In the first one, “hard to get” doesn’t seem right. Hasn’t the male praying mantis just “gotten lucky”? (At least by comic conventions.)
OK, the second is way funnier. Because, like WW says, the beheading of the male comes after the nookie. (Or at least, as WW also says, in cartoons – it rarely happens in the wild, and only under stressy situations.)
That was my thinking as well.
Please tell me that people don’t still believe that women ‘play hard to get.’
Not as many as stereotype would have you believe, but it does happen. Though I suspect in many of those cases it’s due to social conditioning that tells the women they can’t make the first move, or show too much interest, lest they be considered promiscuous.
Interesting take, Powers. I’ve always interpreted ‘playing hard to get’ as being reluctant or unable to say no definitively. Being reluctant to make the first move or show interest isn’t the same thing at all. (Unless it is.)
Eh? I’ve always understood “playing hard to get” to mean “showing less interest than you actually have” (in dating, nookie, booty calls, whatever) in order to stoke the other person’s interest and/or jealousy. It’s a deliberate tactic (hence “playing”) that people use all the time, and not just women. Because it works. As depressing as that may be.
“Playing hard to get” is a valid negotiating tactic whenever you have less interest in a partnership than the other partner(s) do. The risk, of course, is that you may wind up without a partnership you might have wanted to be in.
For a business example, Nintendo played “hard to get” when Sony wanted an entree into the videogame business in 1989-90. (Sony wanted to develop a CD-ROM-equipped version of the Super Famicom). Nintendo, which had about become used to controlling 85-90% of the market for videogame consoles, was less interested in the partnership, and eventually decided they could do better by partnering with Philips, instead. By the mid-90’s, that was a partnership Nintendo would rather have had, over Sony entering the market independently.
My understanding of the phrase is the same as Dave in Boston’s.
Incidentally, why the first one doesn’t seem right to me, the second one doesn’t seem funny. It’s not like a man choosing to ignore a woman’s disinterest, and claiming that it must be insincere, is some comically weird situation that you could only imagine happening with an over-the-top Tony Robbins character.
Incidentally, I’m not going to take a stand on whether it should have been “Tony Robbins'” or “Tony Robbins’s,” but surely “Tony Robbin’s” is wrong.
” It’s not like a man choosing to ignore a woman’s disinterest, and claiming that it must be insincere, is some comically weird situation”
It should be. “I’m not interested” means “stop trying”, so interpreting it as “keep trying” is dumb.
Yes, there ARE a generous supply of people who are dumb (in this exact way), and a number of people who build this misunderstanding for their own purposes, whatever they might be.
The existence of people with amazingly high miscalculations of their own popularity (and their election to high office) does distract from the humor of pointing out how stupid it is to be that egotistical. There’s a proud history of mining the egotism for humor, however. (See, as a random example, the movie Beauty and the Beast, which has just such a character as the main foil for Belle.)
There are times when a person displays less interest in a partnership then they really have; it’s a business strategy. It can be called ‘playing hard to get.’ In my experience, when a man says a woman is playing hard to get, it’s a misinterpretation of her *not* wanting the partnership. Maybe it’s easier on his eago to imagine she’s playing. One could argue that the woman ought to be clearer and give a more definitive no. But that can be risky.
Comics I Don't Understand 
In the first one, “hard to get” doesn’t seem right. Hasn’t the male praying mantis just “gotten lucky”? (At least by comic conventions.)
OK, the second is way funnier. Because, like WW says, the beheading of the male comes after the nookie. (Or at least, as WW also says, in cartoons – it rarely happens in the wild, and only under stressy situations.)
That was my thinking as well.
Please tell me that people don’t still believe that women ‘play hard to get.’
Not as many as stereotype would have you believe, but it does happen. Though I suspect in many of those cases it’s due to social conditioning that tells the women they can’t make the first move, or show too much interest, lest they be considered promiscuous.
Interesting take, Powers. I’ve always interpreted ‘playing hard to get’ as being reluctant or unable to say no definitively. Being reluctant to make the first move or show interest isn’t the same thing at all. (Unless it is.)
Eh? I’ve always understood “playing hard to get” to mean “showing less interest than you actually have” (in dating, nookie, booty calls, whatever) in order to stoke the other person’s interest and/or jealousy. It’s a deliberate tactic (hence “playing”) that people use all the time, and not just women. Because it works. As depressing as that may be.
“Playing hard to get” is a valid negotiating tactic whenever you have less interest in a partnership than the other partner(s) do. The risk, of course, is that you may wind up without a partnership you might have wanted to be in.
For a business example, Nintendo played “hard to get” when Sony wanted an entree into the videogame business in 1989-90. (Sony wanted to develop a CD-ROM-equipped version of the Super Famicom). Nintendo, which had about become used to controlling 85-90% of the market for videogame consoles, was less interested in the partnership, and eventually decided they could do better by partnering with Philips, instead. By the mid-90’s, that was a partnership Nintendo would rather have had, over Sony entering the market independently.
My understanding of the phrase is the same as Dave in Boston’s.
Incidentally, why the first one doesn’t seem right to me, the second one doesn’t seem funny. It’s not like a man choosing to ignore a woman’s disinterest, and claiming that it must be insincere, is some comically weird situation that you could only imagine happening with an over-the-top Tony Robbins character.
Incidentally, I’m not going to take a stand on whether it should have been “Tony Robbins'” or “Tony Robbins’s,” but surely “Tony Robbin’s” is wrong.
” It’s not like a man choosing to ignore a woman’s disinterest, and claiming that it must be insincere, is some comically weird situation”
It should be. “I’m not interested” means “stop trying”, so interpreting it as “keep trying” is dumb.
Yes, there ARE a generous supply of people who are dumb (in this exact way), and a number of people who build this misunderstanding for their own purposes, whatever they might be.
The existence of people with amazingly high miscalculations of their own popularity (and their election to high office) does distract from the humor of pointing out how stupid it is to be that egotistical. There’s a proud history of mining the egotism for humor, however. (See, as a random example, the movie Beauty and the Beast, which has just such a character as the main foil for Belle.)
There are times when a person displays less interest in a partnership then they really have; it’s a business strategy. It can be called ‘playing hard to get.’ In my experience, when a man says a woman is playing hard to get, it’s a misinterpretation of her *not* wanting the partnership. Maybe it’s easier on his eago to imagine she’s playing. One could argue that the woman ought to be clearer and give a more definitive no. But that can be risky.
Honestly, I can spell. It was early.