I think everyone knows what cockblocking is. I used to think it was when a herd of roosters stopped traffic (either merely due to their presence or with a more specific goal of catching drunk drivers or terrorists) but it turns out that it's when someone or something stops a guy from making progress with a girl.
That's all well and good as a term and as a concept, but much like the Eskimo people allegedly have, like, some sort of irrational number of words for "snow" (I don't remember what that number is... I think it's √113), my social group has come up with several different terms for different kinds, or flavors, if you will, of cockblocking. Actually, I have come up with them, personally, and occasionally others not only listen to what I have to say but actually agree with me. It's rare (both the listening and the agreement) but it sometimes happens.
I'll give three different types of cockblocking below... two with relatively recent real-world examples and the third with a general explanation and hypothetical f'rinstance.
Burning Money
The original sub-cb term. The term means to cockblock without having any potential gain from it... the term comes from the idea that stealing is bad. Right? Stealing is bad.
If I steal $100 cash from you, it sucks for you. I'm a bad person. At least, though, I get the benefit of that money. I will buy alcohol or flowers for my cat or food at Taco Bell... something.
It seems a bigger crime, though, to steal that $100 and set it aflame. Lighting it on fire to deny anyone the pleasure of that currency (and don't even get me started on money velocity).
If a married (or, rather, a faithfully married (it kinda sickens me that I have to make that distinction, but in the name of science I must)) guy cockblocks? He's burning money. If a lesbian hits on a straight girl to the detriment of a guy who otherwise might be making headway on said straight girl? Burning money. Super-ugly and/or socially retarded dude chasing a girl out of a bar to the detriment of other guys there? A less direct case of burning money, but burning money.
White Knighting
While burning money is almost exclusively used for evil (whether knowingly or not) white knighting can do a lot of good.
Sometimes girls don't want to be hit on by certain guys. Many of these women are either too considerate to be rude or that "certain guy" is just too oblivious to pick up on the signs of disinterest (which may include bad body language or phrases such as, "I'm going to go talk to my friends now" or "Please leave me alone.")
In these cases, a cockblock can be a good thing.
Recently I was at a bar with a large group of friends. A second group of people arrived, with one or two person overlap between the two groups, and there was some mingling going on. A guy from our group had hit it off well with a girl from the other group, and it was a good thing. All of the guys from our group knew that it was going on, and we were respectfully keeping distance from her.
Unfortunately, there was a fly in the ointment. A dude from the other group was either oblivious or indifferent, and he proceeded to elbow his way through the groups to the chick in question.
Our buddy was giving her some space, and didn't want to barge right in and interrupt the conversation that Other Guy was so keen on having. I was one of the elbow-ees, though, on Other Guy's trip to the chick, and I saw another friend try to distract Other Guy from his target.
Other Guy was pretty good, I'll give him that. My friend had tapped him on the shoulder and asked him a question and the guy had kinda waved him off. My friend then asked the chick a question, and Other Guy turned and looked at my friend and said, "Excuse me. Could you wait just a minute? I'm trying to talk to her."
It was a pretty good move. If my friend had been alone, or if the chick had ANY interest in Other Guy, it would have worked.
But he was not. And she did not.
Her body language was terrible. She was sort of pinned up against a pool table but she was leaning as far away from Other Guy as she could, she wasn't making eye contact, and she was giving monosyllabic responses to all of his inquiries.
I took a shot at being a white knight, and it paid off.
Over Other Guy's left shoulder I looked directly at the chick and asked her a direct question about her current status as a student at a local private University graduate school program.
She heard it and her eyes lit up. Not because I asked the question, but because anyone other than Other Guy had asked it. I had given her an opening to talk about the program she is in, and I was able to throw in some tidbits about my similar experiences.
I couldn't look at Other Guy, but it was game over for him. He'd fended off the first assault but this was too much. I'd engaged his target and she was clearly more interested in talking to me about our topic than she'd been in the last five minutes talking to him about all the things he was throwing her way.
So Other Guy was successfully driven off, and my buddy was able to talk to the chick without interference, and I feel like they should name their first son after me. Unless it's an unplanned pregnancy. I don't want to be associated with that shit.
As an addendum to white knighting: it can be a pretty good neg, too. Last year I met a woman who was a friend of a friend and she was playing pool (odd that white knighting seems to happen most often around pool tables... I wonder if the most oblivious dudes play pool regularly?) with her friend when a really nasty, pretty drunk dude kept talking to her.
