A lot of people aren’t even aware they wink. I was on a date back in the Fall and the woman sitting across of me winked at the end of every sentence. I teased her about it and she told me that it wasn’t done consciously but usually happens when she’s nervous.
There’s this dude at the building I work at that winks every 2 seconds. Everyone else that have had conversations with him noticed the same thing. It gets annoying having a conversation with him as you usually get distracted and do a mental countdown for the next wink; he must have some kind of complication.
Of course, the most famous wink in the sports world was Patrick Roy’s…that was done consciously.
I wink sometimes when someone and I share an inside joke and a third party brings up something that makes it relevant. It’s a semi-discrete way of saying “yeah, I’m thinking that, too.”
But I don’t wink as a pickup-technique. Personally, I prefer using 3-4 seconds of eye contact for something like that.