Men’s Rights Redditor: Watch out ladies, or we’ll make Friend Zoning illegal!
So the Men’s Rightsers over on Reddit are getting worked up over the evils of women “friend zoning” men, and one especially angry fellow by the name of andreipmbcn has a warning for the ladies: if they don’t watch themselves, the men’s rights movement might just rise up and make friend zoning illegal:
What this means is not exactly clear to me. Would women actually be required to have sex with all men who are aggressively “nice” towards them? Who knows. But judging from the dozens of upvotes andre’s comment got, Reddit MRAs like the sound of it.
(Thanks to Cloudiah for pointing me to this lovely comment.)
Posted on May 16, 2013, in all about the menz, beta males, evil sexy ladies, friend zone, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, nice guys, not-quite-explicit threats, oppressed men, playing the victim, rape culture, reddit and tagged friend zone, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, reddit. Bookmark the permalink. 170 Comments.
Being “friend-zoned” means you have been rejected. It does not mean she even wants to be “friends” because if you were friends, you would already be friends. She merely wants to be “friendly.”
You’ll know if she REALLY wants to be friends if she tries to set you up with one of her friends. That’s a nice consolation prize, possibly.
And yes, as a woman I have been “friend-zoned” (=politely rejected) scores of times. And it smarts. But as you get older you realize when someone politely rejects you, they’re doing you a real kindness by not stringing you along and wasting your time.
But this kind of bullshit is why I NEVER let a man pay for dinner.
@hellkell – Scratch a libertarian, you often find a wannabe totalitarian dictator. Very often libertarians simply want to be free to do whatever they want without any concern or consideration for how their actions affect anything or anyone else–I’ve observed that what libertarians characterize as a violation of their rights is often no more than other people’s refusal to devote their time, energy, etc. to fulfilling the libertarians’ wants.
By the way, if you’re interested in a scathing & entertaining dissection of libertarianism, check out John Scalzi’s website & key in “objectivist jerky”, & prepare to laugh harder than you have all month!
Also @Zach, part of my post the “you” is the general third person, you, I don’t think you personally are actually whining about being friend-zoned, because you seem to have “strategies” to avoid that. Since I haven’t yet read your site (though I will) I can’t say one way or the other anything about them so I want. I’m just arguing the whole concept of “friendzoning” being a thing, based in part on your reply about how friendzoning is very real and very painful to many men.
Ironically the reason a lot of men end up in some “friendzone” is because the woman actually doesn’t want to hurt them. But it’s always a little painful when someone we like and want to have a sexual/romantic relationship with doesn’t want us back. That’s just part of life, minimizing women’s right to agency by turning basic rejection into the crime of “friendzoning” is just bullshit.
What kind of manipulative asshole would try to do a friendship with a woman, be nice to a woman, and then act like he was owed upon finding out that that friend ship was *shock* a friendship, and not a pre-relationship!
The friendzone: real to manipulative assholes.
I do not care.
Zach’s site is aggressively dumb, but it isn’t misogynist. And if it actually converted an MRA it would indeed be progress in some useful direction.
I think the idea of a REAL MAN is similar to the idea of something being UNAMERICAN. The whole idea is stupid. A crazy racist rape-apologizing douchenozzle is a real man. He just isn’t a good man.
If you want to “pick up” women, that is, manipulate them into sex, there are myriad ways of doing this. People are not difficult to manipulate. You’ll generally find this experience unfulfilling, though.
If what you want is for women to consent to sex with you, then make a list of women who seem to like you and next time you see them say “you know, I really like you and I am attracted to you. I would like to pursue this. Would you?” Or some such thing. It works fine. It’s not some big puzzle to solve.
Will this law work in the opposite direction? If a woman does something nice for a man, is he legally obligated to have sex with her?
Excuse me, I need to bake Neil DeGrasse Tyson some cupcakes.
Of course not. Men are SUPPOSE to have lots of sex. Women who do so are tramps/whores ect…..
Men can’t have sex with someone they aren’t attracted to. Only women should have to do that because reasons.
Sarcasm above BTW
@Shaenon,
“Will this law work in the opposite direction? If a woman does something nice for a man, is he legally obligated to have sex with her?”
Now there you go! (LOL) I wrote a love letter to Russell Brand on my blog. I think that should get me at least to first base.
A good woman. Like we’re electronics or appliances or something. Do they have any idea how they sound?
@Amused
Nah, everyone knows marrying a woman means you own her, so someone else fucking her would basically be stealing.
