I hate the word ‘advice’. It’s supposed to mean that you would like assistance with something, similar to the word ‘help’, but rather than ‘help’ being a general catch-all, ‘advice’ implies the party your asking has an extensive background on the subject you’re inquiring about, and that it’s tuned for assistance with thought processes. In our modern society, ‘advice’ doesn’t mean this. It means ‘I’m asking you for your opinion on this subject, and it better goddamn well be exactly what I’m thinking or somewhere close to that. Heaven help you if you express something dissimilar to what I expect.’ Gone are the days of true discussion and deep cognitive experiences; people these days are much more focused on validation through their peers and ego-stroking via any means necessary. I could conjure up a slew of terms to describe how I feel, but none works so eloquently as calling this garbage behavior ‘pathetic’. It’s pathetic that people are so insecure with their thoughts, dreams, ideals, codes and beliefs that they must find others who validate them rather than letting the aforementioned stand or fall under their weight.

Where I see this shit crop up the most is in advice columns. This makes perfect sense, since advice columns were invented by writers on a newspaper staff who were garbage at all other types of writing and needed a means to feel important in their suckage, thus dispensing ‘wisdom’ to hapless idiots looking for a solution to their Rube Golberg machine-created problem fit perfectly. Unfortunately, with shitty ad hocking, traffic black hole ‘news’ sites being one of the most common forms of online media, so too is the ‘advice’ section which features people who are younger than I am throwing out wisdom nuggets made of pyrite. I know this sounds like a really stupid complaint, but you haven’t experienced diddly-dick at age twenty-two. The only people who can say that are people who aren’t working for a terrible website like Elite Daily, and that’s because they’ve pushed through the walls in front of them and made something of themselves and are people who would likely agree with me on this. You need to do things with your life that add actual value to your character to be able to dispense advice, not just have ‘experiences’ that can be summed up with ‘so at the beginning of the night, we went out to the bar and..’.  Getting smashed is not a skill; go learn to crochet or cook or some remedial woodworking.

Since we need something to pick on as always, this article is what flipped by shit switch. I’ve covered pieces by Elite Daily before and, as always, they’re abysmal. I don’t get why these authors think it’s cute to put shit like this in their bio:

When she’s not writing, she’s watching documentaries, practicing her Cher impression, or eating pasta. Stalk her at

Does that mean singing? Does that mean dressing up like Cher? Is pasta the only thing she eats? What kind of sauce does she use? Is it from a can or homemade? Why would I stalk her? Better yet, why are people okay with using such a negative term like ‘stalk’ when they really mean the phrase ‘check out’? More importantly, why do we care about any of this? This tells us nothing about this female author. All we know is she listens to Cher, she watches informative televised programming and she eats grains. I know these bios are intended to be short, but come on, its purpose is to let us know who you are, where you come from and what you like and Alexia’s bio contains nothing informative. F-minus, you dip.

In other news, water is wet. More at eleven.

The last person you should ask about a man you want to fuck is your girl friend. She’s your friend, so she’s generally going to be protective of you and agree with what you say; that’s why you’re friends. Unless she’s really honest and you’re the kind of person who can take anything on the chin like a pro, you’re not going to get a good answer from someone who is on your side by default and does not have the brain of the man in question. I don’t get why both sexes do this; it’s inefficient and, as explained above, stupid. Talk to the person directly if you want a direct answer. They may not say something you want to hear and you need to be prepared for that. Adding a wall of useless fluff by first involving your crew isn’t going to change any trainwreck that’s going to happen.

Also, I’m likely the millionth man to say this, but men are not complicated beings. It is because women evolved differently than men did that there is still carry over like this. Hunting requires efficiency, precision and ease and thus men evolved to be able to do those things well. Women had to care for the home and raise children, which are less dangerous but far more complex and, as such, had to create solutions that were more complex. These two simultaneous evolutionary paths are a big part of why men seem dumb and women seem confusing; the two sexes evolved fairly separately from one another.

