10 ms·

On the Nature of Creepiness [pdf]

89 points by rfreytag 10y ago

cousin_it 10y ago
Sometime ago I came up with the formulation that "you're creepy" means "you're too focused on something that you want from me". It doesn't cover all the cases, but it gives a hint on how to avoid appearing creepy.
- jgw 10y ago
  I think that's true. I think I'd formulate it more broadly as, "In our interaction, I'm vaguely aware that there's some sort of subtext that I don't understand, but is very important to you, or is even your main objective." In the study, I'm glad that clowns are finally being called out!
- sheepleherd 10y ago
  There is a large class of "creepy" which covers men creeping on women. In that case your formulation is correct, but I would reword it as "you're too focused on something you want, my ass and cleavage for instance, that I am locked in competition with other young women to attract some cute guys--that's why we've left left them only scantily and barely clad--but that guy is not you and your leers make me feel self conscious." Another big class of creepy which works in both gender directions but because men are more threatening (for size if no other reason like testosterone) perhaps seems more one way is, "you seem or are desperate for friendship so you over interpret every little thing I do as a genuine or encouraging bond between us and you overdo your reactions" But I'm not sure what else people might want that would fall into the same category. Salespeople, for instance, can seem "oily" but not usually creepy.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    You think there's never been a women without cleavage being stalked? You think it's women's fault when they get 'Hey MILF,wanna meet after work?' comments?
    - sheepleherd 10y ago
      First, I was responding not to either the study in question, nor to a question of harassment or stalking, I was trying to make sense of the formulation the PP made about somebody wanting something from somebody to see if I could square it with my experience in the world; I qualified what I said with "for instance", not "for all instances" In terms of what I said, I'm actually not saying anything is anybody's "fault" nor that a transgression had transpired. I'm saying people interact as they have always done through history and some interactions are termed creepy by some of the parties. I was actually allowing for a sexually alluring woman to feel creeped by some attention but not all attention rather than saying it was her fault or that all interactions fit this mold. Of course individuals can be creepier than avg and individuals can be creeped more than avg, and if you get far enough from average it becomes excessive. I was simply testing the formulation that the PP suggested. There are people with socialization issues (psychiatric) such that they frequently get termed creepy, and there are people who more frequently experience the feeling of being "creeped out". It's worthy of study. In addition to being creeped out, other people such as yourself more frequently can experience feeling "shocked, shocked" and outraged.
    - dang 10y ago
      Please don't take an uncharitable interpretation of someone else's comment and then attack them. That's two steps in the wrong direction.
  - nailer 10y ago
    My definition is related to yours, but is closer to the articles. FTA: > It is our belief that creepiness is anxiety aroused by the ambiguity of whether there is something to fear or not You mentioned: > you're too focused on something you want, my ass and cleavage for instance You can be focused on ass and cleavage, but not be creepy: eg, if you're honest and open that that's what you're looking for, and not trying to hide or be something you're not. Creepiness occurs where that ambiguity exists: there's a discrepancy between someones evident intent and actions. - If someone's trying to get you away from your friends, with a 'cool thing you need to see', but they clearly want to make out, it's creepy. - If they say 'I think we should go somewhere and make out' it's less so. A lot of creepiness comes from shy men who are afraid of rejection, other comes from shy men that understand, eg, that isolation makes people more likely to make out, but try and use subterfuge to make that happen.
    - sheepleherd 10y ago
      yes, as I said in my other response to somebody else, I was not trying to explain the study, I was trying to test out the PP's suggestion about "somebody wanting something from somebody"
    - JadeNB 10y ago
      > You can be focused on ass and cleavage, but not be creepy: eg, if you're honest and open that that's what you're looking for, and not trying to hide or be something you're not. I suppose that I believe the first part of your sentence, but I don't think that the second elaborates on it sufficiently. A guy who wore a sign saying "I am focussed on ass and cleavage!" and stared at those attributes of all women in the vicinity would, I think, still be creepy. (Maybe I am just using the word in a different sense.) I think that it is important to be open and honest about your intentions, but also to be willing to respect others' right to reject those intentions.
      - nailer 10y ago
        Oh yeah, totally. I think respecting other people is a given, but then again, maybe common sense isn't that common. I'm talking about someone who discusses making out after previous escalations have been welcomed.
  - kaitai 10y ago
    I think it's interesting that you phrase things the way you do in your first paragraph. When I moved to California for college from a cold place, I was young and female. (Still female, less young now). Sometimes in southern California it gets very hot. A logical response to heat if you want to be outside is to wear a tank top. So sometimes I would wear a tank top. This would be interpreted as being "locked in competition with other young women to attract some cute guys" -- which was creepy to me, because it's putting a whole layer of sexual intent on wearing a tank top when it's 100 degrees that was not present in the clothing choice. This sexualized interpretation by random guys did increase the likelihood of encounters with high creepiness factors as described in the article. It is really hard to find a tank top that doesn't show cleavage if you are a certain shape. Tank tops are not always about a struggle for cute young men: these boobs are stuck to the front of me no matter what I'm thinking or doing, and their presence is not a sign of interest. To assume otherwise causes creepiness.
