Oh man, you know what’s the worst? When that hottie you work with totally isn’t into you. But it’s definitely not your fault, bro. You’re awesome, and she would so be into you if only you weren’t in the friend zone! And isn’t that the worst?
The term “friend zone,” which refers to the commonplace phenomenon of one individual insisting on a platonic relationship when the other individual wants something more, has as of late been bastardized by the Internet. It has become an excuse for people who just can’t process the idea that the object of their affections might just not be into them. But this February, we take a step forward in reclaiming the expression’s true meaning, as it makes the move from Urban Dictionary to the Oxford English Dictionaries.
Recently, the “friend zone” has been kidnapped by the Internet’s “nice guys.” You know, men who are just so nice to their lady friends. Men who listen to their gal pals’ problems, never takes advantage of them, and would never dream of cheating on them, and are angered by the fact that, for some reason, those women don’t feel obligated to sleep with him. What’s the use of being nice if you don’t get sex in return? Thanks to the magic of the Internet, these guys can voice their sexist opinions as often and as loudly as they wants while still sitting safely in their rooms, faces awash in the glow of their monitors. They’re “nice guys” and they have completely hijacked the use of the term “friend zone,” for better or for worse (well, just for worse).
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But the Oxford Dictionaries have come to the handy term’s rescue! They’ve officially added “friend zone” — along with other internet-born words like “GIF,” “tweetable,” and “dumphone” — to their roster of legitimate words. The official definition of friend zone is as follows:
n. informal. a situation in which a platonic relationship exists between two people, one of whom has an undeclared romantic or sexual interest in the other:
i.e. I always wind up in the friend zone, watching them pursue other guys
Maybe now that Oxford Dictionaries has legitimized the term, we can take back it back from the “nice guys” and return it to the hands of those poor guys and gals who are forced to suffer in silence as they listen to their crush talk endlessly about all of his or her loves. And maybe “nice guys” can actually become nice guys again.
One can only hope, right?
Follow Sydney on Twitter @SydneyBucksbaum
[Photo Credit: Getty Images]
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