She and I were getting along nicely, but when Nasty Dude asked if we were a couple I guffawed and said, "No way!"
Because of that simple utterance, this girl had to fend him off for another 45 minutes. I was chucking at her the whole time and she gave me shit for not helping her out... and then we dated for about six months.
Jokeblocking
This is the most dangerous of the cockblocks, and should be only entered into with extreme caution or if everyone is really, really inebriated.
Recently four of "the guys" were hanging out outside of our favorite bar after close. There's always a big group of people outside of Ozzies at about 1:45 AM, and that night was no exception.
I am going to avoid codenames in this story because I don't want to make it too obvious who people are and air dirty laundry... or clean laundry. Instead, I'll use Friend A, Friend B and Friend C.
Friend A and Friend C were standing off to one side, talking to me. It's a short walk home for me and we were just killing some time, when we noticed that Friend B was talking to a girl.
We'd all had an interesting night and we tend to keep tabs on who's talking to whom (to avoid unintentional cockblocking, in part) and we knew that Friend B had just met this chick outside of the bar. We also were a bit buzzed (or worse/better), so when Friend A suggested we go and all cockblock Friend B? It sounded like a great idea.
Oops.
We strode, in unison, towards Friend B and the Target. We stood, the three of us, facing the two of them. Friend A was all the way to my right (to the left of Target, facing her). Friend C was all the way to my left (to the right of Friend B, facing him) and I was in the middle.
Friend C was the first one to think that maybe this wasn't such a good idea, and whether it was because he was farthest from Target or because he just didn't think it was wise, he didn't really say or do much to distract her from Friend B.
The same cannot be said of Friend A and of me.
We introduced ourselves at the same time, and she was unable (for some strange reason) to process all of the information we were tossing at her. As Friend A babbled, I had the following exchange:
Me: Uh... nice hair.
Target: What?
Me: Is it real?
Target: WHAT?
Me (performing a rough kino of grabbing/stroking her hair): It's silky as shit.
Target: Uh, thanks. I just got it darkened.
Me: So is this its natural color?
Target: No. I got it darkened.
Me: Why? I bet it looked better lighter. What color was it?
Target: Blond. Like fake platinum-color blond.
Me: That's hot. Sounds hot.
I can't accurately capture Friend A's efforts there. He was chiming in randomly and she would glance at him and say a word or two of the confusion she was feeling and then look back at me as I negged the shit out of her.
(Incidentally: I stole the premise of the hair neg from Wainy Days, where Paul Rudd satirizes the PUA cliche. It starts about 1:25 in.)
At this point, I looked at Friend B. He had a bemused look on his face... like he knew what we were doing, and he couldn't believe it.
After a few more nonsensical statements (including one about her friend who's a "cutter" at Seven being self-destructive (and motioning with an air-razor to indicate what I meant)) I retreated into the background... or at least back to where Friend A and Friend C were and we reconvened.
If it had ended there? Good. It would have been good. But life it rarely good, I've learned. It tends to be badass or horrible. Or boring. But rarely good.
After two or three minutes of talking, Target made eye contact with me. Friend B was still talking to her, but she motioned me over and pulled me up next to her. I was a bit shocked and aghast. She started telling me more about her hair, when I whispered to her, "Listen. My friend ___ was talking to you first. He's awesome. I feel bad talking to you."
Proving how impossible women are to manage, she said, "NO! It's not like that!" and I kinda backed away, giving myself distance between her and putting Friend B between us.
Her response? She went over to her female friend (who had been waiting for Target to finish with all of this nonsense) and pulled her over to talk to Friend B. She grabbed my hand and we had some more super-deep conversations about her hair.
Friend B and Target's friend didn't hit it off, but Target was still all up in my business, and I became worried. What started off as a joke had spun out of control and I knew that Friend B had to capability to cockblock me for the next decade if he so chose. I had to extricate myself.
Fortunately, Friend C came over and cockblocked ME. He started talking to Target and I was able to remove my hands from her hand and lower back (it's crazy how they sometimes just end up there) and walk home without saying anything to anyone.
It all ended well. Friend B was able to reengage and I was not to be blamed for any of the fallout of what was, after all, Friend A's big idea.
Let this be a lesson to all of those out there who would use jokeblocking as a surgical tool... it can be like using dynamite to replace a filling.
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