Yes, he did. This wasn’t in the OP, but added later on. He started talking to someone when she had just started her routine, she left for another machine or station, and he followed her, still talking.
I read the previous thread. Weedy made clear several times that he did not follow her. He approached her, and when she made her rebuff clear by moving away, he did not continue.
Yes. Obviously if nothing wrong was occurring, this wont be a concern. Its a risk, not a certainty of a social proof effect occurring.
In my view it is not particularly problematic to wonder if an 30 year old guy talking to a woman possibly as young as 15, bumping them, and following after them to keep engaging them in conversation might be making a nuisance of himself or worse. It could all be fine, but in my view its possible that it isnt.
And I and others keep saying ‘possibly’, and it keeps getting turned into ‘definitely’. I cant quite figure out why this is so, but it seems to be why no further resolution is possible.
The effects I mentioned have been well supported by research and are considered robust in a variety of situations. Inaccuracies about Genovese means its no longer a good exemplar (and arguably never was due to the tendency for people to think the effect only applies to such extreme scenarios), but in my view it doesn’t invalidate the concepts.
Otara
If the things you are saying were what the OP said, the situation would be more uncertain, and would contain more indicators of concern. It wasn’t, so it appears that bias (a well-developed spidey sense for threatening men) is leading many people reading the scenario to add in elements or link disparate elements together.
The guy never followed anyone. I will repeat that with emphasis. The guy never followed anyone!
He approached someone, she moved away, and he did not follow her. Furthermore, it was never said that he shoulder bumped her in particular. It was also never said that she was 15.
The shoulder bumping thing was certainly weird, but weaving it in as an indicator of threat specifically to women is an entirely disingenuous misrepresentation of the situation. The description of his shoulder bumping sounded like it was akin to going around high fiving random people. It was described as playful and friendly and included men and women alike.
If the things you are saying were what the OP said, the situation would be more uncertain, and would contain more indicators of concern. It wasn’t, so it appears that bias (a well-developed spidey sense for threatening men) is leading many people reading the scenario to add in elements or link disparate elements together.
The guy never followed anyone. I will repeat that with emphasis. The guy never followed anyone!
He approached someone, she moved away, and he did not follow her. Furthermore, it was never said that he shoulder bumped her in particular. It was also never said that she was 15.
The shoulder bumping thing was certainly weird, but weaving it in as an indicator of threat specifically to women is an entirely disingenuous misrepresentation of the situation. The description of his shoulder bumping sounded like it was akin to going around high fiving random people. It was described as playful and friendly and included men and women alike.
The age range for the women described was 15-20y, hence ‘possibly’ 15. ‘Following’ was used to describe his actions, and is in your own quote. The word ‘friendly’ was qualified, with the women involved being described as not being sure how to react. There was a notable difference in the age of the men and women he was interacting with.
If you think Im being ‘entirely disingenuous’, theres obviously little point in continuing. I think theres more room for differences in judgment in the scenario than you do, at the end of the day we’ll have to disagree I guess.
Otara
:dubious:
Exactly. When there’s such wide room for differences in judgment, and the downside risk is that there’s a guy annoying other people in a gym during their workouts, then mind your own fucking business.
It’s this kind of weasel-like misrepresentation that makes it so unpleasant to interact with some people on a discussion board. Hint: when you have to excise a lot of text around the thing you’re ripping out of context, you’re probably not representing the quote very accurately.
Please re-construct your quote of the source material, putting in bold the text that highlights the point at which this guy persisted in following someone around after that person made clear they did not wish to interact with him.
If a guy is annoying people during their workouts, the downside is that he might very well be driving away customers. Especially if he’s following them from one station to the next.
People don’t have the right to try to force their company on other people. It’s one thing to try to initiate a conversation. It’s quite another thing to follow someone from one station to the next.
Please cite any evidence that he followed her subsequent to her giving some indication that she did not want him to do so.
This is the problem with spidey senses. Some people typically respond more than other people to fears and fantasies, and to imagine elements of the environment or a situation that are simply not present.
Let me make clear that I am discussing the specific situation as described in the original thread.
