Thursday, September 28, 2006

Herd Behavior And The Average Male

I have always noticed that in a club, be it the US, London or Delhi, you always see this herd of girls dancing on the floor, kind of like buffaloes (no, not calling them cows, am just drawing on my many hours of NatGeo watching) against a bunch of tigers, (again, not being sexist, is just an allegory). And the tigers being men (no, for the last time, not throwing testosterone in your face, its just a very convenient analogy)…and here’s the thing, at least the four legged tigers have the balls, or hunger to pounce…eventually. But see, I hear from a lot of women, no one hit on me tonight or no one spoke to me…okay, so let us deconstruct this from my point of view:

** a girl wants a guy, or many guys, to talk to her. No, she isn’t looking for anything, she just wants to know that guys find her attractive. She wants to know she looks good and it doesn’t matter who the guy is, just so long as he made her feel like she looks like a million bucks.

Now if she doesn’t want this guy for any other reason than an ego boost, why is she dressed up? In case there is one guy who is the most attractive of the lot and she wants him to notice her and come up and talk to her. In that case, she leaves the herd to talk to him.

Of course, if the guy is smarter, he won’t treat her as if she were an exceptionally attractive woman. Why? Because every other schmuck treats her like that and well, I have noticed that well…okay, let me think, if I have been drunk, too drunk to notice she is hot or not, if I treat her like every other girl, she tries to make herself more attractive.. Now she cant go home and change nor can she drop her top to lower levels without her boobs popping out, so she flirts. And here’s the thing, I am FAR from being the attractive guy in the room (part truth, part habit of selling myself short, working on both). So, real life application: I have seen enough guys compliment women they see in bars or clubs. But she has heard that from so many other guys so nothing there to grab her attention. Odds are, she has the same ways of blowing guys out of the water, each one same as the next.

The basis of all this is that the guy wants to sleep with her (on an average, true but I know I have met women I am genuinely interested in and don’t want to just sleep with…hmm, I hear a post coming up on my idea of a good girl and good here doesn’t mean what you think it does)…but yes, the girl is under the impression that every guy who compliments her is after one thing (and she, on the whole, may just be right) and every guy thinks if he compliments her, she will swoon and bat her eyes at him and talk to him.

Men are from Mars and god knows where girls are from.

** I have a few friends (and now thanks them, friends’ friends) who will ask me on what to talk to a girl about. To one extreme, BestBud called from the loo during a date when he felt the conversation is waning. Then, a few days later his friend called me with the same question Why is it that guys forget that if a girl is on a date with them, they already like the guy and all he has to do is not fuck it up? And another thing, guys seem to say the most awful blithering things to a girl when they like her, they seem to get all tongue tied. Part of this is from experience and part from watching guys talk to girls. Its like one episode of Friends where Ross tries to flirt with the pizza delivery girl and ends up talking about natural gas. Now, guys lose the tongue-mind co-ordination in two cases (I think) one is when they are trying to make the girl laugh/impress her or they are on a date and the silence is so overwhelming that they have to say something. I want to try this sometime during a date…usually when I am getting bored, I refrain from inane comments and I guess the silence gets to her and she says something…but I haven’t tried this on a date…wonder if I can find a guinea pig to do this first…

** I need women’s opinions here…now pick up lines as a concept are ridiculous and oxymoronic (emphasis on moronic)…but okay, what is the best way for a guy to approach a girl? Does he say hello? Does he introduce himself? But what after? What can a guy you don’t know from a hole in the wall say after ‘hello’ that would make you want to talk to him? And one thing that works against guys is questions like, ‘do you come here often?’, ‘so, what do you do?’, ‘what’s your star sign?’, ‘do you like the music?’…I don’t think these will ever draw anyone, a dead tree stump even into conversation. There have been times I have fallen into conversation with random people but that’s usually when I am waiting for a drink and something catches my eye…one particularly memorable conversation was a girl who had a fluorescent tongue piercing and I just had to ask her why she got her tongue pierced and what that said about her. Another time, my women friends arrived 40 minutes late and I was debating with this group of girls why it takes women hours to get ready to go out to a club where you can barely make them out

