I’ve been blogging since May 20, 1998. This was the date of the Japan release of that awful American Godzilla movie, which taught me that my true mission in life was to bring Japan and the rest of the world closer together by writing about Japan and anime, rather than merely selling bento boxes or naughty products to people around the world. During this long time period, one thing I haven’t correctly done is a book review, and I thought it’d be fun to do one for How to Pick Up Girls at a Con, a book that landed in my lap recently. Let’s look at the book and see if it can help lonely otakus find love at an anime or comic convention!
(And at the end of this article, I’ll give my advice for making romantic connections with anime fangirls. Be sure to keep reading!)
How To Pick Up Girls at a Con Book Review
So, we’re all chilling at the San Diego Comic-Con, enjoying chatting with our customers and selling hentai grab boxes, when someone — I assume C. Racks, author of the “award-winning book Girls are Scary” — dropped a paperback copy of How to Pick Up Girls at a Con off at our booth. Was this just a silly “how to pick up girls” internet article reskinned for anime fans, or could it really be helpful for someone trying to find a connection with someone in the context of a fan convention?
The book is available in physical form or Kindle edition from Amazon. Screenshots in this post are from the Kindle version, with some editing/redaction by me for this post. The writer is @cs_racks, and art is by @Rena_Sakuma.
How to Meet Girls at a Con promises to be “your guide to attracting the anime girl of your dreams…[covering] everything you need to know in seven easy steps.” While my first reaction was to roll my eyes at the goofy concept, in the end, I thought some of the advice inside might actually be useful for fans looking to up their con dating game. Essential concepts such as understanding the importance of hygiene in potential attractiveness to give your potential target person space (“or she’ll deploy her A.T. field”) made me giggle, but are fundamentally sound ideas some people need to hear.
The book covers things like items you should carry with you when looking for a potential target at a con and the importance of bringing a “wingman” with you. But I appreciate the advice on building the right mindset when attempting to make romantic connections with others and how positive it is to get back on your feet if you encounter a bump in the road to the glorious IRL “waifu laifu” you’re seeking.
The book explores different kinds of venues you might want to “hunt” in, correctly noting how larger events can be more lonely than smaller events unless you have a bunch of friends to hang with already.
The book has useful — well, depending on the individual, as always your mileage may vary — advice about dealing with how to approach making conversation with the opposite sex, what kinds of approaches might be good to try out, and so on. It understands some of the defeatist modes that all of us can slip into, and gives pointers on how to counter some of these negative factors.
The importance of flirting in all romantic social environments can’t be overstated, and this information could definitely be useful to anyone trying to improve their skills at interacting with that someone special.
Peter’s Advice for Picking Up Girls at a Con
I’ve been married for 28 years, so I’ve been out of the game for a long time. But one thing I feel strongly about is that guys and girls who happen like anime (or whatever) should guard against the negativity and defeatism that seems to seep out of certain corners of the Internet. I’m a big fan of the book Influence by Robert Cialdini, and one of his core ideas is that we humans always look to other people around us for social cues as to whether what we’re doing is appropriate or not. If you have a bunch of positive friends who are moving up in the world, we’ll generally be influenced by those people; similarly, if you’ve got friends who are full of negative thoughts, they’ll probably pull you down with them, too.
Some online communities, such as 4chan and Sankaku Complex, seem to be filled with super negative individuals who aren’t happy if they aren’t making everyone else as miserable as they are. They scoff at the idea of love, call any happy guy or girl who’s in a healthy relationship “chad” or “thot,” and generally seem to want everyone to have a terrible life. I believe anyone who’s a part of a community like this should rethink who they spend time with online, and find better friends.
For better or for worse, here is Peter’s Advice on Picking Up Girls at Cons!
Have Confidence
Humans seem to be hard-wired to think that confidence is sexy, and we’re all drawn to people who seem to know what they’re doing in life. Learning to have confidence is probably the most important thing when finding someone to date. When the Not-Yet-Mrs.-J-List asked to see my bankbook back when we were dating, my general confidence in life helped her see past the fact that I had only 180 yen (US$1.31) in my account.
