4 ms·

eh, there's really no good signal for women to display that says "hey, i'm open to being hit on right now" or "please don't hit on me right now"

personjerry 4y ago
THE DEFAULT IS "please don't hit on me right now"
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  What can be accepted as “it’s okay to hit on me right now”? I don’t disagree with your assertion btw. Determining collective social etiquette can be challenging, and I’m always interested in other perspectives to better understand other humans in general.
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    > I don’t disagree with your assertion btw, I’ve dated several coworkers years ago but have never been in a situation where me showing interest was indicated to be unwelcome How close to the truth is this as a different take on your situation: "you slowly hit on them, and they wanted it, so they didn't report you to HR/make it a big deal"?
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      I would assume that if you indicate interest and the other person declines, you never bring it up again and you treat them no different than if you had never asked, that’s appropriate? I’d like to think that, at the topic’s core, it’s about empathy and respect for the other person and adults are still adults who can make decisions when there isn’t a power differential (peers, not in a reporting chain). My question is genuine though and stands: when is it okay to communicate interest in someone? If the answer is never, it doesn’t impact me, it just feels very telling with the times (third places evaporating, and most people spend most of their time outside the home at work). If there is a line, I’m curious where that line is, not to leverage it but to respect it. “Don’t be a dick” but you’ve still gotta put yourself out there if you want optimize for luck and possibility. To handle rejection with grace is key, which comes from emotional maturity. > Data from 2017 shows that as many as one in 10 heterosexual couples in the US say that they met at work. Considering some data shows people in the US between the ages of 20 and 50 spend nearly four times as much time with colleagues than they do with friends, this seems all but bound to happen. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220228-the-inevitability-of-the-office-romance https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220228-the-inevitabil...
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  in college? where it's known that a ton of meet people/discover yourself sexually/experiment/hook up, a lot? i'm not sure how realistic that is how does anybody start talking to anybody then? somebody has to make the first move to go from stranger -> acquaintance, no?
- letsbehonest1 4y ago
  That’s the same perspective as all my college friends who’ve not found a partner to settle down with (~15y out).
- ARandomerDude 4y ago
  If that's true, then the only way to let a woman know you're interested in her is after she has first told you. But that's a horrible way to make room for different personality types. Some women are assertive. Some are less so. Should the more reserved women just stay single?
  - t-writescode 4y ago
    Do the more reserved women want to stay single? Maybe they do! And most people have introvert friends and extrovert friends. You meet safe and good people through friend circles and then they get you to meet the other person.
    - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
      Don't you think it's pretty ignorant to pretend the only type of relationships happening between 18 -> 21 year olds throughout every college in America is exclusively "safe and good people met through friend circles" as opposed to two people just randomly in a class together where the guy typically just says "hey, what are you doing later? want to hang out/study together?"
    - ShredKazoo 4y ago
      I've had multiple conversations with women who are somewhere between disappointed and despondent that guys don't hit on them more. >I mentioned to several of the people I interviewed for this piece that I’d met my husband in an elevator, in 2001. (We worked on different floors of the same institution, and over the months that followed struck up many more conversations—in the elevator, in the break room, on the walk to the subway.) I was fascinated by the extent to which this prompted other women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet someone that way. And yet quite a few of them suggested that if a random guy started talking to them in an elevator, they would be weirded out. “Creeper! Get away from me,” one woman imagined thinking. “Anytime we’re in silence, we look at our phones,” explained her friend, nodding. Another woman fantasized to me about what it would be like to have a man hit on her in a bookstore. (She’d be holding a copy of her favorite book. “What’s that book?” he’d say.) But then she seemed to snap out of her reverie, and changed the subject to Sex and the City reruns and how hopelessly dated they seem. “Miranda meets Steve at a bar,” she said, in a tone suggesting that the scenario might as well be out of a Jane Austen novel, for all the relevance it had to her life. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... I think the solution that leaves everyone happy is: start a conversation with that woman, but if she's not interested, leave her alone. Look at it in utilitarian terms: * If the woman you're talking to isn't interested, your attempt to start a conversation will create a brief unpleasant experience for her. * If she is interested, there's a chance at a great, long-lasting romance which will benefit both you and her. The positive utility from finding your future spouse is much larger than the negative utility from a brief unwanted conversation. So on expectation it often makes sense to start that conversation.
