The 1585 Sets Out to
Make Fun of Dating Advice
and
Ends
Up
Uncovering a Massive Christian Media Conspiracy
4/18/09
The project
as
planned
was to respond
point-by-point to each item in a
stupid
mainstream list of dating pointers. How
stupid and
mainstream?
I
found it in a link off the AOL homepage. That’s how stupid
and mainstream.
It
was pretty fun, as these things go. Oh, and
I possibly
uncovered an extensive plot by Christians to infiltrate and take over
the
lifestyle-advice industry.
Or
not. Judge for yourself.
As always, text by the people I'm making
fun of is in red, and
my responses are in black.
12
Things Women
Should Never Say to Men
by
KAREN ASP
Whether
you’re
married or dating, you’re in a relationship with a great guy,
and you’ll do
anything to stay on his good side. How?
Watch your
words. “There
are certain red-button phrases for men
that they just don’t like to hear,” says April
Masini, the dating-advice expert
behind AskApril.com
and
author of Think
& Date Like a Man.
We also tapped Nicholas Aretakis, author of Ditching
Mr. Wrong,
to get a guy’s perspective.
Take their advice and keep those lips zipped when it
comes to these
touchy phrases.
1.
Do
you love me (especially if it’s too soon
in a relationship)?
Guys love their
freedom, and
for many single guys, the idea of making a
serious
commitment can be scary. Say
this too
early in a relationship, even if you’ve been intimate, and
the guy might slam
on the brakes, says Aretakis. If
you’re
married, it’s okay to ask this, but if you want to get the
kind of answer you
deserve, do it when there are no distractions around you.
I
keep hearing legends
about this problem,
but I have never experienced it myself.
With
every “I love you”
relationship I’ve ever been in, there just came
a moment when it was obvious, and then we both said it, and that was
that. Then again,
I'm an artist, and I've usually
dated other artists, and we tend to be more romantic and impetuous by
nature,
so maybe it is different for normal people.
But
even so, why is it presented here as something
the woman worries
about and needs to ask the man? And
who
says “Do you love me?” without saying “I
love you” first? And
why does “I love you” even mean a
“serious commitment?” You can be in love
with someone and not have to marry them
the next day. And
what’s with “even if
you’ve been intimate?” First
of all, who
calls it that, and second, who still thinks having sex
necessarily
means the
person loves you? Oh,
and I am not the
world’s biggest fan of marriage, but even I am pretty sure
that if you are
married to somebody, it is reasonable for you to expect that they can
tell you
they love you even when there are “distractions
around.” What
does that even mean — they are in the
middle of trying to swat a mosquito, or firecrackers are going off
outside? Ugh, the
poor people this makes sense to. I feel so sorry for them.
Not so sorry that I'm going to stop making fun of them or
anything, but you know, a little bit sorry.
2.
I'm thinking
about having some plastic surgery.
“Men like women to look naturally
beautiful,”
Masini says. That
means no plastic surgery; no fake
anything, not even any make-up. Of
course,
what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, or you.
So if you put on lip gloss,
concealer and
mascara to get this “natural look,” just make sure
you don’t look like you’re
wearing a mask, and you’ll be good to go. This
can be true for plastic surgery too—as
long as it looks real, you might be able to get away with it.
First
of all, I went to
April Masini’s
website, and she has had an absurd amount of plastic surgery, and it
does not,
in even the slightest way, look real.
So
if this tip was hers, I guess she’s insane, and if it was the
guy’s then that
conversation must have been really awkward.
Plus,
this is complete bullshit. Yes,
there are
certainly guys who don’t
like fake boobs, or who don’t
like too much botox, but where the hell are these supposed guys who
don’t even
like make-up? Women wear
the stuff
for a reason, and it’s not because it makes them look worse. This
just sounds like
some shit that lame guys tell stupid women to try and look sensitive,
because
they don’t know what the hell “sensitive”
actually means.
Sometimes
"really fake looking"
is hot. This isn't one of them.
