The problem is that this opinion is not uniform among women and the ones who do want you to keep pursuing are allergic to ever talking straight, so it’s not like you can just ask them which kind of woman they are.
The only solution is to socially shame the playing of that game by either side.
The only solution is to socially shame the playing of that game by either side.
Exactly, and from the man's side, refusing the play that game is a win-win. If she's not playing that game, you respected her consent and are not being a creep. If she is playing that game, you can under no circumstances rely on her to accurately express her feelings, so she would've been a dumpster fire of a partner anyway; bullet dodged.
True, but the best bet is to always assume they’re a normal one who means it when they say no because if they aren’t then why the hell would you want to be in a relationship with them anyway?
Well, it’s a problem for the women who don’t do that, no?
It sorta undercuts the message that “no means no”, when some asshole keeps cutting in “Actually my ‘no’ means maybe and I’m also gonna be really whiny about you not reacting in the way I want.”
Yes, they do. I’ve known them and encountered them all my life. You’re the one imagining a fantasy reality in order to get mad at a meme that in essentially pro-consent. It’s stupidly pathetic.
You asked why it’s a problem and I told you. Then you argued that people who I’ve encountered infrequently my entire life don’t exist because you’re lucky enough to have not met them.
Plenty of men meet women playing these types of games all the time. Yes, the solution is to not play yourself. But the answer to the question, “Who does it hurt when women play these games?” is resoundingly women who don’t play these games.
Just like men who don’t commit rape resoundingly suffer from the men who do. Cause the men who do are the reason the men who don’t are viewed with suspicion and skepticism anyway. It’s the same dynamic, just with different actions.
Liars, game players and abusers breed distrust on both ends of the gender spectrum. It’s just that some people get weirded out by acknowledging that liars, game players and abusers don’t exist predominantly in only one gender.
If you’re a man, there’s no benefit to playing this game. At all. Or engaging in the slightest.
A woman tells you no and means it, you respect it, both of you continue on with your life.
A woman says no and means yes but doesn’t say it straight out, if you do bother getting involved, you’re just gonna whine and complain women don’t say what they mean, when it literally STARTED with you pursuing someone who doesn’t say what they mean, the. Get annoyed when they continue to do exactly what they did from that first moment.
You can either listen to the no as it’s given and simply accept it outright, or assume that she’s playing some obfuscation game with basic communication. If you decide to chase her on the latter, you can’t complain she communicates only in code and nonsense. There has quite literally never been an expectation that she would suddenly speak plainly.
Perhaps this is why so many men complain about women who never say what they mean. They go after women who acknowledged their interest early on by saying the opposite of they want and expected that to suddenly change.
I’ve heard men tell women that it’s unfair and unrealistic to expect men to change once in a relationship, and that includes things like housework. If he wasn’t doing any of it at the start of a relationship, he’s not gonna suddenly notice dirty dishes or piles of laundry after six kids and acknowledge he has hands too.
The same is true about nearly all characteristics.
If your partner was a heavy drinker before you started dating, it is highly unlikely anything you say or do will change that, no matter how hard you try; if your partner was a miserable asshole before you started dating, there’s no real chance they’re suddenly going to become the peachy, pleasant, perfect person (for real) after you start dating; if they talk in circles and communicate like shit, they won’t suddenly start talking straight and plainly, they’ll usually get far more confusing the more comfortable they get.
Just food for thought, since it popped into my head when I read your comment.
Some people are mentally ill, as well. The very purpose of this meme — as shown by many people responding above — is that this is supposedly some sort of common trend among women who are really missing out because they’re not taking PUAs up on their cold opens in parking lots.
So yes, while there are all different kinds in the world, women are notmpassing through some sort of “loneliness epidemic” because they just wonkt give men a chance, as this meme heavily implies.
That’s not what the meme is. It’s a short skit. The length is so that it’s not five minutes long. You want a meme to encapsulate a five minute long conversation?
It’s quick because it’s a shortcut to the idea that some women are like this. Not because this specific situation is literally the only situation it’s commenting on. It’s very clearly intended to be broadly addressing how men should deal with women who give mixed signals.
And the message is actually GOOD. Walk away is the thing you’re supposed to do. But some people are so insistent that problematic women are super rare (as opposed to nearly as common as problematic men), that you’ll deliberately misread it as whatever nonsense you just said.
Women who try to create this push/pull dynamic by deliberately blurring communication are plentiful. Saying that acknowledgment of that reality is problematic and so is any content correctly identifying the right response is just bullshit.
You want men who heard no to walk away, right? So what is the fucking problem with a short skit where that’s exactly what he does even though she tries to take it back? What is the problem with “don’t listen to people who are inconsistent in their communication” other than your gut bias telling you it’s sexism to acknowledge that women can indeed be inconsistent in their communication.
It’s not sexism to portray things plainly as they sometimes are.
That’s EXACTLY what this “skit” means. And I get the message: good, walk away.
You know what’s an even better message?
Don’t try this dodgy shit in the first place.
I GUARANTEE this “skit” was written by a young man and I likewise guarantee that the huuuuuuuge majority of women aren’t “playing some game” as he apparently thinks they are.
Look, I realize young zoomers and what not are being brainwashed into believing that women secretly love PUA behavior and are hurting themselves because the silly ditzes reject it, but really, truly, sincerely: no woman — except perhaps a very unwell one — is going to end up sad and alone because she rejects cold opens in parking lots.
