KINO
I always knew that kino was important.
Waaaaaaay back in July of '07 when I was reading
The Game at a feverish clip after having found it, I saw the
Layguide mentioned in the first few pages of the book, right near the beginning of the "Meet Style" section. I saw that it was an online document, closed the window that the .pdf file of
The Game was in, and Googled that beast.
http://www.pickupguide.com/layguide/
Even though it hasn't been updated in a while, what with the book version of the Layguide going on sale, it's still got a bunch of really cool stuff in it. One of the really cool things was kino.
http://www.pickupguide.com/layguide/kino.htm
Reading about this was my first "holy shit, DUH" moment. You have to touch girls in order to pull them. This should have been obvious as hell to me, and when I read it, it made perfect sense. Girls were always touching ME when they were attracted to me. Maybe they wanted me to touch them back? Of course!
A QUICK TRIP INTO THE MIND OF STORMY
That last paragraph will make more sense if you understand where I was coming from at the time.
When I hit the intertubes after getting dumped by Final Ex, looking for pickup-related stuff, what I was really looking for was what I now know to be a list of IOIs. I took it for granted that some girls were attracted to me. I had a bunch of girls in my social circle, and I knew that there were girls that I just knew casually - I didn't know WHO, but I knew they were there - that wanted to sleep with me.
What I wanted to know was how to figure out who wanted me and who didn't. The way I saw it, a girl was either attracted to me or she wasn't. I wanted to know who I could "safely" escalate on. I thought that the whole idea of openers and whatnot was silly; I've got a ton of girls in my social circle! Why would I need to talk to girls I don't know? MAKING a girl attracted to me if she already isn't so? PFFT. Nonsense. I'll just pick off the easy targets, thank you very much.
Anyway, when I read about kino for the first time (later in
The Game, when Sin was training Style up during Mystery's workshop), something just clicked. I knew this was important. Every time I had slept with a girl, there was kino beforehand. My belief was reinforced when I read in the Layguide there that kino is the difference between getting the girl and not getting the girl.
So I've always been a big kino advocate. And I've been appalled by how little attention this subject is given in various and sundry pickup methods. Until I saw Ozzie's portion of
Transformations, I didn't think that anyone really did the subject justice. Mystery and Style had a few kino routines, but I never thought they were enough. And when I saw Mehow do some kino compliance tests in an in-field video, I thought that the whole thing looked stupidly contrived.
I was like, "what? My kino is better than Mehow's!" No disrespect to Mehow, by the way. He WAS just demonstrating a routine, so it would inevitably come off as at least somewhat "engineered" and not completely natural. Hell, that's why he was being filmed: to demonstrate that routine.
You all have read one lay report from me in this thread, and a little bit of a makeout report. My first makeout after getting into the game, as well as every makeout and lay since then, has involved enough kino to sink an aircraft carrier.
Well, I thought, I can keep bitching about the neglect, abuse, and SPAM of poor kino in the seduction community, or I can give this subject the love, attention, and praise it deserves. So here goes.
THIS ISN'T INNER GAME, STORMY. THIS IS CLEARLY OUTER GAME.
Shut up. No it's not. Kino and inner game are linked about as tightly as they can be.
You can fake disinterest during an opener. You can pop off FTCs all day. You can neg, disqualify, takeaway, all that. When you lock in, you can fake a smile, consciously crank up your vocal projection, slow down your speech, and even keep your voice from cracking. When it comes to vocal game, you can fake it till you make it.
But you can't fake solid kino.
This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where you get hit with a congruence test that you've got no way to consciously react to.
Oh, yeah, if a congruence test is verbal, you can spit back some canned line to deal with it, or ignore it altogether or something. You can actually fake that the congruence test didn't affect you internally in any number of ways.
But you can't fake solid kino. This is where your inner game truly shows on the outside.
The girl is going to be passively looking for a TON of things about your kino that it is absolutely impossible for you to consciously micromanage. She'll notice if you're sweating. She'll notice if your hands are clammy. She'll notice if you're shaking. She'll notice if you're fidgety.
And you can't skip this. You don't kino, you don't get laid. You have to run this gauntlet, and the only way to make it through is with good inner game, or at least enough situational confidence to pass for good inner game.
Remember my super-stripped-down progression from earlier? Kino is vital to phase two of that:
Open ->
Pump BT/Defuse ASD -> Close
...and kino IS phase three of that.