These names are ridiculous.

I like how the viewpoints are supposed to be uncensored, but Alexia writes ‘DGAF’, which is an acronym for ‘doesn’t give a fuck’, thus censoring what shouldn’t be censored. Anyway, if you are a ‘self-proclaimed’ anything, you are not what you claim yourself to be, especially if it’s the ‘nice guy’. The only way this works if you are the epitome of what you are claiming to be, like LeBron James claiming to be the current best basketball player in the world. Also, I know people say ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, but the bios of these two twenty-two year olds (the phrase ‘twenty-something’ is used to trick people into thinking the writers are on the older side of the spectrum, especially if they aren’t) give me the impression that both of these guys are huge douches. Their twitter logs, along with don’t help any case against this. I also looked into our author’s twitter just to see if perhaps she might’ve been a decent soul stuck in a poor position, and was greeted with a gaudy photo of a sweatshirt that is pro-Hillary just simply because she has a vagina and so does the author. Elite Daily, you suck.

What is the asterisk for?

Yeah, he wanted to fuck you and you either gave him the goods or you didn’t and he didn’t want to follow the plan of the third/fourth date before getting in the sack. Also, you’re not twenty-six, because when I was twenty-six, I knew this and this was well-before shit like Tinder was even a thought-nuclei in someone’s mind. I mean, you lied about your name, which is fine, but adding in your age like it matters after we know you aren’t Ashley is just silly, plus it’s superfluous information. I can only assume that you, ‘Ashley’, are including it to implicitly say you have some time on this planet, but again, a twenty-six year old person would know when someone is ducking you because you pull that person under the sheets.

Ah,  a cat lady in disguise.

All I can infer from this is that you are not very attractive. Why is this? If you were passable without makeup and bang-able with makeup and possibly beer goggles, then you would not be this hung up over this guy. That’s assuming he’s also not ‘the one’, which I think is a fair assumption considering you two likely met through Tinder and Tinder was not designed explicitly for all-ages dating; the app was bed on Grindr, and we all know what that was made for. However, you are stuck on this guy, so the only conclusion I can make is that you aren’t good looking and/or are fat to the point where it isn’t a cute little bit of ‘chub’. Also, your ‘I had heard this excuse so many times before’ helps my case since semi-attractive women can get dick or attention simply by breathing or existing in proximity of men. Get yourself some Sephora and a treadmill, hon, because that’s going to do you a lot more good than any advice these to clowns will.

 Now that is how you friend-zone someone.

Every single time I have hung out with my female friends, who all have uttered that same ‘if you weren’t interested, why didn’t you tell me’ line, and they get a text where they get shot down by someone they were interested in, they became upset and the night usually ended with an overabundance of alcohol being consumed. Anecdotal evidence is, of course, not proof of anything, but I think it’s more than fair to say that the natural reaction to any person being turned down by someone they find attractive would be some level of anger or hurt. My point is that the whole ‘if you didn’t like me, just tell me’ is a crock of shit and it should stop being used as an anger crutch. Very few people can handle criticism of what they do or their ideas, much less why someone wouldn’t like being around them. Again, a more aware person, both in terms of general awareness and dating awareness, would’ve figured out what was going on and likely wouldn’t have even pulled this line. People operate on multiple levels and implied connotation and contexts; if you cannot read into those, get better at it. Telling people to be blunt with you is just a stupid move all around.

 Hoisted by her own petard. I love it.