stavros 4y ago
Maybe that's what we should work on instead, along with making hitting on people acceptable for women too. That way, it's not just a male thing, and people can still indicate they want to be left alone.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  It's definitely acceptable for women to hit on men, in fact there is currently a double standard in place in many cultures. Two days ago at a party I saw a woman sexually harass multiple men without any repercussions, and she constantly apologized afterwards which somehow made it ok to continue the behavior all night. Yes, that person clearly has unresolved issues to work on but the double standard is there and it's harmful in both directions.
  - stavros 4y ago
    "Acceptable" may have been the wrong word, I more meant "normalized", sorry.
    - jimbokun 4y ago
      How would it at all benefit women over the status quo?
      - stavros 4y ago
        They'd be hit on less, because men wouldn't have to always be the ones to make a move.
soulofmischief 4y ago
Well that's the issue. It's not their fault. The idea of dating today has been reduced to hitting on people and jumping right into high commitment situations instead of slowly building a lasting relationship built in solid fundamentals, the kinds of advances which are rarely rejected in practice compared to just hitting on someone as if they are a checkbox to be ticked.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  eh, i guess i get the point now. on a dating app atleast you have consent of some sort (they're both there, both signed up, both made profiles, both interested in a common goal) whether it's "predatory" for a senior in college (21) to prey on a 100-level STEM student (basically an 18 year old/pre-college according to my friend), that's a whole different question from "consent to being hit on" in my opinion
User23 4y ago
Women signal interest or a lack thereof in a thousand ways. Picking up on that is a basic social skill and like all skills some persons are more capable than others.
- fastball 4y ago
  Keeping track of a thousand subtle signals is a "basic" social skill?
  - User23 4y ago
    Yes, “basic” means fundamental, not simple. And for a sexually reproducing species reading the social cues of the opposite sex is indeed of fundamental importance, modulo outright barbarism.
    - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
      so you're saying it's basically evolution that if you don't know how to fundamentally pick up on flirting cues, you'll end up https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=incel https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=incel
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    that's a huge problem with this too. you can say there are two camps, flirting (warranted or unwarranted can be ignored) and "hitting on". i'm sure some can argue it's a subtle vs not so subtle difference you're asking socially awkward + nervous + scared guys to 1. go out of their comfort zone and smoothly create inorganically an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, and 2. sprinkle in something that is considered flirtatious but not too strong that it falls under the category of "hitting on"
  - bitmunk 4y ago
    They didn't say subtle, or that you had to track the entirety of the hypothetical 1000.
xupybd 4y ago
No but there are social queues for this. Flirting is exactly that. Friendly small talk to see if the other person is receptive or not. If you're like me and are probably slightly autistic with very little social interaction growing up, then you'll be terrible at that. Perhaps this is the problem. A large number of socially awkward guys are joining these classes irritating all the young women.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  The comment right below you is "the default should be don't hit on me" (in all caps) which kind of translates to "the default should be don't flirt with me", doesn't it? isn't flirting a form of hitting on somebody? which one of you is right? i have no clue
  - xupybd 4y ago
    No flirting doesn't begin with hitting on someone. It's a game two people play. They edge closer to hitting on each other. Each time gauging the response. If the other person is not playing you'll never reach the point where you're hitting on them. Neither party needs to lose face and it can simply be a polite chat. Some people just seem to know how to do this. For others its near impossible. I'm in the others group. When a girl was flirting with me in the past I sent messages to her that I wasn't interested. As I had no idea how to play that game. I didn't even know it was going on. Then when I was interested in a girl I tended to creep her out by being too awkward too direct. Even when I asked my wife out she almost dropped the phone as I shocked her by being too direct. Luckily we'd been friends for years and she knew me well enough to say yes.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