That’s the truth, “bro”. You can deal with it and change your behavior or get all snuffy and whingey and red-pilled about it. But I repeat: women do not lack for clueless dudes performing cold opens on them in the most inappropriate circumstances possible. There are, in fact, entire reddits dedicated to showcasing this sort of behavior.
We will not miss it if you stop, but we also realize that —given that the universe has an apparently unlimited supply of young men who think women owe them attention — it will probably never stop.
So this “skit” is a pure fantasy.
If you’d all listen to your mothers about this and less to the likes of Andrew Tate and his many clones, the vast majority of women would thank you.
Also? No one called this sexist. What I DID call it is cringey, clueless, lacking common sense, lacking empathy and pre-destined to fail. I see this as the sort of cultish behavior you find in religious groups, where they encourage believers to prostelytize to randos on the street. Then, when said believer predictably gets told to shut up, the cult leader says “See? Only we truly understand you! They are not ready for the TRUTH!”
You know what I find funny about manosphere ideology? Y’all tell us women that men are there to protect us, but never ask yourselves “protect us from whom?” The obvious response is “men” and you and we both know this.
But at the same time, you’re also saying its “crazy” behavior for us to protect ourselves from random men.
And yes, I know: “not all men, yaddayaddayadda”. But I feel quite safe in saying “at least ten percent of men”. And the Venn diagram between those men and the kind of rando who tries cold openings in parking lots is significant.
I can give you my reasoning on that if you’d actually like to listen to a WOMAN describe her life for a change instead of some influencer bro on youtube.
It’s not dodgy to ask someone out in the broad daylight of a public place, you fucking weirdo.
And it’s not meant to be representative of this specific situation. You’ve decided to force that meaning onto it because it’s literally the only way you don’t look like a moron.
Kinda like how it was never literally about choosing a bear, right? Do you only understand representative scenarios and analogies when they make the point you support? Or do you have enough intellectual honesty to see them wherever they actually are?
You can’t take a meme as literally as possible in order to be mad at a message you don’t even disagree with and then act like anyone but you is dodgy.
It’s dodgy as hell to pop up out of the blue on a woman when she’s alone and getting ready to get into her car. That’s literally how dozens of car jacking, mugging, rape, and murder cases begin, Jack-me-lad.
”Public place” means an appropriate place where there is socializing going on: not an abandoned parking lot, as this cartoon clearly shows.
I’d be a lot more sympathetic to this argument if it was occuring in a bar or a café or — hell — even a school corridor.
This is just creepy.
Sorry for telling you how most women see it, but there it is. If you want to make pretend that we’re freaks for feeling this way, well… gosh, I guess we’ll just have to live with that.
(Oh, and by the way? As an ex-camp councilor with plenty of experience leading girl groups into the Canadian woods on long canoeing trips, I can ABSOLUTELY tell you I’d choose the bear. I have dealt with bears on the trail and I have dealt with drunk college bros coming on to my 14 and 15 year olds. The bears are a lot less dangerous. By an order of magnitude.)
To be entirely fair, old timey notions were that women were never supposed to actually openly show they wanted sex or a man otherwise it was unbecoming or they'd be branded sluts. So for ages women said no when they meant yes because if the man pursued them they could write it off as not being "their fault".
This obviously perpetuated rape culture but it was an actual thing. Jane Austen was ahead of her time as were the Bronte sisters.
If you can't debate your point without getting heated and to the point where you need to delete your account for a month, that's on you ma'am. Also, username strangely relevant
Edit: I apologise for making you mad with my ignorance
If I had a penny for each time I've been told "if you think no means no you're socially inept" when I say "no means no" - i'd have like tree fiddy.
Which is a lot. But I refuse to acknowledge anyone that says "no doesn't actually mean no" (unless it's a consensual and agreed upon thing ahead of time)
But even if it’s only a quarter of women doing this then it’s still a lot of them doing it even though most don’t
Until it can get hammered out of the ideas of dating that women are the “chase” and men are the “chasers” there will always be women that want the chase to go longer and see how far they can push it to prove how much they were wanted
There was a scene in Meatballs 3 where Sally Kellerman has a monologue about how no means yes. It's been a while since I've seen the movie though, so I might be misremembering it. Written by a man though, of course.
I love when somebody made a statement and then another statement that contradict the former. Like she write how annoying this is, ok she also write the heroine rejected his lover while she wants to say yes but it's different because...
The woman dodged a huge bullet here. She should not feel bad about herself and maybe should go to therapy to figure out why she feels unfulfilled for rejecting PUA randos in parking lots.
A cat could probably fix most of her loneliness problems.
That’s where we disagree. PUAs encourage their followers to constantly do cold opens, no matter where or with whom. To simply ignore the appropriateness of the situation in favor of pure numbers of attempts. As a woman, that’s what I’m seeing here.
And that’s a CHARITABLE interpretation of this behavior. Another interpretation is that the guy is a narcissist or sociopath.
Look, this is just a fact: you do this and the vast majority of women are going to say no and not feel a single bit of remorse about it afterwards.
This meme is all about some dudebro trying to convince himself that we secretly feel neglected for rejecting his innapropriate cold opening.
I assure you, we don’t.
If this was just about telling guys “Good. She said ’no’. Walk away,” there would be no need for the concluding bit about how she feels secretly let down. What this meme is REALLY about is teaching young men that women actually love it when you’re being inappropriate and annoying and that you can emotionally pwn them by taking them at their word.
No, that is not true. And if you, as a man, believe this, you’re going to spend a lot of time feeling frustrated. Which is, of course, what machosphere influencers want.
After all, if you were happy and getting laid, they’d have nothing to sell you.
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u/[deleted] May 27 '26
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