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Notes -
Time for some good old fashioned gender politics seethe:
https://old.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/11of65g/i_21m_asked_my_friend_21f_to_be_fwb_and_now_she/?sort=confidence
A clearly very socially awkward nerdy literal virgin (despite being 21 years old) guy thinks a cute girl in his study group is flirting with him. He takes her aside privately after a study session and asks her… does she want to be his FWB (friends with benefits)? He reasons that he wants to have fun like many young men and isn’t looking for a relationship right now.
The girl is shocked and taken aback. She turns him down flat and appears uncomfortable. He feels uncomfortable too and apologizes to her and leaves.
Over the next few weeks, she doesn’t say anything to him at study sessions. He tries to make contact again, not to proposition her, but just to resume their friendly acquaintanceship. She tells him directly that she doesn’t want to speak to him. He is hurt but understands and leaves her be. Soon enough, he learns that she has told her friends and extended social circle what happened, and he is widely reviled as a creep. He feels hurt and violated. He laments that he has lost a friend, and now feels like he’s being lambasted for an innocent error, and he wishes the whole thing would just end and go away.
My take on OP is sympathetic. He comes off as extremely awkward and clearly isn’t well versed in the endless myriad of opaque and seemingly contradictory rules of modern dating. He wanted an FWB, and he didn’t understand that the socially acceptable way to get one is to ask a girl out on a date (usually through Tinder), then hook up with her, then either stay as vague as possible for as long as possible about your intentions while continuing to periodically fuck, or to sort of half way shrug after a fuck session and say, “yeah, I’m just really not looking for anything serious right now.” OP genuinely thought he was being upfront and honest with another person, and assumed that he was proposing something mutually beneficial.
Yes, it’s not a good idea to outright proposition a girl to be an FWB in a library. It’s awkward and weird and I can see how it made her feel uncomfortable. But all signs point to OP making an innocent error. He didn’t know any better. When he became aware of his mistake, he immediately apologized, gave the offended party space, and only later attempted to reestablish contact in a friendly, non-threatening manner. He made an innocent mistake and responded in the best possible way.
And Reddit’s response to OP is… calling him a massive piece of shit in every conceivable way.
What I find interesting about the overwhelming criticisms of OP is that they split in two completely opposite directions, but seemingly from the same critics.
On the one hand, OP is relentlessly slut shamed. He is accused of treating this woman like a “flesh light,” of feeling “entitled” to sex, of creepily trying to fuck an acquaintance, of pursuing sex with a girl instead of trying to date thine lady like a proper Victorian gentleman.
On the other hand, OP is relentlessly virgin shamed. He’s an incel, a fool, a creepy moron. He’s daring to try to have casual sex when he hasn’t even lost his virginity because he is SUCH A MASSIVE FUCKING LOSER. OP doesn’t understand that casual sex is only for chads who have fucked a bunch of girls, FWBs are an unlockable perk, not a privilege of the sexually unworthy.
Fortunately, there is a minority of Reddit commenters backing OP up, but it is a small minority. Meanwhile, many more posters are saying that OP is well on the way to becoming an incel or Andrew Tate fan, and unfortunately, they’re right, just not in the way they think they are.
I don’t have a larger point for this post, only that it’s incredibly frustrating that a significant portion of mainstream culture has erected these standards for the dating marketplace where one false step not only does, but should result in social and moral annihilation.
i thought about not saying this, then saw so many responses
guys, it's fake. it's a fake story. the so-socially-stunted who asks that IRL then goes hard at defending his obliviousness wouldn't be yet astute enough to know that sub, think of it as a good place to ask his question, and know he should use a cutesy throwaway called "throwRA." all those subs, RA, TIFU, AITA, are full of shitty writers posting varyingly obviously fake stories and getting loads of engagement. downthread here are two way more obviously fake stories about a woman whose husband "has become a robot", OP outs themselves as fake when they're trying to flex their prose in the update, and about a jewish guy who discovered his girlfriend is extremely antisemitic. the OP of that story? yeah banned from reddit, probably for dodging the ban they got because of their last fake story posted to RA.
i'm not surprised people who frequent what are among the shittiest subs on reddit chomped the bait but cmon. is there good in "provoking discussion" no probably not unless it's reflecting on credulity, and also how upvotes might, might work in highly niche communities but once used by the masses just become Likes and spur a race to the bottom. modern dating is certainly unideal. stories like this help make it worse.
Does it matter for most of what we discuss here? I have seen similar stories play out in real life quite a bit.
Yes? It's bad to generalize from fictional evidence.
I don't doubt this, but the tiny details matter a lot in these matters.
Mostly the discussion here is about people's reactions to the story, which are real even if the story is fake.
It still fucks up the analysis. In good Bayesian rationality you need to be reasoning about the process which generated the evidence.
To add onto sarker's response, I think the reactions still have merit and truth value, in that "who you are in the dark"/"The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street" kind of way. Consider also the two trans-related Motte-adjacent-adjacent smoke jobs (TraceWoodgrains vs. LOTT and Jesse Singal and that whistleblower).
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