3. You used to
take me out more often — now we don't do anything. Men
love to hang
out,
watch TV and veg. Even
if you’re doing nothing, he’s thinking
that at least you’re doing nothing together. So to
him, this doing
nothing really is
doing something, Masini says. Plus,
realize that cash flow could be low, especially during these hard
economic
times. If you want
a change, plan
low-cost things you both enjoy doing together. If
the only thing you do together is have sex,
that’s a huge red flag, signaling that the guy’s
not really interested in doing
anything else with you.
Okay,
I don’t
think this is a gender thing at
all. There are some
relationships where
the girl likes going out and the guy likes staying home, and some
relationships
where it is the other way around (I mean, if this were true, it would
mean
lesbians go out every night and gay guys stay home all the time, which
isn’t
the case). And the
person who likes
going out and the person who likes staying in need to find a
compromise,
or just
part ways if it’s too big a deal to them.
I
was once in a relationship that ended largely for
this reason (and I
was the one who wanted to go out more).
And
I don’t get the end, that
“red flag” bit about “only”
having
sex. What are the
other things that
count as “doing” something — does it have
to involve leaving the house? Does
a hotly contested game of Stratego count
as doing something? And
what is with “take
me”
out? What year is
this, that the guy is paying for
everything?
See?
Quiet
evening at home.
4.
Don’t
you like my [hairdo, weight loss, new
outfit]?
If your guy hasn’t noticed your
new outfit or haircut,
it’s easy to let this
slip, while calling him on it puts him on the defensive, says Aretakis.
In response he
may lie, develop a testy
attitude or decide to spend less time with you, because he feels like
you’re
asking him to work too hard. If
you want
to get him to notice, do it tactfully. Aretakis
suggests saying something like, “Maybe you haven't noticed,
but do you like my
new hairdo?” Or,
if you’ve lost some
weight, bring it to his attention by saying, “Have you
noticed I’ve lost 10
pounds in the last six weeks? My
goal is
to lose five more.” He
should respond to
that.
Once
again, this is a
problem that I have
heard of but never experienced. Are
there really guys who wouldn’t even notice if their
girlfriend came home with a
different haircut? If
you see someone
every day, you would notice if they look different, whether
it’s your
girlfriend, your friend, or whatever.
Granted,
I might not notice if a girl has new
clothes, because I don’t
necessarily have all the clothes she owns memorized, but in this case
why does
the girl even care? Are
there really
women who would be bent out of shape if they have a pair of jeans on
and the guy
doesn’t notice that they are different from her other jeans? I
certainly
wouldn’t care if a woman didn’t
notice that. This
seems like one of
those things that could only start a fight if someone is looking for an
excuse
to start a fight, and if that’s the case, then the problem is
that you’re
looking for an excuse to start a fight, not the thing about the haircut
itself.
5. Don't you want
to go
shopping?
Aretakis says this is how guys interpret
this: “You hate my
favorite T-shirt and
ripped jeans, and next, you’ll be wanting me to get a new
hairstyle.” It’s
even worse if you’re trying to make him
wear clothes he doesn’t like, as it tells him he has to
change for you to love
him. True, some
guys won’t be bothered
by this, especially once you’re married, but it could make
others think twice
about you.
There
are guys who don’t like to
get new clothes? Don’t
all human beings
like to get new clothes? It
is
inherently fun. I
guess it is boring if
you just have to go buy a shitload of identical white dress shirts and
khakis
for work or something, but presumably that is not the kind of shopping
the girl
is trying to get you to do. The
root here is that most guys’ clothes are boring, and
I
definitely agree that this
is a problem. Girls
get to be aware that
their clothes make them sexy, and thus it is fun to buy them, but as a
guy you don’t
have as much of a sense of what you’re supposed to be
shooting for. If
there are girls who need help getting
their guys to go shopping, try to emphasize the sexy angle. Don’t
just tell
him the pants look “nice for
work” or something; tell him they make his ass look hot, or
show him what
styles will make him look like he’s good in bed or something. If
your guy does not
actually have a nice
ass, then dump him for a guy who does.
