[flashbang]

When travelling and meeting girls abroad, many of us often get asked similar questions. One of these is the time-honoured "what do you do?" It's a typical probing question which helps them categorize you. Answering correctly(although there's no one correct answer) can help build attraction faster and keep things running smoothly.

Based on having been asked this question countless times, I've figured that there are basically 3 angles that you could work on.

1) Working on an some high profile project, or doing some "important" job in the country. Indirectly implies importance and status but would need you to be dressed sharply to be seen as congruent. Keyword: status

2) Keep it mysterious by saying something funny or just dodge the question. Let's say you're a secret agent. She'll often go along with the role and it gets a few laughs everytime. Keyword: mystery

3) Downplay the job or just flat out say you're only travelling. Met a guy once who told chicks he "works at McDonalds" just to lower their guard. Which McDonalds worker could afford to travel the world? Shows you don't give a fuck about impressing her like the chumps try to do. Keyword: aloofness

I'm working on optimizing answers to produce the best results. I'm more interested in the concept of why you'd choose one approach over another. The wording can then be customised based on the situation. In your view, which angle do you think would work best?

[Basil Ransom]

Similar to yours, I see three possible routes:

1. Fabricate and Embellish: make up something impressive. If you do it wrong, you'll come off as a try-hard tool trying to impress her.

2. Ridiculous: Like saying you work at McDonald's. It's funnier when it's more graphic and ridiculous, like "I'm a janitor at a nuclear waste facility" or that you're homeless...

3. Slick Spin: tell her what you do, in a cool way. If you're an accountant, instead of saying "I assemble cash flow statements," you could say, "I make sure people aren't lying and cheating off their ass" or something.

Sometimes I'll use all three - take a grain of truth about my job, embellish it, and say I'm a contract killer. Other times, I'll just give a ridiculous answer that has no relation to reality. The great thing about being ridiculous is that it gives you lots of conversational material - if you're modestly creative, you can make up a brief monologue on the spot about cleaning nuclear waste by hand, how you've been getting these weird pains lately, blah blah, or being homeless. She knows it's complete BS, and immediately thinks you have a good sense of humor, and you aren't a tool for trying to impress her with your real job.

Delivery is important. Roosh is a great example of deadpan/droll humor:

It may seem like he has incredible natural talent, and maybe he does, but it's definitely something that improves over time.

That said, I've been gaming stateside, not while traveling.

[Gmac]

Last night, I had this girl believing I was an Ecuadorian migrant worker with perfect english. Sometimes chicks are a little too gullible.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

I usually say something about robbing banks, mess around with it for a few minutes, than later mention my real profession and move on but keep mentioning now and then how it can be useful for robbing banks. It works quite well. I also drop hints about earning some money from being a psychic, but "having stopped doing that and reserving it only for special and interesting people" (a qualifier)

[Spike]

(10-16-2011 02:07 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

I usually say something about robbing banks, mess around with it for a few minutes, than later mention my real profession and move on but keep mentioning now and then how it can be useful for robbing banks. It works quite well. I also drop hints about earning some money from being a psychic, but "having stopped doing that and reserving it only for special and interesting people" (a qualifier)

I always use the bank robber angle also. (in South America i say bandido or vagabundo )Works like a charm. Many people always ask if i work during my travels on which i say no. Instantly implying i have money to spend.
After a while when the convo is going my way i let them know i sold all my shit back home.

[Prowl]

I say that I dive in dumpsters. I think I might have even gotten that from bang?

Or something like "pirate", etc. Unless I'm feeling really cheeky (see "intricate bullshit" thread), where I make up a detailed backstory on some preposterous thing I do and see how long I can roll with it, but that's really counterproductive when you really want results.


And holy shitsnacks I'd never seen Neil's blog before. Awesome.

[iknowexactly]

I have trouble with this. I'm a psychotherapist, which puts them off because most interesting people worry they're a little strange.

Unless they are really educated they also have the false idea that I have some special ability to control people which is not true. Even when people _want_ to change it's a bitch and takes a long time.

Also, I think some people think shrinks are kind of nuts, which in my case is true. I'm quite eccentric.

My favorite part is dream analysis, in which I have specialized training. I'd _like_ to try to use that instead, but it still may be too heavy and off-putting.

Any suggestions?