I read some of Zach’s stuff and it seems to come to generally good conclusions through problematic language and cringe inducing tangents. Basically, it incorporates a lot of MRA and PUA framing and language to reach not so objectionable ends. So… it sounds a lot like when people are working on pulling their head out of their ass.
This may actually be more effective at changing some minds than attacks or mocking. (Not that this undermines the need and desire for attacking and mocking assholes.)
Does this mean Mr K doesn’t cook stuff I like eating just ‘cos he enjoys cooking? :O
Ah, but it always works both ways for them. We’re not human enough to be free; we have to be property. But if we do something that displeases them, suddenly we’re human enough to have made that decision and to be punished for it.
Ah yes, if a woman does not want to have sex with you, she must have contempt for you.
Not that these MRA’s have contempt for any women who happens to not want to have sex with him. Certainly not. *fedora tilt*
Hi and welcome, sonofadiddly!
Could we drop the “fedora wearer = MRA/PUA creep” meme, please?
Ugggh its not “suitor abuse” when you haven’t even told her you want to go out with her, you MRA turd. GAWD.
It appears to me that the guys bellyaching about being “friend-zoned” are expecting an open-ended contract for sex & emotional services–& strikes me as a pretty uneven rate of exchange when the same amount of cash would buy no more than an hour or two of a sex worker’s time, & carry no obligation for any personal interest in the customer. But the “friend-zone” guys also apparently take women’s emotional concern & support for granted, as they clearly don’t value that provided by women in platonic friendships with them…truthfully, these guys are so clueless about adult relationships, period, I’ve a hunch they don’t have many friends, of any sex.
O/T:
Today I found out that not only am I graduating from college this weekend (had my last test on Tuesday) but I’m graduating summa cum laude.
On the subject of stupid stereotypes: I was talking to a guy I knew pretty well freshmen and sophomore year at a party last night and I mentioned that I wanted to go into quantitative biology but need a few more classes before I can, specifically programming and differential equations, and a look of horror crossed his face.
He was like, “I’m so glad my career plans do not involve differential equations.” He’s an English major. He’s also a tech nerd. A complete tech nerd.
Congratulations, wordsp1nner! ::applauds::
Argenti: *cheers* But you forgot the funny people who want to learn and think people ought to be treated well. This isn’t Mensa after all, there’s no test for entry besides passing “being a decent human being 101″
Smart =/= educated. Brz is educated, but smart he ain’t.
The folks who thrive are those who like to share, and find things which are interesting worth sharing. Think Boing-boing as the model. “Look at this thing I know! Isn’t it cool!”.
Yes, yes it is.
Carp (or Koi). Browser crashed, and re-opened in wrong thread. Sorry for the double post.
Carp, koi are at least pretty (albeit kinda creepy)
Congrats wordsp1nner!!
What’s creepy about koi?
Cassandra: That’s related to a twitter convo between Argenti and myself.
In order for this “law” to work the initiator would need to inform the other person that they do not want to be friends and receive confirmation that the other person did not want to pursue a friendship either. That way neither of them would waste their time getting to know one another well enough to become friends. They could go directly to having sex or ignoring the other person entirely.
Typing that made my brain hurt.
@thebewilderness – but that wouldn’t work, because what happens if the initiator wants sex but the respondent doesn’t? Women aren’t allowed to reject men, remember. I very much doubt this moldy fish shit’s laws would permit men to be given a sad boner in any circumstances.
If the respondent does not then the initiator cannot be friendzoned because he was told no before he pretended to be nice. Saves a ton of time and effort for both of them.
WOOT. *throws confetti* Today has been a good day.
It would be great if they would all tattoo I’m an abusive entitled asshat on their foreheads, but I don’t see that happening.
I was just puzzling out how such a community standard or law would work. I think we need Pierre to handle it.
I could be wrong but the issue seems to be the amount of time and effort these d00dz waste pretending to be decent human beings.
Hey MRAs! You want ‘community standards’ to prevent ‘friendzoning’? You know what? Sure! Here are:
Amatyultare’s Four Community Standards That Will End “The Friendzone”* Forever!
1. Stop romanticizing bitter, mopey unrequited love. It’s not that unrequited love (in fiction, at least) is a bad thing – IF the person suffering it fully gets that it’s his/her issue to deal with, not the loved-one’s. However, too often ‘I love them and they don’t love me’ becomes ‘I love them and they don’t love me – how dare they!‘ See also: Tom in 500 Days Of Summer**, fandom!Severus Snape***.
