This proves you were truly engaged when you last hung out and seemed to go a long way with women. One guy remembered that a girl was moving and in his text said, “I hope your move went well.” The woman we interviewed brought this up and said it had happened years ago but she still remembered it.
Another gentleman shared a story on the subreddit where he met a girl at a bar and they talked for a while and at some point he brought up the band Broken Bells and recommended she check it out. The next morning he received a text saying, “I think October is my favorite song on the Broken Bells album.” “October” was also his favorite song on the album. “Not only did she listen to my recommendation, but we connected in a very strong way. That was the beginning of the conversation, and we’ve been talking since,” he said.
There was also this story from a young woman: “One time, I met a guy at a party. When I got home, he texted me, ‘good night little Audrey.’ That’s not my name. I figured he was just too drunk to remember. After I confronted him about this, he said that he called me Audrey because I told him that I looked up to Audrey Hepburn. It was actually pretty sweet.”
I hope you aren’t holding an ice cream cone against your chest, ’cause your heart just warmed—and your ice cream just melted.
A HUMOROUS TONE
This is dangerous territory because some dudes go too far or make a crude joke that doesn’t sit well, but ideally you both share the same sense of humor and you can put some thought into it and pull it off. And when it’s pulled off well, the attraction to a similar sense of humor can be quite strong.
Here’s a story from the subreddit: “I met her at a bar in town, 2–3 AM after getting her number I drunkenly text her, ‘I’m that tall guy you made out with.’ In the morning I woke up to a message that said, ‘which tall guy?’ I was incredibly impressed with her sense of humor and we’re still together 2.5 years later.”
THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING . . .
So this is what I’ve learned about initial asks, but that’s just the beginning. Even if you put out a solid ask, you are subject to a mountain of confusion. The person could be busy—or are they just pretending to be busy? They could give you silence, like I got! The adventure is just starting. Since everyone now has an entire social world in their phone, they’re carrying around a device that’s loaded with all kinds of back-and-forth, drama, and romance. Navigating that world is interesting, and what happens when you explore someone else’s phone world is nuts.
AFTER THE ASK . . .
So you’ve fired off a successful text, or maybe you’ve just received one. If you are one of the growing number of people evaluating and making plans with potential romantic partners via text messages, the games are just beginning. Unlike phone calls, which bind two people in real-time conversations that require at least some shared interpretation of the situation, communication by text has no predetermined temporal sequencing and lots of room for ambiguity. Did I just use the phrase “predetermined temporal sequencing”? Fuck yeah, I did.
In one of our first focus groups, a young woman, Margaret, told us about a gentleman she’d met at work. He sounded charming and she was definitely interested in him. I asked to see her text exchanges and immediately noticed that his name, according to her iPhone, was “Greg DON’T TXT TIL THURSDAY.”
So it was clear why these texts were important. These early communications could be the determining factor in whether she would one day become Margaret DON’T TXT TIL THURSDAY and make a family of little DON’T TXT TIL THURSDAYs of their own.
Margaret later explained that the last name she gave this guy was not his name but, in fact, an extreme step she was taking to avoid sending this dude a message for a few days, so as not to seem too eager and to ultimately make herself more desirable. The fear of coming off as desperate or overeager through texting was a common concern in our focus groups, and almost everyone seemed to have some strategy to avoid this deadly pitfall. There is no official guidebook anywhere on texting yet, but a cultural consensus has slowly formed in regard to texts. Some basic rules:
? Don’t text back right away. You come off like a loser who has nothing going on.
? If you write to someone, don’t text them again until you hear from them.
? The amount of text you write should be of a similar length to what the other person has written to you.
? Carrying this through, if your messages are in blue and the other person’s messages are green, if there is a shit ton more blue than green in your conversation, this person doesn’t give a shit about you.
? The person who receives the last message in a convo WINS!6