That all-caps at Instapundit comes across as a comic misspelling of "Occupied," but the nice guys in question are at OKCupid. I'm not sure which purportedly "nice guys" deserve more sympathy, if any.
Here's the underlying linked-to article by Rachel Hills in The Atlantic. It's a critique of the critique of guys who cite their niceness as a reason why they can't get girlfriends.
January 9, 2013
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Self-professed "nice guys" seem to have their own breed of hamster.
For nice guys like me it's hard to get dates with women... who aren't butt-fucking ugly skanks, which is totally unfair to nice guys like me.
One website explains all - Chateau Heartiste
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/
How to even approach this nonsense?
Am I the only person in the world who doesn't seem to view romance and sex as a difficult intellectual and ideological problem?
No intention to brag, but I've never had a problem with finding a girlfriend that lasted over a month or so from the time I started looking. It all seemed pretty simple. Mostly I just went about my business, and things happened. Women are looking for love and sex, too.
Some of the girlfriends (and wives) were breathtaking beauties, some not.
The "nice guy" biz is hard to understand. From my reading, this seems to be guys who don't understand that women (for the most part) have the same raunchy, horndog sexual needs that men do, but they express it differently.
I grew up with three sisters, so this was never a mystery to me.
Chateau Heartiste is a fun read.
But, in my opinion, if you need their advice you aren't capable of carrying it out.
So don't be nice. Be cold, calculating and...SCORE!
And if that don't come natural go to heartiste and learn game.
A butt fucking ugly skank ain't bad if she has great legs.
@Shouting Thomas - Concur. But it does explain it to the clueless.
Just because an it's an asshole saying something doesn't mean it's not true.
When Norah Vincent lived as a man, she mostly had kind words for the world of men. Two exceptions to this were (1) living in a monastic community & (2) the behavior of the women (s)he dated. (S)He was amazed at how treating one's date dreadfully just seemed to be par for the course.
People treat each other like shit in all kinds of ways. Original Sin makes sure that's the case. On average, most guys seem to have a clue that sexually the world of men lives, at best, on the edge of morality. Women seem to see their desires as okay because THAT'S JUST THE WAY WE GIRLS ARE!
Just try reading the comments section at a woman's online magazine when it involves domestic violence against a man. "Ahhh, the SOB deserved it!"
From the article: What these men lack in their lives isn't just sex, but all the things that sex stands for in our culture: intimacy and connection with other people, affirmation of our own value and desirability, and love.
Sex "stands for" stuff? Who knew?
(And no, no one owes you love either, but that doesn't make it stink any less to go without it.)
Glad to know that hate is the expected default. Makes it so much easier to operate when I don't absolutely have to love anyone.
Everyone is a victim... How much longer before the Democrats offer a plank in their platform for this?
Oh.
Got it.
Put Julia to work!
Make her earn those bennies...just think of it as a way of "means testing."
That was easy...I should be a Democrat President.
@Tim,
How much longer before the Democrats offer a plank in their platform for this?
Does insuring the equal distribution of sexual resources make any less sense than the equal distribution of economic resources?
Only someone woefully outside of the zeitgeist would confuse OKCUPID as a comic misspelling of OCCUPIED.
Nice guys finish last.
That means she comes first.
Seems to me that both men and women treat eachother badly in relationship-dating scenarios. I'm not sure the reasons, but I do not think its bad intentions. Perhaps just an extension of generally bad people skills in society. However much women and men complain, there appears to be enough sex going on to prevent any changes.
Seems to me that both men and women treat eachother badly in relationship-dating scenarios. I'm not sure the reasons, but I do not think its bad intentions.
I don't think so.
People are looking for somebody with whom they're sexually compatible. We tend to be repelled by the prospect of intimate contact with people we find sexually incompatible.
Just human nature.
"Does insuring the equal distribution of sexual resources make any less sense than the equal distribution of economic resources?"
@YoungHegelian,
As a red-blooded, healthy American heterosexual male, my observation is, it probably makes more sense, from a biological perspective, for "insuring the equal distribution of sexual resources" than it does "the equal distribution of economic resources."
This does not reflect my personal situation, outside of the norms of married life, that is; rather, it is out of an abiding love for my fellow men and an overarching compassion for their needs, lol!
That, and that b!tch Julia needs to earn her keep!
"Chateau Heartiste is a fun read. But, in my opinion, if you need their advice you aren't capable of carrying it out."
