Seduction is sales. In sales cold calling has a low percentage of success. If you must cold approach you better be good looking and funny.
There's a lot of truth to this. Attraction-seduction is somewhat analogous to elements of both sales and marketing.
In business, cold calling has been a discredited sales method since the 1990s, but plenty of organizations are still using it or some modified form of it. There are now many sales reps sending cold pitches in the DMs on LinkedIn, which is roughly similar to sliding into DMs on Instagram. There are also plenty of sales attempts made via email and telephone. B2B brands are far worse of cold calling sales pitches than B2C brands in my experiences, though both sides have a lot of lousy brands doing cold calling.
If you see a brand using cold calling sales tactics, then it is sign that their marketing practices are generally ineffective.
While not all of this applies to approaching women, there is some similarity. Approaching strangers for sexual/romantic purposes is going to be a more difficult path than getting social circle introductions. The problem is that fewer and fewer men have a social circle capable of arranging dates. If you're a man with a capable social circle, you're not spending time on forums like SoSuave.
Another option for men is only doing in-person stranger approaches when you see good indicators of interest. I like this idea. To some degree, I've implemented it myself. Doing this does require a man to go outside in-person a fair amount and likely do some approach sessions.
It also requires knowledge of what the indicators of indicators are and how to be aware that you're receiving them. I did gain the awareness of what the indicators of interest were fairly early in life. Even when I was on a college campus, I knew what they were. In terms of getting choosing signals, good looking will help out with this. My photo ratings have been in the 6.5-7.5 range when I've done them online. I still don't get a ton of approach invitations and haven't in my 2+ decades in the mating environment. I have stories about this below.
I like to think back to my 2001-2005 era on a college campus. I went to a "Hot Girl U" school, a large public university with a great party scene and a reputation for attractive females.
How regularly was I getting choosing signals then? Not regularly.
I wasn't getting them regularly enough to rely exclusively on them, but it is better to do those sorts of approaches if you receive the indicators. Even as a guy who was probably a legit 6.5-7 even then, I was fairly invisible on choosing signals in my classes, walking on campus between classes, in the dining hall as a freshman in the dorms, and in the on-campus gym. This also happened in an era of fewer tech zombies too. Apple didn't introduce the first iPhone until 2+ years after my graduation. If people had cell phones then, they were basic phones and even in my freshman year, cell phones weren't all too common. Basic phones started to get more common in my sophomore and junior years (2002-2004). Apple introduced the iPod in Fall 2001 (my first semester freshman year). You would see some women using iPods in the gym and walking between classes in that era, but it wasn't that common, even as late as my junior and senior years.
Thinking back on it now, daygame and gym approaches would have been much easier in that era than what I have experienced more recently. Even then, I was more "night game" focused, as I did approaches at random off campus parties at apartment complexes. This wasn't social circle game because a lot of these parties were mega bashes. There were some apartment complexes that were well known party hubs at the time, and if you showed up to these complexes, you could find your way to a party.
It's not worth getting too upset about now how I underutilized daygame in that era simply because any relationship I would have formed by now would have ended long ago. I know one couple now in their 30s that have lasted since both were in college, but the exceptions form the rule. Few college formed relationships from college attendees of the 2000s have stood the test of time. Most college relationships formed on campus in 2000s didn't last more than a few years after college at best, a trend that continued into the 2010s.
I have spent the past 10+ years in one of the biggest cities in the USA. As a guy in his late 20s and 30s, I have lived in areas with a lot of 20s/30s people in close proximity. In terms of choosing signals, I've probably gotten choosing signals from a fairly similar percentage of women in the big city as I did on the college campus, so I could rely on them exclusively. The problem is that in daygame, I see way fewer eligible women than I would on a college campus. In my big city, if I consider a week where I daygame my gym (including fitness classes), my office building (I work some days in the office and some at home), a grocery store, and a walking path, I see way fewer eligible women than I would have seen at college if I daygamed the student gym (including fitness class), my academic classes, and randomly daygamed while walking on campus between classes and to the library to study.
Big city nightlife game and off campus college night time party game are comparable in terms of attractive women in one spot.
Cold approaching gives you an adrenaline rush like non other. You also get some really cool stories from it. Mostly you just get depression lol.
That would be similar to my experiences in approaching strangers, both in non-bar venues and bars/nightclubs. I have been more daygame oriented in my 30s than bar/nightclub oriented.