We make analogies to familiarise ourselves with and understand better the situation described to us, or to point out logical fallacies in an argument. Everyone does it. "Following MM? That’s like going to an audition to try for a disclosed character with a script instead of imagining you being that character and adapting to the situation". By doing this we can understand other peoples' points more clearly and see flaws in our opinions or beliefs that we otherwise might not have seen had they not been pointed out to us.

The problem comes when someone uses a metaphor; that something IS something. A metaphor can take root in your brain, and affect the way you speak and more importantly the way you act. A lot of you will be familiar with NLP (I'm not) but from what I've seen and read about it the words you use can have powerful effects through their connotations and combinations. Metaphors are in our everyday language. Time is money, which can then be spent or wasted. New pickup artist theories are food for thought, which can be chewed upon or digested. The club is a battlefield, where soldiers deploy their pickup strategies and can win or lose the war. Is that really what a guy should be thinking like, that he's going into a war? Pickup can be and is fun – certainly the rewards are.

I read something recently for my degree by a guy who believes that the Germans, under the assumption that bombing Britain would deal a "knock-out blow" was actually harmful to their war effort. Much of their reasoning for bombing Britain was because of a metaphor that covered up much of the uncertainty of what would actually happen (no one could really predict – but they were convinced it would win the war for them. Had they been more cautious, who knows?). These metaphors can potentially be dangerous in terms of decision making. Certainly a lot of these metaphors are intended to add a bit of colour and imagination to peoples’ speech or writing, however there can be no doubt some do actually influence a person’s thoughts and ultimately their actions.

These recent "end mental health prejudice" adverts in Britain are partly because people believe mental illness is a metaphor. One psychoanalyst put it in the 1990s that mental health was similar to a television playing bad shows, and not like a defective television. Can mental illness really be summed up like this? And if it is believed to be the former, how would you address the issue? Change the television shows? How? (It wasn’t addressed and wasn’t believed to be a condition for years, not sure how important the above comment was in this case though)

The real danger of metaphors (and this is the bit that distinguishes it from an analogy) is that once the event and the analogy are locked together, if the person then decides to assume other similarities between the two making the analogy a metaphor. Analogies and metaphors are good until it moves from"is like" to "is exactly like". Don’t allow the metaphor to infiltrate your thinking.

Imagine if a boy came across a wolf in a forest, and he had never seen a wolf before, he would do well in making the connection that he was like a big dog. He would be safer by keeping his distance instead of acting like the wolf was a wasp and trying to swat it. The problem here would be if he thought the wolf was exactly like a dog and tried to pat it. This is a bit dramatic, but after doing some more reading on foreign policy making the conclusion was that in a life and death decision, metaphors can kill.

I'm aware that this might not be the most helpful thread here but I'm going to be more cautious in my thinking and analysing – this well obviously help me a little given I’m studying History. Try not to metaphor girls together; they are all different and react differently. The domino theory did not take into account national identity, different circumstances etc, don't make the same mistake!

Just searched this because I wanted to read what I'd said on the subject, thought I'd bump because it's useful to me to read again (and hopefully of some use for you).

Guessing from the lack of any response either I'm absolutely correct, or nobody really cares

You are talking about generalization, not methaphors. Or perhaps stereotyping girls with the acceptance of a girl as a representative of a group of similar creatures.

Methaphors in themselves are used to simplify a difficult concept to make it understandable and give people something to relate to.

If you are not posting this to stop generalizations of women I dont see what you are trying to say with this post.

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I'm not trying to be a dick Ezo, but you're being a Pick Up Snob in my opinion.

bbardot: you just reminded me about porn