Due to the initial nature of the internet (technological), the majority of it’s users were, for a while, male. But not just any man could freely browse the grand internet, before the days of colourful talking buttons only the very finest (read; not retarded) could harness the vast knowledge. For some odd reason I am not really sure of, this group also happened to be the most socially inept part of the population. Hence, dating sites or sites with dating advice flourished. Nowadays the internet is freely accessible everyone and the gender ratios have approached 1 : 1. Still, sites with helpful advice on meeting women continue to exist.

Now I can quote hundreds of sites to fill hours of reading pleasure but I am not going to do that. Instead, I will focus on a single aspect that forms the fundamentals of most women-advice sites; the Ladder Theory and the resulting ‘Friend Zone’

First, an introduction to both concepts;

The Ladder Theory states that men and women categorise others in different ways. Men supposedly use one big category (a ladder) for all women they know. The higher someone is up the ladder, the more they like them as friends [and] the more they would like to have sex with them if the opportunity arises. Women on the other hand use two different ladders, one for friends and one for sexual partners. For men to switch between ladders is possible, but difficult. To summarise; men are more willing to have sex with female friends than the reverse.

The Friend Zone is the hypothetical ‘friendship ladder’ of women. The Ladder Theory implies that if a man does not make his sexual attraction clear to a woman he just met, it is highly probable that he will be placed in the ‘Friend Zone’ instead of the ‘possible sexual partner’ zone.

The above-described concepts are utter bullshit. They are great examples of worthless psychology and a desire to shift blame by shy young males.

I’ll start with the blame shifting. I cannot begin to count the times that I have read something among the lines of ‘my female friend was not interested in me, I must have been friend zoned!’ or ‘that chick at the bar/social event I spoke to for about an hour turned out to be uninterested in a date, I think I was to nice and have been friend zoned!’. In both situations the male seems to be oblivious to the fact that maybe, just maybe, the girl was not attracted to him for whatever reason. Instead he chose to blame the friend zone and the complex mind of women instead of the impossible conclusion that it must have been him. This might seem extreme, yet unfortunately in our current society responsibility for ones self seems to have evaporated completely.

The worthless psychology bit is actually quite funny and I almost feel bad by sharing it to anyone who believes this crap. Almost. Surprise everyone; the Ladder Theory is satire. That’s right, the whole concept of the friend zone began as a humorous stab making fun of exactly the people who would believe it. The reason why it became so popular is due to the fact that 1) most people are too stupid to recognise satire and 2) it allows for convenient blame-shifting.

To conclude, it seems that quite a significant amount of people have this strange notion that women are a totally different species that men. Granted, in general, women are less into random sex, but this is rooted in the fact that women take a larger risk (pregnancy) and the fact that they actually have something entering them as opposed to males. But with that in mind women are not some sub-species that detest sex nor are they incomprehensible; the reason why your hot friend won’t let you screw her is because you are either physically repulsive, boring or she wants to avoid any complications. The reason that she counts you as her friend is the same reason as why you count your buddy Jack as your friend. And you’d probably not want to screw him.

It’s not rocket science people, come on, get a grip.

False stories about the friend zone? Drop us a line!

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 20th, 2007 at 11:48 am and is filed under Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.