This is the brain of an insecure person. You can tell because this girl constantly doubts what the other person is saying. I would bet this behavior applies to a multitude of people in her life, including her friends. It also, yet again, provides a lot of evidence that she is much younger than she says she is as when people get older, they generally become far more rooted in their beliefs and feel the need to be less validated via their peers. That doesn’t mean it stops, just that people generally don’t exhibit this behavior of doubting those around them so overtly. I know that I keep bringing up this age argument, and while it’s getting tiresome, I feel that it’s pertinent because age brings experience, and when it comes to dating, more age equals more experience. When we get to the answers, you’ll clearly see that the two guys giving the advice to this girl clearly don’t have enough time on this planet to be telling her anything. Plus, that’s assuming she listens to the advice, which she likely won’t because, again, that isn’t the purpose of modern advice columns; it’s just someone looking for an echo chamber.

I also didn’t touch on the response this guy gave Ashley, but if you have to go into paragraphs explaining why you don’t want to date someone, it’s should be pretty clear that it will never happen. I don’t have a ton of experience when it comes to dating, but I certainly have more than anyone directly involved with this article and I can sure as shit tell you that the second you get a paragraph explanation (depending on what you consider a paragraph), you should be thinking ‘it’s not going to happen’. People who are stupid and/or insecure with themselves delude themselves into thinking ‘it might happen’, which is how the term friend-zone was created; insipid morons didn’t pick up on the hints and are now stuck in a situation where they keep being nice to try and get laid, despite the fact that doing this will never achieve that outcome.

Just sad.

The phrase ‘checks in’ that Ashley uses is the nail in the coffin here. A guy or girl who is into someone will not ‘check in’, they’ll want to set something up to get together with you. Her continuous asking him to ‘see each other’, which I can’t tell if that means ‘hang out and get lunch’ or ‘date each other’ is effectively her beating the clearly dead horse. If nothing else, this is proof that women can and do get put into the friend-zone and that the friend-zone is clearly a social space for people who suck at picking up hints. I’m chuckling right now because I’ve heard adamant denials about the existence of the friend-zone and plenty of claims that the friend-zone is where nice people get sent for being nice and that only assholes get laid. No, it definitely exists, but it’s not where ‘nice people’ go, it’s where people who clearly exhibit beta qualities (insecurity, stupidity, deceit, faithlessness, etc.) go. Don’t want to get put in the friend-zone? Then don’t let another person take your metaphorical balls, you clods.

How to go from an A+ answer to an F- in seconds.

The answer this girl needs is all in the second line. Instead, this ‘romantic’ (barf) lays on the platitudes to make this dipshit feel better and essentially paint the man who doesn’t want to bang this hen as the bad guy. Being a ‘nice guy’ doesn’t mean you fucking white knight some random person to spare their feelings, it’s a term used to describe people who are kind and thoughtful and perform actions that are beneficial to others because they want to. ‘Nice guys’ don’t shit on people they don’t know simply because a girl has an issue with them; beta people do that.

Articulating your feelings isn’t ‘I wanted to date you’. That explains virtually none of the person’s feelings about someone else aside from wanting to date them. If you can’t actually put into words how you feel about someone, even if it’s a haphazard mess, then you aren’t articulate.  And no, settling down at thirty only makes sense for women because they have a goddamn biological clock. This fucking boot-licking is unreal.

Told you.

 

There is no better summation of this article and all the people involved with it directly and mentioned in it than by the phrase ‘week-long music festival’. If you have enough time to disappear for a week to listen to objectively shitty music in a field somewhere without showering facilities or real food, then you are very young, relatively vapid and focused mostly on yourself. If you want that, then be that, but don’t be surprised when you very few people want to be with that for long term.

It’s no wonder so many people aren’t getting married anymore.

To Robert Box, you have a beta friend. As he is your friend, you should be urging him to not be such a fucking doormat and go out to the club, or the bar, or wherever and find someone to bang. The fact that you are not adamantly pushing your friend to get over this girl who is clearly not into him, which would do wonders for him mentally and make him appear like this girl he met is not his only option, thus creating demand for him, gives me pause as to whether or not you’re actually a good friend. Then again, you were busy putting up your sword and shield in defense of this obvious moron Ashley, so I think it’s safe for me to conclude you aren’t a good friend.