And
“once you’re
married?” Who
thinks that being married suddenly fixes everything?
I
am starting to have my suspicions about
these “dating experts.”
6.
Can we talk
(while he's attempting to watch a
football game, work out or
unwind from a hectic business trip)?
It’s
not so much the question as the timing here, explains
Aretakis. Any
strong relationship needs good
communication skills, so this is certainly a valid question.
But
ask it when
he’s not occupied with other
things.
“Watch
a
football game?” “Unwind
from a hectic business trip?” Be
sure also not to bug him while he is
hunting big game, punching giant robots, or trying on fedoras.
I
guess I agree that, in general, people
should not try to initiate some
big discussion with their partners while they are in the middle of
something
that is important to them — e.g., if your girlfriend is really
into LOST,
then don’t
present her with your
fourteen points about why she should do anal right in the middle of LOST — but,
as with many of the
items on
this list, it is just common courtesy, so I don’t get
why it is presented
as a one-way thing about how women should act or not act in relation to
men. I guess there
is just more money in
phrasing it that way, since women are probably more likely than men to
click on
a link to a list of stuff you should do or not do in a relationship. That,
or Masini and
Aretakis just specialize
in giving advice to people who are dating the ghost of Frank Sinatra. Also,
I don’t
get how “Can we talk?” itself
can be either “valid” or
“invalid.” Isn’t
what the conversation
is about
the issue, not whether you
are
allowed to have a conversation at all?
7. I only slept
with
[insert number] guys
before you.
Do you want to know how many women he
slept with? We
didn’t think so — which is why you should
never, ever let this cat out of its bag, Masini says.
WHOA, WHOA,
WHOA — this one isn’t
even so
stupid it’s funny; it’s so stupid it’s
dangerous. What
happened to that thing where everyone is
supposed to ask their partner up front about their sexual history and
answer
honestly when the same is asked of them?
Fucking
dating divas just decided that being
socially responsible isn’t
the best way to get him to put a ring on it?
Fuck
you, you still have to. What
is the next piece of advice going to be — never get tested for
STDs because
someone might see you going into the clinic?
Who
declared this retard an expert on anything?
This
is analogous to a
personal trainer
telling you to always lift with your back instead of your knees. Actually,
wait, the worst
that can happen
from that is you hurt your back, so I guess it is more analogous to a
personal
trainer telling you to lift with a box full of cobras instead of your
knees. Anyway,
I
don’t see why people care about how
many people their partner slept with before.
I
am fine with a girl telling me how many people she
has slept with
before. In great
detail. And about
how much she liked it, and what
they all said to her about how much she liked it.
Because
that’s, you know, the responsible
thing to do.
8.
You care more
about your friends than you do about me.
What your guy will hear is that you don’t like him
spending
time with his
friends because you don’t trust him.
“Just
remember that, unlike women, when guys get into serious relationships,
they
hold onto their friends and find ways to involve them in their
lives,” Aretakis
says. Of course, if
he really does care
more about his friends, maybe it’s time to ditch the
relationship.
Don’t
people who
are dating just have the
same friends after a while? I
mean, how
else are you supposed to have three-ways with them?
And
if you’re not having three-ways, then
your problem isn’t how much your partner cares about their
friends, it’s that
you’re not having three-ways. So
go
have
some three-ways, loser. Anyway,
there’s
no reason why friend pools have to be segregated.
I
appreciate the dig this guy made about how
women ditch their friends, but I appreciate it because it should be
made clear
to women that they should stop doing that — obviously not all
women do this, but some definitely do, and it's sad.
And
who someone “cares more”
about is a stupid concern. I
love my girlfriend, and I love my friends, and
my girlfriend loves me and loves her friends.
The
only problem is people seeing it as a
competition. The
love you have for your friends is a
different kind, just like the love you have for your parents or
siblings
is. Anyone who
feels like they have to
“win” about this is retarded.
9. Why
don’t
you go to the gym?
If you want your man to
exercise, nagging him won’t make it
happen. In fact,
your nagging could make him more
determined not to. Plus,
by asking this,
you’re telling him you think he’s lazy, out of
shape or both, according to Aretakis.