    - deleted 10y ago
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    - vithlani 10y ago
      Thank you for posting this. This is exactly how I felt about my "sexualised interpretation" towards a lady in a similar situation -- I felt it was wrong on my part and I felt incredibly guilty about it and that I was a creep. And then we found out that she was doing it deliberately: in chill winter she would wear an overcoat which came off in the lecture hall to reveal shorts and a tank top. Let us not even mention the labs. Also, She had begun a relationship with a friend of mine just so that he could do her assignments for her and generally be her flunky. When he realized this was her purpose, he managed to get out of it. So she moved on to a much, much smarter dude who had no problem with the nature of the relationship and openly took advantage of it. My friend went through mental trauma, which is totally understandable -- nerds do not EVER get to go out with women of this caliber, to us all it was some kind of miracle. As time passed, it emerged that she was also using the same approach on some profs. Of course she passed with flying grades and I am certain she is now vice-president of something or the other and having an increasingly comfortable life. This is not meant it any way as an accusation against any particular sex or stereotype. In this sort of a situation is there a measurement of creepiness that applies? Who is the creep?
- draw_down 10y ago
  People can decide that someone 20 ft away from them is "creepy" without ever even interacting. I think it's much more broad, closer to "you make me uncomfortable in a way I choose not to analyze". It can sometimes be a really unfair reaction to a totally innocuous person's appearance, sadly.
  - CocaKoala 10y ago
    What's unfair about that reaction? edit: I'm legitimately asking. One of the things which stuck with me after reading "The Gift of Fear" is that people rarely get 'weird feelings' for no reason. If you're not interacting with somebody and they're still creeping you out, that's a sign that something is wrong. Pay attention to that feeling and get out of that situation, even if it means being rude. Once you're out of that situation, you can certainly take time to think about "wait, why did that guy creep me out so much?". Maybe once you reflect on it, you'll say "He was way too fixated on that one woman struggling to put her groceries in the trunk of her car" or "He came up behind me on the stairs, but I never heard the door of the apartment building open after I came in, and that means he was probably waiting inside for me to pass him". Maybe you'll realize "oh, I was just being silly and there wasn't anything weird going on at all". But think about it. What's the worst case scenario of paying attention to that feeling? You rudely brushed off somebody you don't know, didn't interact with, and will never see again. It's a bummer for them, and maybe they'll go home and tell their significant other a story about this one jerk they bumped into in the stairway today. What's the worst case of ignoring that feeling because you don't want to be rude, or you think you're being unfair? The worst case is that you will get killed. The calculus on that is pretty easy for me.
    - jboles 10y ago
      Besides being paranoid/insecure, it is placing responsibility for your own negative emotions on, in this example, an innocuous stranger. Only you are responsible for your own happiness. There's also attractiveness as an input factor, at least if the person branding someone 'creepy' is shallow or superficial.
- wwweston 10y ago
  That's an interesting formulation. It sounds like a sort of uncanny valley of being "valued." I'm a little wary of the term -- I think it's over deployed as a form of social violence -- but there's no denying that what you're describing happens and is pretty uncomfortable.
- andrewstuart2 10y ago
  I think the key word in your definition is "too" but I'd add more specificity to it: "you want something from me, which I'm not interested in giving you, and you're not reacting to my negative cues by backing off." This may still be too general, as there are plenty of scenarios where this would connote "annoying" rather than "creepy," like with a persistent salesperson. Perhaps it could be more accurate yet by adding "and I'm worried you may try to take it against my will, and have a chance of succeeding." to the end. That would cover, for example, noticing some masked figure sneaking toward your house with a crowbar.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    That's just persistence though. Creepiness takes it to another level: it implies discomfort and fear/anxiety for one's safety/wellbeing. Stalkers are creepy. Overeager salespeople aren't.
    - andrewstuart2 10y ago
      Right, that's exactly what I'm saying with the second point I made. EDIT: Although, I just realized I forgot to take out an unfinished sentence that was seemingly contradictory.
    - rue 10y ago
      Don’t be persistent. Just don’t.
- jandrese 10y ago
  I thought it was more "That person or thing is interested in me and I am not interested in, or even disgusted by, them." One of the takeways is that the line between "cute flirting" and "creepy stalking" is if the other person is interested in you.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    Or, maybe, it's the suitor's ability to recognize rejection.
    - jandrese 10y ago
      That would certainly be part of it. Rejecting being the signalling mechanism that the second party uses to communicate their lack of interest to the first party.
    - kaitai 10y ago