Also, I really hate how these people write. There are so many almost paragraphs that turn into half-finished paragraphs and it’s jarring and choppy. I get that they want to make this a conversation, but there’s a reason why talking and writing are considered different. Proof-read your garbage and learn how to write paragraphs properly; don’t write like you’re having a conversation over coffee.

Why wasn’t this just the response?

Nearly halfway through the article and we finally get more useful advice. It sucks that it contains ego-stroking lines like ‘reluctantly recommend’, but we can’t expect better from some guy who goes out into the woods with a cup of air, sits down on a rock and pretends like he’s being introspective in his backyard. I would like to give Rob a pat on the back for recognizing when someone is feeding another person a line of bullshit because reading between the lines seems to be a lost art these days. Additionally, stop with these ‘mysterious age’ lines. Those only work on retards like Ashley who treat each new year like it’s going to magically be completely different from the previous one; that only happens if you’re really young and starry-eyed as fuck.

Oi vey.

This is some terrible advice to give to someone. ‘Keep in touch’? No, you drop that sack of potatoes like there’s a scorpion inside. Right now, you are the cat and your crush is the mouse that you keep chasing to no avail. If you want this guy that bad, ignore him full stop, go have a life and better yourself so that you become more desirable and then make contact with him again. Not only will you have the best chance of reversing the roles, but you may end up finding someone even better. That last thing anyone should do is hold on to someone in the hopes that the friendship will blossom into love with no effort.

I like how Rob ends his part with ‘continue swiping’. I mean, we knew this girl was spamming Tinder already, but Rob essentially confirming it with his assumption is comical. While I know that Tinder’s rep is getting better, the bottom line is that it is still a terrible dating app because it relies on creating a hyper-idealized version of yourself via entry level social engineering. You aren’t going out on a date with that person, you’re hoping you’re going on a date with that profile. This isn’t to say that people should stop trying or that idealization is bad, just that modern dating and modern society in general is focused on ‘seeming real and tangible’ and then goes about its business cropping shitty moments out of Facebook, slamming ten filters on Snapchat nudes, taking sixteen self-shots for that ‘perfect’ one to put on Instagram, and the aforementioned Tinder profiles. Society wants transparency yet employs facade creation.

With Rob’s take out of the way, let’s see what Treez, the self-proclaimed ‘fuckboy’ can dispense:

Again, all that’s necessary.

I don’t get what the point of blathering on and on after making both your opinion and your advice as clear as the Hope Diamond. I guess that’s just how people interpreted advice columns, which isn’t necessarily wrong, just stupid. It also doesn’t help that I’m a person who prefers brevity and efficiency over being purposelessly verbose and I’m going after people who couldn’t be that if they went to college and got a degree in it.

 

Apparently, a one month ‘fuck buddy’ situation is an ‘engrossing relationship’.

The fucking pandering is astounding. The vast minority of people in the dating pool get nearly viscerally attached to the other person within a month, and that is typically due to heavy emotional baggage and/or trauma stemming from either failed relationships in the past or deeply rooted psychological issues that need to be sorted. Very rarely is it because the connection that is felt is so strong; life isn’t like the fucking fairy tales. Also, ‘informational capital’? Not only does this not make sense, as we’ll see immediately after this, but this is a phrase that only douches who feel the need to obfuscate the point by using gigantic words use so that you keep asking them questions, thus making them seem intelligent. ‘But Sahltines, you use fifteen dollar words all the time!’ This is true and not only have I never hid the fact I am a douche, but I also know what these words mean, so I don’t look like a fool when I flex my massive vocabulary or create new words/phrases.

God this is a long article.