There’s
nothing wrong with getting him
to be more active — just do it tactfully by suggesting some fun
physical activity
you could do together, like taking a hike and then sharing a bottle of
wine.
No, sorry, this is a
perfectly legitimate
thing to say. For
straight women,
straight men, gays, lesbians, furries, Morrissey, everybody. People
should work out. And
not with that
“hiking and
wine” bullshit. Your
man should pump
iron. I realize
going to the gym is a
pain, but it is not that expensive to buy a bench and a curl bar and
some
dumb-bells. Especially
secondhand. Tons of
people buy workout
stuff and and then don’t use it and end up selling it, so you
can always find
very lightly used equipment priced to move on Craigslist or whatever. And
if you have workout
equipment at home,
then you can make working out into a sex thing, where you work out
together in
sexy gear, or do that thing where while the guy is working out the girl
gets
dressed up and watches him and masturbates in front of him but
he’s not allowed
to touch her until he’s finished.
Suggest
this, and odds are he won’t
consider it “nagging.” And
male or female, gay or straight, if your
suggestions about getting in shape make your partner “more
determined not to,”
you should dump them, because they’re retarded.
I'm
beginning to sense a theme here. A retarded theme.
10.
Does this make
me look fat?
Unless you want the truth, don’t go there.
Repeat:
Do not use this phrase. Not
only do men get sick of hearing it, it
also puts them in a sticky situation. After
all, men tend to be more logical in their thought patterns while women
are more
emotional, according to Aretakis. Their
initial response may not be what you’re hoping to hear, and
when it comes down
to it, do you really want him to lie to you?
“Don’t
go there” in the first sentence, and
the “Repeat” device in the second?
Wow,
these people are really hip and sassy.
I
sure wish I were cool like them. Anyway,
yet again, this is something I have heard legends about but never
experienced in
real life. Despite
the fact that all
media my whole life have bombarded me with the idea that all women say
this to
all men every day, no woman has ever actually asked me those exact
words in
that order. Sure,
women have asked me
“Do I look okay in this?” or “How does
this look?” or “Do you like this?” or
“Which of these do you like better?”, but you know
what? Any
human being could ask these
questions of any
other human being. Shit,
you can ask your buddy which jacket he thinks is cooler before you go
to the
bar — what is the big deal? I
am
losing my
patience with this list. It
was funny
for a while, but now it is just making me depressed.
If
one person in the relationship could be in
better shape, then they probably know that and should be making an
effort
to get in
better shape (see #9). Making
it about
what the other partner does or doesn’t say is stupid.
11. Can't you do
anything
better than
watch TV?
You may think your guy is a little too
fond of the sports channel, but
saying
this makes it sound like you think he’s not doing anything
productive with his
life, explains Aretakis. “For
health
reasons, you want to discourage couch-potato syndrome, but if
he’s watching
only a few hours of TV a week, give him a break or entice him away from
the TV
with fun activities.”
You know, seriously half
the shit on this
list just boils down to “men like to watch sports.”
I’m
starting to
think that my responses are
just going to be useless to like 99% of the human race, because I am
not at all
interested in watching sports, so apparently I’m just not
representative of
what guys are like. But
regardless, if
one partner watches too much TV, what is the difference whether it is
sports or
something else? And
who says this
partner is necessarily the guy? Repeated
studies over the last several years suggest that women actually watch
more TV
than men, so why is a guy glued to ESPN any different from a woman
glued to Dancing
with the Stars? And
why did they say
“the sports
channel?” Do
you have to pay if you say
“ESPN” or something? Or
did they just
forget what it was called? Anyway,
fuck
this. If you are
reading this website,
then odds are the only TV shows you watch are House
and 30 Rock
(plus
Stewart and Colbert if you have cable, and Bill Maher if you have HBO),
and you
and your partner watch them all together.
I’m
getting
kind of tired here of pointing out that stupid people have stupid
problems. We
already know that. That’s
why we call them stupid people.
12.
