I got home at gone 10.30pm tonight hoping to get to bed quickly before another early morning swim. Then I saw this thread. Even the best laid plans…

I do not fully stand by the ‘drums’ analogy, you’re correct. Its massively ironic, almost absurdly so, but that analogy was made at a time when I was becoming incredibly frustrated with my game because I was opening fine (canned), but then having nowhere to take the conversation. My initial reaction to this wasn’t to look at the openers, and think ‘shit, using a canned opener is restricting me to a narrow conversation’, but rather I thought ‘the opening routine isn’t helping me achieve my aims. I therefore need more routine!'

The drums analogy was most likely intended to support my decision to search for more routine, as opposed to anything thoroughly thought out. Looking back, I appreciate its short comings. Tom made this point better than any other way I can:

…is a very good point, and obviously blasts my entire analogy out of the water! Some of the best drummers I know taught themselves to drum – I was just lucky (and middle class!) enough to have private lessons bought for me. As such, in terms of the drums analogy, I accept it doesn’t adequately explain either a broad theory of learning a skill, nor is it particularly analogous to pick up.

As I say, at the time of that post, I was attempting to justify my then decision to search for more routine to solve the problem presented by the fact that the piece of routine I was regularly using – a canned opener – was mysteriously not leading into dazzling, original conversation. I know – bereft of logic, and I do look back and wonder.

Fortunately, if you look further on in my Field Reports thread, you’ll also see that pretty quickly I reel back from this decision, and instead of attempting to find more routine to solve the problem of ‘where to go after a canned opener’, instead I decided the canned opener itself was the problem, and that it would have to go. This has since been the aim of my game – to do away with canned openers, and to begin to attempt to go and speak to girls without the use of anything canned.

So, do I now look back on a few months of canned openers and think ‘what a waste of time that was’? No! Absolutely not. On Friday night last week, Dave turned to me whilst we were in the court yard of Heebies, nodded towards two girls, and said ‘that’s your set’.

I said ‘Ok’, and walked straight over to them and began a (naturally opened) conversation.

What has given me the confidence to be able to walk over to a strange group of girls and begin a conversation with them? The confidence has come from spending 2 to 3 months doing it with the use of canned openers.

That, of course, depends on how we define evidence. I have no statistical data to provide to you, nor anything scientific which will provide a concrete basis for my support of canned openers for those who, like me, are at the beginning of their journey. Science attempts to demonstrate the existence of ‘laws’ – predictable results to a + b. I can offer you nothing that explains so concretely - and supports undeniably - my belief in canned openers as having some use for beginners.

My only evidence therefore is anecdotal evidence, which I have earlier today explained elsewhere. It is my own experience of canned openers which makes me confident enough in them to strongly recommend them to my fellow newbies. Here is what I said earlier:

I stand by that 100%.

Is it possible to learn to speak to girls without canned openers? Yes, absolutely. There are many who have done it, and to them, I nod with respect.

But do I think (my only evidence being my own recent experience) having a few canned openers ready to go can be of immense help to someone who wants to develop the confidence to go and speak to strange girls? I think, for some people who have problems with AA, they provide a useful circumvent to the limiting belief of ‘I don’t know what to say’, ‘I can’t think of anything to say’, ‘Nothing I say will work’, etc.

Using canned openers is a stepping stone to help cross what for many people is a massive leap. They aren’t perfect, and I imagine (and hope) that many people end up at the same place that I did – frustrated with canned openers, because having learned to open, they get bored with the same conversation very quickly.

But bear in mind the intended use of the canned opener when I recommend it to someone. I don’t intend it as a permanent solution, and would strongly advise against this. Rather, I would advise their use only as a starting point, to be graduated from as quickly as possible – namely once you no longer have a problem approaching girls.

3 months ago, if Dave had said to me ‘go and talk to those girls’, I’d have froze, petrified. I would have said ‘I’ll do it in a minute’, ‘Now isn’t the right time’, ‘I don’t really fancy them’, or whatever. Anything to excuse myself from having to approach them.

I put the fact that I can now approach those girls without a second’s hesitation down to the fact that I have practiced with canned openers for a few months in an effort to overcome my AA.

This is a complex subject, and to really get into it I’d want to talk at some length about the nature of AA, the nature of a canned opener, and perhaps sometime soon I’ll sit down and think through why, for me, canned openers were such an effective agent at eradicating AA.

This will need to touch on the nature of AA – what is it, where does it come from, why it is there; the nature of a canned opened – what are they, why do they hold such authority, why do they seem easy to use; and further, to question whether the use of canned openers were one among several potential techniques for tackling AA, and whether my own promotion of canned openers is made with an ignorance to these other methods. There is probably a great deal which could be written on all of these subjects.

To be sure, though, I don’t claim to be the holder of some eternal truth: that using canned openers will blast AA.

What I do say, however, is that for whatever reason, it worked for me.