Why wouldn’t you believe it? Unless you have an incredibly finely tuned bullshit detector, which I would confidently posit the majority of people do not, you should believe it. If it’s a lie, then you know the other party isn’t worth your time. If it’s the truth, then everything moves on swimmingly. Plus, lying takes effort. You need to lie to cover up for your first lie constantly, and thanks to many people being awful at it, the whole situation inevitably ends up being a house of cards that collapses in on itself. The easier and smarter move to make is to be honest, even if it sucks, just like the easier path is to just accept what people are telling you for the overwhelming majority of incidents that happen; Occam’s razor here.

We can see that the phrase ‘informational capital’ was just referring to people sharing information about themselves when in a relationship of any sort. Where it falls apart is the expectation that people must give you an answer for every question simply because you provided some. It’s common courtesy to give information in response to gaining some information, just like it’s common courtesy to pay for things you pick out at a store. You don’t have to, and while that’s illegal in the world of commerce since actual tangible goods have been exchanged, it’s not in the world of discourse because memories and information not saved digitally or via classical analog methods can be lost over time. If you tell me about your dying grandmother, I don’t have to give a shit, just like if I complain about my significant other, you don’t have to give a shit. Expecting people to live up to your standards that you don’t even define or explain is the highest order of narcissism and stupidity.

Aww, look at him using higher order words to sound more intelligent than he is. That’s adorable.

I’m belittling her experience, and I’m having a blast. That is also because I am very misanthropic, can’t stand hypocrisy and have no problem offering people the blunt truth they need and not the garbage they want to hear. I’m also doing it because, as you say, it is not uncommon to go through this since this is how dating works; it’s an iterative process of trial-and-error to find the puzzle piece of a person that fits the puzzle piece that is you. Instead, people hide behind shitty weasel phrases like ‘texting burnout’ to describe a flame that was nearly dead on arrival on date one, and it’s again because people expect to be acknowledged.

The ubiquity of technology and social media combined with poor parenting has bred a generation of dipshits who cannot conceive of a world outside their own mind. While some creativity has been brought, since people are more free to express who they really are as it’s all they do these days, it has created people who don’t understand basic social interactions and events, and, worse still, ushered in an age of mental totalitarians who believe that having differing opinions or challenging their beliefs is tantamount to the death penalty.

In short, yeah, Treez is right; you should know by the end of thirty days. Hell, it’s the reason that a good company has a ‘thirty day money-back guarantee’ because four weeks is a ton of time. That doesn’t take away from the fact that he would rather use pandering and weasel words to protect the ego of this random girl versus being honest, even if it would be brutal. Whomever this person is needs people around her who don’t handle her with fucking kid gloves on.

Goddamnit.

Right here is why I preach people staying in their lane in terms of intelligence and vocabulary. The term ‘bullish’ means acting like a bull, which is colloquially known as being stubborn. What he means to say is ‘fond’, which is a tangential definition of ‘bullish’, but you’d have to dig like I did to even make that connection. Just to address Treez directly for a second: you are writing on a shitty article aggregation website about some nonsense question you got tweeted in a field of journalism rife with horrible practices and to an audience that is to be assumed to be the general public. You do not use words the general public would need to dig to understand. You would know this if you had paid attention during class at any point in your life or if you took your job seriously and read up on proper journalism practices. You don’t, of course, and that’s why you’re writing for Elite Daily and not the New York Times.

Call-outs aside, this is again awful advice. Stop telling these starry-eyed retards to leave lame people like the guy in Ashley’s story in their back pocket. The guy will not find Ashley’s acceptance of his decision sexy because he does not find her attractive enough to date. If he did, he would be all over that shit. These fuckers are helping breed a legion of beta people who practice subservient behavior because they believe just being friends with everyone is better than competing for the best position to avoid hurting feelings.

You can finish the article on your own because I’m done. Treez says nothing interesting from this point on and I’m fed up with watching noncompetitive people create more people like them, as if they’re doing it because they’re upset with themselves for being noncompetitive in the first place. You don’t make it to your death day by wearing metaphorical plastic wrap, you do it by commanding a place in the universe by your own two hands. Fuck your feelings and fuck your shitty advice.