I saw this in the news last week, and I've been waiting for someone to post about it. Since no one has yet, I'll take a stab at it. This is an obvious Blue Pill example and \"don't be that guy\" story. However, there is an opportunity to discuss the nature of power between the sexes, and a bit about female attraction.

The article is from Boston Magazine, and since Boston is experiencing record snowfall, I figure this story is still timely. The story is about a writer for the magazine named Susan Zalkind, who decides to see if she can use Tinder to find men willing to dig out her car for free. I live in the south and I have never had to dig my car out of the snow. I can imagine it is a hassle, having to work up a sweat under your coat just to be able to get in your car to go to work.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/03/04/tinder-getting-strangers-shovel-car/

Live link above because it's not one of the major clickbait sites, and also the live link yields some good discussion and even a bit of Red Pill awareness in the comments.

The article begins with a lie.

But for some reason—maybe it was that stomach bug or maybe just because of the times we’re living in—on a whim, I decided to see if I could use Tinder to get someone to shovel out my car. To avoid confusion, I made my terms crystal clear:

\"About Susan:

Looking for someone to shovel out my car. Nothing complicated, no strings attached, just please shovel out my car.

Thanks so much.\"

The words I have emphasized in boldface above are a lie because of the different natures of masculine and feminine power. More on this later.

The next thing she sets out to do is identify her marks. She writes:

I swiped right exactly a dozen times. Instead of looking for men I was necessarily attracted to, I looked for men who seemed especially wholesome. (If only this Venn diagram had a greater overlap, perhaps I wouldn’t be in this predicament at all.)

This admission is an interesting and important tidbit in the nature of female attraction. She admits there are two sets of men. One set that she feels attracted to, and another set that seems especially gullible wholesome. Notice also she admits the intersection of these two sets is small. The men she imagines as doing favors are not the same men for whom she feels attraction.

Of her first success, she writes:

Ted wasn’t creepy at all. I think he just got a kick out of being chivalrous and having a little company on Valentine’s Day.

I don't even think this is rationalization. This is sarcasm. What other possible subtexts would motivate a man to perform physical labor for her? Valentine's Day had nothing to do with it. Tinder had nothing to do with it. He was just feeling altruistic. Right.

After a snowstorm the following night, she was back to swiping right. One man objected, and suggested that Craigslist might me a more appropriate venue. That guy knew what was up. She finally got another man to excavate her car. He was a married man, supposedly in an open relationship. Why would a swinger use Tinder to meet a woman? Why would he do things for her? Could it be he expected something in return?

But so long as he kept digging, at least it wasn’t a total waste of my time.

Here is the answer: She wanted service, and she used her power to get it.

The mainstream narrative about patriarchy is that only men have power and that men unjustly deny power to women. This unitary outlook denies the yin and yang that is male and female. It is not that men have all the power and women have none of the power. Though the balance of power may wax and wane over time, the nature of power does not change: Masculine power is overt. Feminine power is covert. Having covert power is not the same thing as having no power at all.

This is the root of why with women sometimes no means yes, and yes means no. Typically feminine power is covert. Covert power is hidden, occult, ambiguous, and subtle. Typically masculine power, in contrast, is strength and force. It is unequivocal and unambiguous.

She begins with saying her terms are crystal clear: \"just dig out my car, no strings attached\" But for her to use tinder places her terms in an ambiguous context. Even the \"no strings attached\" phrase is itself a hook-up buzzword. If she had placed an ad on Craigslist saying \"just dig out my car, no favors or payment exchanged in return\" what do you expect her response would have been? A truly straightforward request on Craigslist in a non-sexual context would most likely have gone unanswered.

Instead, she traded on the dance of courtship by using Tinder. This was an exercise in covert power. She knew exactly what she was doing. For the guys, you know why they showed up. They offered their time and effort and strong backs up front. She said no sex up front, but because the offer was framed in a sexual context it opened the possibility in these men's minds that she might be receptive.

This is a textbook example of feminine wiles. This is as clear as any example going all the way back to junior high when a girl gets a guy to hold her books. It's a beautiful example of feminine power. A beautiful example that feminine power does exist, and that women are not powerless in society and never really have been. It is only that the nature of their power is hard to see, and by its nature is more difficult to employ.

In conclusion, the comments are actually pretty good. Most people seemed to think what she did was exploitative. There were a couple of \"you go girl\" comments, but generally the response was negative, and clear understanding that she was trading on sexual context of Tinder. The obvious Blue Pill takeaway is you don't want to be one of those two guys out of the hundred or so she swiped. Those chumps were played. Everybody here knows that, and even most of the commenters on the article knew that.

The Red Pill takeaway, though, is those men she chose to be a mark were not from among the same group men that she feels attracted to. Or concisely, she was not attracted to potential chumps. So, keep that in mind. Keep that in mind when you feel the need to ingratiate yourself to a woman. Keep that in mind the next time a girl asks favors of you.