How to leverage high IQ for game?
04-29-2017, 12:54 AM
I’m a pretty big nerd with a reasonably high IQ. I’ve found this trait to be most useful in one particular circumstance: talking to foreign women.
As I noted in another thread a while back, I have cultivated a tendency to focus my attention on women in the USA who were either born abroad or raised primarily there. I find I do better with this group of women and take fewer L’s altogether.
In my experience, foreign women who come to the USA have relatively low expectations of men from the states with regard to intellect or multi-cultural understanding. They don’t expect you to know anything about their culture, their nation, their history, etc. Men who can clear this relatively low bar have a distinct advantage over others.
As a nerd, I spend an inordinate amount of time reading about current events and geopolitical affairs from around the planet. As a child, I cleaned my middle school library out of books from the geography section (which talked about each country in detail). I regularly view international news programs on youtube and elsewhere that talk about many nations and their affairs. I constantly survey Wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook for more information about some of the most random nations an American coud think to look up, just for the sake of knowing. I’m able to retain and recall a lot of this information long after I’ve seen it.
When it comes to game, this has been a benefit. I’ll give you an example: recently, I was in a club and I approached a set of two girls. Both of these girls were Russian speakers. I focused on one, but her roommate hovered and looked poised to easily become a foil to any approach I made on her friend. I was able to use standard friendly engagement (whereby I consistently and directly engage the roommate and build rapport with her even as the focus remains primarily on her friend) to keep her at bay for the most part and avoid having her push me away, and her friend liked me enough (and signaled as much to the roommate) to help mitigate the risk of a block for much of the night.
What helped me more than anything, though, was my reserve of random knowledge about random nations most Americans have never heard of.
In the midst of my friendly engagement approach, I asked the roommate where she was from. She said she was from Belarus. My response?
“Wow, that’s cool. I hear Minsk is a really beautiful city.”
Her face lit up like a christmas tree. She simply couldn’t believe I knew what a “Minsk” even was. Of course, I have never been to Minsk, nor have I any tangible connection to the city or any place in Belarus. I only know anything about the place because of my long history of nerddom – some time long ago, I read a book about Belarus, surveyed a chapter about the country in some other book/article about Soviet military history, and/or saw a few stories about the country on the YouTube channels of the BBC, Al Jazeera English, Russia Today, or Deutsche Welle. I have cultivated, over time, an ability to sort through reams of information about many places, people, and things, store that information, and recall it at relatively random periods of time. This is what happened here: I have read a lot about Eastern Europe (not only the geopolitics, but the vehicles, the military equipment, and the cultures) and over time I just happened to retain some information about Belarus. I then maintained the ability to recall that information at pretty much any time it was prompted.
Her immediate response after lighting up once I mentioned her nation’s capital (also her hometown) was this: “You are so approved! You are approved times 1000!!!” She immediately became more expressive, open, and friendly toward me from that point on.
I took her friend home that night and the roommate not only didn’t get in the way, she went ahead and facilitated it. She was my ally on the night I took her friend home, the day after when I took her friend out on the town (and had to stop at her place first so as to allow my girl to change and all that – the roommate made sure to plan to leave and give us the living space completely at this time) and the day after that when I met her friend before she left town (the roommate again made sure to accommodate us by ensuring we had the apartment all to ourselves and timing her departure properly to make this possible).
This roommate was not a wilting violet – she was tough and protective of her friend, and showed a willingness to coldly and efficiently dismiss unapproved men (this included several men I saw who attempted to approach her while I was engaging her friend – she was having none of it). If I had not been approved by her, my interaction with her friend would have been done the night I met her (and quickly). I got as far as I did because I was able to disarm her. Part of that disarming was just in my ability to build simultaneous rapport with her as I focused on her friend (and ability anyone with a few years experience in the game should have), but the main thrust of that disarming was my knowledge – simply knowing just a small amount about her country and culture did enough to ramp up rapport to a point where I went from strange guy whom she must shield friends from to cool friend who must be assisted in getting at her friends.
All of that because I’m a nerd who reads my ass off and can retain quite a bit of the information I gain and recall it on command. All of the reading paid off.
I have many other examples of this kind of thing working for me. There are the Korean girls who were shocked at the fact that I knew conscription was a thing in their home country and could utter three or four basic Korean phrases. There were the Brazilian girls who were pleasantly surprised by the fact that I knew how expensive cars were in their country and that their football (soccer) leagues had complex nexuses between state and national systems that most foreigners couldn’t comprehend. There are the Estonians who are amazed by the fact that I have the ability to recognize their flag and distinguish their nation from Lithuania. There are the Kazakhs who couldn’t believe how much I knew about Astana and the Uzbeks who appreciated the fact that I understood the capabilities and limits of their football team (and also appreciated the fact that I didn’t confused them with Kazakhs).
I can go on. Suffice it to say that having a good level of intelligence/nerdiness to you may not generally be an asset to men, but can be helpul if used properly. In my case, when this trait is used to better understand a large number of distant places, the result is much stronger rapport with the foreign women and better results in the field engaging with them. I also find that these women tend to appreciate displays of intellect/knowledge a bit more than most American girls anyway, so that just adds to the positive impact.
Again, I haven’t been to any of the places I’ve mentioned, nor do I have any other sort of deep connection with them. My understanding stems entirely from a tendency to read a lot, retain lots of info about lots of different places/histories I have no personal connection with, and recall it quickly in the field when prompted. That’s a benefit of melding intelligence and stereotypical nerdiness (traits which some may just amalgamate as signs of “high IQ”) with game, IMO.
Just my two cents.
Know your enemy and know yourself, find naught in fear for 100 battles. Know yourself but not your enemy, find level of loss and victory. Know thy enemy but not yourself, wallow in defeat every time.