months, then you have little left to show for it. That is a heavy price. If you build things that last, like friendships, lifestyles, social groups, real skills, careers, businesses, hobbies etc. you build something much stronger and longer lasting than what you get from years of cold approach under the pickup framework. And all of those things together put you in a much better position to date than the skillset of approaching women on your local high street will. It's worth doing pickup a bit, just to push yourself and build up some superficial charm, take the parts of the system that are valuable. It will get you laid. But beyond a certain point I think you get very diminishing returns for the amount of effort involved.

I don’t think you’re upset because I’m not serious, I think you’re upset because you’re building an identity around pickup and now interpreting my criticism of pickup as an attack on your identity. My goal here is mainly just to warn you that pickup is not a good thing to build your identity around. Use some of the tools from it, then drop them when they no longer serve you. Don’t build your entire identity around it.

It really isn’t a whole other topic. It’s one of the keys to actually getting a quality girlfriend or hooking up with hot girls, which is your goal. Hot girls want you to be a well rounded man, but pickup is boyish behaviour. Again, ask yourself, does a 10/10 girl dream of marrying a dude who calls himself a pickup artist and gets up at 9am on a Saturday to go to his local high street and talk to hundreds of women? Probably not. I think pickup has value as a framework when you take the parts of it that are useful and drop the rest, but when you go all in to the point where you build an identity around it, it starts to hurt a lot more than it helps.

I mean stereotypically high value guys go to nightclubs and tinder to meet women. They almost certainly don’t go to parks or high streets, simply because they don’t need to. The key distinction is the effort to reward ratio. If you have a solid social life and you can meet women through that while also having fun going out with friends… why would you waste time going to a park alone to chat to women? If you have tons of cool travel pics that mean you can meet girls on tinder… why would you get up on a Saturday morning to go to your local high street to chat to random women? It’s just not something a high value guy has any reason to do because he’s got more important stuff going on, and likely has easier ways to meet women. Girls are acutely aware of this, which is why if you tell most women that you were spam approaching on the high street they’d rightfully be suspicious of you and think you were a bit weird. There are exceptions to that of course, but as a general rule that’s what will happen.

I know this is almost word-for-word from the pickup textbook on shit tests, but I’ve done just fine without it in terms of hooking up with and dating attractive girls. The goal for me was learning to be a socially functional, calibrated, interesting, and fun person. Up until my early twenties I had a stick up my ass, had borderline autistic social skills, social anxiety, zero interests or hobbies etc. Pickup didn’t work very well for me as a framework for fixing that. If anything it made me feel more isolated, because I was the weird dude chatting to girls in the park or going to clubs alone. It actually made me feel creepier, low-value, and even less socially calibrated. In my head I was thinking “why do I need to chat to girls in the park to get laid, is this really something a quality man would do? If my future girlfriend knew I was doing this, would she really respect me?” It did help with social anxiety in the form of exposure therapy though, that’s probably the main value I got from pickup. My goal was never to become this ultra charismatic pickup god, because that is not who I am or who I want to be. I wanted to overcome social anxiety, to have a solid set of social skills, and to have a vibrant social life with close friends. When you have that, dating comes very naturally. Again, what I found is that social hobbies, travel, and close friendships grew me in the ways I care about far more than hardcore pickup, and I’m now regularly dating girls far more attractive (both personality and physically) than I was during my pickup days.

It's weaker to want the touch of a woman so badly that you keep talking to someone who either: doesn't respect you enough to be polite; is not remotely interested in you; or is interested, but wants to play silly games with you. I don't have time or energy for that shit. There are plenty of women out there who don't do this, and those are the women I would rather spend my time with.

This is true. However most guys having lots of fun in clubs also tend to get laid a lot. When you are having fun it doesn't even feel like 'doing pickup' or 'approaching', you just meet women naturally by existing in a busy place and being sociable. I've always found it very natural to go through the motions of hooking up with someone after that stage, if you have to learn how to do that part, pickup does teach you that I suppose. Pickup as a framework can be good for getting out of your comfort zone and giving you basic tips, but eventually that more natural approach will start to appeal more to you I think.

If a woman is genuinely cruel or rude to me I don't think "oh wow, she must really like me, I'll keep pushing!". I just leave and go chat to girls who are receptive and playful.

She was playfully teasing him and he didn't engage. It wasn't that he failed a "shit test", he just killed the conversation stone dead with "yea I am". I don't disagree with learning basic social skills, but framing everything in terms of pickup lingo is a detriment to that goal. You start interpreting everything women do as a "shit test" or whatever, meanwhile they're just trying to playfully flirt with you and you're viewing it as some kind of hostile battlefield where she's trying to test your masculinity.

Not everything in life has to be about achievement. Many of the best memories I have are from when I was just vibing with friends with no particular goal. There's a reason people typically don't develop particularly deep friendships with work colleagues despite spending 40 hours per week with them. You rarely get a chance to just have fun and be fully authentic in a professional / goal-oriented environment. I disagree with the premise here. People would benefit from many things they could do but don't do. Eating healthy, gym, meditation, reading etc. The incentive for these activities is far in the future, requires work, and is relatively abstract. This means it doesn't really activate your brain's reward system very well. The same is true for socialising, if you aren't naturally sociable. It's very easy to sit at home alone, scroll on social media, and watch videos. If you do that long enough your social skills atrophy and then you end up in a situation where you can't pursue a fun social life because the barrier to entry becomes so high. Even if you have an abstract sense of "this would be good for me" as an incentive, it actually isn't very motivating and doesn't really drive most people towards action.

I used to go out with specific goals like "talk to X many women, and then you can just relax and have fun for the rest of the night" I stopped doing this when I realised that 90% of the time I hooked up with a girl, it was one I met when I had completed the goal and I was just vibing and having fun. After that I just started going out to have fun. Girls can often pick up when you have a hidden agenda, it reeks of desperation. There's a term I've heard girls use, "meerkating", it's used to describe guys who stand in the middle of a club and scan around for the next girl to approach. It is not a positive term. Now I mostly just go out with friends to have fun, and if I find a girl to hookup with then great. I find this much more enjoyable than going out with goals and an agenda, and it gets me better results.

What pickup calls a 'shit test' is just playfully teasing someone, it's part of basic human social interaction, especially so when flirting. I don't like the term because it makes it seem like women are actively and intentionally trying to test you, which they are not. They're either teasing you playfully to flirt or they're telling you they aren't interested. It's usually easy to tell the difference.