Tips for Writing a Blog About Dating Tips

When writing about dating tips, there are a few things to keep in mind. Luckily, for the blogosphere, I have taken the time out of my busy day to help you.

Tips for Writing a Blog About Dating Tips:

1. Do not write blogs about dating tips.
   

If you write a blog about dating tips, you will come off as a moron. I just read one and, aside from the author sounding like a know-it-all/God's gift to women wannabe, there is a huge contradiction to his advice.

His "research" consists of his own personal experiences which, for me at least, completely discredits him. But in his "studies" he compiles ten tips for men to follow in order to get the proverbial girl.

The one that stuck out for me was #2: Don't convince her to like you. And I suppose that is good advice because if a woman likes a man, she likes him and if not, then she doesn't. This seems easy enough to understand but it also makes the entire blog pointless. The tip should have just been: If the girl likes you, then she likes you. Way to go.

The rest of the blog includes points about not being too nice a guy, and not completely submitting to her will, and not buying her affection with gifts, and blah blah blah. But like I said, if a woman like you, then she does. There is no other way to "get" the girl. This is not to say that men have no control in whether or not a woman will like him, but the things that would keep a woman a way are obvious truisms that need not be mentioned. And that's all this list was: completely obvious statements that everyone already knows like "don't be too submissive". Well of course don't be. I mean, that's advice for anyone in any situation.

The advice should come after you get the girl. It should be in how to not screw up a relationship. I don't think men have trouble "getting" the girl. The trouble is "keeping" her around. Because let's face it, men are idiots. But even then, most of the tips would be obvious like "don't cheat on her" or "Tell her you feel warm inside when she's around". But as I said, men are idiots and maybe we need to be told these things.

Click here to read the one guy's blog about "dating tips"

A Fun Fact for Teenagers and Literature Buffs

Because of wikipedia, the word research has lost much of it's meaning. 

Regardless, I was researching Ernest Hemingway and, for one reason or another, I read about his suicide via shotgun blast to the face in 1961. As gruesome as that is, I read a bit more that just added to the grotesqueness of it all - he purchased the shotgun from Abercrombie & Fitch. 

I'm going to let that last part marinate for a bit. 

Apparently, Abercrombie & Fitch, the now hip clothing store for tweens, was once an elite excursion and fire-arms retailer up until the late 80s before it was bought out by The Limited and turned into what it is today. 

How weird is that? A popular clothing store with a legacy of self-inflicted shotgun blasts to the face. Although it's kind of appropriate - everytime I go into an Abercrombie & Fitch I want to kill myself. 

Expensive Virals and My Reality TV Idea

I wanted to talk about two things and I thought it would be ok to just combine them into one post. But it doesn't really matter because no one reads this. 

I just watched the new SNL digital short "Jizz in my Pants" for the 48th time. It is one of the funniest videos they have done, even more so than "Dear Sister" and "Dick in a Box". 

And I'm glad for one thing about the video - it has solid production value to it. This is good for two reasons. 

1. It adds to the humor of it all because it looks so much like an actual music video. 
2. I don't have to worry about all the YouTube wannabes remaking it. 

I'm fine with movie remakes and I'm actually excited to see The Day the Earth Stood Still but for some reason, I fucking hate it when the YouTube crowd finds it appropriate to make their own version of a funny skit on SNL  or whatever. They are piss poor and have no redeeming value. I think I've made a post about this before. 

But because this video has some much production value, no one in their bedroom is going to decide to remake it. And that makes me sleep better at night, knowing that their aren't fifty horrible remakes. 

It might be the volume of the YouTube remakes that pisses me off. If Hollywood decided to send out fifty remakes of The Day the Earth Stood Still, I think I would get upset. 

The next thing I want to talk about is my Reality TV show idea. Although, it probably wouldn't work as a Reality TV show, I think it was a cool thought experiment. 

So in the show, regular folks would come together and form small groups (4-5 people) and write a movie script. These people would be mechanics, businessmen, housewives, nurses, students, what have you. All walks of life. Basically, you can't be involved in the movie industry in anyway. And they write a script. Now I know what you're thinking, "They would probably write a terrible script," and that's the point. The worst it is the better. I want plot holes, paper thin characters, no structure, just a flat-out terrible script. I wouldn't want it to be made outside of the show. 

So this terrible, terrible script, a script that would defile any kind of artistic credibility that film is desperately clinging to, would be brought to a visionary director of today like Steven Spielberg or Paul Thomas Anderson or the Coen Brothers. They would take this God-forsaken script and direct it with perhaps struggling actors looking to make a break into the industry. 

The main idea behind it is to see if they truly possess the talent to tell even a horrible story in a way that would be generally acceptable to a modern audience. Two films would be made, by two groups and two different directors. The best film, judged by a panel of film critics and regular folks, would win. What they win, I haven't decided. 

But like I said, it would never happen because it would cost so much money to make and waste a lot of important people's time. 

The Hills and Metaphysics

For one reason or another, there was an issue of Us Weekly on my kitchen table.

This is strange because I hate Us Weekly and celebrity magazines in general and my roommate is an uber-masculine ex-cop who I'm sure feels the same.

Regardless, there was the latest issue on the table and the cover story was about the elopement of two "characters" from the "reality show" The Hills. The quotations are not meant to be sarcasm rather they are a foreshadowing of the topic at hand.

The two people who got hitched were Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag. They're lives were featured on the hit show The Hills and it seems they fell in love on the show. In the story from Us Weekly, Pratt talks about the elopement to Mexico, the wedding, etc. The newelyweds even shared their vows with the magazine, which was too much for me to handle. But he also went into his mother-in-law, Darlene Egelhoff. She obviously disapproves of her daughter's decision to get married and her choice in husband. She claims that "it won't last six months". And by Hollywood standards, that's probably a compliment.

But what struck me as interesting, in an otherwise completely dull and meaningless article, is how Pratt described his mother-in-law's motivations for her disapproval.

He says, "I think she thinks she's being funny and, like, playing into her character (on The Hills) - that she hates me."

This seemingly innocuous comment has a lot of weight in the world of metaphysics and media studies. The Hills is supposed to be a reality TV show. From my understanding, there are no "characters" rather just real people in real situations. But it seems like Pratt is shedding some light on this mysterious TV fad. Maybe being on a reality TV show makes one a character on the show. You would be you playing you. You wouldn't just be you.

If I had a reality TV show, my character would be myself and I would be playing that role. I'd be my own cameo in my own show.

Now, I've never watched The Hills, but I can extrapolate the kind of character that Heidi's mom portrayed. She was the typical mother of a teenage daughter who never approved of guys her daughter dated. Now, I believe this to be fairly accurate because I believe what Chuck Klosterman has to say about reality TV and what it does to people: it turns them into stereotypes (Klosterman, p. 30).

So Pratt says that his mother-in-law is "playing the character" in "real life". So what does that mean? Was she a completely different person outside of the show? Or did she somehow transform into her character, which was herself. It's like reverse method acting - instead of preparing for a role by assuming a role in the real world, she is assuming the role she already played after the show is over.

Now I want to know just who the hell this woman is. Has she assumed a different personality or identity because of this show? It makes you ask yourself, how real is reality or reality TV at least. Is it really real or is it somehow even more real than reality in that the facade or artifice of it all (relationships, personalities, the world in general) is so apparent?It's pretty strange to think about. And what's really strange is that a fucking stupid gossip magazine is making me doubt my very existence and the nature of reality.

Klosterman, Chuck (2003) Sex, Drugs, and Coco Puffs. Scribner, New York.