I wonder how you've read my message to get this take. I'm reading that standing on my head and still can't see how it's about picking up. Picking down, maybe, yet it's questionable. Asking another person of their life isn't picking someone down, it's just showing interest in them and letting them tell something about themselves. It's a basic courtesy. And it probably started relationships of parents of many people in this thread, yours and mine included. It's just a normal dating starter. While pickdown (pickup?) is a snake oil strategy that promises one to get a pussy while ignoring another person completely and it doesn't really work that way unless you pay for a sexworker's service. And I don't think OP wants that at all. If they want a normal relationship, making a future partner talk about something they like is a good starting point - that's what I was talking about.