2. Get rid of the weird societal concept wherein romantic and sexual relationships must begin with men being aggressor-hunters and women being something between prey and bait. Normalize the idea that sometimes men will do the asking-out and sometimes women will do the asking-out and both come from a place of basic equality and are completely fine ways for a relationship to start.
3. Seriously, stop believing that women are sex vending machines. No woman – no PERSON – is obliged to do anything with you beyond provide basic human courtesy. Also, see that word ‘do’? Stop imagining that sex is a commodity that women have and men try to get. Maybe start thinking of sex as a fun activity that people sometimes mutually choose to do together.
4. In general, stop making men the default gender and women a mysterious ‘Other’. Do women the favor of believing them to be people, just like men are. Understand that some people of each gender will have shared some of your feelings and experiences, and others of every gender will not have. Do all men and women – and let’s not forget genderqueer, androgynous, and intersex people – the favor of imagining each individual complexly****.
*The idea of “the friendzone”, I mean
**To be fair, I’ve never been quite sure whether 500DOS is falling into the trope or criticizing it.
***Severus Snape, as written, is an ambiguous and interesting character. However, why so many fans have romanticized a guy who is basically an emotional Miss Havisham is frankly beyond me.
****’Imagine others complexly’ is not my idea; it’s a John Green-ism.
@thebewilderness – “I could be wrong but the issue seems to be the amount of time and effort these d00dz waste pretending to be decent human beings.”
It is, but they wouldn’t stop there, because they still wouldn’t be getting TEH SECKS.
@Amatyultare – *cheers* *applause*
Say, have you had your Official Manboobz Welcome Package yet?
“***Severus Snape, as written, is an ambiguous and interesting character. However, why so many fans have romanticized a guy who is basically an emotional Miss Havisham is frankly beyond me.”
The Alan Rickman factor?
Kitteh – I have gotten my welcome package! I bookmarked it, even. :)
And yeah…when you point it out, the Alan Rickman factor definitely plays a role in the character’s woobification.
Huzzah! I’d hate to think we’d been remiss in handing out the welcome package. :)
When the first Potter movie was being cast, there was a tiny article in the paper here saying AR would be playing Snape. I asked my mum “What actor would you choose to play Snape,” and without hesitation she said “Alan Rickman.” No, she hadn’t seen the article – but we’ve watched The Barchester Chronicles many times and after seeing him play the Odious Mr Obadiah Slope, who else could one choose?
Hmmmm…I’m happily married and have been since dinosaurs walked the Earth. Does this mean that I have to cheat on my lovely husband with all the “friendzoned” guys I’m friends with? Is it worse to cheat or not have sex with all my male friends? Seems I lose either way. If I stay faithful to my husband I commit a crime against all the men I’m friends with, if I don’t I’m a “slut” for cheating on my husband.
Someone please explain this to me, I haz a confused!
Spelling out Snape has a song stuck in my head.
VENGEANCE IS MINE!
@seranvali the “good news” is… that a good portion of “nice guys” tend to see women like they are property to be owned, so if you dutifully wear a wedding ring to indicate that you are already another man’s “property”, they will usually leave you the hell alone.
After all, the phrase: “Why won’t you cheat on your husband? I’m a nice guy!!!!” doesn’t even make sense to THEM.
Wedding rings are their kryptonite.
WonderWoman, not always true. I have more than a few married friends who have been told by “nice guys” that their husbands must obviously be abusive, cheating manipulating assholes and so they should leave their husbands at once and have sex with the “nice guy”. For most of these, the “nice guy” has never meet and knows nothing about the husband, other than he is married to the woman the “nice guy” wants.
Wonder Woman:
Generally you’re quite right, wedding rings are kryptonite, but I’ve had more than one man reply when I told him I was married that he didn’t mind and that I was making far too big a deal of it! I even had one guy demand kisses in return for doing me a small favor AFTER he’d done it, thinking that having accepted the favor I couldn’t refuse!
Could you imagine him proposing this idea to his congressman?
Congressman: Hello, you told me earlier you have a proposal for a bill?
Andre: Yes, this would make the world a much better place.
Congressman: So what would it be?
Andre: A law against friendzoning.
Congressman: Friendzoning?
Andre: Yeah, it’s how women manipulate-
Congressman: I know what it is, how would we go about doing this?
Andre: Well, we punish women who abuse suitors.
Congressman: Abuse suitors? How do we know that’s what they’re doing?
Andre: They’re definitely doing it. I say you should imprison them.
