This happened to me last night and it's bugging me as it happens from time to time. (lol, I actually sound like i'm talking about...well, you know)

I opened a hot young girl at a bar directly (hey, you're super cute. I'm Walt)

I never go direct so it was an experiment, but to my surprise she smiled and said thanks. I followed it up with an observation about her clothes, and we fell into a short conversation.

Usually I open INDIRECT and build up to telling her that she's hot, but since I done it at the open, I was a little bit 'lost' about what my next move was supposed to be.

I carried on talking too her for a little while but at some point I bailed, even though I wasn't really feeling as though I was getting a complete RED LIGHT - She seemed neutral still, but I ran out of things to say and also wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be escalating on her or what. Like, was her carrying on letting me speak to her an IOI or probably not?

My questions:

In the old days, mystery had routines and scripted DHV stories to use in the early part of the interaction to always have something to talk about and help build attraction etc, but nowadays that seems obsolete, so what do we do instead?

What should my next move have been? What sort of things should I have been doing and saying bearing in mind I'd opened direct, and was now talking about who we were with, where we'd been and stuff

Do we take the fact that a girl who you open directly doesn't run away as an IOI or not?