Improve at conversation by having actual conversations

Here are a couple things somebody wrote about online dating. (References available upon request, by the way; I take this stuff from various internet forums. I'm not sure if the original posters of this stuff really want it attributed, so I'm not attributing it. Also most of what I've commented on the past few days was written three years ago.)

A simple 1-3 line message which contains some specific question/comment about something in their profile works fine. It must be funny. All messages with girls should be funny. Yeah, pressure. I have taken an hour+ just to respond to a girl online before. Why the fk not? Get it right.

Why the fuck not? Because if it takes you an hour to think of something acceptably witty to say, YOU AREN'T WITTY. Then when you're face to face with the girl you'll both be disappointed: you'll find out her pictures were taken 35 pounds ago, and she'll find out you're not witty and in fact are a poor conversationalist.

That's not to say that an exercise like this is completely meritless; it's practice, anyway. But the brutal truth of it is that by the time you're in your mid-20s, if you're not witty you're never going to be. Best to accept that and focus on what strengths you have.

This also explains much about what's wrong with internet dating/meeting in general (and yes, I most definitely include Facebook in this): you get too much time to think about how to word things, and you have a backspace key. This is not just irrelevant but harmful to improving your conversation skills. You should stay the hell away from it. Now internet dating sites (as different from Facebook) should also be avoided because it is populated almost exclusively by people with something seriously wrong with them. As such, they are useful only if there's something seriously wrong with you and you're too damn lazy to fix it.

I have more to say about wittiness, but I'm going to give it its own post.

All messages OTHER THAN THE FIRST ONE should contain some reference to sex or a joke about sex. You are not looking for a friend, you're looking for a date. You will not scare off a girl if you let her know that, as long as its not the first message.

This is spot-on correct and very important. Not just in online dating sites (please don't use online dating sites) but in conversation too. If you want to have sex with someone, MAKE IT KNOWN. Girls like sex. Really, they do. You're saving yourself a lot of time and the woman a lot of aggravation by tossing a little playful flirting into the conversation very early on. To not do this is to pretend you're just friendly and not sexually interested, and it's dishonest. BE HONEST.

The writer is wrong when he says you won't scare her off. You will "scare off" a lot of women that way, but "scare off" is the wrong term for it. It's you're expressing sexual interest, she isn't interested so she shuts you down (online, usually by ceasing to respond to your messages). Once you get good at life, you'll be able to chill out enough to still get on friendly terms with girls that aren't sexually interested in you, which will open social doors.

This doesn't mean complement her.. I almost never flat out complement a girl I just started talking to, they get that crap all the time.

He means "compliment". "Never compliment" is a pretty stupid strategy. Complimenting is OK, just use it sparingly, and be careful with it; it's easy to be over-effusive (and tip her off that you know she's out of your league) or under-sincere (and come off as a jackass). But this writer is correct that every reasonably attractive woman on an online dating site gets 30 or 40 compliments a day, and on their face they mean nothing to her.

Knowing when and how to compliment is an important part of good conversation skills, and most people are bad at it.