4

The Experts Say: Improve Yourself

Sexual attraction is somewhat cruel in how much it focuses on physical appearance while ignoring your many other qualities, like how good of a coder you might be or how organized your teddy bear collection is. But it's a fact of life, and one of the most common pieces of advice for navigating a friend zone is to simply make yourself better looking. By disguising yourself as a more attractive person ...

John Shearer/Sebastian Artz/Joe Scarnici/Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images Entertainment

3

The Experts Say: Play Hard to Get

Another thing that makes us look attractive is how other people treat us. If you perceive that someone is cool, popular, and attractive to others, you are almost certainly going to find them more attractive yourself. The idea behind this tip, then, is that by flirting with other people (successfully), you'll make yourself look more attractive. This is theorized to also make your friend feel competitive; if they believe you're spending every waking moment imagining someone else covered in rose petals, they might suddenly develop the urge to buy some rose petals themselves.

Hemera Technologies/Photos.com/Getty Images
Or whatever.

How It Works in Reality:

This is surprisingly the most useful technique here, but not in the way you intended. Again, you're really unlikely to offset that first impression you've made, and seeing you romantically pursue someone else will make most friends happy for you.

George Doyle/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Rather than pants-happy for you.

2

The Experts Say: Use Verbal Cues to Imply They're the Ones Seducing You

This technique works by you saying several small, clever things that plant the idea that your friend is the one who likes you, and you simply thought you were just friends, but now they're starting to win you over. And by doing this, and just wanting it to work so bad, it will somehow actually work. It's basically the Jedi mind trick of pick-up artists and has at the very minimum given me a lot of great ideas for my next piece of Star Wars fan fiction.

How many Stormtroopers woke up in Obi-Wan's cave with no clear memory of how they got there? Check next week's column to find out.

How It Works in Reality:

As someone who's pretty sure that thousands of people secretly want to sleep with me, I find this pretty far-fetched. The idea that I could be tricked into liking someone by something so flimsy is actually kind of insulting.

Brand X Pictures/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Oh. Right.

1

The Experts Say: Stop Being So Nice

The dating advice world is practically drowning in advice for "nice guys." These are dudes who self-identify as "nice" (and not much else) and conclude that their lack of romantic success is related to their niceness (and not the fact that they're not much else).

Creatas/Getty Images
"If only I was a boring asshole instead."

Endless variations of "be less nice" appear in these friend zone extrication guides. Depending on how utterly seedy the advice guide you're reading is, this can even include the utterly awful practice called "negging" in which you direct petty insults and slights at your ... you know, let's just put "friend" in quotation marks now, OK? By doing this, you'll make this poor person feel worse about themselves, which makes you look better by comparison, which will help you slide your way into their bed on a slick of your own oiliness.

How It Works in Reality:

Fuck you, that's how well it works. Making every interaction into a bizarre AXE-scented minefield of insults and verbal traps is a terrible way to make someone like you. You don't deserve happiness, you awful abomination.

Siri Stafford/Photodisc/Getty Images
"Did those pants shrink?"

Better Idea: Set Yourself on Fire

This trick needs a bit of prep work. First, casually ask your special friend if he/she would like to go on a "non-date" to one of your favorite sources of sparks or open flames.

Digital Vision/Photodisc/Getty Images
"You mean you've never been to the foundry? We simply must go!"

There, because you'd previously applied an entire can of body spray to your horrible self, you'll quickly combust and melt like a Nazi.

Congratulations on finally escaping the friend zone. I wish you the best of luck in your future non-life, trying to trick other ghosts into "like" liking you.

Chris Bucholz is a Cracked columnist and loved the part of this column where he got to search for pictures of women squatting. Join his friend zone on Facebook or Twitter.