OK eat crayons, I admitted it was CREEPY. But, I’m jiust explaining my thought process.
Again, I admit I made a mistake. It won’t happen again.
You’re still not understanding the situation from either the point of view of the organizer or the (hypothetical) “female”. From the organizer’s standpoint, someone he doesn’t know, has never met, and has yet to attend once of his activities has asked for personal information about a member of his group. For all he knows, you could be the vindictive ex-boyfriend of this woman, or an obsessive stalker, or worse yet, an Amway distributer. From the woman’s position, someone she doesn’t know has information on her that could be used in nefarious ways. (With a name and general geographical location I can readily obtain someone’s address, phone number, public legal history, general information about finances, et cetera all from public records.)
Let me provide an anecdote of a situation I experienced at a Meetup group, and why I’m surprised any unattached women show up at these groups at all. For a while I belonged to one local group that was your basic social gathering group, i.e. happy hour, dinner & movie, Dodger games, poker nights, et cetera. It was a good sized group of about three hundred members, and any particular gathering would be between a half a dozen to roughly thirty people. It had been established for a couple of years, and the organizer had several assistants to help with planning or lead activities when he wasn’t available. In other words, precisely what the intent of a Meetup group is supposed to be, and a particularly well-run example of the genre. One Sunday afternoon we had a meetup at a local upscale pool hall that was pretty well attended (around twenty people), with a few older women and a spectrum of guys from mid-twenties to fifties. Everybody was having a pretty good time and the organizer was running around introducing people to each other and making sure people felt involved.
About half an hour after I arrived, a couple of younger, reasonably attractive women stopped in “just to check out the group” (which the organizer had explicitly invited people to do) and started joining in. As I was finishing up a pool game, I invited them to play, and they split to partner with me and the guy I was playing with, and we were all having fun and some superficial, lightly teasing conversation. And then…the wolves started circling. A guy took the cue out of the hand of the woman on the other team “to show you how to make this show.” Two guys basically walled me and started double teaming on the girl was was partnered with, asking her all kinds of intrusive questions. There was a lot of generally pubescent jostling to get the attention of these women. Is it any surprise that within five minutes they made an excuse about needing to meet up with some friends, but they “might drop back by later” (which of course they did not)?
This is the kind of thing any even moderately attractive woman has to put up with on a regular basis in social situations, and what most are hoping to avoid at organized events like this. I’m not Mr. Charm and Social Graces, and yet I can certainly understand how these women felt intimidated and why they wouldn’t want to come back. They just wanted to come to the gathering, have a good time, and maybe meet some cool people, one or more of whom might turn out to be worth seeing in a less casual situation. Instead, they found themselves in the water with the sharks swarming and having to spend their energies fending them off rather than just hanging out and shooting some pool. I made an offhand mention of this to the organizer a few minutes later as we were setting up the table for another game, and he responded something like, “Yeah, this happens every time. It’s even hard for me to get my girlfriend to come to these sometimes unless she knows there are going to be a lot of women.”
Now you probably didn’t envision this kind of scenario when you asked for the name of the “female” in question, but I guarantee the organizer has seen situations similar to that above, and has had interesting and worthwhile female members drop out of the group because of it, hence his prickliness about your question, and even moreso of your persistence. The Meetup.com organizer rules also caution against handing out personal information about members without explicit permission, and his behavior was in accordance with those instructions. He was in the right, ethically and per the rules of the organization.
Now, if you’d showed up at a few events–regardless whether the woman was there or not–interacted with the organizer and other members of the group in a friendly and chill manner, volunteered to help with organizing future events or provided assistance to other less capable hikers, and generally shown yourself to be a mensch, the organizer would likely have shown you some consideration; if not actually given you her name or contact info, he probably at least would have arranged to introduce you to her, and perhaps said a few favorable words about your character. This is, after all, one of the prime reasons for social networking; to put together people who have similar interests and tastes. For that matter, if you’d done the above and the women in question had been at the hikes, and had seen that you were an open and friendly guy that as approachable and didn’t have some kind of secretive obsession over her, she very likely would have volunteered all of the information you could hope to get from the organizer and more as part of casual conversation. That is what the people criticizing your actions in this scenario are talking about by “normal getting to know you” behavior.
