Every time a college or high school aged young man asks for game tips there is always one piece of overused advice thrown about: the most important thing for young guys in the game is to “be popular.” While being popular is indeed important for very young guys as they game girls from their own respective schools, telling guys to become popular as a blanket statement does not address the subtleties of how it affects your game.

Your school is a massive friendzone when it comes to you and the girls, and the smaller the school and the longer you have gone there the more so that this is true. As such, popularity is not enough. Being well liked by your peers simply means that you have been already been put into the friend and classmate category by the majority of the cute girls  and that you get invited to house parties. Popularity is literally is only a foot in the door to get into them, yet you still need game to be able to pull at them.

On the other hand, being not only popular while having a reputation for being a player act together in synergy,  turning girls who would have been firmly friendzoned you into prospects when they are open for fooling around both inside and outside of the party scene.

Only a minority of “popular” guys in  school are players. Most of them will have had a girlfriend or two during their schooling years, being popular in itself hardly means that vagina will rain down from the sky like much of the marketing hype for young guys game advice on the internet implies.

Unfortunately, unless one were to begin quite young, it is difficult for a non-natural to gain a reputation for being a player within their school, simply because learning game requires that one approach a large volume of girls one has never met before, meaning they will be outside of the wider social circle of your school.

Therefore it’s not a good idea to tell young, up and coming high school aged guys to merely become popular in school. Instead, young guys need to cold approach as many girls as they can outside of school and improve their social skills and confidence. As they do this, they will gradually become more and more popular in their school.

The most important lesson for young guys to take from this is that improving your game is your number one priority rather than becoming more popular, the later of which will become totally moot once you finish school.

Read More: Why Demographics Matter For The Younger Man