I hate this though because I am not just trying to say hi, I am literally trying to explain to women why they should listen to me, so if they have headphones in they will never hear the arguments in the first place that I have honed in preparation through conversations with my AI Wives.
It is rude for women to just pretend like they can go about their lives and not center me, I am a man and I am the hero of MY STORY you have to listen to me.
Exactly. It’s like they don’t even realize who the protagonist is here.
Self awarewolf
Does he usually walk up to random people on the street who aren’t wearing headphones to try start conversations? 😬
Judging by replies to that thread… yes, quite a bit. One woman described how she had to wear ear protection after ear surgery and a guy removed that to talk to her from behind. She was in pain for 2 days afterwards.
Edit: my personal experience is I had 2 different guys tap on my shoulder and ask me to remove my earbuds by gesturing. Both times they were trying to pick me up. I was just on the way home from work, exhausted and also heavily married.
Oh my god, that’s awful
What is lightly married?
It’s a thinner batter - think tempura rather than chipshop fish (or corndog if you’re of the USian persuasion).
You guys put corndog batter on fish???
No, it’s not as thick as that, but it’s thicker than tempura batter.
lol, maybe engaged? So like wearing just the engagement ring instead of both rings?
Soo… Just regular engaged?
Idk I’ve known married couples that preferred to live far apart or other married couples who were casual partners but needed marital benefits
H…How can someone come even close to think it is a smart move to stand behind someone, invading personal space (at minimum with their arm), grabbing and taking away ones belongings aka the headphones and then expecting that person will be happy to have a nice chat with you which results in a date?
Some people really are just that stupid I guess.
Cavemen like that only understand a wack on the head, and even then they think the woman is into them.
Because they think they’re hot shit and have an ego the size of Jupiter. In their mind, they’re the catch and someone would have to be a (insert slur) to turn down such a gracious offer from the world’s most attractive “alpha male”.
One woman described how she had to wear ear protection after ear surgery and a guy removed that to talk to her from behind. She was in pain for 2 days afterwards.
Sounds like she suffered consequences while the man who harmed her suffered no consequences.
We should be able to easily call police and sue for damages in such situations.
Someone… touched what some stranger is wearing to remove it… and it wasn’t an emergency???
What the fuck is wrong with people
entitlement. women are objects for men to interact with and men are owed their attention when they want it. you have ear protection? well that interferes with me seeking female attention, so off it goes. that’s the mindset we’re dealing with.
To the gas chambers with them all!
walk up to random people on the street who aren’t wearing headphones to try start conversations?
It’s strange to me that this would be considered out of bounds. “Pickup artists” aside, this really ought to be more normal.
Maybe a Generation and location thing, Gen Z here from Western Europe and i definitly would not dare/think about trying to pick up a person outside of a space thats specificly labled for dating.
For me its kind of a consent thing, outside of specific dating spaces i cant be sure that the other person wants to be botherd with dating.
Yeah 90s born here and the idea of just wandering up to someone while they’re out in the street, shopping or pretty much anywhere that isn’t like a bar (and even then unless they give some sort of indication) and running a line is wild.
My mates older brother in high school would insist that sort of stuff is how you do it. Fuck that. I hate people, mostly sales people or weirdos, bothering me when I clearly have every indication about my demeanour not to talk to me, do it. So why would I? It’s weird.
You should just talk to people to be nice. If it turns into something else, then great! But I hate when somebody starts a conversation with me and they have an agenda: like, they want me to give them money or join their religion or something like that. Just talk to people because it’s a nice thing to do!
And if somebody’s giving social cues that they want to be left alone, then…don’t do that. Because that wouldn’t be nice.
But I didn’t say anything about picking a person up except to explicitly exclude it from what I was talking about. The comment I responded to was specifically about starting a conversation.
They probably misconstrued “pick-up artists aside” as being very specifically about literal “pick-up artists” rather than as a generalized hitting on someone in public thing.
I do agree with them, though, in that it’s very culturally dependent on how okay it is. I remember from a long time ago now one of those “kids today are always glued to their phones” memes where somebody just responded with a photo of a commuter rail car from the 50s where every single person in the photo was reading the newspaper, and I have a similar story from my dad about my grandfather: My grandfather worked in NYC for over 20 years and he commuted by train. During those commutes, he sat next to the same man, twice a day - on the way there and on the way back - for years, and only once in at least a decade did they ever speak to each other. “Are you finished reading that?” Those were the 5 words that man spoke to my grandfather, who handed him the paper he had finished reading, and they never exchanged another word again. I don’t think they ever even looked at each other.
