Welcome To Hallie Batchelder’s School Of Flirting

“After a glass of pinot, I’ll slide into anyone’s DMs,” Hallie Batchelder tells me, sipping an extra dirty martini as we sit at a corner table in Zero Bond, a private members club in the trendy NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. Her go-to message? The cartwheel emoji, sometimes accompanied by a simple “hi.” When I ask about her success rate, she shrugs. “It depends on whose DMs I'm sliding into. With athletes, it usually works.”

I should have known her advice would be this straightforward. Batchelder has built an online brand off of her blunt, explicit takes on sex and dating, which she dishes out on the Extra Dirty podcast (under Alex Cooper’s Unwell network) and to nearly 600,000 TikTok followers. She tells them how to orchestrate a hookup (at a man’s apartment rather than your own, because “men can overstay their welcome”), how to enjoy getting on top (focus on yourself and “don't give a f*ck what he's looking at”), and how many orgasms to strive for (“I want as many as I can possibly have before my neck breaks”). Now, we’re out to drinks on a Tuesday night so she can teach me, a chronically single girl, how to flirt and build a roster as iconic as hers.

First of all, the 27-year-old Boston native says, it’s about putting yourself in the right places to find the “rich daddies” and fratty boys she gravitates toward. She recommends members clubs like this one and Chez Margaux, where we’re headed next — the clientele is wealthy, with a higher-than-usual number of single bachelors. But for the girls who don’t have Batchelder’s level of access (“I’m the most relatable, unrelatable person ever,” she jokes), fancy hotel bars will do the trick, as well as sports bars when there’s a big event going on. “The hot men are at random dive bars,” she says. “Wherever you can watch a game is also where you can find a guy.”

But don’t expect these men to approach you. “Men don’t come up to girls anymore,” she says. “That's why it's a woman's time. We have to shoot our shots.” You can use the power of sultry eye contact — she demonstrates by flicking her gaze downward and back up at me, with her manicured nails perched elegantly on the stem of her martini glass. “I'll point at them, too,” she says. “Like, ‘I want you. Come over here.’” It doesn’t matter if you haven’t confirmed they’re on the market. “The worst-case scenario is that they're in a relationship and are like, ‘Sorry, I have a girlfriend.’ It's not going to kill you.”

See how many ego jabs you can take to a man, that's literally the recipe to having him fall in love with you.

I tell her about a recent almost-meet-cute, where I approached a hot dude on the subway and straight-up asked if he was single. (He said yes initially, but texted me later to explain that he actually wasn’t.) Batchelder rolls her eyes — ”these f*cking men, so predictable” — but applauds me for going for it. “I'm always like, ‘Wait, take my number. Take my Instagram,’ she says. “I'll give him my phone. I'll put it in his face.” If she’s on a dating app (she “loves” them, by the way), she’ll use the line: "It's so weird that we're still on this app, here's my number."

In person, she tries to suss out chemistry through banter. “I try to pick up on their sense of humor right off the bat — flirting is like a pingpong match. You're feeding off the person's energy,” she says. “And if they're not funny, I don't want them. I'd rather have a funny guy than a 10-out-of-10 supermodel that has no personality.” It helps, she says, to be a little mean and see how they react. “See how many ego jabs you can take to a man, that's literally the recipe to having him fall in love with you.”

But Batchelder isn’t looking for love — at least not this summer. “It would be great to find a man, and I'm not not open to that,” she says. “But not a sh*tty man who I stay with for two years before I find out he's a piece of sh*t and have to start over from scratch. I'd rather start from a solid foundation with a solid person. I also feel like my taste in men right now is absolute sh*t.” I ask what she means. “I think my type will change when my EQ is a bit higher. Right now, I have the emotional intelligence of a sorority girl, so I go after men that are fratty.” She’s loving the mustache and mullet combo at the moment. “That's how I know I'm toxic right now.”

Despite her preference for f*ckboys, she has other plans this season. “This summer, I'm going to focus on being seductive and productive. Men can just be accessories. I want to flirt with them, but I also want to get my work done.”

It’s achievable because she’s mastered the art of not catching feelings. “If a guy's like, ‘I just want to keep things casual,’ it puts a mental block in my brain. If I know that's the end of the road with this person, it’s just sex and fun, then I'm so OK with that.” Also, it’s not cute to get attached to a man who’s not into you. “I never want to have to feel like I have to beg for a man to date me, or down the road if I have kids, to be like, ‘Oh my God, your dad didn't like me at one point.’ I need a guy to be fully obsessed with me for it to work.”

By now, we’ve migrated to the warm, red lighting of Chez Margaux, sharing a salad and fries, a bowl of pasta, and a crème brulee with copious amounts of white wine. She’s already pointed out several good-looking men sitting at tables around the room, and I can’t lie, I see the vision. This place is sexy. Batchelder won’t dish on exactly how many men she’s met here, but never fear — she’ll continue to talk sh*t about their bad behavior on her podcast.

"Whatever you take from what I have to say, whether that's ‘don't do it,' or ‘do it,’ I have a contribution,” she says. It’s not a crime to want to have sex and be single, or as Batchelder puts it, “If you want to f*ck on the first date, you should be able to f*ck on the first date.” She’s far from the only one doing it. “These are not original experiences, I'm just bold enough to talk about them.”