But riddle me this: what does the guy say after hello…if there are any women who read this, give me stories of random guys who spoke with you for over 1.5 minutes with you trying to brush them off

The reason I ask is because I have seen enough guy friends first muster up the courage to go talk to a random girl and then last about 15 seconds and then walk back to me…funnily enough, happy they actually approached a random person…

Now Hobo talks about carrot danglers and most women I know indulge habitually in this

From this point on, I rechristen Hobo to Bobo, dont know why, don’t care to either

For instance, take Dusty, (so that isn’t her real name but I know the name well enough and that’s all matter to the likes of you lot)

I was a complete idiot and was played for a long time. When she started dating StraightLace again, she cut of all contact with me because he didn’t want her to talk to me…apparently he was under the impression I was better than him and she would see that…oh well. So anyway, I got back together with the Ex and ignored her completely. Apparently she went tearfully to her friend and said I wasn’t paying any attention to her. Of course, everyone reviled against her and said now that I wasn’t paying any attention to her and had my own life, she was disappointed but whereas when I would fawn and make gestures, she trampled over me. Oh well, I think things came to a head when Straightlace called and apologized (no doubt under pressure from our common friends who the two had managed to piss of) and apologized and said he wanted to be friends. That’s a long story but point being, whenever Dusty and Straightlace would fight, she would come to me to get a coffee and this was an obvious occurrence.. So, I was played and I played up her ego. Point being, she, along with a few other women I know, do that. Which isn’t very nice but I’m not here to make value judgements, more like how to deal with that stuff.

Its quite simple really – don’t.

>: o)

And I have to say, it worked beee-you-ti-fully

Anyway, to all the carrot-danglers I hope for your sake guys don’t catch on to the game, else what will happen is that they will pull out a pair of scissors, snip through your ego and get the carrot anyway….

3 comments:

eM said...

i LOVE this post. so nice to see from a guy's point of view. although i do think some of your generalisations are too, um, GENERALISED, like for instance, the whole myth about how long it takes women to get dressed. Most of my friends, and me, usually know what we're wearing before we go out and if we don't, we already have a couple of options lined up, coz we just don't have that many clothes, you know? that make us look okay, ie. as for the pick up line, it NEVER works. unless boy is friend of friend of friend etc. or reasonably attractive. but still, you wouldn't wind up giving them your number, or talking to them for more than about ten seconds. :)

Zaphod said...

Good to get a reply so early in the morning (London time) along with my coffee. But yes, I agree on the liberal and loose generalizations I made with regards dressing up times...Bobo has been exceptionally good in that regard.
As for pick up lines, you just told me what I already knew! Now, think back to an exceptional time when a random guy had a conversation with you that lasted a few minutes or more and tell me. The Delhi I knew circa 2000 (and circa is correct since SO much has changed), random women wouldn't even say hello (but perhaps it was because back then, everyone I hung out with was 17-18)....hmm, feel the rumblings of a post coming up

hedonistic hobo said...

Benny you ask too many questions.
OK
1. what can a guy say other than hello? you know guys think too much about what to say. and girls do too!! sometimes it's the tone that just does it. if a guy sounds bubbly and happy and genuine (and that's something you just can't put on it resonates from genuine genuiness!) that's good enough incentive for me to keep the conversation rolling. and pick up lines work only as long as the guy loos so obviously aware of how idiotic he sounds and then proceeds to redeem himself by making a few smart quips.

what else? not every woman dresses up to get an ego boost from guys, sometimes being dressed up is the ego boost. and some dress up to get laid brother, how do you tell one from another? easy, you put yourself out there and get yourself trampled on till you find what you're looking for. :)

and some guys take the brush her off technique a bit too seriously. whatever the authors of 'the game' say (and they're writing about american women, you know how new york women are duuuuuude) ignoring her can't ever be good. the nice ones are fragile and they'll wilt if you ignore her. so don't do that. be witty, be charming, don't tell her she's gorgeous and blah blah,tell her she stands out or whatever your line is but also have the balls to pull her leg. just dont be cruel coz you're blowing your chances then.
and remember the girl's almost always just as nervous.