Stop right there. Social doesn’t necessarily mean meat market. What you were doing pretty much screams “trying to pick up attractive women without knowing anything about them”. This is hitting on women. It’s pretty hard to read it otherwise based on what you’ve told us or, more importantly, what you told the meet up organizer. All he sees is a stranger asking questions about a woman in his group for the seeming purpose of hitting on her. In many cases, that’s exactly what these groups are designed to avoid.
Then meet everyone in the group, go on some hikes and see what develops. Hiking groups have had a bad record of men going on trips solely to pick up women, in an isolated, dependent, and frankly scary way. Hiking isn’t like meeting in coffee house for a bite to eat. You are stuck on the trail for hours with someone that you can’t easily get away from.
In some contexts what you did wouldn’t be bad. In this context it sets off lots of warning flags. You may not have known before, but you know now. Go forth and sin no more.
Good lord, look at all the pages here and people saying “well don’t do that” instead of answers. I tried to give real suggestions. Here is another observation: Before you feel too bad about yourself and how mean this guy got, think about WHY she was not on the meetup list in the first place. Didn’t this authority guy make that list? THINK WHY!!
Now he is just so mad you wanted just her name? Did it occur to you she was not there on purpose because the leader was either involved with her himself or planned to be? In fact if he did even tell her anything I am sure he laid it on thick how he protected her from this serial killer to get even more points with her. Please do assume this was the real reason for his actions and suddenly it all makes sense. She wasn’t left off that list by accident.
Please ignore all these folks saying no one joins groups to meet people, almost ALL do join for that reason among others, I have myself and I have heard others talk and say the same. Your mistake was asking some guy on an ego trip that he is some guardian angel, and not just waiting and going on hikes and asking some regular folks later or running into her there.
Yes the others here are right you asked too soon and all that, but they are way off base saying no one joins hiking groups to meet like people with the thought of dating, they do often. Join other groups and later you may well meet her or someone else you will like and don’t feel bad because some authority nut was rude, they love acting like that.
My example was not a good one. I’m not paranoid, or particularly overly-cautious even. Of course people engineer seemingly random meetings, my point was that what can make the difference between “creepy” and “not creepy” is just a single intermediary step in social context.
For example, your co-worker, Mr. Nice Enough sends you an email: “Hi, Stranger ON A Train. I saw your family portrait, and I find your sister quite pretty. May I ask you for her email address?” You’ve met Nice Enough, even though you don’t know him very well, and he’s also asking you if it’s okay, and provides an opportunity for you to ask for your sister’s permission.
Compared to: you get an email from an address you have never seen before. “Hi, I’m Mr. Blank. I saw this pic on your corporate website. Do you know the girl third from left in the bottom row? I’m trying to find her email address.”
Basically, it’s BitT’s two points: a total stranger asking for personal information for someone he’s never met.
I do agree that the Meetup guy was a bit overzealous. All that was needed was a simple “I’m sorry, we don’t give out personal information about our members without permission.” But all the OP had to do was go on a few hikes, actually participated in the group’s outings as they are intended, to let people get to know him first.
Not one word of this is justified by what we know about the situation and none of it is necessary to explain the organizer’s actions. I would have done approximately the same thing in that situation with regard to any member if the group.
That’s not what people are saying. They’re saying that you don’t meet women by choosing thrir pictures from a lineup and thrn asking strangers to identify them.
This is exceedingly bad advice. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, but it pretty much goes against common experience with hiking meet up groups. I can safely say that this is extremely unlikely to have any basis in reality.
acs, so it is terrible to pick someone from a picture lineup and try to get a date that way huh? Are you aware there are thousands of internet dating sites that all do JUST that? After many many people use those and have for years, why would it seem so odd to pick a picture out of any group and try to meet them?
It is normal now, yes before computers it was not, but it is now. I will shock you that such can happen on Facebook and Myspace as well too. Did you know there are also singles dances and such and people select partners they do not know based on looks as well, and that has been true even before computer pictures.
The guy just wrote to the wrong person and did it too fast, that is all. There is nothing wrong with his idea at all.
Can you really not tell the difference between people putting their photos online for the purposes of soliciting a mate versus being in a group photo advertising a social group?
The groups are based on interests and activities (Meetup’s slogan is “Do something • Learn something • Share something • Change something”). “Singles” is one category of meetup, but not the only or predominant category. I would say romantic status figures in only a tiny fraction of meetups, at least in my area.
You can look at it here and see what its all about:
Because a hiking meetup group is not a dating site. If someone wants to be contacted solely for dates, they sign up on a dating site and they make their contact information and other personal information available to strangers voluntarily. A hiking meetup group is not the same thing. Yes, people might be willing to meet and date people, but you can’t assume it.
Facebook allows you to specify yourself if you are willing to meet people for dating and you yourself get to put out how much information is available to strangers. Trying to find a way to work around that using strangers would still be creepy.
Again, you are ignoring the social context. People go to singles bars and singles dances as a signal that they are available for dates as their primary purpose. This is not true of just any kind of social group.
There are meetup groups with singles things as their chosen theme, but it’s not a general rule. In my meetup group, there are almost no singles and as far as I know no one has dated within the group.
See you are looking at this from the girls point of view and I am looking at it from a guy seeing the picture point of view. Let me give a real good example, rock star girl puts out a wonderful album picture on her CD. She is doing that to sell records and have her music heard. Now guys looking at it also want to date her and many will write or try to be where she goes hoping to see her. Are they doing that too just to promote her music sales? Of course not, they dream of dating.
Look at Britney, she has actually dated some real rough and tumble guys from out of nowhere so of course more would try. It is silly to think just because a picture is somewhere to promote hiking no other thoughts are allowed by the viewers!!! Come on? Have you never looked at a movie poster and wanted to be with that person, well it isn’t allowed, it is only there to promote the movie! Hah, guys will NEVER think like that!!
Well sending mail and following stars around sure is a public action and sometimes it has in fact resulted in dates. What we have here is just a much smaller group with one girl this poor guy wanted to meet, actually just get a name at that point, and he is being needlessly battered for that. There are tons of people doing that same research to people in groups, singers, actresses, models, even smaller groups like waitresses, stewardesses, secretaries and right on down to hiking groups, see? Nothing bad about it, he just asked the wrong person and too soon.