Open -> Pump BT/Defuse ASD ->
Close
I'm sure you all are familiar with Vin DiCarlo's kino escalation ladder. If not,
http://www.directnaturalgame.com/Techni ... adder.html
While I don't think that following the ladder step-by-step is necessary, and I DEFINITELY don't think that memorizing it is helpful, I do think that it's good for illustrating a point: pickup is kino escalation. Why are you talking to this girl in the first place? Because you want to kino the inside of her vagina with your penis. Hell, you can get less kino than that (BJ, makeout, etc.) and it's still a damn good night. One might say that the "success" of a given night depends not on how many sets you open or how many IOIs you get, but on how much kino happens. Kiss is good, makeout is better, sex is awesome.
I know that making out with a girl makes ME happier than getting an IOI from her.
What you're ultimately trying to do during a pickup is touch the girl more. That's what it boils down to.
BAD KINO
Remember the Golden Rule of Natural Game? Whatever you feel, she feels. If you're feeling nervous and weird, the girl is going to feed nervous and weird right back to you. And your feelings are transmitted most clearly through your touch. The music and lights in a club may drown out visual and auditory cues that you give, but your kino will always project, loud and clear, what you're feeling on the inside.
Before I got into pickup, I was actually convinced at a few points in time that I was haphephobic. I really,
really did not like people touching me. I'm not going to psychoanalyze myself to figure out why this was the case, but the second a girl touched me, my guard always went UP. I knew that she wanted something from me, and it wasn't necessarily for me to touch her. In my cynical, jaded worldview, the girl was using the hint - not even the promise, but the
hint - of sex to get me to do something for her. And she wouldn't be using that hint if it didn't work on other guys.
"Well, screw that," I thought. "I'm not going to be like other guys. Girl touches me, I know I should trust her less." This attitude would continue with individual girls until I actually trusted them.
In my pre-pickup days, my kino was absolute crap because I usually didn't kino at all. And whenever the girl touched me, that cynical I-don't-trust-you vibe flowed like electricity right from me into her. Especially when I froze up and physically removed myself from her touch.
That's what bad kino looks like. Or rather, that's what the
extreme of bad kino looks like.
NOT QUITE AS BAD KINO
I understand that when a lot of guys first get into pickup and learn about kino, they employ something called the Purposeless Hand of Doom. I've never done this, as far as I know, but I've heard of it.
You all have probably seen AFCs doing this. It's the stereotypical hand on the lower back that doesn't move. But that's not the only form it can take. It can also take the form of touching a girl on the shoulder or something for absolutely no reason. Like, there's just no connection between the vibe of the interaction and what that hand is doing. It's weird, and it's not good.
This is a result either of miscalibrated AFCs trying to claim the girl as their own after having just met her and being needy due to scarcity mindset, or miscalibrated newbies knowing that they're supposed to kino without quite knowing how or why.
GOOD KINO
What makes kino good? First of all, YOU'RE comfortable with it. You know that the girl will be receptive because what you're doing is completely normal.
Second, it fits the vibe. There's a reason for it to happen. This is where things can get seemingly illogical: I kiss girls out of absolutely nowhere. This fits the vibe
better than a lower level of kino out of absolutely nowhere. If the flirty vibe is on, a totally random kiss is normal, or at least not weird. If there's a lesser, more casual vibe going, then kino doesn't make sense without a logical reason. In the flirty vibe, though, emotions rule.
This game is emotional. It is not logical.
It all comes back to the vibe.
HOW TO GET COMFORTABLE WITH KINO
This, thankfully, is pretty easy. Just practice touching people. Now turn off the creep alarm that just went off and pay attention.
Physical greetings: do you greet people verbally, and verbally only? Put some kino into it. High-five. Hug. Respek Knuckles (also known as the "terrorist fist bump," "dap," or whatever you kids are calling it these days).
[youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geZSBEi9afo[/youtube]
If my hands are full, I'll use my elbow. "Gimme some elbow, dawg." Hooray! You now greet people more personably!
What you might notice after doing this a little is that you suddenly find your social confidence going way up. By which I mean, you'll find your fears shed and your interactions clarify. Everything will just flow a little bit better. That's because you've just shed a totally irrational fear and you're seeing the world unfiltered by it. You just cleaned a piece of dirt off of your windshield.
Incidental kino: I don't mean this the same way that DiCarlo does. What I mean by this is situations where it just makes sense to touch people, and NOT doing so would be weird. The first example gets its own big, bold topic heading because it is MASSIVE and HUGE and AWESOME.
THE CLAW
Formulated by Tim of RSD in a flash of brilliance no less significant in scope than Isaac Newton realizing that the force behind the falling of an apple was the same force that caused celestial bodies to move across the heavens, The Claw has been used throughout the ages by alpha males wishing to both establish their dominance over someone AND comfort them.