      Recognize rejection, and then not retaliate. A flirter who flirts with me and makes it clear it's all in good fun, there's no pressure for more, if I need to go catch a bus I'm not an unfeeling b*^%$, if I don't feel like smiling/flirting it's ok; a flirter who makes me feel confident he's not going to call me names in public or follow me around for a week due to a pleasant interaction -- not creepy. A flirter who keeps pressing on despite signs of discomfort, who doesn't leave me alone, who tries to imply I owe him something, who starts making grand plans for the future based on a few sentences interaction, who calls me names if I have to catch the bus -- creepy. These are all a little unpredictable (smiling conversation at a bar with a stranger, "Gotta go -- nice to chat!", sudden eruption of debasing language, for instance) as well as having high scores for other creepy factors identified in the paper. A little test for yourself: flirt for enjoyment and then walk away with no expectation of ever talking to the person again. Can you do it? Practiced non-creepy flirters can do this well.
  - mcv 10y ago
    It's not just that. It's continuing despite the other party not being interested. Flirting is a two-way street.
- Tycho 10y ago
  I think creepyness has to relate to some perceived threat. Example: in horror films, children can be super creepy, because there is a hint of supernatural threat. But in real life? Never, because they pose no threat. Too focussed on something is only a symptom, the real feeling comes from fear that the individual is unstable or will go to extreme lengths to get what they seem to want. To avoid appearing creepy you need to understand what sort of fears people might have. The exact same interaction may be 10x creepier in an empty car park than a busy office floor. Sometimes the fears may be unwarranted or unfair, of course.
elcapitan 10y ago
> In the study, I'm glad that clowns are finally being called out! Also garbage collectors. Very creepy not to manage memory manually.
- bcpermafrost 10y ago
  Heyyyooooo!
- EthanHeilman 10y ago
  Dogs tend to get very upset about garbage collectors as well. Is there some deep unease about strangers taking things away which used to be yours?
  - splawn 10y ago
    Idk, my dogs seem to like java and lisp on their bigger projects. Then again they are known to be the worst at creating memory leaks whenever they hack C.
    - PeCaN 10y ago
      Weird. My dogs, which are rather naughty, use Lisp on most of their projects too.
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    Almost certainly. Garbage collection doesn't seem especially alarming to most of us because it's institutionalized, but "rag men" and "garbage pickers" are still seen as quite creepy because they're individuals taking possessions we identify with. The decision to throw something away doesn't sever it from our identity, especially with old clothes and personal effects. Of course, the dog effect may be more about theft than identity, because they have no real way to differentiate "taking unwanted objects" from "taking valued objects" - after all, that garbage smelled delicious to them!
- kps 10y ago
  Well yes, since the paper implies that creepiness boils down to unpredictable potential threat, garbage collection is very creepy. Reference counting is not creepy, though.
randomname2 10y ago
Interestingly the paper does not consider physical attractiveness as a factor, other than (indirectly) "has very pale skin" (.566), despite considering a separate "Appearance/ NV" variable.
douche 10y ago
How to be creepy: 1.) Be unattractive. 2.) Perform the same behaviors that attractive people do. 3.) Goto 1
- randomname2 10y ago
  It's not necessarily the lack of physical attractiveness that's a problem -- more so the lack of social awareness in exhibiting such "high status" behaviors as a "low-status" person, as mentioned in the paper ("People who follow social rules of behavior are not perceived as creepy"). It's more socially acceptable for unattractive yet wealthy/high-status people to perform such behaviors, as this can be explained by considering them "eccentric" or "confident" rather than "weird" or "creepy".
  - noxToken 10y ago
    Is that not the same as what GP said? Your modifier is wealth or status. Without those, you move from eccentric to creepy on the sliding scale.
    - randomname2 10y ago
      Perhaps. If for the sake of the argument there is such a sliding scale, maybe attractiveness should also be a factor. Attractiveness is more than just "physical attractiveness", and by definition pretty much excludes creepiness. Not to imply that people who are considered attractive can't be creepy -- but they do get more leeway.
  - existencebox 10y ago
    I could be misunderstanding the data due to my pre-work skimming of the article, but looking at a variety of the variables they expose, it seems like many of the highly weighted creepiness factors _do_ align with appearance in absence of action. Greasy hair? Overly thin/pale? I can understand that some people may consider your parent's comment as looking for excuses/being overly snide/something or other, but it's certainly worth consideration, especially for me in that my anecdotal bayesian prior certainly echoes the sentiment of "appearance buys you breathing room". (As I got older and started caring about my appearance more, I observed my equally nerdy (behaviorally) friends get treated diametrically differently than I was when I KNEW we acted nearly identically after decades together)
deleted 10y ago
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tomp 10y ago
> Males were perceived as being more likely to be creepy than females, and females were more likely to associate sexual threat with creepiness. This appears to just be another one of those, largely undefined, vaguely sexist, insults - like "bitchiness".
- exolymph 10y ago
  Women realistically do experience a lot more sexual violence than men, so it's not an unfounded worry. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm
  - sheepleherd 10y ago
