Men’s Rightsers and Pickup Artists alike are obsessed with the dilemma of the so-called “Nice Guy” who can’t get laid. MRAs see his plight as a symptom of a gynocratic society in which fickle, asshole-loving women are the gatekeepers of sex; PUAs see it as a sign that beta males need to learn how to imitate the vaguely aloof swagger of the natural alpha male.
And both MRAs and PUAs completely miss the point.
To see just how badly they do, let’s take a look at a recent post from the sadly influential PUA shitbag Heartiste, who uses an alleged Facebook screencap of uncertain provenance as a springboard for a diatribe against the “desperate male,” that is, the “desperate, clingy ünterbeta male” who pursues a woman, often in a weirdly apologetic, even abject way, long after she’s made it clear she has no interest in him.
But Heartiste’s example, as you’ll quickly notice, isn’t exactly a textbook case of so-called “friendzoning.” (I’ve blotted out the dude’s face; Heartiste didn’t bother.)
Be warned: it’s a teensy bit long.
Yeah, so I’m thinking that the problem isn’t so much that the dude here is “too beta” as that he’s “a creepy stalker with no sense of boundaries and the obsessive persistence of a serial killer.” It’s not even clear why he’s developed this fixation on her. He says nothing to suggest he knows anything about her other than that she’s a “pretty lady,” and she doesn’t remember ever even meeting him.
Heartiste, naturally, takes him to task not for his creepery but for violating “just about every Poon Commandment” — that is, Heartiste’s set of “alpha male” rules for getting, well, “poon.”
He also notes the fellow’s repeated promises to not “take advantage” of her if she comes over to his place. Generally speaking, when someone casually promises not to rape you on your first date, and presents this as if it’s somehow a generous gesture on their part, it’s pretty much the opposite of reassuring, as it sort of suggests that they were at least considering it as a possibility.
But Heartiste sees it as an example of excessive chivalry:
Any man who thinks promising a woman that he “won’t take advantage of her” is the way to her heart is a power tool. Chivalry works in the abstract (specifically that abstract where unicorns are a possibility); in practice it’s an abysmal failure. A woman, if asked, will always say she wants a man “who respects her need to take it slow”, but in reality, where her words meet the unstoppable force of her tingles, a chivalrous gentleman’s pose is the equivalent of downselling: “Sure, this smartphone looks fast and functional, but it actually has parts made from Fisher Price toys. Try this cheapskate badboy clamshell over here instead.”
No, dude, the problem isn’t that this guy is being too “nice.” The problem is that he’s creeping out a random woman because he refuses to accept that she’s not interested in him.
The trouble with a lot of so-called “Nice Guys” isn’t that they don’t understand when a woman has rejected them — our creepy Romeo in the screenshots here was aware that he was probably “bothering” her only a few messages in. It’s that they refuse to accept these clear if implicit “no’s” as real” no’s.” Because, on some level, no matter how lonely and desperate and “ünterbeta” they may feel, they still feel entitled to sex with a “pretty lady.”
I rather doubt that many “Nice Guys” show up for work at companies that have interviewed them and hired someone else. The solution isn’t for these guys to learn “game”; it’s for them to learn to respect a “pretty lady’s” no as they would anyone else’s.
Aias Oileus- If you’re genuinely worried about being a creeper, you’re probably not one. At worst, you probably come across as “well-meaning, but awkward”. Which, hey!, that’s most of my interactions with people.
If you want some advice, Doctor Nerdlove runs what I think is a pretty great advice blog, aimed at nerdy/introverted/just-not-socially-competent-as-yet guys. I can’t link to specifics, since it’s blocked at work for some reason, but you can probably find useful stuff in the archives.
I also find he does a really great job of taking a lot of the PUA culture and distilling the (few) grains of truth in there, while explaining why the rest is toxic. Things like “This technique works because it makes you seem confident, and confidence is attractive, but doing it just to get a “hot chick” who you know nothing about is probably going to leave you miserable.” Or “Sure, negging might get you laid, but only by preying on someone’s insecurity, and that just makes you an asshole.”
