What’s in an accent? Apparently a lot. America is experiencing a kind of British invasion at the moment, across all media. Popular shows like Game of Thrones, movies like James Bond, bands like Coldplay and actors like Idris Elba and Benedict Cumberbach. But Americans have always held a certain fascination and admiration for the British accent. You even have ideologues and provocateurs with British accents exploiting politics like Milo Yiannopolis. Why not use it for a much more innocent goal such as you know, getting laid?

The last year has been a bit of an eye-opening experience. Since March 2016 to about March 2017 or so, I have been going out to bars, public events, public transit, really everywhere, with a convincing British accent.

“Hello, I’m Jake..er Marcus Stratham”.

I created an entire fake persona, complete with it’s own Facebook profile. I called him “Jake Stratham”, the most stereo-typically British name I could think of, for whatever reason. One of my more perceptive friends picked up on it immediately and sent a text:

I first tested this “persona” while on lunch break from my job in downtown San Francisco. I’d go up to random people, and start talking with the accent. Usually I’d use a gimmick or ice breaker like “hey I’m new and town and looking for a pizza place, anywhere I can find one?” Upon later realizing the name “Jake” for some reason makes me sound like an axe murderer, I changed it back to my real name and closed the Facebook profile. From then on if they asked, I’d just tell people “No I don’t have a Facebook” and left it at that.

Race and Class…it’s Complicated

In my part of Oakland, I see and interact with (hipster) white people all the time. Yet, I know next to nothing about them. Pretty much all of my white friends are non-hipsters. They might be hippy-ish or hip-hop heads but not really hipsters. They don’t listen to obscure, weird sounding bands, they don’t ride fixie bikes. To live in one of the most culturally and racially diverse cities in America and regularly come into contact with loads of people you know next to nothing about is a bizarre state of affairs. Which brings me to my next point. It seems, race to Americans is a major point of confusion and is often thrown-in with class haphazardly. “Having a British accent, people assume you are educated” is what one guy in a bar explained. Really? So does wearing a red bow-tie signal I graduated from Harvard? This is unbelievably goofy to me and I’m American.

Yet with the accent, I met and befriended far more hipsters than normal. Which lends me to believe hipsterism is really a (upper-middle) class and race phenomenon. Who else can afford Whole Foods prices? But I digress.

The Hookup

Let me tell you about how much easier it is to pickup girls. Stupidly easy. In many cases, girls in bars would initiate conversations with me out of nowhere. In other cases, I would just walk up to them, talk and surprisingly, total sweetness. A cakewalk. Forget pickup “instructors”, if you want to pick up cute girls without a hitch just brush up on your fake British. No “game” needed. One drunken girl in a bar blatantly blurted out “He has a British accent, I’m attracted”, then somewhat desperately pulled out her phone before I left the bar to get the digits. I thought to myself, “And British guys had it this easy this whole time?”.

I also don’t recount very many times time I would go out and not get my drinks paid for by any random person I was talking to, including from women. This happened rarely with my “normal” accent. It goes like this: Go out to a bar and start a conversation or just talk really loud so that people will want to engage you. Sooner or later someone will bite, and start taking a liking to your “British” charm. Then just wait for them to order a drink and presto.

I wanted to see how far I could take this experiment, looking back on it, maybe I shouldn't have pushed it. But I was curious. I began seeing a woman, we’ll call her “Becky” and doing it without ever leaving character.

We would get into intense discussions about the differences between America and the UK and I would try to stay as true to character as possible. I’d play the “devils advocate” and say would I imagined “Mr. Stratham” would say in those situations. It was insightful and dare I say, fun.

What I Learned

I learned it’s not what you say but “how” you say it is what matters to people. And if said with a British accent it makes it that much more charming.

I learned that if you simply changed the way in which you talked, not your clothes, not your level of education or money, not your virtuous character, you could get drastically different responses from people. They would go out of their way to do things for you and to want to be your friend.

I approached this whole idea with a beginners mind, with the attitude that I know nothing. Today I can say I sure I do know a lot, and I sure am envious of those British dudes.

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