Lexicon ·
spinning plates
noun phrase, also 'spin more plates'
- Stated meaning
- Pursuing several prospects at once, so that no single one carries enough weight to make a man needy.
- Operating meaning
- Several prospects kept in motion by one performer, whose act consists of moving between them fast enough that none of them is attended to.
- Origin
- A stage act performed since at least the 3rd century, adopted as a dating analogy by The Rational Male in 2011 under the heading Plate Theory.
- Antonyms
- oneitis
Plate spinning is a circus manipulation art (opens in a new window), plates kept turning on poles so that none of them falls, and it has been performed since at least the 3rd century. It reached American television on The Ed Sullivan Show. The skill shows only while the act is running. The performer moves from pole to pole and touches each plate just long enough to keep it up.
In August 2011 The Rational Male (opens in a new window) opened a post with the instruction “Spin more plates.” Each plate, the post explained, is a separate woman being pursued. Some fall off and break, some are stopped on purpose, and some do not spin as fast as he would like. The argument is about confidence. “A man is as confident and valuable as his options,” and a man without them becomes necessitous and falls into a scarcity mentality. The post called itself Plate Theory and offered the plates as a cure for oneitis, inside a relationship and out of one.
Under load, the analogy is more accurate than its author intended. A spinning plate needs attention only when it starts to wobble, and the act is judged by how many are up at once, never by how any one of them is doing. The performer’s evening is spent travelling between poles. Confidence, on this account, is the feeling of having somewhere else to go, and the act supplies it by keeping him in transit. Whatever he says at one pole is said on the way to the next.