Escaping the Friend Zone: Choosing Victims & The False Sense of Security
Now begins the application of what we have learned:
Victim Theory
Victims are categorized by what they feel they are missing in their life, though they may not be immediately aware of what is missing. Identify what people are missing and how you can fill that need. Look beyond the surface social and cosmetic, get into what they lack psychologically. Get them talking about themselves, people love to talk about themselves.
Greene calls them victims, but assures us that they’re usually willing victims. They want that need to be filled, they want someone to fill it for them. Since we’ve been learning in detail how people exploit various manifestations of human narcissism, this seems to make sense — narcissists are always on the lookout for more sources of narcissistic supply. Of course they’re willing victims.
Victim Types
Numbering 18, with brief descriptors:
Reformed Rake or Siren: Were once great seducers, then had to settle down or stop due to social pressures. Mourns the passing of time and revels in their glorious past. Make them think they are the seducers they were of old.
Disappointed Dreamer: Probably spent a lot of time alone as a child. Lives in their fantasy world. Hungers for the unattainable image of epic romance and excitement. Identify and fulfill their dreams.
Pampered Royal: Brats who are accustomed to being placated and served. Lazy. Seeking novelty. Easily bored. Looking for a mommy/daddy figure who will spoil them. Gross and increasingly common in a modern society obsesed with instant gratification.
New Prude: When Greene wrote this section I don’t think he could foresee that people now are often having less sex and watching more and more porn. Prudes are obsessed with appearances and appropriateness. Secretly desires transgressive behaviors and compensates for perceived social oppression with prudery. They love to correct the sinner and secretly love the sin.
Crushed Star: Once accustomed to being the center of attention, their star has since dimmed. Let them shine again and don’t compete with them (He recommends you play the Charmer).
Novice: Innocent, inexperienced and insatiably curious. Show them new things, be gentle, don’t rush or you’ll intimidate them. They have no experience with aesthetics and romance and long for them, even and especially the evil and dark parts of life, mixing innocence with corruption.
Conqueror: Always looking for the next mountain to climb. They love power and accomplishment. Can be highly emotional when pushed. They long for the chase, the hunt. Coquettes are built for taming them.
Exotic Fetishist: Fascinated by “the exotic” and this fascination governs everything they do in life. They like to travel and collect objects from faraway places, much like a person who, you know, travels. They have a deep sense of self-loathing related to their hatred of their own background or social class. Be exotic with these people, don’t bother with them if you have nothing to offer. Insecure and thus they are poor victims unless they are found in a very hum-drum existence. This Fetishist is also increasingly common in modern society. White yuppie liberals obsessed with social justice, the wild explosion of people identifying with a different gender expression, militant atheism, etc are filled with a powerful and defensive hatred of where they come from, who they are, and the historical context and traditions of same.
Drama Queen: Some people are just addicted to drama. I see these people a lot and it never fails to blow my mind that some people seem to love being in the middle of something, often many somethings at once. They are averse to stability and security, masochists who revel in their own trauma. Take a step back and think about the online universe and the people in it, observe how some people seem to live in that universe and are positively drenched in frenetic, rapidly changing and self-aggrandizing drama in the setting of making the online universe a profitable professional identity.
Professor: They overanalyze and critique everything they come across, they love to lord their superior intellect over others. They long for physicality without intellectual abstraction, they want physical stimulation and experience.
Beauty: Used to being looked at and constantly worried that they aren’t being looked at any more. They feel a longing to be understood as people and not as an object, feeling isolated by their physical presentation and its effect on people. Validate their intelligence and character but do not fail to worship the physical traits they’re insecure about as well.
Aging Baby: Refuses to grow up. Plays all the time. They also want a mommy and can be exceptionally narcissistic. Spoil and validate them until you get bored. I feel like this also describes more and more people today and it was a little unnerving to read this bit. Men in their 30’s and 40’s obsessed with anime catgirls comes to mind, and I hate when that comes to mind.
Rescuer: These people want to save someone and seem to be attracted only to people who have a lot of problems. They are often very sensitive, empathetic, and are drawn to helper roles, which gives them satisfaction and distracts them from their own problems. Be vulnerable, sad and needy and they will love you. They’ll love you even more if you’re both vulnerable and very naughty, a depressed and self-flagellating sinner. Again, more and more and more people today are described thus. They need to save someone, or they need to be part of some cause or the other, often self-describing themselves as “activists” who just happen to work at Chipotle.
Roué: Have lived a decadent life, they are cynical and jaded and at the same time sentimental. They long for their decadent youth and long-lost innocence. They love the Coquette who appears innocent & youthful. Don’t give in too quickly. Sounds very French.
