[The_King_Under_The_Hill]

I've had a look, and an essential part of being a 'PUA' is conversation starters, shall we have a compilation thread on here?

[Utopian]

Its hard to determine how to initiate conversation with a person without watching them for a few seconds before initiating conversation. You have to be able to read how they feel towards your presence initially.

For instance, if you are sat waiting for a train, and your on a bench with a hot chick. If she has her arms crossed and her leg crossed and pointing away from you, that is a sure sign you're not going to get deep conversation from them. Where as if the person you want to chat to has open body language, e.g. is fidgeting and looking around a lot, possibly having a leg crossed toward you. Chances are you can easily strike up a conversation with the personas they are bored or interested in you.

As a conversation starter you have to try and find a common link between yourself and the other person. Using the train example again, you could be getting a train towards Timbuktu, you have a link to initiate conversation there. Approach the person and just say 'excuse me, have you got the time ?' When they respond, pretty much instantly initiate a second string... ' Is this the platform for the train to Timbuktu?'.

After those two questions, and if your feeling brave you can pretty much go into whatever conversation you want to. Personally I find it easier to create topics based on the two questions you asked, at least until the person is comfortable with your presence. Don't force a conversation, but introduce your persona to them in short fragmented parts

=P This has worked for me when practicing my NLP on random members of the public.

[siffyh]

Its hard to determine how to initiate conversation with a person without watching them for a few seconds before initiating conversation. You have to be able to read how they feel towards your presence initially.

For instance, if you are sat waiting for a train, and your on a bench with a hot chick. If she has her arms crossed and her leg crossed and pointing away from you, that is a sure sign you're not going to get deep conversation from them. Where as if the person you want to chat to has open body language, e.g. is fidgeting and looking around a lot, possibly having a leg crossed toward you. Chances are you can easily strike up a conversation with the personas they are bored or interested in you.

As a conversation starter you have to try and find a common link between yourself and the other person. Using the train example again, you could be getting a train towards Timbuktu, you have a link to initiate conversation there. Approach the person and just say 'excuse me, have you got the time ?' When they respond, pretty much instantly initiate a second string... ' Is this the platform for the train to Timbuktu?'.

After those two questions, and if your feeling brave you can pretty much go into whatever conversation you want to. Personally I find it easier to create topics based on the two questions you asked, at least until the person is comfortable with your presence. Don't force a conversation, but introduce your persona to them in short fragmented parts

=P This has worked for me when practicing my NLP on random members of the public.

This is one of the best ways in my opinion, because as you said, you have things, incommon, and open body language, is in my personal experience 95% correct (sometimes it seems like people lack bodylanguage, they just have a body to move around) and as you ask those two questions, you can keep track of her/his bodylanguage, for example; You ask the first question, she looks up and answers with a smile, green light, keep going, but as I wrote above, some peoples body language seem to be out of order, so if they have that stale "I-have-to-smile" smile, Just walk the other way.

[DaPaus]

I'm not that great and communicating with others, let alone strangers. But what I do is try to smile and look happy, people feel confortabler around you. Especially people from an older generation. One day I was alone on the train and I had still more then 45 minutes to go. So as I started eating some food in my backpack. Out of nothing a female around the age of 50 tooks the seat next to me and she was looking really irritated someway. My phone died and I had nothing to do so I asked here if she wanted a choclate bar. I'm around 16 and she looked at me like it was a joke ("She later admitted she thought at the beginning that there was a hidden camera). I asked her where she was heading and she had to step out the train stop before mine. So she talked about her children and she wanted to send a text message. But she just bought a new phone and she couldn't work with it so I helped her a bit. When we arrived at her stop she tanked me and gave me 20 euro's with the words: "There aren't many kind guys like you left, I honestly never thought someone like you would offer me some help. But thanks, you restored my faith in the next generation." I was kinda shocked after that actually.

[Mr.Dux]

Simply to start a conversation, do something interesting, get up and do a dance, that'll attract attention making people talk to u, thus a conversation, works everytime