Congressman: But how do we know when it’s this “suitor abuse?”
Andre: Whenever he’s nice to her but she doesn’t return the favor.
Congressman: Just indulge me. To what extent?
*his secretary comes in with a coffee*
Congressman: Thank you.
Andre: See? You just thanked her but she didn’t return your favor with any intimacy!
Congressman: But I don’t really want to do any of that with her. And isn’t she the nice one for getting me the coffee?
Andre: I guess you could see it that way. So?
Congressman: Wouldn’t I be the one “manipulating” her by your logic?
Andre: But… you’re not… woman… sex… boner.
Congressman: I see you did not think this through. Now, please leave.
*Andre leaves, but holds door open for woman going into office. Andre points to crotch*
Andre: Well?
Congressman. Out. Now.
*waves hands excitedly*
katz! katz! Cthulhu’s Intern has just written the perfect Pierre script!
@Seranvali – that is just so gross, I don’t even …
@Ranter:
Yeah, not surprising considering how popular this is as a cultural trope: Women dates/is married to an asshole, nice guy enters the scene, eventually she realizes she ought to dump her current mate for the nice guy.
Actually, the only movie I can think of where the love interest of the hero is already coupled with a NICE (literally) guy, rather than an asshole, is Superman Returns. Superman comes back from a five-year-tour of space and finds Lois living with a boyfriend who seems a perfectly decent type whom she’s happy with. I thought that was really refreshing. I’m sure there must be SOME other movie/TV show/book like that, but I can’t think of any right now.
Sorry for nitpicking BUT it’s not “false premise” but “contradictory premise” which is a small subset of all false premises. Like, “Washington is the capital of Sweden” is also false, but you can’t conclude anything you want to from that.
In this weird, dystopian society envisioned by this guy, how would you recognize the actual nice guys (not the Nice GuysTM), who value their friendships with women even if there is no romantic or sexual attachment, or who are open to a romantic and/or sexual relationship, but want women to actually be, you know, comfortable with them?
Would these guys (or indeed, all women) start carrying around suitcases filled with legal forms? Every time they approach, or are approached by a member of the opposite sex (since the law only counts for heterosexuality) for some reason or another, would they whip out a form and a pen, saying: “This contract guarantees sexual favors are not expected in exchange for acts of kindness (see clause §12 in the Law Against Friendzoning, LAF, for all legal definitions). If you would kindly read through it and sign here, here, and here…” They would sign this contract, pass it to a civil law notary (who is making a fortune hanging out in bars and restaurants, btw), and then proceed with the normal dealings of normal people that were the standard anyway in the good ol’ days.
The Nice GuysTM would have to start signing these contracts to be able to talk to women at all (since women now know men who don’t do that are, in fact, expecting sex as a reward). Then they’d see the actual nice guys getting laid, complain about being “legally friendzoned”, and blame feminism.
The sssssstupid, it burnssssss! Since Grumpy’s law has already been invoked:
http://memegenerator.net/instance/30456324
@RadicalParrot: *LOL*
@zachpetrecca,
I’m going to respond to your offensive points in the hope that you might begin to appreciate how offensive and skeevy they are.
Is this a reasonable thing to do? Manipulate someone for your own ends?
Hey, this person actually thinks I like them for who they are! My manipulation powers are strong today!
SHE! SHE! That BITCH took my friendliness as just that! She’s still got all her clothes on! What in the heck is going on?!
Your tricks and manipulation failed. Good. Serves you right for using tricks and manipulation on someone who possibly thought of you as a friend. If you want sex with women without the possibility of making friends or developing a real relationship then just be honest from the start. Believe it or not some women actually enjoy sex and are happy to participate in one night stands. No one likes being manipulated.
It always fascinates me how the emotions these guys are going through are the exact emotions I feel when a new version of Pro Evolution Soccer comes out and I can’t fucking score for like two weeks.
I GET SO MAD.
Couple things about that, though.
1) Interacting with other people is not a video game.
2) Even if it were a video game, it’s actually completely irrational to be angry at a video game because you aren’t good at it.
So, yeah.
Sorry but you can. If you assume a false premise to be true, you can prove anything. No premise can be true and false at the same time.
Washington is the capital of Sweden
Stockholm is the capital of Sweden.
Therefore Washington = Stockholm
Therfore Washington and Stockholm are one place.
Washington and Stockholm are two places.
Therefore 2 = 1.
The Queen and are are two people, therefore we are one person.
Therefore I am Queen.