[sylo]

I stole a solid line from my buddy that usually kills.

Girl: What do you do?
Me: I work in the circus. (Key is to be very straight faced)
Girl: Usually laughs, thinking your joking. When she realizes your serious, she will ask "What do you do?"
Me: I am the worlds tallest midget.

Iknowexactly,

I was just having a conversation with my friend yesterday how I thought dream books and anaylisis were BS. Dreams are very interesting, but I fail to see how they are anything more than superficial. That is, I know things in our day, week, or thoughts influence our dreams, but Im skeptical that someone can tell me my dreams mean something. Much like those 1-800 pshycics. No disrepect. Maybe you could enlighten me more?

[iknowexactly]

(10-16-2011 11:05 PM)sylo Wrote:  

No disrepect. Maybe you could enlighten me more?

Well, the main serious schools are Freudian and Jungian.
I spent a year-- three trimesters-- studying it as well as having my own dreams analyzed by a analyst over a period of seven years (pretty fancy-- he went to Yale medical school.)

The pop books where a waterfall means such-and-such are pretty
limited and bogus.

I believe Jung took it much further. In his model, the dream is respected as a story which the dreamer is in some ways most qualified to interpret. The analyst just sort of acts like a guide, helping to map the people/symbols in the dream to the events/things in the patient's (traditionally called "analysands") everyday life.

It really isn't verifiable in the scientific sense that the analyst tells you "the dream means you'll find money," and then that exact thing happens.

In fact, to me the fascinating thing about dreams is you can't really prove you had one at all, can you? I mean they might be able to measure brain waves and say you were in a dream state, but that whole story, the characters you experience, the emotions-- none of it is real in any shared sense-- which is pretty strange when you remember how real they feel.

So technically, one could not only say dream interpretation in balderdash, but the idea that you dream at all is phony. Prove you had that dream!! Imagine a person that never dreamed. He might think everyone is lying to him.

The Jungian method is aimed at getting at the deeper meaning of where you are in life, larger issues like one's relationship to authority, to women, etc. It's mostly for people over 30-35, as that's when a shift towards development of the inner personality rather than the "competent <whatever>" you learn to present to the world in your teens and twenties. ( The persona). You learn to be a competent basketball player, or accountant, or drug dealer, and establish an outer identity which gets you money, sex, whatever you need to survive.

Then what? You have a chance to develop your inner world.

If you want to learn more about that model I recommend "Understanding Dreams" by Mary Ann Mattoon. She was one of the first women to study at the Jung Institute in Switzerland. Jung was a disorganized genius, and just spewed out brilliance over something like four decades. He read in the original Greek and Latin and quotes extensively in his writings from those, and knew a massive amount about mythology and the underlying psychological forms a lot of our ideas are based on. He invented the word "archetypes."

Dr. Mattoon went through the thousands of pages of stuff and extracted and systematized all the dream stuff. It would take years of full-time reading to do what she did.

You can get it used on Amazon for thirty-four cents as of a few minutes ago. Kind of hints at how much wisdom is valued.

http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Drea...t_ep_dpi_1

Oh, also, if you want a glimpse at some quasi-scientific, quasi-mystical, fully far-out shit, take a look at Jung's Red Book, an illuminated manuscript
that was hidden for something like seventy years until his heirs published it in the last few years.

Now THAT will set you back... about $120.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Book-C-G-Jung/...t_ep_dpt_1

[Soothesayer]

I tell them I'm a novelist who creates parellel worlds filled with monsters--shapeshifters, dragons and imps...oh my. Usually starts them talking and asking questions. After I hook them, I close the deal by showing them some of my book covers. Then I let them read a sample chapter (from my best book, of course). After that, they can't get into my pants fast enough.

[RexImperator]

Dang, I was in a shitty mood and Roosh's video really made me laugh and cheered me up. Haha. Thanks.

[MidniteSpecial]

I tell them I'm a stunt cock.

"Yup I'm the guy who comes in and cums huge loads all over when the guy can't finish."

[unbowed]

^^



I told a girl i fix shopping carts that get dumped in the river.

[ddjembe mutombo]

If you are going to go with minimum wage fast food, then you should at least say you work at Sonic and continue to convince her you provide car service in roller skates. Obviously, this would really only work on American girls...