I recommend that you read Gavin DeBecker’s The Gift of Fear to understand just what it is like to be a “female” in an anonymous social situation, and why the organizer felt compelled to criticize you for attempting to leap forward without making the basic attempts to ease into the group. What you did, while not perhaps intended to be creepy, pretty much hits every alarm button. You also need to read something like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People to better understand how to get what you want from people, i.e. by looking at the situation from their point of view and giving them what they need in fair trade. In this case, the organizer needed to know that you weren’t some random creeper, and if you’d made the effort to joint the group first and show your interest in the activity and the members as a whole, he would have been a lot more sympathetic to and comfortable with your particular interest in this particular member.
Stranger
I hate to feed your paranoia, but the fact is that most guys would, given the incentive and opportunity, do precisely this (as do many women). There is nothing particularly creepy about wanting to engineer a seemingly spontaneous meeting with someone to whom you are attracted in hopes that it will lead to conversation, and it is a lot more effective than waiting for serendipity to strike. What is creepy is wanting to show up, wow the lass in question with a prescient knowledge of her particulars, and hope that all of this somehow results in a rapid escalation in the proximity of normally clothed body parts, which is the impression one gets from the o.p. That is the relationship version of the three step profit joke.
Strangert
“wow the lass in question with a prescient knowledge of her particulars”
No. This was never my intention. I only wanted to MEET her. If after meeting her it didn’t seem like we were compatible, or if she expressed in ANY WAY that my presence was not wanted, I would have bowed out and gone on to greener pastures.
I never asked for any other information about this woman. Again, I just wanted to meet her.
I think the most unfortunate thing you did was to ask a complete stranger to help you hookup with the girl.
If you have a friend who has a cute friend, you can ask them to tell you the girl’s name and maybe see if they’ll help you hook up. That’s not creepy.
And at least in the meet up hiking groups that I am familiar with, this is exactly what they don’t want the groups to be used for. They are for hiking, first and foremost. Anything beyond that is fine, but you should be going into it with hiking in mind, not hitting on women that you saw a picture of.
Telemark, yes you are right, I like hiking too. I love nature and the great outdoors. But a good part of hiking is also the social aspect of it. Right? Is this not a social situation? I’m not “hitting on women” during these hikes. I’m making friends, sharing, being social. If a “relationship” doesn’t happen, that’s fine. It’s not that I would be solely talking to this person the whole hike. I’d try to meet everyone in the group.
Yeah but this is exactly what you were told:
She didn’t want to meet you and wants nothing to do with you. She’s afraid of you. She didn’t have to meet you to figure this out, what you did creeped her out, as soon as she found out about it, and you hand a 0% chance of her ever agreeing to be within 500 feet of you because of your approach.
I’m just curious; how were you planning to assess compatibility? I guarantee that if you walked up to her and said, “I saw your picture on the Meetup site and had to meet you,” she would almost certainly express in some fashion that your presence wasn’t wanted.
Please don’t take this in an insulting or pejorative manner, but you seem to have a significant disconnect about how relationships are formed on any level. It is one thing to be taken with the visage of a young lady and want to meet her; it is another to go to a social gathering with the specific and sole intent of meeting this woman and checking to see if she is compatible with your expectations. In the words of Don Draper, “You haven’t thought this through.” What happens if you show up for the hike, meet the woman, find out that you’re not compatible or that she deemed your presence unwanted, and then be stuck on a hike with her (and her with you) for several hours. That’s pretty much a monumentally awkward situation, wouldn’t you agree?