Idol Worshipper: Always searching for something to worship. They go from one religion or cause to another, the true believing cultist who thinks of themselves as a “seeker.” Be their idol, keep everything on a mystical plane. Start working on your Tantric Sex terminology and techniques. Don’t try to correct their poor self-esteem. Increasingly common in influencer culture as we construct an ever expanding pantheon of peasant gods. Enjoy these followers for a while, they’ll eventually move on regardless.
Sensualist: Slaves to their own senses. Very choosy about their surroundings and aesthetics. Secretly feel trapped in a world devoid of sensual pleasure. Keep them overstimulated and they will be yours.
Lonely Leader: Used to being in charge, and used to people always wanting something from them. They long to be free from the isolation of their own power and privilege. They long for someone to be their equal or better, and they long for people to be honest and direct with them.
Floating Gender: Play up to their desire for traditional gender role transgression, and encourage their explorations. Greene says this is a bad idea if you aren’t also a gender-bender, and he’s probably right. I wonder if he foresaw how prominent this victim would be today?
These categories don’t feel too far off, really. Much like I said in the Anti-Seducer previously, I think most people are one or more of these “victim” types so this isn’t very revealing, but interesting and not a little disturbing to think about.
Methods and Creating the False Sense of Security
Fortunately, I was wrong and we are not done exploring these concepts and methods using the examples of history, art and literature. It’s most of the book, really.
Leisure stimulates love, leisure watches the lovelorn,
Leisure’s the cause and sustenance of this sweet Evil.
-Ovid, Cures for Love
The essential method here is patience. Be patient in choosing a victim and be patient in closing the deal, try to ignore how predatory and weird it is. Most of the section on Methods of Seduction and The False Sense of Security is pretty uninteresting encouragement for the reader to stay the course, keep your distance, let them come to you, and be mindful of your own feelings. If someone stimulates you, they could be a great victim for your enlightened machinations. Again, this is about power over others and allowing people to have power over you on your terms. Over and over and over.
…Haunt the periphery of your target’s life
A False Sense of Security
Seduction should be approached indirectly, it should never be a direct attack. Approach slowly from a distance or through a 3rd party. Study your target. Make them feel like it was destiny that brought you together. Never be direct about your goal. Haunt the periphery of their life and strike at the correct moment after taking your time and doing your homework. Your victim wants you to stalk and seduce them.
OK, I know that “stalking” isn’t what Greene is trying to say, but it really feels like that is what Greene is saying. The language used here is pretty aggressive: attack, victim, target, haunt, arranging “chance” social encounters. Very aggressive. There’s a lot of overtly romantic language here too, specifically, falling in love and having the target fall in love with you without you ever really coming on to them. Amoral, but maybe also a little bit sweet.
Friend to Lover -or- Escaping the Friend Zone
Attention: Robert Greene secretly had the key to escaping the dreaded Friend Zone the whole time, hiding somewhere after yet another extended quote from the Metamorphoses.
Get your target’s attention. Spend time with them. Maintain distance. Take your time and be patient. Let them think you’re just friends. When they believe you’re just friends is when they’re most vulnerable, when the sexual tension has drained away. Now a word here and there, a casual touch, each one sparks a little thought that there could be something there, let them think they’re making the advances…It’s worth a try, right? It feels rather dull to me and not at all revelatory but if it works for you let me and every male on earth know.
Greene mentions Freud’s famous line in a letter to Marie Bonaparte here:
What does a woman want?
An interesting question that he was never able to really answer, I think I might explore this question by itself in future writing. Men want Women, Women want… who knows, it is a mystery. Confusion and resentment at the ambivalence of women for exiling men to the proverbial Friend Zone are the lot of many many men pursuing women. Angie proposes that this has an element of evolutional biology to it, and she has a fine point: Women have much more to lose in the reproductive game of love. Reproduction is deadly dangerous even now in modernity, and this ambivalence acts as a protective behavior. Nothing in that suggests that the legendary Friend Zone is a permanent exile.
Aside from possibly having found the route out of the worst nightmare place that any man enamored of a beautiful lady finds themselves, I found this chapter to be a bit boring and empty. It’s amoral, creepy, and he just repeats the same bland grandmotherly advice noted above interspersed within extended accounts of the interesting lives of the storied elite and selections of great romantic poetry. This chapter didn’t reveal much, but it does accurately describe many real human tendencies and personality types.
This “method” he describes here is mostly intuitive, and I say that carefully: mostly. Anyone who says that they intuitively make all the right moves in love is dangerously insane. What Greene seems to be doing in Part 2 is exactly what we’ve been saying throughout the reading, and that’s that he’s taking a perfectly normal thing and trying to make it into an intentional activity to which you apply strategy to the game of love divorced from the emotional element. There is no affection here, no sentimentality under the thin veneer of classic literature, only manipulation and personal profit.
Next: Sending Mixed Signals & Creating Triangles