I would also add that it’s a very extroverted thing to do, and not in the sense of social anxiety or something, but in the sense that introverted people burn mental and emotional energy in social interaction, and by trying to engage with a stranger in a random conversation, you might be using up the spoons they have that day. I’ll talk to random people in public as well, but I keep it to one-off statements that people can either leave be or reciprocate with if they want. A joke about the traffic in trying to navigate the grocery store, that sort of thing. I’m very good at talking with people, I learned it from working a service industry job as a teen, to the point where I was basically the public face of a company, but I find it EXHAUSTING to do. I’m an introvert, pure and simple, and social interaction simply takes energy to do. At the end of the day, all I want to do is isolate myself so I can recharge and unwind.
Plus, there’s the whole “women having to handle a man” aspect. Women have to treat men differently and behave differently to protect themselves when interacting with men (ones they don’t know in particular), and so a random stranger trying to start up a conversation is A Situation that they have to analyze. It goes back to the “women would prefer to be in the woods with a bear” thing. Women would rather a random bear try to start a conversation with them in public, or something.
My grandfather worked in NYC for over 20 years and he commuted by train. During those commutes, he sat next to the same man, twice a day - on the way there and on the way back - for years, and only once in at least a decade did they ever speak to each other. “Are you finished reading that?” Those were the 5 words that man spoke to my grandfather, who handed him the paper he had finished reading, and they never exchanged another word again. I don’t think they ever even looked at each other.
Best friend he ever had. They still never talk sometimes.
Probably it is just Americans being Americans.
I wish someone would do that to me in real life. I’d tell them about how a popular coffeeshop in our city is run by a straight up cult and the employees are all members whose wages go into a “shared purse” controlled by the cult.
Because unlike the guy in the OP, I recognize I’m not the main character. I’m the NPC in the tavern who sends the protagonist on a side quest to take down a cult.
But then it turns into a moral lesson when it turns out that cult was actually a cooperative and the person who told you the original rumor a real estate developer that wanted the property
So there was an “article” written about the cult, but it was written by the head of the church. The article itself painted the group in an extremely positive light… The comments, on the other hand, were largely from concerned parents, siblings, and friends who had lost loved ones to the cult and no longer had contact. They’ve been active since 2007, this isn’t a meme.
If they aren’t family, or friends, and they aren’t on some talking forum, they might as well not exist. You have no right or reason to interact with them whatsoever.
Heck, family and friends are optional too…
You have no right or reason to interact with them whatsoever.
I absolutely have the right to talk to anyone I wish. (Assuming we’re not talking about stalking, harassment, etc). As for my reasons, they are my reasons and fuck you if you don’t like them. It’s no wonder nobody has a social life anymore.
You aren’t entitled to other people, and to make them talk or listen to you.
Who says I’m trying to make them do anything?
Story time! This isn’t here to say that dudes have it worse or just as bad or anything. It just made me think of this.
I have a good friend who wears wired earbuds often. He gets in a space where he doesn’t want to talk to anyone but he got to be out for one reason or other. I’ve watched person after person come up to him to talk. He rolls his eyes, takes out an earbud, make a huge show of pausing whatever he’s listening to while holding up the “Wait a second” finger. They’ll say whatever they’re trying to open with and he will nod and give the biggest fake smile. Then put his earbud back in. To continue the conversation they have to tap him again and wait for him to do it all over again. Some do, sometimes repeatedly.
Some people seem to have no concept that others aren’t just waiting for the chance to talk to them.
This whole thread is weird to me because being approached in public by people wanting to talk almost never happens. Not that I’m complaining exactly, it’s confusing and concerning when it does, but it’s hard to imagine it as such a normal thing that it has become a commonplace annoyance.
This seems dependant on location to me. In a region I lived before it would be rare that someone would talk to me in public like at the store, now where I’m at it happens all the time, people seem much more social in general. I used to be sort of confused when it did happen, now I’m used to it and it feels like a nice human moment when it does usually.
I don’t know what it is. I used to get approached semi-regularly, maybe once every few weeks when I was younger. But this dude, for whatever reason, was approached often. I think part of it is the places he was a lot of times. We’d be out at the bar (he would lend music/PA equipment to bands or small bars for a small fee and show up to basically drink for free) and there was one night I watched it happen half a dozen times. Not by the people who were borrowing equipment, but just random people who he didn’t know.
