// intel / pop culture

stop texting like schmidt. text like nick miller. (new girl)

tldr: Schmidt has the career, the abs, the walk-in closet, and zero luck because every text he sends reads like a polished audition. Nick Miller sends the first paranoid thought that enters his skull and cleans up. Text like Nick, keep the hardware of Schmidt, and the outcome flips.

#texting#dating-apps#new-girl#signal-inversion#openers

I was Schmidt.

If you lined up my ten closest friends and asked them, they'd tell you the same thing without hesitation. It's a running joke at this point. Bailey is Schmidt. The thoughtful bio openers. The rehearsed one-liners. The J.Crew fit going out on a Saturday. I had the whole thing dialed in. And it got me nowhere.

My co-founder was Nick Miller. Stains on his shirt. Hole in his pants. No rehearsed anything. In our early 20s he was getting ten times the results I was and it wasn't close. That gap is the entire reason we built The Guy. Let me explain why the guy who looks like a catch on paper keeps losing to the guy who looks like he owes money to a bookie.

why does schmidt lose even though he has everything?

Schmidt has the hardware. Great career. Walk-in closet. Abs. Grooming. Everything you'd want from a physical, on-paper, spec-sheet perspective is a 10.

Nick Miller is a bartender with no ambition, no direction, and possibly no shower in the last week.

Both of them lived with Jess. Both of them lived with the Megan Fox character. And both women chose Nick. Every time.

This isn't a plot hole. It's the whole point. The thing that makes Schmidt impressive on paper is the exact thing that repels women in the text thread. He's always operating with a preset agenda. Every message has a purpose. Every purpose is visible. Women don't read that as "trustworthy." They read it as an alarm.

I wrote more about this exact trap in the more impressive you are, the worse you do on dating apps. The polish isn't a bonus. It's the tell.

what does texting like schmidt actually look like?

I asked The Guy to write a Schmidt opener. Here's what it produced, and I'll be honest, it's close to what I was sending back then.

SCHMIDT: just got back from santorini and my skincare routine has never been better. you look like you could keep up.

NICK: my landlord sued me for something i can't discuss and i think you might be working with him

Look at the first one. It's polished. It performs. It signals status, it signals effort, it signals "high value man auditioning for you." Every word of it says "I thought about this before I sent it." And she can feel that.

The second she feels you crafted something for her, she knows you care about the outcome. And a guy who cares about the outcome is a guy who needs something from her. That's the kiss of death.

Now read the Nick text again. There's no strategy behind it because there's no brain behind it. She can't find the angle because there is no angle. She's just staring at a text from a man who might be in legal trouble, and somehow that's more interesting than the 40 Schmidts in her inbox who all sound like LinkedIn posts with a flirty emoji.

That's the whole game. This is Signal Inversion Theory in one screenshot. The move that feels weak is strong. The move that feels strong is weak.

why do her alarm bells go off with the polished guy?

Because Schmidt is hiding red flags. Everybody has them. Schmidt has more than most. But he presents a version with zero seams, and the missing seams are exactly what she notices. Nobody is that clean. So the polish reads as concealment.

Nick leads with his red flags. He owes money to everyone he knows. A guy at his bank told him he has poor judgment. He doesn't trust fish because they breathe water. She sees exactly what she's getting. And weirdly, that makes her comfortable. She knows the deal. There's nothing hidden because he's incapable of hiding anything.

Schmidt makes her feel like she's being sold something. Nick makes her feel like she stumbled into a comedy show she can't leave. One of those is a date. The other one is a "haha" and a slow ghost.

I broke down why the guy who leads with the mess wins in why nice guys get ghosted. The nice, clean, agenda-free version isn't safe. It's suspicious.

so what would nick miller actually send?

I had The Guy write three. Here they are.

1. my landlord sued me for something i can't discuss and i think you might be working with him

2. i owe money to everyone i know so if you're here to collect get in line

3. a guy at my bank said i have poor judgment and then i matched with you

The Guy picked number one. The landlord angle. Because it's so absurd that he becomes the entertainment, and now the dynamic is flipped. She has to follow up. She has to ask what's going on with him. She has to figure out his deal. No other guy in her inbox is texting like that.

That's the move. She's asking you questions now. The pursuit inverted. You didn't chase. You said something unhinged and made her chase the punchline.

