3 ms·

The fact is, by and large, guys are creepy. Attractive females are bombarded with guys approaching them in all sorts of ways, constantly. I'm sure you've heard

The fact is, by and large, guys are creepy. Attractive females are bombarded with guys approaching them in all sorts of ways, constantly. I'm sure you've heard of the kind of garbage that fills OkCupid inboxes. The internet is terrible in that regard because it is so much more accessible (i.e. you don't have to approach them face to face). I completely understand why they default to putting the guardrails up. Yeah it makes things that much more difficult for The Good Guys, but how are they supposed to know from a Facebook friend request?

dvt 13y ago
I guess I should've prefaced my anecdote: I wasn't interested in the girl in any romantic way. We're close friends now and I'm still not interested in her romantically. It was just a random example (I have some guy examples too). I just mentioned that I'm a pretty good looking guy in the sense that I don't have an unkempt look (i.e. unshaved, unwashed, etc.) that would evoke creepiness. I don't think this is a battle of the sexes kind of deal even though you're completely correct and I don't deny anything you said.
angersock 13y ago
No idea why you're being downvoted--though I would like to amend your statement from "guys are creepy" to "guys are easily perceived as creepy". I cannot help but notice that it seems like there may be a trend in faster binning of folks into creepy/not creepy among my generation; I believe this also may be because social skills are not that great in this magical interconnected age. People are so used to being able to pull up relevant data about others, I theorize, that being faced with a new person without that data or connection makes the newcomer more alien.
- resu_nimda 13y ago
  You're right, I do tend to be a bit harsh in that regard (maybe that's why I was downvoted), but I'm also trying to cover all of the general public, not just the considerate HN reader. And creepy is a strong word. It's just that it's tiring, having to fend off guys that may not be creepy but they're just not interested in. We really don't have any reference for what that's like (unless you're a celebrity, I suppose). But I've heard enough about it to have developed a strong bias against unsolicited/unwanted behavior.
  - angersock 13y ago
    It's also really interesting, right? Consider that, once upon a time, to successfully creep on somebody you actually had to show up in person, or send mail, or something like this. That took time, and resources. Now, I have to spend ~30 seconds slinging out a fast message to attempt and reconnect, and if I hear no response, I may do the same thing in a few hours--note that my time spent is less than two minutes/day, which subjectively seems perfectly reasonable. To the receiving party, if communication isn't desired, this seems like a huge deal. Moreover, limiting only to a certain class of stereotypical male (the hacker), it's very easy to get in a situation where you mistake lack of communication for a channel problem instead of an interested problem, and so you resend over and over--especially if you think that hey, maybe the message got lost or something. Compound this now with the way people leak information online all the time, and the way that these companies (in order to foster connectedness/advertising) practically rub information and personal data in our faces. A message out of the blue (because it's so easy to send) about a person's shared interest in a common album (because my social network provider told me about it) is immediately tagged as creepy, even though the data and message were trivially put into motion. (I say this having made and sometimes still making these mistakes.) I think that a new sort of manners need to evolve that actually recognize just how easy it is to communicate nowadays. People need thicker skin, and they probably need much more explicit flow control ("Not interested, fuck off." instead of silence). On the other side, people need to appreciate when they might be making others uncomfortable by spamming too much or doing too much cyber-sleuthing (which is, again, something that once took real dedication; "I remember when being a stalker used to mean something" lol).
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  > I would like to amend your statement from "guys are creepy" to "guys are easily perceived as creepy". Well, both are true of course -- there are actually large numbers of guys whom I think it's fair to term "creepy," and there are many guys who are not really creepy, but because of the former group, they don't get the benefit of the doubt. I try not to be creepy, but inevitability there are circumstance where something I do, even if well-meant, ends up looking kinda creepy, and I'm only too aware of it. Oh well, at least I try... TT

dvt 13y ago

I guess I should've prefaced my anecdote: I wasn't interested in the girl in any romantic way. We're close friends now and I'm still not interested in her romantically. It was just a random example (I have some guy examples too). I just mentioned that I'm a pretty good looking guy in the sense that I don't have an unkempt look (i.e. unshaved, unwashed, etc.) that would evoke creepiness. I don't think this is a battle of the sexes kind of deal even though you're completely correct and I don't deny anything you said.

angersock 13y ago

No idea why you're being downvoted--though I would like to amend your statement from "guys are creepy" to "guys are easily perceived as creepy". I cannot help but notice that it seems like there may be a trend in faster binning of folks into creepy/not creepy among my generation; I believe this also may be because social skills are not that great in this magical interconnected age. People are so used to being able to pull up relevant data about others, I theorize, that being faced with a new person without that data or connection makes the newcomer more alien.

resu_nimda 13y ago
You're right, I do tend to be a bit harsh in that regard (maybe that's why I was downvoted), but I'm also trying to cover all of the general public, not just the considerate HN reader. And creepy is a strong word. It's just that it's tiring, having to fend off guys that may not be creepy but they're just not interested in. We really don't have any reference for what that's like (unless you're a celebrity, I suppose). But I've heard enough about it to have developed a strong bias against unsolicited/unwanted behavior.
- angersock 13y ago
  It's also really interesting, right? Consider that, once upon a time, to successfully creep on somebody you actually had to show up in person, or send mail, or something like this. That took time, and resources. Now, I have to spend ~30 seconds slinging out a fast message to attempt and reconnect, and if I hear no response, I may do the same thing in a few hours--note that my time spent is less than two minutes/day, which subjectively seems perfectly reasonable. To the receiving party, if communication isn't desired, this seems like a huge deal. Moreover, limiting only to a certain class of stereotypical male (the hacker), it's very easy to get in a situation where you mistake lack of communication for a channel problem instead of an interested problem, and so you resend over and over--especially if you think that hey, maybe the message got lost or something. Compound this now with the way people leak information online all the time, and the way that these companies (in order to foster connectedness/advertising) practically rub information and personal data in our faces. A message out of the blue (because it's so easy to send) about a person's shared interest in a common album (because my social network provider told me about it) is immediately tagged as creepy, even though the data and message were trivially put into motion. (I say this having made and sometimes still making these mistakes.) I think that a new sort of manners need to evolve that actually recognize just how easy it is to communicate nowadays. People need thicker skin, and they probably need much more explicit flow control ("Not interested, fuck off." instead of silence). On the other side, people need to appreciate when they might be making others uncomfortable by spamming too much or doing too much cyber-sleuthing (which is, again, something that once took real dedication; "I remember when being a stalker used to mean something" lol).
snogglethorpe 13y ago
> I would like to amend your statement from "guys are creepy" to "guys are easily perceived as creepy". Well, both are true of course -- there are actually large numbers of guys whom I think it's fair to term "creepy," and there are many guys who are not really creepy, but because of the former group, they don't get the benefit of the doubt. I try not to be creepy, but inevitability there are circumstance where something I do, even if well-meant, ends up looking kinda creepy, and I'm only too aware of it. Oh well, at least I try... TT