    Yes, women realistically do experience a lot more sexual violence than men, so it is not an unfounded worry; but as ordinary and normal and safe reproductive courtship entails a lot more approaches to women, the physically smaller nurturing gender, by men, the larger more aggressive hunting gender, such examples of deviant and opportunistic sexual violence can be seen to "come with the territory" of our evolutionary history. It's nice to imagine that we as a social species could have evolved past this, but in studying our history on the scale of hundreds of years rather than evolutionary scales of thousands of years, and in studying works of scholarship such as the Selfish Gene by Dawkins, one may not be at all surprised that we are where we are, but perhaps by continuing to educate one another we can takes steps to make all people feel, and more importantly be, safer. The reason I felt it necessary to add the "context" to your statement is that our world consists of many many interacting postitive and negative stochastic processes, and when we look at a simple "violence" statistic it might seem "oh, this is terrible, we must stop this" when in fact things are much more complex than that.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      Oh, but despite all the biologistic determinism, it really is that easy: there is violence – and it needs to stop. It doesn't matter why is exists, and even if we believe the stuck-at-13-years simpleton you're quoting, an explanation is not an excuse.
defen 10y ago
I guess this paper explains why my clown bordello failed.
- _-__--- 10y ago
  Clown-garbed garbage collection service, using found trash to taxidermy up some foxes?
- Chris2048 10y ago
  <insert cream-pie joke here>
mcguire 10y ago
"Everything that we found in this study is consistent with the notion that the perception of creepiness is a response to the am- biguity of threat. ... We are placed on our guard by people who touch us or exhibit non-normative nonverbal behavior, or those who are drawn to occupations that reflect a fascination with death or unusual sexual behavior. People who have hobbies that involve collecting things that we are predisposed as a species to fear such as spiders or snakes, or things that can only be acquired after something has died (e.g., skulls or bodies to be stuffed) seem creepy to us as well. We are also wary of individuals who have a preoccupation with monitoring the activity of others. "While they may not be overtly threatening, individuals who display unusual patterns of nonverbal behavior, odd emotional responses, or highly distinctive physical characteristics are outside of the norm, and by definition unpredictable."
- executesorder66 10y ago
  > We are also wary of individuals who have a preoccupation with monitoring the activity of others. The fucking NSA for example.
  - mcv 10y ago
    Though not quite the same topic, I do think the NSA could be considered creepy, and the definition of creepy should reflect that. A creep's interest doesn't necessarily have to be sexual.
amelius 10y ago
> The person had bags under his or her eyes This makes me wonder, are we all destined to become creeps?
- huherto 10y ago
  I believe there is an age when confidence is created. Teenage years. You carry that status the rest of your life. Even if you are successful later in life, you still feel a bit like an impostor. (see impostor syndrome) And it shows in your personality. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/03/short_changed.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/0... "Height at age 7 or 11 turns out to have no impact at all on future wages. But height at age 16 makes all the difference in the world."
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Bartweiss 10y ago
    This is really interesting in light of the studies suggesting that tall people are more successful. Those results almost always claim that it's an externally mediated result (i.e. that we respect tall people more because they're tall). This would suggest that it might be an internally mediated result (i.e. that tall people are more confident). That would make a lot of sense to me, since we tend to be more acutely aware of our own height than other's heigh.
    - amelius 10y ago
      I can see a business opportunity here: If you are a rich parent and your kid is too small, just buy him classmates that are even smaller :)
      - Bartweiss 10y ago
        Napoleon syndrome as a service?
      - 10y ago
yarrel 10y ago
Also smurfiness.
etamponi 10y ago
Interesting paper and... well, expected conclusions. One thing that makes me skeptic about the entire work is that they use different p-value levels for each hypothesis, which is bad practice. The entire meaning of the p-value is to compare it with a previously decided threshold to be sure to limit the type 1 error rate
grillvogel 10y ago
creepyness is 100% based on the attractiveness of the person being "creepy"
- vithlani 10y ago
  Yes it is. Good luck getting any acknowledgement of this from the current PC, minority-lgbt-feminism-excuses-everything culture.
- mcv 10y ago
  Not true at all. It's entirely possible for an attractive person to be creepy, and certainly for an unattractive person to not be creepy. Though I suppose the creepiness itself doesn't exactly make you attractive either, so in that way it could be a self-fulfilling prophesy or even a tautology. But it's definitely not about looks. It's about behaviour.
  - jboles 10y ago
    Every good rule has an exception. Also it can definitely be about looks or the person, as opposed to behaviour. Really comes down to how shallow the alleged-victim is.
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
I'm going to drop this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0 and yes it's kind of a novelty song but maybe it'll help some of the people in this thread realize "hey maybe I shouldn't do that."
Mendenhall 10y ago
Being creepy = making people feel uncomfortable. I think knowing how to make people feel comfortable around you is success 101.
Millennium 10y ago
Careful. Anything that calls creepiness anything but arbitrary -and especially those that say it originates in the one being called creepy- is bound to draw the ire of the bitter untouchables (even though this only provides more evidence for the claims the research makes). I applaud the people brave enough to publish such research anyway.

