I messaged a girl out in a dating site. It took a while. She got back.

Her: "lol! l'm down!"

"sorry, I suck at checking these things"

Me: Awesome! Text me *gives number*

I realized in hindsight after I sent that dumb fucking reply she was already invested. So instead of matching her tone, I should have played it down to give her the chance to chase on it.

See the difference here. This is how I should have done and this would most likely how it should have played out

Her: "lol! l'm down!" "sorry, I suck at checking these things Me: "Awesome. Text me *gives number*

Her: "Noooo problem! 555-243-5030

This is actually something that now that I've divorced myself from all the poorly made advice on here that I've observed myself when messaging and texting.

I will see a girl trying to play things down in a message like

"Ok. Maybe. Tell me about yourself"
"Well. I'm basically looking for someone really hot. Could that you? I like to go out. I live right here near the main strip downtown"

"Her: "Oh awesome! Yeah I love going there. What do you like to do!?"

Turn off. She was trying to play it cool and her next message made it clear she was just holding her breath trying to curb her enthusiasm.

This is the most fundamental problem I have with PUA advice. They're more often than not out-of-context, poorly contextualized, with little to no appropriate given context for the reason backing them. Blanket statements on how you should behave that encourage you to act with unordinary weird robotic attempts to seduce-by-the-numbers "if she does this. do that" Really PUA "experts"? Cut the bullshit. As if there's only one universal response to anything. A lot of PUA advice is (weather accidentally or just coincidentally or purposefully) poorly given. When it doesn't work, then you come back looking for more advice. It's like a drug almost. It creates a dependency on them that makes you come back for more of their shoddy advice looking for a fix to a problem they create. "Oh no. I must have not been holding frame correctly in that situation. I know. I will go back for more shitty advice and see what I did wrong!" Creating a problem so they can sell the solution

Other rules I've found ridiculous and without context are "never look down" < terrible!

What the advice should really be is "Don't look down so as to indicate that you're showing low value in a situation where you don't get your way".

But I could even pull that apart. When I'm not getting the correct correct response from a girl I often shoot my eyes slightly down pensively and quickly in anger. Why? Because she's not giving the appropriate response to a good joke, or something that she should have responded positively to. This is actually holding frame. You should to be able to show you're approving or disapproving of things she does and not some pre-programmed robot that shows no emotion in the correct way. It makes you look stiff and uncomfortable instead of comfortable with what you do.

So for the longest time before I dropped this sub and the bulk of the advice on here, I would go out and talk to girls and, like scared stiff fucking robot, would keep my eyes up the whole time. Like some weird robot who was programmed to behave 1 certain way.