That’s the best image, Cassandra! 😀
… Now Dinah’s going to want a tartan lorgnette, I just know it. Could be tricky for someone that small.
Does it ever work? Maybe it’s my limited imagination and (happily) nonexistent experience, but negging seems like the worst way (as in, ineffective) to try to talk someone into your bed.
“Negging” sounds like a cross between nagging and begging. No man has ever nagged, begged, OR negged me into bed.
(Or worse: jeggings, jorts and JUNDERPANTS!!!)
Junderpants? Sounds like the result of really bad wind …
Negging does sound a bit like what cats do, except they don’t beg, of course; it may sound pitiful but it’s demanding. Like Mads the other day … play with yarn, play with needles, poke around in bag, jump on back of chair, jump on arm of chair, jump on table.
Me: you want this chair, don’t you?
She did.
Junderpants = Jeans x underpants.
But yeah, it does sound like all hell broke loose in the britches, doesn’t it?
While negging wouldn’t have ever, like, turned me on or anything, there was a time in my life when I might have laughed along with someone who was “teasing” me to show how I could be cool and fun and I can take a joke! And that would have achieved what I have always thought is the real goal of negging, which is revealing if someone will let you demean her and push her boundaries.
Do note that themaskandrose is making his “worrying about rape is totes irrational” comment with the avatar of a kidnapper and rapist.
I can imagine – or rather, remember – being insecure enough to put up with shit, but not in a social setting, because I’ve simply never done that sort of socialising. I’ve no idea how I’d have reacted that way to a bloke I might possibly have been interested in otherwise; as it is, I think it would have both baffled and distressed me, and I wouldn’t have hung around for anything more. There’d have been no sense of “He likes me!” because I never saw myself as being attractive, so I’d have put the worst interpretation on it anyway (“bullying creep”, at least).
When did V rape anyone? Kidnapper I won’t argue in the slightest, but I’m failing to recall any rape. Or is that not the reference you’re making?
No doubt he thinks that avatar is romantic and evidence that even a physically ungifted dude can score with a pretty lady if he only plucks up the courage and drags her off to his Underground Grotto-o-LOVE™. Personally, though, I’m just reminded of a shitty proto-PUA boyfriend of mine from the early ’90s, who used to play the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack (and a shitload of Chris de Burgh) on the tap deck of his ’86 Acadian shitbox. His CB handle, icky-appropriately, was “Psycho”.
He doesn’t use a V avatar, Argenti, but the one from Phantom of the Opera.
@Sparky:
In your effort to discredit my assertion that “rape culture” is an unwarranted fear, you linked to a statistic that the rate of rape in the United States, in 2008, was 1.2 out of every 1,000 women.
Thank you for proving my point for me; it was very kind of you and saved me a lot of trouble.
Tell me more about how “1/3womengetraped” or “1/4” or “1/6” or “534/7” or whatever number you’ve pulled out of your asses this week. Then explain to me how it’s constructive to tell women there’s a 30% chance they’ll get raped when the actual chance is a tenth of a percent.
Er, TAPE deck. And oh yeah, dude actually bragged about chasing women who were much his superior in terms of appearance. If he’s still at it now, he could probably be found on a PUA board, kvetching about how HB10s no longer give him the time of day.
Probably still drives a shitbox, too.
Gods, I think I’d die of boredom if I had to listen to the Phantom soundtrack again.
Mind you the last Lloyd Webber thing I liked was Superstar – and only with the Australian cast, kthnx.
Kitteh — ah, my mistake. As is typing, cat has my other hand!
Guys like this one aren’t necessarily ‘nice guys’ they simply have bad social skills. Many of those so called ‘nice guys’ turn into huge assholes when rejected.
