There’s nothing wrong with zoning out to The Bachelor. But if you ever find yourself dating a woman (or man) with devious intellect and a penchant for lorgnettes then you’ll need to improve your flirting before you drown in a sea of Mozart references and nerd face emojis.
Enter: Reddit’s r/AskMen community, who yesterday opened a forum dedicated to curating the cultural knowledge of 1.1 million modern men and their ancestors past.
“How do you be an interesting texter and keep a girl’s interest?”
The r/AskMen members upvoted each other’s responses, the most popular rising to the top of the page. We then consulted the chicas over at Elite Daily and Thought Catalogue, to help tweak this sexual textual knowledge to the cultural savant of your dreams.
Here are five ‘sophisticated’ texts that will help make you sound less like an emotionally unavailable leather jacket and more like a verbose version of Keanu Reeves.
“Do you follow (insert dark-humour meme page here)?”
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Sophisticated peeps like to play up the ‘angst’ the rest of us keep at bay with coffee and doughnuts. So keep your ‘basic’ meme pages like The Tasteless Gentleman on the down low and go full ‘intellectual’ with something like Existential Memes.
Will your friends wonder why you’re acting so pretentious? Sure. But book-bae will love you for it. And if ‘existential memes’ sounds too wanky, try The Awkward Yeti — the least cringe-y (and most relatable) master work of the genre…
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“I Can Be Quite Solipsistic”
Not only will this text show you keep a Dictionary in your bedside table, but it also demonstrates an appetite for self-reflection — something your ravenous-reader-of-a-lover will find almost as hot as torn jeans.
“Is it just me, or would this conversation be better suited to a romantic Mexican restaurant?”
One Reddit user recommends asking more questions about your crush than you make statements about yourself. This is not enough. In fact — doing this makes your convo liable to read like a job interview.
Hence the genius of this bizarre restaurant question: playful, off-beat and leading.
“I Just Got Back From My Mount Everest Workout”
As the good people of Reddit point out: avoid cliches like the plague.
“If she says, ‘What’re you up to?’, Just replying, ‘Laundry. Lazy day’ throws the ball entirely back into her court. Even if you don’t have anything interesting to say, you can always ask a question she might find interesting to answer.”
Essentially: avoiding short answers (and essays) and always steering the topic towards keeping the discussion going (or offline) helps.
“What’s your opinion of France’s love/hate relationship with fashion?”
“Throw in a shocker here and there but not too many. The kind of things that make her more curious about you; and when her curiosity is peaking; you back the f*ck out and shroud yourself in mystery,” (Reddit).
“Nice day for Netflix, lol”
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Sarcasm? Tick. Irony? Tick. Postmodern disillusionment? Possibly. Sent on a sunny day this text has it all — and could even lead to a date.
Still stuck for inspiration? Further tips from our dedicated Redditors include:
- Be warm and inviting — but simultaneously keep a distance.
- Take a while to respond here and there (but not too long).
- Reply with a question for a question, and an answer for an answer (keeps the conversation flowing by avoiding dead ends).