Why
can’t you be as successful as my
sister’s (or other’s) husband?
Can you insult your guy any more?
“Comparing
your partner to somebody else is demeaning and belittling and will hurt
your
relationship,” Aretakis says. It’ll
also
make your man less willing to spend time with your sister and her
husband. Instead,
be supportive of your partner’s
career and establish reasonable expectations — and no higher
than he has of
himself or else you’ll both be disappointed.
No. Just
no. That’s
it, I’m
done. Do you really
want some advice
about this? Here’s
some goddamn advice:
if you are genuinely the type of person (person,
not woman)
who would say this, kill
yourself. There’s
my advice. Look at
me, I am a dating expert! Wheeeeee! Delicious!
Don’t
go there! Honey! Diva!
Here’s
how many days you
should wait to call him! Here’s
the type
of relationship he should have with his mother!
YOU
ARE AN IDIOT. THERE
IS IPSO
FACTO NO “GOOD ADVICE” THAT CAN BE GIVEN TO YOU,
BECAUSE THE FACT THAT YOU CARE
ABOUT THE THINGS YOU CARE ABOUT MEANS THAT YOU SUCK.
In conclusion, I
regret that this piece became a very different animal than was intended
at the
outset. My goal
was to give legitimate
dating advice that was superior to mainstream dating advice. Over
the course of
attempting to do so,
however, I discovered that mainstream dating advice is aimed at people
so
utterly pathetic that my trying to do this was analogous to a sperm
whale's
trying to
teach a raccoon to hunt giant squid.
Further
perusal
of the websites of the initial advice-givers confirmed the hypothesis
that
their advice and my advice are simply non-overlapping magisteria. April
Masini’s
site, for example, offers tips
on “How to Know Your Dating a Loser,” but I guess
her tips must be different
from my tips, because my #1 way of knowing I'm dating a loser
is that she
doesn’t know the difference between
“your” and “you’re.”
By
project’s end,
the primary concern was that my Jeebus Sense was tingling big-time
with both
of these clowns. My
research could not
uncover either of them saying anything overtly Christ-y, but virtually
everything on both of their websites (especially his)
has that icky
Christian-prose
feel to it. You
know what I'm talking
about: lame attempts to sound “with it,”
too much emphasis on marriage and silly
gender stereotypes, the complete absence of any language that even
borders on
the salty or ribaldrous… It’s
like in a
sci-fi movie when someone’s an alien, and you can just tell
they’re an
alien. (As for the
actual author of this
piece, one Karen Asp, we checked her out and she seems just
to be an
agendaless
freelance writer of light mainstream chick stuff about ice cream and
cats and
the like.)
I
also
move to
introduce this transcript of Masini’s
appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, which — puzzlingly,
for the author
of How to Date
Like a Man — focused
on
how women these days are “out of control.”
As
for Aretakis, his
dating advice website is rife
with out-of-left-field
references to spirituality, and his
other website, featuring advice
for
young
people about the “real world” or some shit, has
links on the main page to stats
about divorce going down and a vid of his appearance
on — you guessed it — FOX
News. Googling him
also reveals that he
is frequently linked to off something with the suspicious name of
“Blisstree,”
allegedly a confederation of advice with no specific
agenda…
and the first link I clicked on not only features spazzy warnings for
parents
about which movies have cursing in them, but also does th-t st-pid th-ng wh-re the
c-rse
w-rds are fill-d in w-th hyph-ns, even h-ll and d-mn.
Blisstree
itself is in turn controlled by an even
larger web entity
called b5media,
which also runs Blisstree’s male counterpart, EveryJoe,
the
only men's-advice website in the universe that has articles about
everything
under the sun except
sex.
Interesting. Almost... retardedly interesting.
Anyway,
if
this
is the case, then people need to watch out.
