Lexicon ·
IOI
noun, an abbreviation (indicator of interest)
- Stated meaning
- A sign, usually unspoken, that the other person is attracted to you.
- Operating meaning
- A gesture entered as evidence by the party hoping to find it, with the other party's intent supplied in the reading.
- Origin
- Pickup vocabulary, in use on the seduction newsgroup alt.seduction.fast by August 2003 and expanded there by 2005. Its opposite, the IOD, appears in 2006.
- Synonyms
- indicator of interest
- Antonyms
- indicator of disinterest
“Convo ran for a bit, but they weren’t throwing out IOI’s and I wasn’t warmed up and stalled out.” That is the term in use on the seduction newsgroup alt.seduction.fast (opens in a new window) on August 9, 2003, in a field report, without a gloss. The expansion came later. In December 2004 a poster wrote “an IOI (indication of interest),” and in October 2005 another asked, “Are these IOI’s? (Indicators Of Interest)?” The opposite arrived in February 2006 and was defined that July as “an indicator of DISinterest.”
The Mystery Method (opens in a new window) entered both in its 2007 glossary as “Signs, mostly nonverbal,” and gave them a place in the method’s sequence. It also reclassified its own best-known move: “A neg is in fact an IOD.” By then the indicator had a list, a count and a direction, and the field report was where it was entered.
Under load, the IOI is evidence logged by the only party looking for it. A laugh, a hand on an arm or a question about whether one is single is recorded as a signal, and the reading supplies the intent. The ledger has one column, kept by one side, and the other party is never asked to confirm an entry. A disputed reading has nowhere to go, because the only auditor is the man who made it.