Indicator of interest

Indicator of interest

Field	Pickup
Also known as	IOI, IOIs
Origin	Mystery Method

An indicator of interest (IOI) is a signal — spoken or not — that someone is attracted or at least open. The term is Mystery Method vocabulary. The opposite is an indicator of disinterest (IOD). An approach invitation (AI) is the special case of an IOI that means "you may come over."

Classic ladder

PUA Lingo (Vince Lin, 2008) listed a typical escalation of IOIs, rewritten here as an encyclopedia list rather than the original glossary prose:

1. Held eye contact, "come talk to me" look (AI)
2. Unconscious self-touch (hair, hand)
3. Open body, lean-in
4. She touches you (kino)
5. She complies with a request (compliance)
6. Verbal compliment
7. Long held "dinner-bowl" eye contact
8. Lip lick / chest presentation (sexual)
9. Willing to bounce or isolate

Mystery-school rule of thumb: go for a kiss close after about three IOIs. Later schools (including Chase Amante) treat continued compliance and the absence of IODs as enough; waiting for a cartoon IOI is how AFCs never escalate.

Fake IOIs

The same lexicon warns that some signals are bait for free attention or drinks. Distinguishing real from fake is calibration, which only arrives with field time.

See also

• Indicator of disinterest
• Approach invitation
• Calibration
• Kino
• Mystery Method

Sources

• PUA Lingo, "Indicator of Interest (IOI)," Vince Lin, 22 Dec 2008; Common Crawl 2014 capture in Wingman corpus (pualingo-983). Encyclopedia rewrite, not a paste.
• Erik von Markovik, The Mystery Method (2007).