(“Who’s Queen?” – wanders off to watch Blackadder)
Manboobz – come for the laughing at misogyny, stay for the lessons in Logic.
The true Queen
@daintydougal: Long live the Queen!
titianblue: “Manboobz – come for the laughing at misogyny, stay for the lessons in Logic and the pictures of cute, fluffy things.”
FTFY.
Dammit, somehow my name changed and my comment was captured by the moderation monster. Anyway:
titianblue: “Manboobz – come for the laughing at misogyny, stay for the lessons in Logic and the pictures of cute, fluffy things.”
FTFY.
No he’s right. Generally, a false premise can lead to proving false things but it can’t prove *everything*. You need the false premise to actually contradict another premise (or conclusion from those premises), just like here where you assert two different capitals to Sweden, in order to be able to prove anything.
If however the false premise is orthogonal to the other premises and do not directly contradict any of them, you can’t construct this sort of argument from them. However, every proof constructed from that false premise is shaky, to say the least (their conclusions can still be true by pure chance, of course, if there’s some other path to a proof).
(Hmm, not sure about pronouns for Dvärghundspossen, replace “he” with whichever preferred pronoun.)
Washington is the capital of Sweden
Stockholm is the capital of Sweden.
Therefore Washington = Stockholm.
Therefore Washington and Stockholm are one place.
Washington and Stockholm are two places.
There’s a few hidden premises in here, like that there exists only one capital for each country, or possibly the entirety of natural numbers mathematics, which are the cause of the contradiction.
@blackbloc the same thing applies to the contradiction.- the entirety of the natural numbers mathematics is a given in the original proof, too.
Blackbloc: It wasn’t the falsity of “Washington is the capital of Sweden” which did it, it was the combination of premises which were – contradictory. Point still stands: You need a contradiction, not mere falsity.
Look, there are lots of propositions which you cannot know to be true or false a priori. You need, for instance, scientific investigations in order to prove or disprove them. However, if it were the case with ANY false proposition that you could reason your way from that proposition to anything at all, it would be possible to test the falsity of any statement whatsoever (including scientific ones) by checking whether you could conclude, for instance, that I’m the queen by using that proposition as a premise. But as we all know, we can’t replace scientific investigation with such a silly test.
Obviously, if I KNOW that P is false (which is a different matter from P merely being false, and that’s probably where the confusion stems from), it’s because I know that not-P, and from the combination of P and not-P I could prove that I’m the queen. Because the combination of P and not-P is a contradiction. But without a contradiction, with mere falsity, I can’t prove that I’m the queen.
Butbutbut, everyone knows that all men exist in a state of always wanting sex with any woman that they don’t find repellent. So if he’s already chosen to spend time with her, this whole step of “make sure she knows that he wants something other than to be friends” must be redundant, and it would be unreasonable for the law to require him to perform it, when he could be spending his valuable time convincing her how nice he is.
Titianblue: Yeah I just accepted that false mathematical statements were contradictions for the sake of argument, although it’s debated what the relationship between math and logic is exactly.
Damn, I shouldn’t post when in a hurry: Sorry, Blackblock agreed with me, it was only Titianblue who didn’t.
And you can call me what you like, although the general agreement is “she”.
Gotta run!
Thanks – that makes it all clear. I knew I was getting confused somewhere.
I was a recursion theorist so the natural numbers are always an accepted given.
Musta made her saving throw.
Seriously, “nice to a woman to get a relationship” is NOT some ritual or something with guaranteed results. Every woman’s different, and they reserve the right to be Not Into You.
I hate to keep banging this particular drum, but the problem here is once again certain men not understanding that women are people (rather than sex and affection vending machines). If they understood that women were people they’d understand that we have preferences and whether or not we like someone is a bit more complicated than “X helped me build my bookcase”. Sometimes we don’t like someone no matter how “nice” they are! Sometimes we think they’re just awesome and want to be besties but don’t want to date them! Sometimes we like them, but not in a particularly intense way, just in the way we like all people who’re basically pleasant to be around, and there are lots of people like that – we can’t date all of them.
There is no code that you can enter into the machine to get what you want, guys, because people don’t work like that.
Oh man, not sure if anybody else pointed out, but that yahoo’s post hit the /worstof subreddit. The comment scores basically reversed and the blatant misogyny is being actively called out.
It’s pretty great.