Compare that to what you're doing now. You saw she likes to travel. So you wrote about Santorini. You mentioned a specific island to prove you're cultured. You thought that set you apart. It didn't. You became the 40th guy who also travels. This is the same reason referencing her bio is a trap. The effort is the problem, not the solution.

does this mean i have to look like a bartender?

No. This is the part everyone gets backwards.

You don't copy Nick Miller's life. You copy his texting. Keep the hardware of Schmidt. Good career. Good shape. Hobbies, friends, a social life. Then text like Nick. Like you have no agenda. Like you have no strategy. Like you didn't reread it and don't care if you should have.

That dichotomy is what kills it. Great life, zero investment in the outcome. It signals you're not sweating this match. When she thinks you have no game, that is the best game you could possibly have.

And here's the thing about Schmidt that people miss. His problem was never that women thought he had no game. They knew he had game. They just didn't like the game. They didn't like the angle, the strategy, the constant sense of being managed toward an outcome. Nick has no game to dislike. There's nothing to push against.

If your texts read like LinkedIn DMs reformatted for Hinge, you're Schmidt. I wrote about that exact failure in you text her on hinge like it's linkedin. The professional polish that gets you promoted at work gets you ghosted in the thread. It's the same skill inverted.

how did this actually change things for me?

I had to make the mindset shift myself. My co-founder walked me through years of nonsense until I stopped writing openers like cover letters. The first time I sent something dumb, half-baked, unpolished, on purpose, I felt sick. It felt like sending a typo to your boss.

Then she responded. Faster and warmer than anything I'd ever crafted.

That's the whole trick. The Idiot Toddler Framework says the text you're embarrassed to send is usually the one that works. Nick Miller is that framework in a flannel. He doesn't know what Santorini is and he's dating Megan Fox. You know exactly what Santorini is and you're staring at a read receipt.

If you have the career, the shape, the halfway decent social skills, and you're still shooting yourself in the foot the second the conversation moves to text, you're not broken. You're just Schmidt. It's a fixable problem. You already have everything Nick doesn't. You just need his thumbs.

try The Guy at asktheguy.app. paste your conversation, get the version that actually works.

video transcript

You're texting like Schmidt from New Girl, and it's absolutely sabotaging your dating life What you should be texting is like Nick Miller. Unhinged, absurd, with not a care in the world. Now, guys, I know because I used to be Schmidt. Yes. Believe it or not, I was Schmidt. And I was the one with the thoughtful bio openers, with the overly rehearsed, polished one-liners, and it literally got me nowhere.

Now contrast that with Nick Miller, who just sends the first thing that pops into his mind and somehow kills it. I mean, think about it. On the show, he literally starts off dating Jess, played by Zooey Deschanel. She leaves in, like, season three, gets replaced with Megan Fox as the roommate, and then he starts dating Megan Fox.

Meanwhile, both women were roommates also with Schmidt, and yet they chose Nick Miller over Schmidt. Why is that? Guys, what you have to understand is that even though Schmidt, on paper, looks like a perfect catch. He's got the great career. He's got the walk-in closet. He's got the abs. He's got the grooming.

Everything you would ever want from a physical hardware-like perspective, he's got it all dialed in to a 10. Nick Miller ... Compare that to Nick Miller, who is a bartender, who has no ambition, no direction in life, probably hasn't even showered in a week, and yet somehow the ladies routinely cannot s- help themselves but go after and pursue Nick Miller.

And that's the kind of energy you wanna be bringing to the text game, both on the apps and if you're going out and meeting women at bars in the daytime and then getting their number from there, okay? That's gonna make the world of difference. I would argue, honestly, that what you wanna do is you wanna have the hardware of Schmidt.

So you wanna be in good shape with a good career, all that stuff, the hobbies, the friends, the social life, but then you wanna text like Nick Miller. That dichotomy is what's going to kill it because it signals that you're not overly invested. That's what you have to understand, is that these women don't trust Schmidt because he's always acting like he has a preset agenda.

He's hiding all his red flags, of which there are many. And it's not that he presents this perfectly polished version and they think he's, like, totally trustworthy. In fact, if anything, their alarm bells just go off. Nick Miller, totally opposite scenario. He literally reads with the red flags. She can see it for what it is and then from there she actually feels comfortable because she knows what she's getting involved in.

Let me give you an example. So I asked the guy app, link in the description, 'cause, guys, I was like Schmidt. I was texting just like how he would. Literally, if you were to line up 10 of my best friends, they would all tell you, without question, this is like a party joke we do sometimes, that Bailey's Schmidt.