89 points by rfreytag 10y ago

Sometime ago I came up with the formulation that "you're creepy" means "you're too focused on something that you want from me". It doesn't cover all the cases, but it gives a hint on how to avoid appearing creepy.

jgw 10y ago
I think that's true. I think I'd formulate it more broadly as, "In our interaction, I'm vaguely aware that there's some sort of subtext that I don't understand, but is very important to you, or is even your main objective." In the study, I'm glad that clowns are finally being called out!
sheepleherd 10y ago
There is a large class of "creepy" which covers men creeping on women. In that case your formulation is correct, but I would reword it as "you're too focused on something you want, my ass and cleavage for instance, that I am locked in competition with other young women to attract some cute guys--that's why we've left left them only scantily and barely clad--but that guy is not you and your leers make me feel self conscious." Another big class of creepy which works in both gender directions but because men are more threatening (for size if no other reason like testosterone) perhaps seems more one way is, "you seem or are desperate for friendship so you over interpret every little thing I do as a genuine or encouraging bond between us and you overdo your reactions" But I'm not sure what else people might want that would fall into the same category. Salespeople, for instance, can seem "oily" but not usually creepy.
- matt4077 10y ago
  You think there's never been a women without cleavage being stalked? You think it's women's fault when they get 'Hey MILF,wanna meet after work?' comments?
  - sheepleherd 10y ago
    First, I was responding not to either the study in question, nor to a question of harassment or stalking, I was trying to make sense of the formulation the PP made about somebody wanting something from somebody to see if I could square it with my experience in the world; I qualified what I said with "for instance", not "for all instances" In terms of what I said, I'm actually not saying anything is anybody's "fault" nor that a transgression had transpired. I'm saying people interact as they have always done through history and some interactions are termed creepy by some of the parties. I was actually allowing for a sexually alluring woman to feel creeped by some attention but not all attention rather than saying it was her fault or that all interactions fit this mold. Of course individuals can be creepier than avg and individuals can be creeped more than avg, and if you get far enough from average it becomes excessive. I was simply testing the formulation that the PP suggested. There are people with socialization issues (psychiatric) such that they frequently get termed creepy, and there are people who more frequently experience the feeling of being "creeped out". It's worthy of study. In addition to being creeped out, other people such as yourself more frequently can experience feeling "shocked, shocked" and outraged.
  - dang 10y ago
    Please don't take an uncharitable interpretation of someone else's comment and then attack them. That's two steps in the wrong direction.
- nailer 10y ago
  My definition is related to yours, but is closer to the articles. FTA: > It is our belief that creepiness is anxiety aroused by the ambiguity of whether there is something to fear or not You mentioned: > you're too focused on something you want, my ass and cleavage for instance You can be focused on ass and cleavage, but not be creepy: eg, if you're honest and open that that's what you're looking for, and not trying to hide or be something you're not. Creepiness occurs where that ambiguity exists: there's a discrepancy between someones evident intent and actions. - If someone's trying to get you away from your friends, with a 'cool thing you need to see', but they clearly want to make out, it's creepy. - If they say 'I think we should go somewhere and make out' it's less so. A lot of creepiness comes from shy men who are afraid of rejection, other comes from shy men that understand, eg, that isolation makes people more likely to make out, but try and use subterfuge to make that happen.
  - sheepleherd 10y ago
    yes, as I said in my other response to somebody else, I was not trying to explain the study, I was trying to test out the PP's suggestion about "somebody wanting something from somebody"
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > You can be focused on ass and cleavage, but not be creepy: eg, if you're honest and open that that's what you're looking for, and not trying to hide or be something you're not. I suppose that I believe the first part of your sentence, but I don't think that the second elaborates on it sufficiently. A guy who wore a sign saying "I am focussed on ass and cleavage!" and stared at those attributes of all women in the vicinity would, I think, still be creepy. (Maybe I am just using the word in a different sense.) I think that it is important to be open and honest about your intentions, but also to be willing to respect others' right to reject those intentions.
    - nailer 10y ago
      Oh yeah, totally. I think respecting other people is a given, but then again, maybe common sense isn't that common. I'm talking about someone who discusses making out after previous escalations have been welcomed.
- kaitai 10y ago
  I think it's interesting that you phrase things the way you do in your first paragraph. When I moved to California for college from a cold place, I was young and female. (Still female, less young now). Sometimes in southern California it gets very hot. A logical response to heat if you want to be outside is to wear a tank top. So sometimes I would wear a tank top. This would be interpreted as being "locked in competition with other young women to attract some cute guys" -- which was creepy to me, because it's putting a whole layer of sexual intent on wearing a tank top when it's 100 degrees that was not present in the clothing choice. This sexualized interpretation by random guys did increase the likelihood of encounters with high creepiness factors as described in the article. It is really hard to find a tank top that doesn't show cleavage if you are a certain shape. Tank tops are not always about a struggle for cute young men: these boobs are stuck to the front of me no matter what I'm thinking or doing, and their presence is not a sign of interest. To assume otherwise causes creepiness.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - vithlani 10y ago