personjerry 4y ago

THE DEFAULT IS "please don't hit on me right now"

toomuchtodo 4y ago
What can be accepted as “it’s okay to hit on me right now”? I don’t disagree with your assertion btw. Determining collective social etiquette can be challenging, and I’m always interested in other perspectives to better understand other humans in general.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  > I don’t disagree with your assertion btw, I’ve dated several coworkers years ago but have never been in a situation where me showing interest was indicated to be unwelcome How close to the truth is this as a different take on your situation: "you slowly hit on them, and they wanted it, so they didn't report you to HR/make it a big deal"?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    I would assume that if you indicate interest and the other person declines, you never bring it up again and you treat them no different than if you had never asked, that’s appropriate? I’d like to think that, at the topic’s core, it’s about empathy and respect for the other person and adults are still adults who can make decisions when there isn’t a power differential (peers, not in a reporting chain). My question is genuine though and stands: when is it okay to communicate interest in someone? If the answer is never, it doesn’t impact me, it just feels very telling with the times (third places evaporating, and most people spend most of their time outside the home at work). If there is a line, I’m curious where that line is, not to leverage it but to respect it. “Don’t be a dick” but you’ve still gotta put yourself out there if you want optimize for luck and possibility. To handle rejection with grace is key, which comes from emotional maturity. > Data from 2017 shows that as many as one in 10 heterosexual couples in the US say that they met at work. Considering some data shows people in the US between the ages of 20 and 50 spend nearly four times as much time with colleagues than they do with friends, this seems all but bound to happen. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220228-the-inevitability-of-the-office-romance https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220228-the-inevitabil...
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
in college? where it's known that a ton of meet people/discover yourself sexually/experiment/hook up, a lot? i'm not sure how realistic that is how does anybody start talking to anybody then? somebody has to make the first move to go from stranger -> acquaintance, no?
letsbehonest1 4y ago
That’s the same perspective as all my college friends who’ve not found a partner to settle down with (~15y out).
ARandomerDude 4y ago
If that's true, then the only way to let a woman know you're interested in her is after she has first told you. But that's a horrible way to make room for different personality types. Some women are assertive. Some are less so. Should the more reserved women just stay single?
- t-writescode 4y ago
  Do the more reserved women want to stay single? Maybe they do! And most people have introvert friends and extrovert friends. You meet safe and good people through friend circles and then they get you to meet the other person.
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    Don't you think it's pretty ignorant to pretend the only type of relationships happening between 18 -> 21 year olds throughout every college in America is exclusively "safe and good people met through friend circles" as opposed to two people just randomly in a class together where the guy typically just says "hey, what are you doing later? want to hang out/study together?"
  - ShredKazoo 4y ago
    I've had multiple conversations with women who are somewhere between disappointed and despondent that guys don't hit on them more. >I mentioned to several of the people I interviewed for this piece that I’d met my husband in an elevator, in 2001. (We worked on different floors of the same institution, and over the months that followed struck up many more conversations—in the elevator, in the break room, on the walk to the subway.) I was fascinated by the extent to which this prompted other women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet someone that way. And yet quite a few of them suggested that if a random guy started talking to them in an elevator, they would be weirded out. “Creeper! Get away from me,” one woman imagined thinking. “Anytime we’re in silence, we look at our phones,” explained her friend, nodding. Another woman fantasized to me about what it would be like to have a man hit on her in a bookstore. (She’d be holding a copy of her favorite book. “What’s that book?” he’d say.) But then she seemed to snap out of her reverie, and changed the subject to Sex and the City reruns and how hopelessly dated they seem. “Miranda meets Steve at a bar,” she said, in a tone suggesting that the scenario might as well be out of a Jane Austen novel, for all the relevance it had to her life. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex-recession/573949/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... I think the solution that leaves everyone happy is: start a conversation with that woman, but if she's not interested, leave her alone. Look at it in utilitarian terms: * If the woman you're talking to isn't interested, your attempt to start a conversation will create a brief unpleasant experience for her. * If she is interested, there's a chance at a great, long-lasting romance which will benefit both you and her. The positive utility from finding your future spouse is much larger than the negative utility from a brief unwanted conversation. So on expectation it often makes sense to start that conversation.