We all know it, okay? Now, here's something. I asked the guy app, link in the description if you actually wanna fix your text game and start texting like the catch they are, 'cause the guy is literally Nick Miller, okay? The guy, so I asked the guy app to, um, say, "Give me an example of what Schmidt would send on the apps."

Oh, wow. And then we'll also follow that up with an example of what Nick Miller would send on the apps. So the guy said, "Schmidt would send something like, 'I just got back from Santorini and my skincare routine has never been better. You look like you could keep up.'" And this is the guy's analysis of that text, which I'm not gonna lie, is a similar text to probably what I was sending at some point in time.

It says, "It's polished, it's performing, it signals status, signals effort, signals I'm a high value man auditioning for you. Every single thing about it says I thought about this before I sent it, and she can feel that The second she feels a guy crafted something for her, she knows he cares about the outcome.

And a guy who cares about the outcome is a guy who needs something from her. That's the kiss of death on the apps. Now, Nick Miller would never craft anything. Nick Miller doesn't even know what Santorini is. Nick Miller opens his phone, types whatever half-baked paranoid thought entered his skull, like, 'I don't trust fish.

They breathe water. It's crazy,' and hits send without rereading it. There's no strategy behind it because there's no brain, and that's why it works. She can't find the angle because there is no angle. She's just staring at a text from a man who might be in legal trouble, and somehow that's more interesting than the 40 Schmidts in her inbox who all sound like LinkedIn posts with a flirty emoji.

I mean, guys, couldn't have said it any better myself. Now, what the ... Now, what Nick Miller would send on the apps, in contrast, would be, number one, "My landlord sued me for something I can't discuss, and I think you might be working with him." Two, "I owe money to everyone I know, so if you're here to collect, get in line."

Number three, "A guy at my bank said I have poor judgment, and then I matched with you." And then it says, "I'd go with one, the landlord sued me angle," because then it's so absurd, he's the entertainment, and now she has to ... Now the dynamic's flipped. She has got to follow up with him, ask him questions, see what's up with him, what's his deal, 'cause no other guy is texting like that on the apps.

So guys, what you wanna copy, what you wanna take away from this video is not, you don't wanna start, you know, looking like you woke up, um, from a dumpster like Nick Miller, okay? But you want to text like you're Nick Miller, like you have no preset agenda, like you have no strategy. Guys, like I've said before on this channel, when she thinks you have no game, that is the best game you could possibly have.

Conversely, with Schmidt, all the ladies think Schmidt has game. That's not the problem. The ph- the problem is they don't like the game. They don't like the angle. They don't like the games and the strategy he's taking So yeah, guys, hopefully that makes sense. And listen guys, I was Schmidt. I was the one who had to make this mindset adjustment because it was my co-founder who we helped, who helped me develop the guy app.

We did it together in a partnership. He was Schmidt. I mean, excuse me, I was Schmidt. He was Nick Miller. He was the one, you know, he's probably not gonna like me saying this, but it's okay. He watches every video. He's our biggest fan so far. He was the one who just goes out in public, stains on his shirt, hole in his pants.

And yet somehow, if you were to compare our early 20s, he was getting way more success with the ladies than I was. It wasn't even close, quite honestly. Even though I was like, you know, you know, even though I was dressed like a J.Crew model and then like, you know, going out with my overly rehearsed lines, he was cleaning up.

He was getting 10 times more results than I was. And it wasn't until we finally talked through so much nonsense. He helped me with the text game. And then I started texting like Nick Miller that I started to have way more success. And now I'm even acting like Nick Miller on the dates, which is a totally different topic.

But guys, if you want to fix the text game, if you identified with what I laid out in this video of the trap of presenting yourself as overly polished on the apps and being so outcome independent and really just sabotaging yourself to where you come across like you're writing LinkedIn DMs, just formatted slightly differently for Hinge.

And you want to finally start having the success that you know you're capable of on the apps. Because if you're watching this, you probably have the career down, probably are in good shape, probably have halfway decent social skills. But when it comes to the text communication, you shoot yourself in the foot.

Guys, you know what to do. Free trial, link in the description. Change your text game. Just paste in a screenshot, new chat, current chat, doesn't matter. And you'll see the difference yourself. All right, that's it for me in this one. I'll talk to you guys later. Peace out.