    Thank you for posting this. This is exactly how I felt about my "sexualised interpretation" towards a lady in a similar situation -- I felt it was wrong on my part and I felt incredibly guilty about it and that I was a creep. And then we found out that she was doing it deliberately: in chill winter she would wear an overcoat which came off in the lecture hall to reveal shorts and a tank top. Let us not even mention the labs. Also, She had begun a relationship with a friend of mine just so that he could do her assignments for her and generally be her flunky. When he realized this was her purpose, he managed to get out of it. So she moved on to a much, much smarter dude who had no problem with the nature of the relationship and openly took advantage of it. My friend went through mental trauma, which is totally understandable -- nerds do not EVER get to go out with women of this caliber, to us all it was some kind of miracle. As time passed, it emerged that she was also using the same approach on some profs. Of course she passed with flying grades and I am certain she is now vice-president of something or the other and having an increasingly comfortable life. This is not meant it any way as an accusation against any particular sex or stereotype. In this sort of a situation is there a measurement of creepiness that applies? Who is the creep?
draw_down 10y ago
People can decide that someone 20 ft away from them is "creepy" without ever even interacting. I think it's much more broad, closer to "you make me uncomfortable in a way I choose not to analyze". It can sometimes be a really unfair reaction to a totally innocuous person's appearance, sadly.
- CocaKoala 10y ago
  What's unfair about that reaction? edit: I'm legitimately asking. One of the things which stuck with me after reading "The Gift of Fear" is that people rarely get 'weird feelings' for no reason. If you're not interacting with somebody and they're still creeping you out, that's a sign that something is wrong. Pay attention to that feeling and get out of that situation, even if it means being rude. Once you're out of that situation, you can certainly take time to think about "wait, why did that guy creep me out so much?". Maybe once you reflect on it, you'll say "He was way too fixated on that one woman struggling to put her groceries in the trunk of her car" or "He came up behind me on the stairs, but I never heard the door of the apartment building open after I came in, and that means he was probably waiting inside for me to pass him". Maybe you'll realize "oh, I was just being silly and there wasn't anything weird going on at all". But think about it. What's the worst case scenario of paying attention to that feeling? You rudely brushed off somebody you don't know, didn't interact with, and will never see again. It's a bummer for them, and maybe they'll go home and tell their significant other a story about this one jerk they bumped into in the stairway today. What's the worst case of ignoring that feeling because you don't want to be rude, or you think you're being unfair? The worst case is that you will get killed. The calculus on that is pretty easy for me.
  - jboles 10y ago
    Besides being paranoid/insecure, it is placing responsibility for your own negative emotions on, in this example, an innocuous stranger. Only you are responsible for your own happiness. There's also attractiveness as an input factor, at least if the person branding someone 'creepy' is shallow or superficial.
wwweston 10y ago
That's an interesting formulation. It sounds like a sort of uncanny valley of being "valued." I'm a little wary of the term -- I think it's over deployed as a form of social violence -- but there's no denying that what you're describing happens and is pretty uncomfortable.
andrewstuart2 10y ago
I think the key word in your definition is "too" but I'd add more specificity to it: "you want something from me, which I'm not interested in giving you, and you're not reacting to my negative cues by backing off." This may still be too general, as there are plenty of scenarios where this would connote "annoying" rather than "creepy," like with a persistent salesperson. Perhaps it could be more accurate yet by adding "and I'm worried you may try to take it against my will, and have a chance of succeeding." to the end. That would cover, for example, noticing some masked figure sneaking toward your house with a crowbar.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  That's just persistence though. Creepiness takes it to another level: it implies discomfort and fear/anxiety for one's safety/wellbeing. Stalkers are creepy. Overeager salespeople aren't.
  - andrewstuart2 10y ago
    Right, that's exactly what I'm saying with the second point I made. EDIT: Although, I just realized I forgot to take out an unfinished sentence that was seemingly contradictory.
  - rue 10y ago
    Don’t be persistent. Just don’t.
jandrese 10y ago
I thought it was more "That person or thing is interested in me and I am not interested in, or even disgusted by, them." One of the takeways is that the line between "cute flirting" and "creepy stalking" is if the other person is interested in you.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Or, maybe, it's the suitor's ability to recognize rejection.
  - jandrese 10y ago
    That would certainly be part of it. Rejecting being the signalling mechanism that the second party uses to communicate their lack of interest to the first party.
  - kaitai 10y ago
    Recognize rejection, and then not retaliate. A flirter who flirts with me and makes it clear it's all in good fun, there's no pressure for more, if I need to go catch a bus I'm not an unfeeling b*^%$, if I don't feel like smiling/flirting it's ok; a flirter who makes me feel confident he's not going to call me names in public or follow me around for a week due to a pleasant interaction -- not creepy. A flirter who keeps pressing on despite signs of discomfort, who doesn't leave me alone, who tries to imply I owe him something, who starts making grand plans for the future based on a few sentences interaction, who calls me names if I have to catch the bus -- creepy. These are all a little unpredictable (smiling conversation at a bar with a stranger, "Gotta go -- nice to chat!", sudden eruption of debasing language, for instance) as well as having high scores for other creepy factors identified in the paper. A little test for yourself: flirt for enjoyment and then walk away with no expectation of ever talking to the person again. Can you do it? Practiced non-creepy flirters can do this well.
- mcv 10y ago
  It's not just that. It's continuing despite the other party not being interested. Flirting is a two-way street.
Tycho 10y ago
I think creepyness has to relate to some perceived threat. Example: in horror films, children can be super creepy, because there is a hint of supernatural threat. But in real life? Never, because they pose no threat. Too focussed on something is only a symptom, the real feeling comes from fear that the individual is unstable or will go to extreme lengths to get what they seem to want. To avoid appearing creepy you need to understand what sort of fears people might have. The exact same interaction may be 10x creepier in an empty car park than a busy office floor. Sometimes the fears may be unwarranted or unfair, of course.