He said it never happened at like the grocery store or whatever, but very often in bars when he’d sit alone, less often in restaurants when he’d sit alone, and occasionally at the park when he’d go sit to read (headphones in). He’s good looking but not extraordinarily so and never looked especially friendly so that wasn’t it. It was both men and women, men more often but women more persistently.
Some folks just have something that makes others want to talk to them I guess. I imagine it’s worse for women for a few reasons (the way certain demographics of dudes are socialized, not knowing how a guy will react when you shut him down, etc). And some folks seem to believe that everyone is just waiting for them to strike up a conversation, even if the person they’re trying to strike it up with is obviously actively avoiding people.
It stopped happening to me. I’m not sure if I aged poorly over the pandemic or if I just look meaner these days. He moved away so I don’t get to watch that particular trainwreck anymore. I’ll have to ask him.
We’d be out at the bar
LOL! What psychopath sits at the bar with earbuds in?
A psychopath that doesn’t want to make a habit of drinking at the house because they know it’ll become a problem but doesn’t want to interact with people because they’re going through shit? Possibly a psychopath that gets to drink for free because of the gear loan? A psychopath who wants to watch his gear and take it home with him rather than leaving it in a public place or with a group of drunk musicians overnight?
Next time you talk to him, suggest that he pick up some of those over the ear noise cancelling headphones. You don’t even have to have them turned on, but the size of them makes taking them off such a visible hassle that it seems to discourage a lot of those kinds of people. And the rest you can ignore and pretend that you couldn’t hear them because you had the noise cancelling on.
I already sent him one message this week!
Seriously though, this whole thing has me curious about the current state of things so I shot him a message asking about it. I’ll pass it along if he still needs the advice.
It happens depending on where you are.
In the East Coast? Mind your business.
In the West Coast:
Someone made conversation with me in the toilet. “Good water flow, yeah?” He said.
As a dude, most people only give me small talk, just to break the ice and explain nobody is a threat. But I can see as a woman, most small talk is a lead up to something else.
I figured out I have to say hi or hello to anyone going into the waiting station, just to let them know I’m not a threat, but ironically, my own voice breaks with fear, because I have to share a space with another human, and I’m on edge the entire time.
No this seems like some made up scenario. Complete bullshit, if you will. But, go off.
As a wise person once said…
If I have both earbuds in, don’t talk to me.
If I have one earbud in, don’t talk to me.
If I have neither in, don’t talk to me.
The guy is not “so close to getting it.” He just appears that way because we don’t have the same bias he has. He’s actually quite far from getting it and he probably won’t even believe the truth when people explain it to him.
If he was close to getting it, he’d have gotten it already.
No haha, I didn’t take that from this at all either.
All you got to do is wave your hands in front of face and ask if they are using aptx HD, AAC, or some other codec. It’s an easy conversation starter.
Is there even a point in continuing to talk if they are not using LDAC?
Maybe not. Let them down easy and go on your way.
Is it? I work in tech and I would have not a single fucking clue…
Waiter! My steak is too juicy and my lobster too buttery!
My wallet’s too small for my fifties and my diamond shoes are too tight!
Meanwhile, the dirty looks I get when I’m on a bike ride and I startle nearly every woman I pass because she couldn’t hear me say “on your left”
Only the women, though?
Guys have to pretend that they weren’t startled because of toxic masculinity 😔
Bingo
Maybe they’re just embarrassed about how much faster than them you are?
First read I thought he meant that a lady might be blocking the path in the mall. Which happens too many times.
nathitheoblivousasshole
I disagree that’s the point. The point is generally to distract oneself or to keep focus. Neither of these two reasons preclude the willingness to stumble into s.o. actually worthwhile.
Whether earphones are supposed to serve as a sign to keep away depends on the culture and gender. In the States, for instance, people are way more often stopped by s.b. on the street than in Europe. The idea that s.b. would try to sell s.th. or preach to you on your path almost every day is very foreign to most Europeans.
Who’s sb?
I think I have cracked their completely unnecessary code
s.o. Someone s.b. Somebody s.th. Something
I hate it. I hate all of it.
Same here, man.
My entire day is ruined.
Oh, I thought s.o was Significant Other, i.e. a partner, and my reaction was “Yeah, the chances of that happening are practically zero”.
Someone who tried to sell you s.th
Honestly no idea
I don’t know but my brain wants it to be “some bastard”
Starbuck wouldn’t try to sell swamp thing!
Humble huh
I love the energy of this post. People are finally learning to live on their own.
Textbook rage bait.