If You Don’t Have Confidence, Act Like Someone Who Does
We all have to start somewhere since none of us was born with the confidence, we need to get through life. Until you feel confident, create a “script” that you run internally unless it feels more natural. Pretending to wear a “mask” of some with more confidence than I actually had was how I got through university.
Don’t Fear Flirting
If you think about it, humans are animals, and we’re all hard-wired to do certain things, like find babies and small animals cute, to experience a “fight-or-flight” response if we feel threatened, and so on. Flirting is another natural thing humans do with each other, and it’s just something you learn to do, like driving.
Don’t Be Afraid of “Hunting”
When I posted my long post about understanding Japan’s birth rate challenges through anime memes, I mentioned that one of the social engines causing Japan to have fewer babies is 装飾化 soushoku-ka, or the “herbivorification” of Japanese males. This refers to men in Japan becoming “salad-eaters” rather than “meat-eaters,” less interested in making a sexual conquest than they might have been in previous generations.
One respondent on Twitter took issue with this language, saying something to the effect, “We live in a modern and civilized society, and men shouldn’t be thinking about sex in terms of sexual conquests.” While I respect that everyone has a different approach to relationships, I think that men should feel that it’s okay for them to be open about their needs, for the same reason women should have a healthy checklist of bullshit they won’t take from their partners.
Remember the Lesson, Not the Disappointment
I read a lot of comments from my followers who have tried the IRL relationship thing once or twice but have been turned off by the pain when the relationship eventually ended. As Holo the Wise Wolf tells us, we should remember the lesson, not the disappointment. Treat every relationship that didn’t work out 100% as a learning experience for the future, and consider each person you’ve dated like gaining a level worth of XP in AD&D. Whatever works for you.
Remember that Love is a Two-Way Street
Whenever I bring up the issue of relationships on social media, I inevitably get a bunch of lonely male followers lamenting not having a cool anime-loving girl to date. I then get many replies from lonely female followers lamenting not having a cool anime-loving boy to date… or something like that. The point is that if you’re sitting around your computer room wishing you had someone to spend time with, know that there’s an anime-loving fangirl out there, wishing she had an incredible boy she could cosplay with next con season. So don’t give up on finding her!
Finally: Make Friends To Hang With Online Ahead of Con Season
A decade ago, we got in some Touhou Project iPhone cases on the J-List site. We were happy to have something cool to sell to our customers, but… sales were more disappointing than when we tried to sell our infamous Upskirt Shimapan Umbrellas at the San Diego Comic-Con, in a city where it never rains. We realized that while we all might hang out in communities celebrating Touhou Project (or any other suitable subculture), who the hell has IRL friends who would be impressed when we pulled out a Touhou phone case? Touhou is mostly an online-only thing.
Then I met KC, the admin who oversees the J18 Publishing twitter and runs our anime conventions. He lived in Baltimore but managed to make online friends with people from all over North America, which he turned into valuable IRL relationships, inviting these people to help work the booth at J-List and provide fun and companionship at cons, and got him exciting jobs. Being a generation older, I was impressed that it was possible to turn online friends into IRL ones, but it’s apparently a thing younger folks should pay attention to. I’ve also seen some very positive interactions on the Anime Expo Facebook group I belong to, in terms of people finding others to hang out with at the show ahead of time.
Got Any Thoughts on How to Pick Up Girls at a Con? Post Them Below!
Thanks for reading this blog post exploring possible good approaches for meeting that special someone at an anime or comic convention. Do you have any tips that have worked for you in the past? Share them below or on Twitter!
We’re big fans of artist Murakami Suigun, and recently J18 Publishing brought out two artbooks of all his amazing art, organized into Illustrations for Masochists and Illustrations for Sadists. Which one will you choose? Check out the two new artbooks here!