It also completely fails to account for her intentions at the activity, which may very well be to show up, go hiking, and not get hit upon by random guys. It sounds like what you really want is speed-dating, which matches your intentions exactly; meet up, assess compatibility, trade info, and go from there. The “creepyness” of this situation is that you are treating a social activity group–in which people meet and bond over an activity–as your own personal dating connect, which is exactly the sort of thing that drives women away from these activities.
You really need to sit down and have a good think about why the organizer and woman reacted the way they do, and why most of the feedback you are getting here reinforces their responses as being reasonable and proportionate.
Stranger
Then why do you keep assigning blame to the organiser for smacking you down?
I 100 percent agree. If the person truly is as crazy as you think, than all you do by antagonizing him is encourage him to be worse to you. And that’s all the guy was doing–antagonizing the OP.
I also think that many people in the thread did the same thing, making the OP defensive. Now he’s less likely to accept our ascertainment of the situation.
if you walked up to her and said, “I saw your picture on the Meetup site and had to meet you,”
Stranger, NO. I would never share that. Again, I would go on the hike, strike up a conversation, and see where it goes from there.
“you seem to have a significant disconnect about how relationships are formed on any level”
Stranger, that’s a real broad statement. I really don’t think you know me well enough to make that judgement. In this case, I made a mistake. I wanted to meet a woman that was attractive and went about it the wrong way. You live and learn.
You seem to be very knowledgeable Stranger, but making broad pronouncements about people that you don’t really know nor understand is just problematic. I really hope you try to be less impulsive with your judgementality in the future, as you may discourage or dishearten a youngster growing up with the best of intentions, but just making mistakes.
Some people, and particularly women, want to hike in a group not primarily because it is social but because it provides a sense of security and safety, both from natural threats and two-legged predators. What you did and how you did it stuck a pitchfork right through the hay bale of warm protectiveness.
Really? Then why were you concerned about being on a hike with this particular girl right off? Don’t you think it would be better to show up, establish your credibility as both a participant and a person with the group, and let your reputation speak for itself? Wouldn’t it be far less awkward and seemingly predator to have an established member of the group introduce you to Girl.Cute as “Hey, this is deanc2000; he joined us a couple of hikes ago while you were gone to assist starving children in Uruguay, and he’s a really cool guy who helped me out one day when I ran out of water, got a blister on my foot, and was attacked by a six hundred pound mountain lion. He’s just a stellar chap and you should really get to know him 'cause he’s unattached and really handy with a paperclip, a roll of electrician’s tape, and a Swiss Army Knife.”
If you show up to a Meetup group and make a beeline for the most attractive girl there, unless you are George Clooney you are going to get lumped into the bin labeled “Losers, Jerks, & Creeps.” If you show up, show that you are interested and competent (or at least have enthusiasm and a good sense of humor about your deficiencies) you’re going to stand a lot better chance of actually getting to know the woman in question.
Stranger
I agree that it is a broad and unqualified statement, and all that I know about you is what you’ve presented of your behavior here, and from only your perspective. I may be completely wrong about your behavior and how you come off to others. However, your continued lack of comprehension of not just that what you did was inappropriate, but the ways in which it was inappropriate, i.e. your insistence that “I only wanted to MEET her,” without understanding how that would seem from her point of view tends to point to some limitations in applied empathy or understanding of social memes in this context.
Again, please don’t take this criticism in a pejorative context. If I seem particularly pointed in my comments, it is because I done many similar things and have learned trial-by-fire as to just how badly they don’t work and are often counterproductive. I would spare you future repetition of this kind of situation if I could. I sympathize with your goal and realize that your intentions are benign, but the way you are going about it is far too direct and goal-oriented for this type of activity, and that is what comes off as “creepy”, i.e. not in conformance with how people form relationships and become comfortable with one another.
