With current day mainstream culture, social norms and law anything less than an enthusiastic yes its a red light.
I take for granted that attraction needs few seconds to rise not hours of dates, men and women need only few seconds to decide if they want to be intimate or not.
No amount of game no matter how tight is gonna turn an uninterested girl or a lukewarm one into a great ride at least in my experience.
Only exceptions are blue pilled girls (the few left ) which genuinely take time despite being interested because they really think its the way to do due to education.
Even if they take time to get intimate they surely dont piss you off, disrespect you or send mixed signals while they are always up to meet.
I share with you a couple of benchmarks I use.
The first one is frequency and lengh of message they send, the time they take to answer and the amount of work they put in the answer.
The second one is the physical contact one, wheter is try to hold their hand or get physically closer than normal, if they are fine with that and reciprocate its a good sign.
There is some great stuff in this post ^^^
As a dude you have to look at a couple of different things. But whatever you are looking at you have to go by ACTIONS, nothing more, nothing less. I'd say the first thing you have to look at is RESPONSIVENESS. And you can look at that whether you are in person, over the phone, over text...the communication medium doesn't really matter...you just have to know what is responsive in a certain medium. You are the man. Therefore (according to the law of the jungle, historically) you do the hunting. When you see or meet a woman you are interested in you have to have some sort of interaction so she knows you exist. IRL she may have already smiled at you, or looked and looked away or something of that sort, and if you are paying attention that can be seen as an IOI and a greenlight to approach. Maybe she pings you first in online dating. All that does is make your job easier...but you as the man still have the man's role.
However you interact, you look at how she responds to you. A woman who likes you will be receptive, encouraging, flirty (style of flirting will vary based on personality and experience level) and you will get essentially a (+) response. It's easiest and most obvious to gauge IRL, so where some guys get mixed up is after they get the number etc. and they move to a remote communication form. Over text responsiveness is still the key. She may take several hours or a day to respond (she might have a life - be in class - have a business trip - etc. etc. etc.) but if she responds warmly, is responsive and encouraging and positive? That is interest. So act accordingly and ask her out. Anything other than a "yes" or a "That doesn't work, but this does" type response suggests low or no interest.
Don't analyze anything. If she says no, or maybe, she's low interest. If she seemed high interest before and seems low interest now? Who cares why...it is what it is. Give it one more shot the next week if you want to, otherwise let it go.
The girls you want are going to be to some degree or another the girls some other guy wants. This is where you have to decide about how persistent you want to be. The most sought after girls have the most options, and their options are dynamic, changing all the time. They meet various men, they may go out on various dates, they drop certain men, certain men drop them, it's a fast moving landscape. So it's unreasonable to assume that you hit it off really well at a party on Saturday night and you wait until the next Thursday to contact her, that she will be available. She's already got plans or another date by then.
If you meet a really traditionally minded girl, they are rarely going to initiate, certainly not the first time. The "Blue Pill" girls are going to expect a man to reach out MOST of the time, and they are going to gauge the man's interest based on his action of reaching out. They expect the man to take the lead, do the asking, and do the initiation and make many of the decisions. These women can look like low interest, but the key will be responsiveness. If you lead, ask, initiate, and she is responsive? She likes you. So keep going. Traditional women will be responsive, receptive and warm...although they may pace the relationship and slow things down regarding escalation. But they won't confuse you as to whether they like you. They may frustrate you depending on what you want sexually and how soon, but they won't confuse you.
I've been dating someone for 6 months. He contacts me first 90% to 95% of the time. Still. He texts good morning, he calls, he pings me on FB, he asks me out (and he makes lots of the plans for what we are going to do and then tells me what we will be doing) without me prodding him at all. What do I do? I respond by saying "Yes", by being warm and enthusiastic, by listening, by appreciating, by encouraging, and by enjoying him, our time together and then by expressing appreciation and gratitude for his efforts. I know by his actions that he is interested in me; he knows by my responses that I am interested in him.