First, in other situations, where the potential risk is for serious harm, one should absolutely attend to any instinctual or intuitive sense that they have that something is off. One should of course continue to recognize the inherent fallibility of those intuitions, but in terms of weighing false positives versus false negatives, the severity of the potential outcome justifies racking up a whole bunch of false positives.
Secondly, if the people who were shoulder bumped or who were talked to when they don’t want to be talked to decide that they don’t want to deal with that kind of behavior, they are certainly well within their rights to make comment to the management. However, they are in a much better position to report on the matter without having to derive a substantial portion of the information from intuition. They will know if they are 15 or 25, if they said “buzz off” or “hey, how are you doing” or if the shoulder bumping was a funny reference to an inside joke, a mild annoyance, or an offensive intrusion.
I was raised by parents born and bred in New England. In public amongst people I don’t know, anything greater than “Good morning” or “Do you have the time?” is an abnormal intrusion. Yet I know that social convention differs greatly across contexts. Thus, when my sister-in-law from California gave us all hugs upon first meeting us, it was way outside our comfort zone. Nobody thought of charging her with unwanted intrusive touching, even though it was.
When the risk is that other people might be annoyed, then let them report being annoyed of their own free will. Extending the discussion of the original circumstances, based on the information provided to us, to a situation of sexual predation is simply insinuating one’s own personal issues into the matter.
When someone gets into a gym station, starts working out, and a second person comes up and starts talking to the first person, and the first person then leaves that gym station and goes somewhere else, and the second person follows the first person…I’d say that’s a pretty clear indication that the first person was trying to get away from the second person. How else would you interpret it?
And if the second person demonstrates a habit of ignoring other people’s boundaries, then I’d say that the second person is either socially clueless or is being deliberately offensive.
I’d also say that notifying a member of the gym staff is probably the BEST thing for this second person. The gym staff can observe him, and if they see that he is, indeed, bothering other people, they can take him aside and drop a word in his ear…“Hey buddy, you probably don’t mean to be rude, but that shoulder bump thing? That’s not a normally accepted way of interacting with other people. And if you start talking to someone, and she leaves her station to go on to another station, that means that she doesn’t want to talk to you. So don’t follow her.”
This whole situation is because the guy in question won’t mind his own business, but insists on touching people inappropriately, and talking to people when they’ve indicated that they aren’t interested in a conversation with him.
Please, please, please stop right there! Please cite for me anything from Weedy that says that this happened. I’ve asked you several times to quote where it is that you are getting this, because it is just not consistent with what Weedy wrote. I’ve quoted the portions from the thread that are relevant, but you seem to be ignoring them.
Please cite or retract this characterization. Otherwise, it’s starting to look like lying.
It’s in the posts you quote! The words “he followed her”, in that order, are in there! You quoted them yourself! Do you even read the things you are copying and pasting?
Gah, this thread has been done to death but Lynn said she had started working out – that’s not true. He followed her to her the machine, then she started working out, then she switched machines and he left her alone. Without knowing why she switched machines we don’t really know what was going on (and it certainly sounds like she did it to get away from him but we don’t know). The key point is that he left it at that, either he took the hint or their conversation was finished.
It’s all speculation on someone else’s account of what they thought someone else was feeling/doing. Arguing the point in the original OP is kinda pointless at this stage. If we’re going to do it I’d like to know how big the original gym is – how many steps did he take to follow her to the first machine – 'cos the difference between two steps and twenty changes the colour of this situation.
Some of the rest of the thread has been fairly enlightening, but – as always – I doubt many minds have been changed.
SD
I’m starting to think I’m the only one.
He talked to her. She replied. He followed her to the machine. She moved away.
He did not follow her after that.
Anyone who claims that he did so subsequent to this either will have proof to that effect or will be a lying sack of shit.
Sure, after he followed her, he stopped following her. Agreed.
After it became clear she didn’t want to be followed, he stopped following her. Agreed. The problem with that is what, exactly?
You are being incredibly disingenuous in this thread, you know damn well what happened but seem to want to misrepresent it because you have chosen a side and want to stick with it.
It’s making you look like an arsehole.