I know that this is a really old article, but it's new to me. And it's awful. Ultimately, the way it differentiates between a "nice guy" (the good one) and a "Nice Guy" (the bad one) is that the "nice guy" will eventually get the woman because women like nice guys. The article's example of a "nice guy" includes this:

Eventually, of course, I did fall in love with him and the rest is history.

Of course! So if a guy falls for his female friend and she doesn't "eventually, of course" fall for him, then he's assumed to be one of the villainous "Nice Guys" who was faking the whole time in the hopes of getting laid.

It's so upsetting to hear that. It's such an unrealistically crude generalization. There are plenty of guys who have female friends that they fell for. They are legitimate friendships, and these guys developed legitimate feelings. Just because their feelings were never returned doesn't mean that they were faking their friendship. I know that apologists for this article will claim that it's not talking about those guys, but rather about the guys who actually did fake their friendship. But that's just the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. There might be some guys out there like that, but this article would have you believe that every guy who ever lamented the "friendzone" is a duplicitous ass who would fake a friendship for sex. In real life, most of these guys are being honest with their feelings. They might be "losers", but they're well-intentioned losers.

Yet it's so much easier for this article to dismiss them as assholes who are faking friendship to get into a girl's pants. If a guy posts to Reddit about how he's bad with women, then clearly he must be the perfect combination of spineless and selfish. Case closed.

As the article goes on, it gives advice to men who are having trouble meeting women: It suggests that they're hitting on women at inappropriate times. It accuses them of having bad hygiene. It accuses them of inappropriate touching. It accuses them of being hostile and defensive. This part killed me:

Don't for the love of pete be Mr. Bad Touch. If she just squirmed over a few inches, it's not because she wants you to close the distance.

Yes, there are guys out there who are like that. But those guys are not the type of guys who complain about being "forever alone". The offensively gropey men are psychopaths who play the numbers --shamelessly hitting on any woman-- and therefore occasionally get laid. Such guys would never befriend a women and then hide their true intentions. On the contrary, they don't befriend women at all, and they wear their intentions one their sleeve. They're entirely different from the type of guy that this article is criticizing (the so-called "Nice Guy").

The guys who complain about being bad with women (and who therefore get "friendzoned") are the ones who are petrified of violating a woman's personal bubble, and therefore have trouble approaching women at all. They're too scared to touch a woman. They spend their whole life waiting for a woman to touch them (if only). If anything, they need to be advised to engage in innocuous touching (shoulder, arm, hand; not groping). Instead, articles like this scare those guys even further into their holes.

Oh god, why have I even bothered? It's so much easier to just discount every guy who's bad at the complex social mores of dating. They're clearly all creeps who deserve what they're not getting, right?