I think what also gets missed in the friendzone conversation is the idea that sometimes, a guy being rejected is nothing to do with him. Sometimes women have other things to take care of and don’t have time for a relationship. Sometimes women are enjoying being single. Sometimes women aren’t into sexual relationships. Sometimes women have made other plans for the nearer future and starting a relationship would be unfair to the potential new partner. Sometimes women have responsibilities to others, and while the guy might be great and she might have chosen to date him, her responsibilities and his wants or needs conflict in ways that make the relationship impossible.
Usually, when I explain this to guys who think friendzone is a thing, the fact that she made a choice based on criteria that has absolutely nothing to do with them gets them more pissed than her having chosen someone else.
How dare you suggest they’re not the center of the universe to whatever woman they want to be with!
Lol. Or they could like, tell someone they’re interested when they’re interested instead of hanging around for months or years just hoping she’ll one day magically read his mind. And not only will she be a mind reader, but she’ll have been harboring secret feelings for HIM hoping HE would read HER mind and they can live happily ever after in a totally non-communicative relationship where everyone’s desires are totally fulfilled immediately without talking at all because they are SUPAH in synch SOUL MATES.
It’s only “not offering solutions” if you don’t qualify these as solutions:
-Don’t expect her to read your mind
-Don’t treat her like a sex vending machine
-Don’t act like a “friend” to people who have expressed that they have no romantical/sexual interest in you. It makes them think you are cool with just being friends
-Don’t wallow in your “unrequited” love for months/years without telling her, but acting like a “friend” because she will think you just want to be friends
-Don’t expect her to read your mind
-Don’t expect her to read your mind
If you’re interested in someone, tell them so. And if they aren’t interested, take them at their word and stop acting like some martyred doormat. It’ll suck for you (general Nice GuyTM “you”) and it will just make her either annoyed if she can tell you’re just doing it in hopes of fucks, or make her think you’re fine with being friends. What kills me about the guys who don’t even tell someone they’re interested but insist that they’ve been friend zoned is that it’s not even like treating women like sex vending machines. It’s like… trying to use a vending machine in France and getting pissed off when not only will the vending machine not take US Dollars, but it won’t magically get them out of your wallet for you either.
SO is “the liberal media”, and “the FEMA Camps” and the Jewish Bankers Rule The World” very real to a lot of people.
Doesn’t make it true, just something they believe.
Plus the whole “friend-zoning” myth ignores that women have been socialised into believing that they have to let any man they are rejecting down easy, to worry about hurting their (the man’s) feelings. And so all those “it’s not you, it’s me”, “can’t we just be friends?”, “I like you really but …” conversations are the ones women feel socially compelled to have when really they just weant to say “No. I’m not into you. Please go away.”
And women also know that if they actually said “No. I’m not into you. Please go away.” a whole lot of these Nice Guys would turn remarkably nasty in the blink of an eye.
And Falconer wins again!
Actually, this is the kind of attitude that makes sense to me. Those who look at women this way tend to have little or no real experience with them as people, and so they buy into the PUA mindset because it operates according to the kind of by the numbers, transactional view of the world so common to D&D or some video games. It reduces the complexity of human emotions and interpersonal relationships to who has the most hit points. Which also explains why some of them get so ragey when they don’t have the success they expect, because they totally did everything ‘right’ (they said the words and performed the gestures), so it’s not fair that it didn’t ‘work’.
It’s also why the PUA mindset is also so damaging; instead of being gently but firmly taught that people are not like video games or cookie recipes, PUA “game” just repeats the same old failure to them. It’s not that the problem is the very idea that all you have to do is say an incantation and wave your hands in a particular set of ways, it’s that you didn’t have the right incantations or the right gestures! (So just send me $19.95, plus shipping and handling, and I’ll send you my copyrighted video to give you all the lines and moves guaranteed* to work! – *guaranteed to work with the actresses I’ve paid to be in this video with me, anyway)
So the poor, deluded wanna-bes end up start awkwardly (as we all do while trying to figure things out) with the wrong general mindset, and just add resentment and internalized shame, because it TOTALLY worked on that video they watched 500 times.
But yes, the ‘frendzone’, it is NOT. A. THING. Maybe someone you are interested in is interested in someone else. Or interested in you but not as a romantic partner. Or not interested in you at all and just trying to avoid being rude while rejecting you. Or is in the middle of her own life and you really don’t exist for her at all. All are plausible and (I’m sorry if this comes as a shock) all are completely valid because her life does not have to include you in any way that she doesn’t want to, and your wishes ARE NOT RELEVANT!
Or, as my housemate put it, “Ah, yes, the friendzone, that horrible condition where women will talk to you but not sleep with you!”