The Nice Guys of OkCupid featured all of these mind-sets in spades, taking what had been a somewhat abstract cultural critique and making it concrete with real life-examples and shareable images. There were complaints about "falling into the friend zone" (a term which refers to the idea that women divide men into platonic friends and romantic prospects, and that once you fall into one category, you can't jump over into the other) and about how "shallow and superficial" American women are. There was bitterness over nights spent talking, texting, and holding hands, with no physical or emotional pay-off. Then there were reams of professed political views that, if not definitively "not nice," are certainly not popular with many people on the liberal left.

See, the site seemed to say. You're not single because you're 'too nice'. You're single because you're a jerk. And indeed, that tone of self-righteous mirth has been reflected in much of the journalistic response to the site. But spend enough time scrolling through the pages of the Nice Guys of OkCupid, and that mirth begins to transform into something else; something a little sadder, and more akin to sympathy.

Critics of the Nice Guy™ are right on at least one thing: Nobody "owes" you sex, no matter how nice you are, how much money you spend on them, or how close a friendship you have.

But to dismiss OkCupid's embittered "Nice Guys" purely as misogynists who are pissed off that they're not getting the sex they believe they are entitled to is too simple a reading.

What these men lack in their lives isn't just sex, but all the things that sex stands for in our culture: intimacy and connection with other people, affirmation of our own value and desirability, and love. (And no, no one owes you love either, but that doesn't make it stink any less to go without it.) As one OkCupid "Nice Guy" wrote, "I have never had a girlfreind [sic] because they all seem to not look past the fact that im a little over weight [sic] ... i hope to meet someone who can accept me for who i am and instead of playing with my heart actually tell me the truth."

These desires for intimacy and affirmation aren't unique to heterosexual men. Nor is rejection. Most people have fallen for someone who just hasn't liked us back in the same way at one point or another, whether we're male or female, gay or straight, conventionally hot or not. Being "friend zoned" isn't always a matter of trying to manipulate an unwilling party into having sex with you, and drafting angry online dating profiles when they turn you down. Sometimes it's just the process of discovering that someone you connect so well with in every way doesn't feel the same way about you. So, why do these guys turn to the Nice Guy™ narrative to explain their predicament? Partly because they're been weaned on Hollywood love stories where the geeky best friend gets the girl just before the credits roll, and on tough love self-help that urges men to act like douches if they want to get laid.