A few weeks ago I was standing on an underground escalator and did that thing where I turn around to watch all the bored people behind me as I slowly rise backwards into the air and feel like I’m in some kind of dystopian movie cutscene.

As I turn I’m greeted by the face an older woman. She’s standing right behind me on the step below, and notices me turn around; looks a bit puzzled about it. Of course it’s kind of a weird thing to do to turn around on an escalator, I don’t blame her, and I can’t just ignore her presence as if she’s not there, we’re standing uncomfortably face to face. Hey don’t blame me she broke the escalator etiquette of leaving one step in-between each person. We have those rules for a reason man.

Okay so she’s not that old, like middle age, but I’m young so she’s out my range for women I can comfortably hit on. I can tell that back in her time she must have been a real looker, wall hasn’t smashed her too hard yet, nice hair and makeup, but I can see the tiredness of a long office day in her eyes. It’s kind of awkward though and I’ll look like more of a sperg if I don’t say something.

So I say “Hi”.

She’s very suspicious of me. Of course, I got that whole fuckboy thing going on.

“Hello” she says.

“You’re very pretty” I say.

Her eyes light up, then her mouth follows, into a big, toothy smile.

“Um, thank you” she stammers out, blushing. She seems very surprised yet pleased by this. Her face looks younger and softer.

“That’s all I wanted to say-bye”.

I walk up the remainder of the escalator.

She laughs hard and then says “bye” too.

As I hop off I sneak a glance behind me and she’s still beaming like a happy child, smiling to herself.

When I got home I had this tremendous sense of satisfaction with myself, a wellbeing that followed me into a pleasant dream and a happy morning. It felt great.

So I did it again.

It was an underground train, and a girl hopped on in what seemed to be a cosplay. Had a blue wig on and the pleated schoolgirl skirt and the zettai ryouki; had she been older I would have been all over that shit but actually probably not because I still have mad anxiety with hitting on girls on public transport… everyone’s watching and can hear everything!

But I remembered what happened the day before… what if I just… complimented her…. and didn’t hit on her explicitly?

The idea that I’m not actually after anything and there’s no possibility of rejection at the end because I’m not gonna request anything off her was absolutely freeing… so I spoke to her as the train stopped into the next station.

“Hey, I like your cosplay”

She blushes. “Um, thanks”

“Who’s it supposed to be?”

She told me an anime that I didn’t know, and that she was going to a photoshoot, stuttering the whole time.

It’s cute when you can make girls malfunction like that.

I was going to say something else but then the train started moving again and the Jubilee line wails like the grinding gears and billowing winds of hell itself. So we waited, awkwardly, in silence, while people around snuck glances at us. We reach the next stop.

“Well, have fun at your photoshoot” I say, as I hop off. This stop was actually mine.

“Thanks” she says back, looking kind of upset I was leaving.

Once again, easy peasy. I was kinda bummed I didn’t get her number but she was also a bit too young and that wasn’t the intention anyway. I just wanted to make her happy. I bet her photoshoot went much nicer and her smiles were much brighter in the pictures.

And it didn’t cost me anything. In fact, I probably got just as much out of it as she did.

Looking back, if I set out with the intention of actually closing on her, I know for a fact I would have hamstered myself into pussying out. “Not in front of all these people” I would have said. “She’ll think I’m creepy”, I would have said.

But this… this was practice…this was benign, no ulterior motives. And in fact I just proved to myself that it actually would have gone well and she wouldn’t have gone super bitch-mode and girls aren’t that mean and strangers aren’t that scary.

I remember whenever my ex-LTR would get hit on by Incels and pickup artists she would come home beaming and tell me about it immediately. We’d laugh about their cringey lines together but I could tell she loved it because it was the best compliment she received all day.

Women love compliments. They feeeeeeed off of them. They live for them. They want them all the time.

But compliments from friends and family come in thick, and they can be disingenuous, or repetitive. Does she really look pretty in that dress or is her boyfriend just trying to get head later?

But a compliment from a stranger? That’s a real compliment. There can be no other reason for it except that it’s genuine. Getting hit on or stared at by random dudes is a huge life-giver to a lot of women… because it tells them that they are objectively attractive, attractive enough to meet the criteria of strangers on the outside world, attractive enough that a dude literally broke social convention just to tell her “that dress really suits you”.

It makes her day. Quite literally. It will bring a skip to her step and she’ll go to bed thinking about it, a small highlight of an otherwise monotonous life.

So why not do it? Why not bring some happiness into the life of a stranger, and yourself in the process? It feels good to make others feel good.

And it’s good practice, especially for those of you who are still having trouble with cold approaching. Go cold approach a girl and tell her you like her shoes, or she’s just so pretty you had to say something, or “hey, sorry I can’t stop staring at you, you’re beautiful”… and then just leave.

Over time, after the first few nervous failures, you’ll get used to just approaching random girls, and you’ll find out that a lot of them, more than you would expect, are very kind and take it very well.

Eventually you can learn to extend these into actual conversations, and then a number, and then a date, and then a marathon fuck session.

But it all starts with having the balls to compliment a stranger.

So let’s go over the benefits:

1) Kills Approach Anxiety

Immunises you to talking to strangers. You get used it and realise it’s not that bad.

2) You realise most women are kind

Teaches you the majority of women respond positively to strangers speaking to them and aren’t rude about it.

3) You realise rejection isn’t that bad

Some will be bitchy, but who cares, you weren’t trying to pick her up… and then you’ll be fine and you didn’t die after… hmm, maybe this rejection thing is kind of okay. Maybe some people are just rude or having a bad day and it reflects nothing on me…

Plus then you get to reverse her once you leave and think like “ha, you were bitchy but I was actually just being nice how does that feel huh?” Good shit.

4) Abundance mentality

Do it once a day, or whenever you feel like it, and you’ll quickly realise there’s a huge amount of very pretty girls everywhere and maybe your one-itis isn’t the only beautiful woman to ever exist.

5) You did a good thing

And most importantly, it spreads happiness and good intentions without asking for anything in return; yet you will reap the rewards in Karma, almost instantly.

So try it, for me, and yourself. Make her day.