cousin_it comments on Procedural Knowledge Gaps - Less Wrong
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This is excellent advice, and I up-voted it. However:
I may just be reading too much into things, and I acknowledge that this comment is written primarily as a response to the question "how to get into a relationship". Nevertheless, this bit bothers me a bit, as the "for the love of, don't try to actually cultivate a friendship" part seems to imply that there's no point in being friends with women if you're not going to have a relationship with them. That strikes me as a bit offensive.
Even if we're assuming that you're purpose is solely to get women, I don't think befriending lots of them is as useless as you seem to suggest. You say yourself that one's friends may introduce one to somebody one might be interested in. People tend to have more same-sex friends than opposite-sex friends, so being friends with lots of women will increase your chances of one of them introducing you to a friend of theirs. I also suspect that women are more likely than men to do this.
I do admit that this may not be the most efficient approach if you're optimizing purely for finding a romantic relationship in minimum time. But on the other hand, it can wield you rewarding friendships that persist long after the end of your relationship with whoever it was you eventually found, so personally I'd find it worth it.
I should also mention that my experience somewhat mirrors MBlume's, and I find the notion of becoming involved with someone before being good friends with them a little off-putting. Which is not to say that it would never have happened to me, though. (Without going to details, suffice to say that I've both had relationships with women I was friends with from before, and with women where that wasn't the case.)
Befriending women is sometimes useful for becoming attractive to other women. (Allow me to skip the obligatory part where friendship is good in itself, of course it is, but I want to make a different point.) For example, you can ask them to help you shop for clothes, relying on their superior visual taste. Most of my "nice" clothes that I use for clubbing etc. were purchased this way, and girls seem to love this activity. Also they can bring you to events where you can meet other women; help you get into clubs; offer emotional support when you need it; and so on. If you make it very clear that you're not pursuing this specific girl sexually, being friends with her can make quite a substantial instrumental benefit.
That said, of course I don't mean the kind of "friendship" that girls offer when they reject you. That's just a peculiar noise they make with their mouths in such situations, it doesn't mean anything.