elcapitan 10y ago

> In the study, I'm glad that clowns are finally being called out! Also garbage collectors. Very creepy not to manage memory manually.

bcpermafrost 10y ago
Heyyyooooo!
EthanHeilman 10y ago
Dogs tend to get very upset about garbage collectors as well. Is there some deep unease about strangers taking things away which used to be yours?
- splawn 10y ago
  Idk, my dogs seem to like java and lisp on their bigger projects. Then again they are known to be the worst at creating memory leaks whenever they hack C.
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    Weird. My dogs, which are rather naughty, use Lisp on most of their projects too.
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  Almost certainly. Garbage collection doesn't seem especially alarming to most of us because it's institutionalized, but "rag men" and "garbage pickers" are still seen as quite creepy because they're individuals taking possessions we identify with. The decision to throw something away doesn't sever it from our identity, especially with old clothes and personal effects. Of course, the dog effect may be more about theft than identity, because they have no real way to differentiate "taking unwanted objects" from "taking valued objects" - after all, that garbage smelled delicious to them!
kps 10y ago
Well yes, since the paper implies that creepiness boils down to unpredictable potential threat, garbage collection is very creepy. Reference counting is not creepy, though.

randomname2 10y ago

Interestingly the paper does not consider physical attractiveness as a factor, other than (indirectly) "has very pale skin" (.566), despite considering a separate "Appearance/ NV" variable.

douche 10y ago

How to be creepy: 1.) Be unattractive. 2.) Perform the same behaviors that attractive people do. 3.) Goto 1

randomname2 10y ago
It's not necessarily the lack of physical attractiveness that's a problem -- more so the lack of social awareness in exhibiting such "high status" behaviors as a "low-status" person, as mentioned in the paper ("People who follow social rules of behavior are not perceived as creepy"). It's more socially acceptable for unattractive yet wealthy/high-status people to perform such behaviors, as this can be explained by considering them "eccentric" or "confident" rather than "weird" or "creepy".
- noxToken 10y ago
  Is that not the same as what GP said? Your modifier is wealth or status. Without those, you move from eccentric to creepy on the sliding scale.
  - randomname2 10y ago
    Perhaps. If for the sake of the argument there is such a sliding scale, maybe attractiveness should also be a factor. Attractiveness is more than just "physical attractiveness", and by definition pretty much excludes creepiness. Not to imply that people who are considered attractive can't be creepy -- but they do get more leeway.
- existencebox 10y ago
  I could be misunderstanding the data due to my pre-work skimming of the article, but looking at a variety of the variables they expose, it seems like many of the highly weighted creepiness factors _do_ align with appearance in absence of action. Greasy hair? Overly thin/pale? I can understand that some people may consider your parent's comment as looking for excuses/being overly snide/something or other, but it's certainly worth consideration, especially for me in that my anecdotal bayesian prior certainly echoes the sentiment of "appearance buys you breathing room". (As I got older and started caring about my appearance more, I observed my equally nerdy (behaviorally) friends get treated diametrically differently than I was when I KNEW we acted nearly identically after decades together)

deleted 10y ago

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tomp 10y ago

> Males were perceived as being more likely to be creepy than females, and females were more likely to associate sexual threat with creepiness. This appears to just be another one of those, largely undefined, vaguely sexist, insults - like "bitchiness".