What is the nature of the fun? Who is having fun and how? It's kind of hard to figure out. What fantasy world is this? What does anyone really do with this quirkily confident advice?
What is the nature of the fun?
The fun, I think, is in acknowledging that sexuality exists outside the rational. The concept of Sexual Market Value is the strongest bit here. People really do generally get a mate that matches their SMV.
Who is having fun and how?
The fun is, I think, defiance. That is defiance of those who insist that this sexual part of our lives conform to some rational way of looking at things. It's also defiance of what we have to put up with in the workplace, which is the shut up culture of PC.
There is a very strong revenge undercurrent in Heartiste. The object of this revenge fantasy is a stereotyped woman who spends her teens and twenties fucking around with alpha males, then "settles" for a beta male once she realizes the alphas won't marry her.
It's kind of hard to figure out. What fantasy world is this? What does anyone really do with this quirkily confident advice?
I don't understand why anybody wants advice in this part of their lives. I certainly don't.
The notion seems to be that a nerdy or ugly guy can transform himself in some way and learn how to pick up a lot of girls.
I doubt it. It's analogous to the music biz. Writing advice on how to make it in the music biz is usually many times more profitable than actually being in the music biz.
The writing is snarky and funny, and if you enjoy the skewering of your enemies and your enemies are feminists of the feminist-website type (as opposed to the respectable I'm-for-equality type) then it's fun.
And I think the advice is helpful. The knowledge a "nice guy" can gain at PUA sites is what he needs to stop behaving the way he's behaving. That includes both the behavior that gets him in trouble with the scolds, and the behavior that gets him friend-zoned and causes the bitterness in the first place.
Any guy who has been some girl's friend knows what the nice guy problem is.
A lot of women want the danger and the challenge of taming a "bad boy". These women fill battered shelters.
The nice guy is "harmless", so he's safe, she doesn't have to worry about him making a pass. He's a gentleman.
Which says something about the times in which we live.
The "Nice Guy" thing is very real but what they often don't get is they have to manage their expectations.
The total nerd dudes think they should get model quality girls. Which is just not going to happen.
Unless you have drugs. Just sayn'
Well, in my experience, most "nice guys" are anything but. They're usually self-centered but terribly insecure wanna-be's that pretend to be "nice" just to get the female attention they crave to boost their own sagging egos.
Yes, I mention that after a lot of self-reflection.
True Nice Guys have no problem getting women because they're nice from a strong sense of self.
Lots of women mistake arrogance for self-confidence which is what really attracts them.
I looked at the Heartiste website, and I don't get it. Just meet people until you find the right match. Why make it so weird? It seems totally foreign; maybe that comes from my having been married for the last decade. The initial impression the site gives is that it's for angry people and people who are social climbers when it comes to dating.
An acquaintance of mine got into the whole PUA thing. It works like a charm, at least for him.
The meanness factor of Heartiste, Freeman, is remarkable.
My feeling is you get what you give in that regard.
The total nerd dudes think they should get model quality girls.
I think that's probably the most common "nice guy." Usually the guy who says all women are shallow is the same guy who is only interested in trying to date beautiful women.
@Freeman,
I looked at the Heartiste website, and I don't get it..
Freeman, don't think about it too hard. I remember a quotation from a previous PUA site (maybe heartiste) that summed it up as "penis in vagina = victory!".
We're not talking about any mystical union of two lonely hearts here.
Needless to say, that KISS point-of-view is both the strength & the weakness of the PUA worldview.
ST, on that we agree.
In a functional relationship, the two people are nice to each other. I don't think there are any exceptions to that.
Well, yes, that is the point of the whole PUA phenomenon: to pick up women who are more attractive than the ones you otherwise would pick up. It's a very simple motivation, nothing that should be hard to understand.
If you're asking why a young single reader of the site would want that ... I don't know what to say.
Even if your goal in life is to sleep with a lot of women (and that was my goal in life at one time), it seems to me that you would want your relationships with those women to be fun and affectionate.
Yeah, I have to agree with ST again. Pick up people who would never actually be with you? How depressing!
An acquaintance of mine got into the whole PUA thing. It works like a charm, at least for him.
So, he says.
Back when I was living the life of the stray alley cat, I came to a different conclusion, which I summarized in this maxim:
"It's easier to get into a woman's pants than it is to get out!"
It seems like anyone would be repelled at the idea of being the lover someone else regrets.
For nice guys like me it's hard to get dates with women... who aren't butt-fucking ugly skanks, which is totally unfair to nice guys like me.
