I'm just wondering if the older players here can shed some light, was it really harder back then or the same or easier?
I'd say in general most things were easier.
In my commentary, I'll be comparing the game I ran 1997-2003 to 2010-present. Fall 1997 was my freshman year of high school. I got my first cell phone in the 2nd half of 2003.
This got me thinking… I was hooking up and calling girls before everybody had a cell phone. I had to call their house and ask for them when their parents answered and same when they called my house. This would be like 5th grade into early high school.
I remember talking to girls all night until our parents made us get off the phone.
If a girl didn’t want to talk to you she had to get her mom or dad (or brother or somebody) to cover for her and say she wasn’t there or something. And at the age where the f*ck could she be? She was either home or at soccer practice.
A lot easier these days to ignore, ghost, manipulate etc
@RickPound - It seems like we had similar experiences. I am 38.
In thinking about high school, getting phone numbers wasn't that important. I could track down everyone I needed to track down in person. My high school also published a student directory at the beginning of the year with everyone's contact information. This was mostly the landline house numbers for every student. We all knew that. In theory, we could ask for contact information beyond that. You could get an email address or an AOL Instant Messanger screen name if you wanted to. It wasn't that necessary.
I remember a couple of times being anxious to call girls in high school when I called the landline. In my senior year of high school, 2000-2001, almost no one had cell phones. Some parents did, but I can't recall any students in my senior year class having a cell phone. When I called the landline, perhaps I had to speak to a parent. You also had to think about leaving a voice message on an answering machine that could get played out loud by a parent. Now, I can't even remember the last time I left a voicemail for a woman prior to putting my penis in her. In the early stages now, if you want to talk on a woman on the phone, you can set up a convenient time to voice talk via text message. That's not a regular occurrence but not that out of the norm.
Men who went to all boys high schools in that era (1997-2001) would have to carry a pen and a small notepad to dances with girls who attended the all girls high schools if they wanted to get phone numbers.
In college, I had the pen and small notepad thing going for off campus, private residence parties. If I got a woman's number in class, after class, or randomly walking campus between classes, there was always a pen and paper in my backpack. I also had a tape recorder to record class content and could record a girl saying her number. That could eliminate the chance I incorrectly wrote a number. I still had the tape recorder until after I got my first cell phone, which was years before the first smartphones. You could digitally enter numbers on the first basic phone I got in 2003 and was using in 2004 when I was turned 21 and first got out to bars/nightclubs.
The only occasions where I might have to memorize a phone number would be...
- if I got a girl's number at the gym or some extracurricular club activity.
- if I was walking campus to the student union to eat or at the student union without my backpack. This was possible at night or on weekends.
These types of occasions were rare though.
As far as dating goes, like I said it is like comparing apples to oranges. Back then you had to go up to the girl and ask her out and/or get her phone number. Basically it was all either daygame or social circle game. There were greater expectations on performance of game (social skills) on men and women. Women either showed that like she liked you through her body language, or were more direct in letting you know that she did not like you, which was nice because you didn't waste your time. Her family or social circle were clock blockers just like they are today. Simping did not exist any where near as bad as it does now; women did not have that princess mentality like they do now. Casual sex happened, but the focus was much more towards LTR's.
LTR's were much more common, but you had to have better social skills than young people do today. The best thing I can tell you is to get off the social media and do things that put you in a position where you have to communicate with people face to face in a social setting. Unfortunately most under 30 are so socially incompetent that in a sense it really isn't getting the same kind of practice that I had growing up.
High school was all daygame for me. I changed high schools after sophomore year. I began junior year with a drivers license, a car, no girlfriend, and no friends. My mom was strict and wouldn't let me go to parties at night with no parental supervision. She could sniff it when I was attempting to attend such parties. One could have done night game at unsupervised parties in high school. Mom's policy was silly. All she did was delay stuff for me. By the start of my freshman year, I was going to parties with no supervision. In May 2001 as a high school senior, I could not handle those parties but in August 2001 as a freshman, I could while making my own decisions. Such bullshiit.
Either in high school or college, you had to ask women out in person. From 1999-2004, my age cohort wasn't using Match.com, PlentyofFish, or OkCupid all that much. There were older singles in their mid-20s to mid-30s doing that stuff in that era, but for me, being 16-21 at the time, it was non-existent.
I would agree that women were better at displaying interest in the form of body language in the late 90s/early 2000s than from 2005-beyond, especially 2010-present. The last vestiges of that were present in the 2nd half of the 2000s.
By the early 2000s, the writing was already on the wall about declining social skills. While I was in college (2001-02 to 2004-05), AOL Instant Messenger was coming up big and that was a bit of a predecessor to texting. It was common for college students to use it.
I remember 2003, when I was likely a sophomore though it could have been my junior year. I remember being in the gym and starting to see the hottest women all wearing earbuds with their new iPods (first gen iPods were October 2001) or older Sony Walkman Sports (Google it). Still, about 75% of women weren't wearing any personal music device at the gym. I miss that.
I do agree that LTRs were more of a thing than casual sex. Casual sex happened plenty when I was in undergrad. Dorm rooms were the worst for that. College dorm rooms are essnetially the size of prison cells and you had a roommate. It was possible to have a situation where one roommate was asleep and one was bringing home a likely one night stand at 1-3 AM. The already asleep roommate would be awakened, and either have to stay in the room, or get dressed in darkness, go out of the room to a common area in the dorm or outside to walk the streets and wait it out. Sometimes this happened in the cold of January, unless you went to the University of Miami and January at 2 AM is fine temperature wise.
I don't know why anyone thought dorms were a good idea. At my school, most got apartments after freshman year. In apartments, you might have a 2-3 bedroom apartment with 1-2 other roomates. Some students even got their own one bedroom apartment. Sex became more private.
