The Experiment: Conclusions

Venue 1 (Bourbon) vs. Venue 2 (Grand Central)

I assumed since it was just us two girls at Venue 1, we'd be less intimidating and more approachable. Nope. There was one prospect who kept glancing our way but was nervously downing beers the whole night to build confidence - "liquid courage" I think they call it? And then the unfortunate swarthy guy whose moves and lines were so transparent and obnoxious that I swore off Bar Experimenting all together (the marine dude at the second venue didn't help with my decision either). First thing I learned is that my generation of boys (I call them that because they're not full-grown yet) has become increasingly lazy. They either have not developed the self-confidence or independence to casually approach a girl and start chatting normally. Without shamelessly exposing motives, without revealing how many tricks you have up your sleeve. Or they have become so spoiled in many other aspects of their lives that they just expect/prefer girls to approach them. Hey, I'm not against women making the first move, but does that mean the roles have reversed entirely? All of my male friends find it refreshing and thrilling, when women come up to them, but does that mean we've got to whip out our credit cards and drop a line "hey there, can I buy you a drink?" and the whole nine? Won't be so refreshing or thrilling anymore when women become the pursuers, huh? And apparently, as I learned from Venue 2, it is much easier to approach a girl who is in a group of males and females. Why is that exactly? How do they know one of the males isn't her boyfriend? Any thoughts, audience?

Swarthy guy vs. Marine guy

Now this was just sad. I honestly couldn't have asked for a better story for my blog during my experimentation. Let me make it clear that the purpose of this experiment was to compare 2 different circumstances: the first being just my girl friend and I, the second being in a primarily male-dominated group of people. I wasn't analyzing "game" or how "successfully" we'd get hit on, but simply who would hit on us under each circumstance, and how often, depending on each environment. Unfortunately, I'm pretty removed from and ignorant of the whole "pick-up game" and/or "the rules" we're supposed to abide by, so I'm in no place to analyze either - I wanted to keep this simple, stupid. Right off the bat, I could tell Swarthy was a desperate-type. It was obvious to me that he came to Bourbon to pick up as many girls as possible (and create a sketchbook of girls he met) and the thing that bugged me was that he was so damn transparent about it. He clearly had ADHD or a self-confidence issue, or both, and quite frankly, if I had the capability, I would have just written him a prescription for Adderall and sent him on his way. His friend seemed more composed and relaxed and normal, actually, so I think it's unfair to use Swarthy as conclusive evidence of what type of guys were there. Marine guy was lucky in that he got to use the Iranian/Farsi card on me, despite being American and, well, a marine. I think my being in a group setting in no way influenced him in approaching me. Like a shark (a poorly trained shark), he literally just dove in for the kill, and probably would have done so no matter what setting I was in. Since he didn't really have an effect on my experiment, I just felt bad for the guy and humored him - like other Iranian girls probably have in the past - about his interest in learning Persian culture. However, marine guy aside, Elle and I were approached a couple times throughout the night, in spite of having a bunch of crazy, rowdy Puerto Ricans with us, and us being completely oblivious to the bar crowd. So being in a group, for whatever reason, did make us more approachable.

What I Learned

I don't like bars. I don't like experiments in bars. And I probably should know exactly what I'm doing before I attempt to conduct an experiment in a bar.