Hear hear! For some reason only fat chicks are attracted to me and I'm not fat.
Leave it ST to reduce it all to a 3-letter acronym.
I also think a misconception among critics of PUA stuff as well as its unsuccessful practitioners is that the idea is to deceive, by mimicking the traits of the "better" man. The idea is to acquire those traits, not to mimic them. It's about self-improvement, to actually "be" a better man. ("Better" in this case is defined by what attracts women.) That's why one of the first things on any PUA list of directives is "work out, get in shape."
No one has to regret anything, in theory.
I remember in the days of my youte, I had a friend whose technique was to go up to every woman in the bar and say "Wanna fuck?"
You be surprised how often that worked.
And he was a super nerdy guy with glasses and a receding hairline.
Don't worry nice guys. There is a woman with really low self esteem out there for you if you just keep looking.
Baron - now that guy was desperate for a herpes.
There's a conceptual problem with the whole "Alpha males" thing. In the animal world, for which this term was invented, there can only be one Alpha male per group; all the remaining males must be Betas. The Alpha male animal is unique by definition.
Yet, in buying into the idea that the same phenomenon exists in human society, one bumps up against a major difference, in that the number of individual men characterized as Alphas has exploded, an increase necessary in order to have enough to validate the assertion, as summarized above, that the "stereotyped woman who spends her teens and twenties fucking around with alpha males, then "settles" for a beta male once she realizes the alphas won't marry her".
If the phenomenon among humans is truly analogous to that among animals, there simply can't be anywhere near as many Alpha males as the philosophies of sites like Heartiste imagine.
Of course, this could be another instance of the stupidity of a blanket application of what we think we know about evolutionary biology to contemporary human society, or just another metaphor that doesn't work, but I suspect that Heartiste et al. take it literally.
"An acquaintance of mine got into the whole PUA thing. It works like a charm, at least for him."
So, he says.
If it comforts you to think that it doesn't really work, feel free to believe that. No skin off my nose.
No he had that base covered.
He figured once you got it what's the big deal.
Hey it was the 1980's!
I have to agree with ST and Barom. This is not complicated shit. But Americans (and maybe others -- I don't know) have this unrealistic view if dating and marriage. I think we kearn it from TV and movies.
Guys-- if you're a 6-7 you won't be dating 8/9. Well maybe the crazy, needy, alcoholic, or drug addict.
Ladies-- good men are not perfect.
Does anyone remember the old SNL skit about "lowered expectations dating service"?
How could anyone not get laid in the last four decades? Finding someone to love and love you back is harder, but not getting laid.
I guess the opposite of misogynist is 'misandry'.
Anyway, the flip side of this issue is the increasing amount of 'misandry' on TV, in commercials and in movies. [Or is my perception flawed?]
It seems more and more common for men, especially young men/boyfriends/young husbands to be set up as the idiot in any kind of social situation. The latest case I noticed is a commerical for the Discover Card, where the wife has to call Discover Customer Service because the husband was too stupid to know to pay the bill. The customer service person is of course an empathetic women, with that 'Yeah... men. Doofuses, all of them' attitude.
I can see where some single guys might get the sense that all women hate them, will treat them like dirt, will cheat on them, and so forth.
I can see where some single guys might get the sense that all women hate them, will treat them like dirt, will cheat on them, and so forth.
Well, that's partly it. There are plenty of women around who aren't that bitchy, although unfortunately few who are willing to criticize the "men are doofuses" meme so popular in our culture.
The bigger problem, I would say, is that the downsides of long-term relationships and marriage are so much greater for men than for women.
I just believe just like some people have faulty gay-dar, some people have faulty ass-dar.
Was it someone here that said a woman is just a life support system for a pussy? That seems to sum up well the perspective of the PUA...with all the promise of a rewarding, loving, human relationship that goes with it.
You keep hearing that people who are completely non-religious and worldly at least place value not hurting others. This seems to turn that idea on its head. When does what I want in order to make me happy get subsumed into what is kind? Apparently not in the sexual sphere. Can it be justified by saying you did it first?
Well, another assumption people of that generation make, I believe, is that no one is getting hurt by this sexual behavior, and the loudest proponents of this idea are the women, lately. And who is being hurt, other than those of us tax- and insurance premium-payers who are forking out for the birth control?
Now, some of us may disagree, but the ones who do agree are generally the ones in the bars. Don't you think?
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