stavros 4y ago

Maybe that's what we should work on instead, along with making hitting on people acceptable for women too. That way, it's not just a male thing, and people can still indicate they want to be left alone.

soulofmischief 4y ago
It's definitely acceptable for women to hit on men, in fact there is currently a double standard in place in many cultures. Two days ago at a party I saw a woman sexually harass multiple men without any repercussions, and she constantly apologized afterwards which somehow made it ok to continue the behavior all night. Yes, that person clearly has unresolved issues to work on but the double standard is there and it's harmful in both directions.
- stavros 4y ago
  "Acceptable" may have been the wrong word, I more meant "normalized", sorry.
  - jimbokun 4y ago
    How would it at all benefit women over the status quo?
    - stavros 4y ago
      They'd be hit on less, because men wouldn't have to always be the ones to make a move.

soulofmischief 4y ago

Well that's the issue. It's not their fault. The idea of dating today has been reduced to hitting on people and jumping right into high commitment situations instead of slowly building a lasting relationship built in solid fundamentals, the kinds of advances which are rarely rejected in practice compared to just hitting on someone as if they are a checkbox to be ticked.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
eh, i guess i get the point now. on a dating app atleast you have consent of some sort (they're both there, both signed up, both made profiles, both interested in a common goal) whether it's "predatory" for a senior in college (21) to prey on a 100-level STEM student (basically an 18 year old/pre-college according to my friend), that's a whole different question from "consent to being hit on" in my opinion

User23 4y ago

Women signal interest or a lack thereof in a thousand ways. Picking up on that is a basic social skill and like all skills some persons are more capable than others.

fastball 4y ago
Keeping track of a thousand subtle signals is a "basic" social skill?
- User23 4y ago
  Yes, “basic” means fundamental, not simple. And for a sexually reproducing species reading the social cues of the opposite sex is indeed of fundamental importance, modulo outright barbarism.
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    so you're saying it's basically evolution that if you don't know how to fundamentally pick up on flirting cues, you'll end up https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=incel https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=incel
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  that's a huge problem with this too. you can say there are two camps, flirting (warranted or unwarranted can be ignored) and "hitting on". i'm sure some can argue it's a subtle vs not so subtle difference you're asking socially awkward + nervous + scared guys to 1. go out of their comfort zone and smoothly create inorganically an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, and 2. sprinkle in something that is considered flirtatious but not too strong that it falls under the category of "hitting on"
- bitmunk 4y ago
  They didn't say subtle, or that you had to track the entirety of the hypothetical 1000.

xupybd 4y ago

No but there are social queues for this. Flirting is exactly that. Friendly small talk to see if the other person is receptive or not. If you're like me and are probably slightly autistic with very little social interaction growing up, then you'll be terrible at that. Perhaps this is the problem. A large number of socially awkward guys are joining these classes irritating all the young women.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago
The comment right below you is "the default should be don't hit on me" (in all caps) which kind of translates to "the default should be don't flirt with me", doesn't it? isn't flirting a form of hitting on somebody? which one of you is right? i have no clue
- xupybd 4y ago
  No flirting doesn't begin with hitting on someone. It's a game two people play. They edge closer to hitting on each other. Each time gauging the response. If the other person is not playing you'll never reach the point where you're hitting on them. Neither party needs to lose face and it can simply be a polite chat. Some people just seem to know how to do this. For others its near impossible. I'm in the others group. When a girl was flirting with me in the past I sent messages to her that I wasn't interested. As I had no idea how to play that game. I didn't even know it was going on. Then when I was interested in a girl I tended to creep her out by being too awkward too direct. Even when I asked my wife out she almost dropped the phone as I shocked her by being too direct. Luckily we'd been friends for years and she knew me well enough to say yes.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]