The Claw is elegant in its simplicity and earth-moving in its effect. Its speed is like the wind, its stillness like the calm of a forest. It moves through resistance like fire, and is itself as immovable as a mountain.
Look upon The Claw in all its glory.
Check out Colin Farrell giving some love to some hotel chick. Awww. Hey, he's an alpha. He's got time for everyone. Note the position of his hand: he's reaching around and grabbing her by the shoulder. That's The Claw. Quite simple, really. And it communicates everything you want to communicate if done correctly.
Want to see more of The Claw in action? Watch virtually any mafia movie, especially one directed by Martin Scorsese (or Robert DeNiro, if you include
A Bronx Tale, which you should). You'll see swaggering Italian-American gangsters throwing The Claw around with reckless abandon, on EVERYONE. Girls, each other, guys that owe them money, random bystanders, EVERYONE.
The Claw always wins.
HOW TO GET COMFORTABLE WITH THE CLAW
The easiest, most situationally appropriate, and probably most common use of The Claw is in a loud venue.
Girl: "Blah blah blah"
You: *Claw* "Wait, what?"
If you don't hear something, Claw the speaker in and have them repeat themselves. Don't just peck in and give them your ear; put The Claw on and give them your ear.
It makes sense to be close together in this circumstance. You're two people trying to talk in a loud venue. Merely pecking in to avoid touch would be weird because it involves deliberately
avoiding touch when it would just make sense to go ahead and touch. You are NOT so uncomfortable with physical touch that you avoid it. Hell no. If you need someone to repeat what they said, you put The Claw on them.
There, two birds with one stone. The Claw will increase the amount of kino you use in set, and it gives you a way to deal with loud venues. Meditate now upon the glory of The Claw.
OTHER USES OF THE CLAW
You: *Claw* "Hey, look over there!"
You: *Claw* "Let me guess. You're the bad girl, right?"
You: "Hahaha, you're adorable. C'mere." *Claw*
You: "You're awesome. I'm keeping you." *Claw*
You: *Claw* "Hey."
You get the idea. The Claw's diversity of utility is vast. If you aren't hugging within one minute, or at least Clawing within thirty seconds of opening, you aren't using enough kino, and you should start.
OTHER INCIDENTAL KINO
There are lesser forms of incidental kino that can help you get comfortable touching people more.
Here's your change: whenever you buy something and the cashier hands you your change, let your fingertips brush theirs a little when you get your change. This is another example where there's just a practical reason to touch someone and NOT doing so would be weird: trying to take something being handed to you without your hands touching is awkward and could result in you dropping whatever it is you're being handed. So don't avoid it. This goes for cups of coffee and whatnot too.
And you may even find yourself picking up unexpected IOIs from baristas, bartenders, and checkout clerks doing
just this.
Crowd sliding: Instead of bobbing and weaving like Dave Elsewhere to move through a crowd without touching anyone...
[youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykmj_IVLQ1k[/youtube]
...save your liquid action for the dancefloor and lightly place your hand on people's shoulders as you move past them. They'll usually get the hint and move out of the way slightly. You'll move through the crowd easier and get used to kino.
Fun story related to this: I was at an outdoor concert this one time, watching the Molly Ringwalds...
[youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkVU-KNJch8[/youtube]
...when some fifty-something Hispanic woman who was kinda drunk slid past me through the crowd. She wanted to talk to someone who was standing right in front of me, and was holding my arm a little to steady herself as she did so. She wasn't even paying attention to me. That's how comfortable with kino this woman was, at least at the (drunken) time: she was holding my arm and
didn't even know I was there.
When she got done talking to whoever it was she was talking to, she turned around and started walking back to where she was before, but forgot to let go of my arm.
So I followed her, with a smirk on my face.
A few steps later, she realized that she was holding someone's arm, turned around, and looked at me, and saw me smiling. We both laughed for a second.
And then we made out. Instantly. Because hey, why not. Then she told me not to follow her because she was going back to her husband.
I am a filthy, dirty motherfucker.
So now you know how kino works, and you SHOULD understand that, once again, you don't get better by adding things, most of the time. You get better by subtracting them. If you don't have enough kino in your game, the solution is not to simply add more. The solution is to get rid of your fear of kino so that you do it more without even thinking about it. When you're comfortable with it, you'll find yourself dropping loads of well-calibrated kino without even having to think about doing it. It'll flow straight from your core and manifest itself in what you do, uninhibited by fear.
That's how ALL of natural game works. When you get in the zone, you don't have to consciously "do" anything. It all flows on autopilot. Your masculine core is drawn towards the girl's feminine core. No thought. All feeling.