Stranger
“your continued lack of comprehension of not just that what you did was inappropriate, but the ways in which it was inappropriate, i.e. your insistence that “I only wanted to MEET her,” without understanding how that would seem from her point of view tends to point to some limitations in applied empathy or understanding of social memes in this context.”
Stranger, What makes you think I did not comprehend that my actions were inappropriate? What makes you think that I don’t understand that from her point of view, my actions were creepy?
Again, you make these assumptions that are wrong, and arrive at a SWEEPING generalization. Are you actually a mental health professional? I ask because, you seem to like to diagnose someone, but from very limited information, which is PROBLEMATIC.
Of course you realize deanc2000 that your actions could bring an end to the world as we know it. You are the only poster here that has ever committed a social faux pas and for the duration of this thread you must listen to the infallible Dopers harangue you about your mistake.
Alternatively you could just decide, “won’t do that again” and move on, never replying to this thread again.
Because smacking someone down is jerkish behavior. It can be justified in certain situations, but this was not one of them.
The whole idea is based on the real life version of slapping someone for doing something you don’t like. It’s purpose is not to correct, but to cause pain.
Some people on this board seem to only be able to see in black and white. No, both people were wrong in this situation. The thing is, it’s the OP that is asking for advice, so all we can do is tell him how to prevent this stuff in the future. It would be pointless to try to tell the group leader what to do.
[QUOTE=deanc2000]
Telemark, yes you are right, I like hiking too. I love nature and the great outdoors. But a good part of hiking is also the social aspect of it. Right? Is this not a social situation? I’m not “hitting on women” during these hikes. I’m making friends, sharing, being social. If a “relationship” doesn’t happen, that’s fine. It’s not that I would be solely talking to this person the whole hike. I’d try to meet everyone in the group.
[/QUOTE]
They weren’t to know that.
I work in Marketing. People hate my type, partly because we have a principle that says “it’s not about the truth, it’s about the perception of the truth”. While this has many negatives with regard to commerce, it does have positives with regard to human interaction. Namely, it doesn’t matter what the hell you are thinking when you act, what matters is how you act, and how your actions are perceived.
It’s like the friend-of-a-friend who gets introduced “he’s a bit difficult at first, but he’s really OK when you get to know him”. Which is akin to saying “he’s a dick but you’ll get used to it”. Nobody’s inner self actually says “I’m going to be an asshole” (except perhaps Denis Leary) - but some people do act like assholes - which makes them, to other people, assholes. To most people who don’t know you intimately, you are how you act.
All of this is a long-winded way of asking - why keep holding a grudge against the organiser? By every account, including yours, your actions crossed into the realm of creepy. Which makes you, just for that one interaction, a creep. And he reacted as one should towards a creep, and particularly to protect one of his members from someone he perceives as a creep or possible stalker.
That statement itself sounds a bit creepy too…
Anyway, regardless, I’m finding this thread very entertaining, so do carry on.
Now to actually address the OP:
There are two things that made what you did creepy:
- You tried to get personal information from someone indirectly.
- You did this while not providing them any way to get to know you first.
This makes it look like you have something to hide. It doesn’t matter that what you asked for was innocuous, because being creeped out has nothing to do with logic.
I do agree that the method of response was jerkish, but, honestly, most people in the world are jerks. For some reason, creepiness is considered worse than jerkishness, even though the latter is a lot more hurtful.
Creepiness in strangers is frequently associated with danger. But honestly, I’m not seeing a significant difference between creepy and jerk in the OP’s behavior when I look at it from the organizer’s perspective. The only information he had about deanc2000 was that he joined the group that day and sent an e-mail requesting the name of a particular woman he had seen in photographs. There was absolutely no existing relationship of any kind. Does this make deanc2000’s request creepy or jerkish?
How would you react to a random stranger asking for the name of your mother/sister/girlfriend/wife/favorite female cousin after viewing her picture on your facebook account?
As the organizer of this event, how would you have responded to the OP’s request for the woman’s name?