Beloved LessWrongers,
Recently I experimented with radically changing my texting strategy to increase women's interest. It was stunningly successful because I fixed awkward conversation killers and learn to perform high-status behaviors. Reductionism OP, please nerf.
I am now considering applying the same strategy to my in-person flirting. Ten or so behaviors (eye contact, slow movements, posture, etc.) are likely to inspire attraction. Given that learning the optimal behaviors in texting was so effective, I intend to learn the in-person behaviors next. I will hire an acting coach and we will pretend flirt exactly like learning a golf swing - adding a few more behaviors each time until they feel natural. I expect the acting coach will have other tips.
Some say "faking" confidence is impossible. But they said the same for tinder. Furthermore, if there is a 90% chance they are right that confidence is unfakable, the acting class is still positive utility.
If I'm missing something, post below.
Best, Snog
I don't think this is a terrible idea, but keep in mind that your end goal should be "learn how to express myself in a socially fluent way" rather than "hit this combo to score." The failure mode for your approach is to end up with something that feels like AI-generated text -- the right words and signals in the right places but with none of the content behind them to feel natural. "Normal" people have very finely tuned senses of these signals, and while the fake reaction may work for initial or shallow interactions it will begin to fall apart quickly once something of more substance is desired. On the other hand, if your goal is to be able to combine these actions to correctly communicate your actual feelings, if you approach this more as you would learning a foreign language (because that's what it really is), you will end up in a better spot. There is nothing wrong with learning social language in a structured fashion -- it's not as good as learning it intuitively as a toddler learns their first language, but it's better than not learning it at all.
After finishing Geoffrey Miller's Mate, I arrived at a similar position. If someone did not understand courtship more broadly and the classic PUA failure modes, my advice would probably make them worse. But if you have a good model and are already okay at conversation, reminding yourself to have open gestures and make confident eye contact provides net benefit. Your toddler analogy is helpful.