exolymph 10y ago
Women realistically do experience a lot more sexual violence than men, so it's not an unfounded worry. http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm
- sheepleherd 10y ago
  Yes, women realistically do experience a lot more sexual violence than men, so it is not an unfounded worry; but as ordinary and normal and safe reproductive courtship entails a lot more approaches to women, the physically smaller nurturing gender, by men, the larger more aggressive hunting gender, such examples of deviant and opportunistic sexual violence can be seen to "come with the territory" of our evolutionary history. It's nice to imagine that we as a social species could have evolved past this, but in studying our history on the scale of hundreds of years rather than evolutionary scales of thousands of years, and in studying works of scholarship such as the Selfish Gene by Dawkins, one may not be at all surprised that we are where we are, but perhaps by continuing to educate one another we can takes steps to make all people feel, and more importantly be, safer. The reason I felt it necessary to add the "context" to your statement is that our world consists of many many interacting postitive and negative stochastic processes, and when we look at a simple "violence" statistic it might seem "oh, this is terrible, we must stop this" when in fact things are much more complex than that.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    Oh, but despite all the biologistic determinism, it really is that easy: there is violence – and it needs to stop. It doesn't matter why is exists, and even if we believe the stuck-at-13-years simpleton you're quoting, an explanation is not an excuse.

defen 10y ago

I guess this paper explains why my clown bordello failed.

_-__--- 10y ago
Clown-garbed garbage collection service, using found trash to taxidermy up some foxes?
Chris2048 10y ago
<insert cream-pie joke here>

mcguire 10y ago

"Everything that we found in this study is consistent with the notion that the perception of creepiness is a response to the am- biguity of threat. ... We are placed on our guard by people who touch us or exhibit non-normative nonverbal behavior, or those who are drawn to occupations that reflect a fascination with death or unusual sexual behavior. People who have hobbies that involve collecting things that we are predisposed as a species to fear such as spiders or snakes, or things that can only be acquired after something has died (e.g., skulls or bodies to be stuffed) seem creepy to us as well. We are also wary of individuals who have a preoccupation with monitoring the activity of others. "While they may not be overtly threatening, individuals who display unusual patterns of nonverbal behavior, odd emotional responses, or highly distinctive physical characteristics are outside of the norm, and by definition unpredictable."

executesorder66 10y ago
> We are also wary of individuals who have a preoccupation with monitoring the activity of others. The fucking NSA for example.
- mcv 10y ago
  Though not quite the same topic, I do think the NSA could be considered creepy, and the definition of creepy should reflect that. A creep's interest doesn't necessarily have to be sexual.

amelius 10y ago

> The person had bags under his or her eyes This makes me wonder, are we all destined to become creeps?

huherto 10y ago
I believe there is an age when confidence is created. Teenage years. You carry that status the rest of your life. Even if you are successful later in life, you still feel a bit like an impostor. (see impostor syndrome) And it shows in your personality. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/03/short_changed.html http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2002/0... "Height at age 7 or 11 turns out to have no impact at all on future wages. But height at age 16 makes all the difference in the world."
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Bartweiss 10y ago
  This is really interesting in light of the studies suggesting that tall people are more successful. Those results almost always claim that it's an externally mediated result (i.e. that we respect tall people more because they're tall). This would suggest that it might be an internally mediated result (i.e. that tall people are more confident). That would make a lot of sense to me, since we tend to be more acutely aware of our own height than other's heigh.
  - amelius 10y ago
    I can see a business opportunity here: If you are a rich parent and your kid is too small, just buy him classmates that are even smaller :)
    - Bartweiss 10y ago
      Napoleon syndrome as a service?
    - 10y ago

yarrel 10y ago

Also smurfiness.

etamponi 10y ago

Interesting paper and... well, expected conclusions. One thing that makes me skeptic about the entire work is that they use different p-value levels for each hypothesis, which is bad practice. The entire meaning of the p-value is to compare it with a previously decided threshold to be sure to limit the type 1 error rate

grillvogel 10y ago

creepyness is 100% based on the attractiveness of the person being "creepy"

vithlani 10y ago
Yes it is. Good luck getting any acknowledgement of this from the current PC, minority-lgbt-feminism-excuses-everything culture.
mcv 10y ago
Not true at all. It's entirely possible for an attractive person to be creepy, and certainly for an unattractive person to not be creepy. Though I suppose the creepiness itself doesn't exactly make you attractive either, so in that way it could be a self-fulfilling prophesy or even a tautology. But it's definitely not about looks. It's about behaviour.
- jboles 10y ago
  Every good rule has an exception. Also it can definitely be about looks or the person, as opposed to behaviour. Really comes down to how shallow the alleged-victim is.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago

I'm going to drop this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLPZmPaHme0 and yes it's kind of a novelty song but maybe it'll help some of the people in this thread realize "hey maybe I shouldn't do that."

Mendenhall 10y ago

Being creepy = making people feel uncomfortable. I think knowing how to make people feel comfortable around you is success 101.

Millennium 10y ago

Careful. Anything that calls creepiness anything but arbitrary -and especially those that say it originates in the one being called creepy- is bound to draw the ire of the bitter untouchables (even though this only provides more evidence for the claims the research makes). I applaud the people brave enough to publish such research anyway.