Does this mean kitty’s assimilating you? 😯
Diana – that’s why there’s a term NiceGuys(TM). They’re anything but nice, that’s understood; they’re stalkers, essentially, hanging around, refusing to accept a complete lack of interest, being “friends” and doing stuff for the woman they want to fuck because, well, she’ll be obliged to fuck them if they do stuff, won’t she? And, of course, they’ll whine about her lack of interest, how any guy she is interested in or having a relationship is an arsehole, blah blah blah.
It’s not just poor social skills, though I suspect a lot of them have that problem; it’s entitlement and passive-aggressive behaviour.
Oh Kittehs, this guy was a real peach. Played that (and de Burgh) as part of his “win her heart” strategy. He was a virgin, so I can’t very well call it “seduction”; he chickened on me when I let it be known that I (also a virgin at the time) wanted to “do” him. In fact, he chickened so badly that I never saw him again. He called me up out of the blue two years later, but by then I’d moved on…and made sure he knew it. He was NOT a happy camper.
‘Fact, if he were a PUA now, he’d probably say I’d changed horses on the Alpha Asshole Cock Carousel, or some shit like that.
I’m not a guy, but I have social anxiety issues and dyssemia, so I understand where you’re coming from. You’re probably not being creepy if it’s someone you actually know (even if only as acquaintances) and you limit the number of messages you send them. If it’s a complete stranger on a dating or social media site – one outreach, tops.
And I second the recommendation of Dr. Nerdlove! His stuff is awesome, and he’s great at spelling out the ‘mysterious code’ for those of us who never quite managed to learn it in the first place.
Kitteh — sort of? She’s had enough, so I can type, and thus post this — http://instagram.com/p/i5KrdAo9nb/
Not that long ago I was in a pub with one of my girl friends and we hadn’t seen each other for ages so had a lot of catching up to do. Well this guy was hovering around us listening into our conversation and then started butting in so out of politeness we spoke with him for about 2 mins and then carried on talking to each other. He then said ‘Why won’t you talk to me, I don’t bite’ and we replied we had a lot of catching up to do as we hadn’t seen each other in ages.
He then asked us why so we said we lived in different parts of the country and then continued talking but ffs this guy would not go away. He just kept on butting in so my friend said to him quite angrily to get lost as he was getting on our nerves to which he replied ‘Ohhhhh I get it! You’re lesbians, that’s why you don’t talk to men’. Yep. That old chestnut. Anyway we moved away as we were sick of him and sat at a table as far away from him as possible.
My friend then went to the toilet and the creep came up to me and whispered menacingly in my ear ‘See your pal, she’d better watch out or she’ll get her fucking head kicked in. No one tells ME to get lost or speaks to me like that!’ I was pretty shocked by that remark. It was obvious he fancied her and she didn’t think much of him hence his pathetic, little threat. Well I told her what he said and she called her boyfriend who came dashing over to the pub (the creep was still standing at our table) and the boyfriend walked right up to his face and said ‘Listen dude, when a girl ‘ain’t interested, take the bloody hint and just go away’. He actually screamed this in the guy’s face.
Well the guy left because he was obviously scared it would turn into a fight and my friend’s boyfriend then had the gall to say to us ‘The trouble with you two is that you’re too nice to blokes … you talk to them and give them false hope. You lead them on. The next time just tell them to fuck off and they’ll get the message’.
What the hell???? Women cannot win! We’re either too nice because we politely acknowledge their presence but that seems to just encourage them so now we have to scream at them to fuck off and then we’re called (amongst many things) frigid bitches or something.
Makes my blood boil! Surely to God these guys can see we’re not interested and to just move on? It’s their bloody big egos that cannot accept someone isn’t interested in them and to me, that’s what most of this is all about. They have a sense of entitlement that we should be bloody grateful that they are actually taking the time to speak to us.
Sorry this was so long but aaaaaaaaagh! Just wanted to share. I think just about every girl friend of mine has been through this scenario and a lot of times it has turned real nasty ie fights breaking out and bouncers getting involved etc. Take the hint and piss off!
Kittysqueeeeee!
Truely a horror movie waiting to happen. How long do you think he would have kept going? Years? Decades? Long into eternity?