July 19, 2013

• Disjoint perspectives...

  In my attempt to better understand how the social constructs of flirtation and dating function, I began my journey in looking up how exactly this art of flirting is accomplished, that is, how does one segue from going to complete strangers briefly meeting at a coffee shop to something more?

  Well, I did what any socially incompetent person would do, and I turned to the all-knowing, all-mighty god whom I believe in and trust with my life, Google of course. Of course, not wanting to get a biased image and hoping to see the bigger picture, I decided to read articles on how to flirt from both the girl and guy's perspective, so like, you know... I know what I'm supposed to do as the male, and I also know if the girl is interested in the off-handed chance that she too is socially incompetent and decided to go and read the same article on google in order to figure out how to flirt back. At which point, our actions would become so compartmentalized and procedural, that each of us following this rigid step-by-step procedure in tandem laid out by AskMen and Jezebel would result in things seeming to fall together into place in a most elegant fashion causing both of our minds to chime the thought 'My god! It does work!'

  That would be the ideal plan anyway. 

  What I was able to determine after reading through a few articles on these popular websites/blogs is that men are creeps and women are chickens and the advice being given to both sides on the rules of attraction have convinced me that I will die alone in my bachelor pad at 34 surrounded by empty cans of food and rats harvesting my corpse (for the groundskeeper does not check the basement and do maintenance on the heater that often since it has really started to stink since I moved down there last fall).

  But no, on a serious note, it's interesting to me what a huge gap in perspective there is on both sides and to be honest, I think it's hilarious. 

  Every article I read telling the girls how to flirt was the most subtle, round-about crap I've ever seen, which makes perfect sense because women are told to act passively. The majority of it is so cliche and contrite that I'm not sure if it's a joke or serious...

  Example:

  "Find an excuse and bend down low in front of him. Pretend to be busy and allow him to take a good peek down your cleavage. Look up suddenly and catch him doing it. Taunt him for it and make him feel awkward. It’ll build the sexual tension up in no time because both of you know he’s interested in your body."

  The stuff I read on the men's side was to say and do things that had such creepy and sexual undertones from my perspective that I even felt uncomfortable reading them, like the guy that wrote the article was standing right behind me and whispering all of these tips into my ear. 

  Example:

  "A great way to flirt sexually with a woman is to compare some of your “outside the bedroom” activities to what goes on inside the bedroom. For example, let’s say you get a woman a cup of tea; you can follow up by saying: "Looks like you’re on the receiving end today. Do you always receive or do you like to give at times too?" Crack a slight smile and she will know exactly what you are talking about"
  

  "Want to know a secret about female sexuality that 99% of men don't know? Here it is: Many women feel compelled to vacuum their house when they're ovulating. Some experts believe it has something to do with wanting to "clean the nest" before laying her "egg." So, when a woman tells you she is vacuuming, say: "Vacuuming? Are you ovulating or something?" She'll be stunned that you know this and wonder what else you know about female sexuality. Of course, if she doesn’t know what you mean, fill her in. Women love it when you teach them something new -- especially about themselves."
  

  The above quote links me to a website called double your dating, which probably only sounds appealing to those that are not savvy with math and would follow this advice, because 0x2 = 0.

  A part of me feels like some of these articles were written just to be written, like maybe no real advice is there to be given, maybe these writers are just trying to pay their bills and eat, maybe these blogs and websites are just so meta that their main source of funding comes from the secret upper echelon of society that push their agenda by paying people to write articles bestowing terrible advice onto the lemmings on how to find their mate in order to implement this subversive new-world-order-esque form of population control.

  I mean, these are all just ideas of course... Crazy ideas... But....

  What if they weren't?

  .......................

  • 3:45 pm
  • 3 Comments