The First Message

Okay, the first message is regional and culture specific, starting. So, you gotta identify your audience and identify where you are both literally and metaphysically. So, what I mean by that is texting, messaging, whatever you want to call it, it's a text. It's a text format message sent electronically. It depends entirely on who it's going to. Depends entirely on the audience. So, step one is identify that. What country are they in? For starters? Because that will give you a lot about their cultural upbringing, even if they don't directly identify with all of it. It still has major impact on them. Whether they consciously acknowledge it or not, it helps to find them. So that's a good place to start. The next place is on their profile. Hopefully, they've entered lots of inputs to give you lots of data, and hopefully, they are serious, and they put a little bio, even though I've always thought those were kind of a waste of time, so I just used a bunch of emojis to literally illustrate what I was into and what I did. And then in pictures, pictures are worth a thousand words, so look at the pictures on their profile, and see what they are. Are they nature? Are they museums? Are they travel? Are they local? Are they bars? Are they just whatever they are? Just identify what they are. And what that says about someone, like someone that likes being outside and exercising. They probably care more about fitness activities and, you know, gear towards food for that unless they're cheating, like a cheat meal that day or something. So you can learn a lot about someone just from literally reading the information that's available, and then using that to deduce and infer, the least objectionable, logical outcomes.

So, a personal anecdote about my first messages, when I was still there, when I was still doing that, I did a lot of them, and that's not a humble brag, that is like, I had to schedule them. It was too many. And then I had to do, like, okay, I'm only going to choose the top people. And then I had to block out time to do it. Maybe that is a humble brag. I don't mean it to be. It literally took a lot of my day. I didn't like doing it. And then you upset a lot of people because then you end up ghosting them and you don't talk to them, so it's not cool. So, that's something to consider as well. When you start liking people, it's very common. This is a tangent, it's very common to a lot of apps to do, zombie swipes, something CHRYSA purposely does not do. Like, literally, you can't. The way that it functions doesn't allow for that. Not that there's a block on it, but we don't swipe. You literally can't do it that way, but on other apps, you just swipe for everybody and then you pick from a pool that matches with you. So, you get, like, 100 matches or whatever, and maybe that's a ridiculous number to some people, to other people, that's very low. Go ask, go ask any girl, and she'll tell you what's very low. So anyway, it's just an example. But what I'm saying is I have a lot of experience with it, and I have a lot of experience with it from different people from different places, because even though they are concentrated in two places, primarily in the greater Los Angeles area and the Tokyo metropolitan area, specifically, broken up over the last four years. Within those areas, you get a microcosm of the world, especially in LA, you get people from everywhere, and a lot of them, and they're very proud of where they're from, which is beautiful. It's colorful and amazing, and so you learn to adapt and connect to a lot of different people, or you sink, you know? You learn to swim with all the different folks and connect with them, you know, on what matters, and, you know, forget about the rest. It won't bother you. And in Japan, you still get a lot of international folks, but the entire culture is different. So, anyway, that's a whole nother blog.

What I'm saying is identifying who you're messaging is super important. So before you even think about what to say, think about who you're saying it to. So, where are they from? Where do they live now, and then what's on their profile? Once you identify those things, then you can craft what I used to do, which CHRYSA basically automatically does for you, which is also culture specific, because that was a shock for me when I got to Japan. Because it was very successful in LA, and just giving that away. I would not say anything outside of the following, starting now. Hello, blank. Would you like to do activity A on this day, at this time, or activity B on a different day, at a different time? And that's it. And then I would just make sure the activities were different. Like one of them would be meeting at a restaurant, one of them would be going hiking, you know, like, or going to a museum, whatever their profile dictated, there was no static answer. You know, I wouldn't say to everybody, you know, do you want to get sushi on Friday or Italian on Saturday if they were vegan? Right? So it's culture specific, it's region specific. Proving a point. And you can illustrate that however you want, but that's what I did in the States, in L.A. Specifically. And a lot of people really liked it. And, a lot of people felt that it respected their time, that it showed initiative, and that it showed that I had learned something about them, because I chose things that they would be interested in based on their profile.

Also, it showed that I put an effort, and really, that's what the main thing is, is, as long as you don't come out of the gate, you know, like, Oh, my God, I saw your picture, you're really pretty, I wanna have babies. Even if you feel that way. Then, you know, awesome for knowing yourself and for standing by it. I dig that. But it's not always, you know, the right time to share personal information. Usually that comes out in waves and later in certain intervals, and, less is more sometimes. So I've always found that the most effective initiation of conversation was to lead with action. So I would lead by putting an effort to learn about them with what they provided, and then I would present two options, either of which they would find enjoyable. And then go from there, because I also would find them enjoyable.

And that is the first message in Japan, just for context, totally different. Because in that culture, they respect privacy and they respect taking things slow. So here, in the West, we are all over endless chatting with each other online, and never meeting in person. In Japan, they feel much safer if they chat with you first online, and then meet with you in person for a little while. So when I first got to Tokyo, and I was looking for a girlfriend, I was looking for someone to show me around, whatever, I was following my old pattern. I was reading their profile, and I was doing my same basically system prompt in, you know, updating name and activity in days and dates, accordingly. And people just unfollowed me. People just unmatched me, and, thank God, thankfully, some of them, they messaged me first, and they were like, I just matched with you. I don't even know you. Why would I go meet up with you? And in LA, I literally would get the other things, I would say, Do you want to do this or this? And, for example, if they picked a restaurant, I would then, as soon as I saw it, I would lock in a reservation for the day and the time that I suggested. I would do it before. If there was no cancellation fee, I had enough time. And I would just say, Okay, perfect. Reservations locked at this day. I'll see you then. And they were like, Oh, my God, that's so efficient, it's so fast, it feels like a movie. I love that, in Japan, totally different. So that's just a personal, real, real world, anecdotal, esoteric example of why identifying who your first message is for is the first and most important step of the first message.