[General Stalin]

Man I remember before there was social media when I was in my early teen years. Used to meet girls at school and/or through friends. You'd get their phone number and call them up on the landline like other people said. You also couldn't text eachother all day so you;d talk on the phone when you were both home and free and chat about the day/week and future plans, then you get off the phone and worry about other shit. It was pretty great, though of course racking up notches required more time and investment surely. I really can't comment on what "game" was like because social media and texting became the norm by the time I was out of high school.

Regardless, the biggest differences as far as I can tell are male thirst and jaded entitlement of females. Women get a lot more attention now from a lot more men in a lot more frequency. Conversely, it is far more difficult now for a an average guy to get the time of day from an average girl. I suppose it comes down to females' perception of options.

If women wanted to meet and garner attention from men they had to be very willing participants. They had to go out, they had to be open to approach, and understand that only men with balls (or that were vetted by their social circle) were going to spit to them. they had perceptively less options because less men were talking to them and it required more effort on their part to participate in any kind of courtship.

Nowadays women get comments, messages, likes, and matches from men 24/7 from their myriad of social media accounts. A girl can never leave her couch and get flooded with offers for merely posting a picture of herself. The effort girls need to make for male attention and offers for dates is close to 0.

[UroboricForms]

I only briefly managed to experience this era around the time I was 16/17, in college and still had a new girlfriend every few months. In fact I guess it could more accurately be called a transitory time as everyone my age had a mobile phone, they just weren't smartphones. Myspace was still around and functioned as the Facebook of its time, though with arguably less detrimental side effects. Facebook was around I think, but had yet to reach any real prominence. This was around 2006-2008/9 for me. It feels now like some golden time in a distant memory, now blurry and difficult to recall. It won't ever be like that again and there are times I think about that and genuinely feel sad.

[NO_LIMIT_CRACKA]

So tl;dr what are the general of this thread: the EASE and COMFORT of gaming has risen but the tradeoff is that the QUALITY has drastically fallen. I dunno about you guys, but I think I'd trade in comfort for actual quality. It's an endless arms race with newer technology. She has more venues to attention whore so she is more self-entitled. Her ego is big so she flakes more. Therefore guys have to counter-attack the flake with pre-flaking or near instant dates. Which leads to other counter-tactics etc.

It's simply retarded. In the past, be it with girls or with friends, you both agreed beforehand on a date, place and time and then it's DONE. You already agreed on everything, no changing plans halfway because you can't contact the people. You're either there, or you aren't. If a girl doesn't show up to such an agreed date, it was a huge deal and very very rude. More to the point, all the people around her, not just you, thought that it was a very rude move. Nowadays it's just "Oh you flaked on him? Haha oh wow you're so mean lol. was he boring? eh the sucker will get over it"

[RoastBeefCurtains4Me]

I went to college in the early 80's. Back then, after you turned 21, you could go to bars, pick up girls, and bring them home. Before you turned 21, you could go to a frat party, pay $3 door fee and have access to a keg all night (equivalent of $10 now). You could pick up girls this way as well.

You still could get numbers, and call later to ask for a date, and being on campus, it was easy to find a convenient opportunity to meet up. You could also meet people at house or dorm room parties, where you'd go to a party on your buddy's floor, and meet a chick from his floor, or maybe one of the floors above or below. It was really easy to branch from one social circle to another. Meeting a chick like this and getting the bang was called "Getting Lucky". I know that term is not extinct, but it was our lingo at that time.

There were definitely guys who were naturals. I had a friend try to explain to me how you go to a party, watch for a girl who is looking at you and checking you out, then go talk to her, and fuck her. Of course, he played guitar in a band, built his own hot rods, dealt drugs, and was a really cool guy. A typical natural. He worked at the activities that made him cool, and he did have a thought out methodology, but there's no doubt he was a natural.

So, like other guys have said, it was all about getting numbers and calling her at her parents home, or her dorm room or college apartment. However, there were also plenty of one night stands or single night lays turning into plates.