It
may mean that Christianity is deploying agents to
pose as
relationship experts, in an attempt to Jeebus up the dating world. Now
that I think about
it, there have been an
awful lot of back-to-the-old-school dating books coming out in the last
few years — if
you’re the type of person who reads dating advice, you might
want to start
looking into whether the author constantly has a freaky smile on their
face and
went to one of those colleges that makes you sign a contract saying you
won’t
watch any R-rated movies. And
if you’re
the type of person who doesn’t
read
dating advice because it’s all so stupid, but has wondered on
occasion why
it’s all so
stupid, you may finally
have your answer — it is secretly all being written by
Christians. In some
cases, Christians who have had
ludicrous amounts of third-rate-porn-star plastic surgery merely to
throw
people off the trail of the fact that they are Christians. Or
had the surgery first,
because they used
to be a stripper or something, and then flipped and became Christian
afterwards. I
don’t really care. I
tried to suss it out from her
Wikipedia
page, but all I learned is that
she used to be married to
the guy who
created Star
Search and that she is
“widely
credited with bringing the television show Baywatch
to Hawaii.” I'm
not sure how a
specific person can be “credited” with making a
particular state aware of a TV show, but anyway, they subsequently
declared a holiday in
her
honor.
So
if 1585 flops, my back-up plan is to bring Numb3rs
to American Samoa.
Anyway,
the
punchline is, as far as I can tell, there’s not even
anything directly
Christian about any of this crap.
What
the hell is Christianity’s compelling interest in women not
bugging men to go
shopping? It’s
as if at this point they
just want people to act like it is 50 years ago purely for the sake of
acting
like it is 50 years ago. I
guess we
should be happy that their shit is coming off the rails so hard, but it
is just
sad and confusing more than anything else.
Plus,
Christianity or no Christianity, it is still
all terrible advice!
But
maybe
this is
the path towards some kind of rapprochement.
If
all Christians want is for women to act like
it’s the past, I could
totally get behind that. It’s
just that I have way cooler ideas for how women could act like
it’s
the past, such as
wearing garter belts and those hats with weird shit on the top, and
talking in
that fucked-up Katharine Hepburn voice.
That
would be awesome.
Also,
those
bras
that make your tits pointy. It’s
what Jesus
would do.
And
that
line
would have been a funny way to end the piece, but an irresponsible one,
because
the fact is, I know
the
reason — the
reason why, even with respect to things that have no perceptible
connection to
its views on morality, organized Christianity has a compelling interest
in
perpetuating stereotypes about the monolithic, insurmountable
differences
between the genders.
The
reason
is the
giant stupid boner it has for marriage. No-one
who isn’t
retarded needs religion to
explain anything about the natural world anymore, so all
religion’s eggs need
to be in the basket of
the
social cohesion for which it is supposedly responsible.
And
if it’s possible for two people to
choose
to spend their lives together and raise a stable family just because
they, you
know, happen to like each other, then who needs the religious view of
marriage? Marriage
as a religious
concept (i.e., the point is to obey God, not to celebrate human desire)
only
has a point if people think that the only way a man and a woman could
ever
stand to spend their lives together without fleeing or killing each
other is if they believe God will punish them for doing otherwise. (This
also helps
explain Christianity’s problem with gay marriage — if
straight couples had models
of gay life-partnerships to examine, they might wake up and realize
that the
gender gap is actually just the any-two-people
gap.)
So
for all
its
talk of harmony, religion actually has just as much of a stake in
fomenting
gender discord and perpetuating legends of opposite-sex inscrutability
as the
extended Stupid-Shit-Aimed-At-Women Industry does, which is why they
make such snug — if
bizarre — bedfellows.
So the next
time
you come across some dating advice that is even more retarded than
normal
dating advice — especially if it is of the “Trick The
First Poor Bastard You Can
Get Your Grimy Hooves On Into Marrying You Purely For The Sake Of
Getting
Married” variety, rather than the “Try To Actually
Be Happy” variety — consider
the possibility that it was written by Christians.
Actually,
you
might want to start considering the possibility that everything
was
written by Christians,
just to be on the safe side. Remember
the three principal warning signs:
grammatical
errors, the absence of profanity, and no
mention of sex, at least not as something positive or fun.
Needless
to say,
this website is therefore above suspicion.
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