A few tips for the community guys

I was at an event last night, of course, being a small city, there was a parade of community guys... marching in. There were some rather sad but humorous things they did, if you are reading this. Here are a few tips:

Find friends within the community, not wings. In case you never had friends, there is a whole new world of things that you can discuss and can talk about besides "game." That also means that you have fun with each other, you bring value to the interaction, contribute, instead of trying to take/steal/lower energy/vibe/value from each other. It's a tough concept to explain, there are some people who just click and majority of the time, people just don't, live with it, let it go.

Therefore, you don't march locksteps into a venue like an invading horde of horn dogs looking for tails. Walk past the entrance, step aside, start talking to people around you. It's ok to walk into a place, scan the room, SMILE, and wave at people you know.

If you haven't made any new friends recently, go up, say hi to people, introduce yourself, make friends, be nice to people, have fun, be social. For the banter monkeys, work on your delivery, and get a feel of the energy level, if it's low, don't start going crazy. For the Juggler monkeys, stop using so many "I statements" and actually ask people questions, they want you to care enough to want to know about them. For the Mystery monkeys, stop with the stupid ass opinion openers. Seriously, just throw all those opinion openers out the door. First, at a classy event, where people have real careers not just the latest "gig" or job, they don't give a shit about you or your friend's problems. Second, opinion openers tend to distract people's attention from the here and now, problems/conflicts of someone else instead of we & us. Third, the delivery is the key, until you have mastered that, learn to behave like a normal person, instead of running game. Finally, the trick about running routines, unlike your computer programs of subroutines/functions, should be interleaved, nested, stacked, interwoven together. So you don't run a routine to completion, you start one, seem distracted by something else, move on to something else, then something else in the middle of the next routine. The goal is to create many open loops, eventually some of them will take the bait and try to pull you back to finish.

Another thing, avoid silences because you will come across as needy, unless your pauses are deliberate. This means that you don't actively seek out reaction. Throw stuff up in the air, run your routines, but don't seem to wait for their reaction even though you should be constantly gauging their reaction; this is where compliance tests become handy. There are quite a few, from verbal qualification hoops, verbal commands, physical touching to moving the group.

If all that I have written seems too much, go into a venue, observe, join into conversation. Stop trying to talk over people in order to take over the set. I have plenty of girls, I'll step back and watch you crash & burn. In fact, watching you fail is my second favorite past time, and if you ever come into my set, just beware that pay back will be a bitch.