I’m slightly confused as to how asking for directions (prr’s latest scenario) can be construed as something mildly flirtatious (OP scenario).
Really? I thought I was hauling out a tired old chestnut of a pickup routine. BTW, if anyone can place the cinematic reference being alluded to in this famous pickup routine, I will award extra credit points.
Ah, I thought it would be something like that. But then, if somebody asks me for directions, I would give them and not think of it as any pick up line.
Not trying to be gratuitously mean, but that pic isn’t going to do you any favors in this thread. Not because you’re bad looking, but because you look creepy.
I bow to your aesthetic judgment, and to your own appraisal of the lack of gratuitous meanness in your post. I don’t see how, in retrospect, I couldn’t have seen the blatent creepiness in my photo. I beg your forgiveness.
No prob.
I’m wondering about this too. PRR took some trouble to detail how the situations were different, but he thinks they’re the same?
“Maggie” doesn’t merely think the first man is conventionally handsome, she personally finds him attractive. As she realizes you can’t trust every man with a smooth line who you meet upon the streets of NYC, she tells a white lie and says she can’t help him with directions. She doesn’t make it clear she doesn’t want to talk to him anymore, and we’re told that in fact she actually DID want to keep talking to him. That’s why she wasn’t upset when he kept talking to her!
This man read Maggie’s signals more or less correctly. Maggie WAS interested in him, but she decided it was better to be safe than sorry. Based on what she told her friends, she was intimidated by his appearance and may have suspected that such a handsome fellow couldn’t genuinely have been attracted to an ordinary woman like herself. An average looking man might actually have had better luck with her that day. If Maggie were approached by the handsome man again in a situation that was more comfortable for her, like a friend’s party or even a familiar bar, she’d have better reason to trust that he wasn’t a con artist. She’d likely be much more receptive to further conversation with him then.
The “Rachel” scenario is quite different, even though the man’s initial request is the same. Rachel was not attracted to the second man, did not want to talk to him, and made this abundantly clear with her rude response to his question. But after her rather crude rant the guy tells her she has a lovely voice? Sure, he used the same line that got the first man a laugh, but in response to a totally different situation. Either he was being sarcastic and really suggesting that she’s a shrieking harpy (not that I’d blame him after getting told off for asking directions) or he’s the type who’d consider even a restraining order to be flirting. No wonder Rachel was upset.
Perhaps she would have been more polite in her initial refusal if she’d been approached by the better-looking man, but she and Maggie aren’t the same person so we have no way of knowing. Even if she would, this is exactly what many of the posters in this thread have said – that they’d be more receptive AT FIRST to the handsomer man. But if Rachel had told off the Brad Pitt look-alike the same way she did the ugly guy, I’d expect she’d be equally annoyed when he persisted with the “you have a lovely voice” routine.
Ah, I understand now. So if I were to change my hypothetical to make it Maggie who comes in the door both times with the same scenario, then I’d be switching my hypothetical situtation around again and being SOOOOOO unfair, and bbbyyy. Or you’d be able to claim “Yes, but Maggie may have had a sinus headache the second day, you can’t ever know what’s going on inside her head…” This is a terribly complicated series of hypothetical circumstances I’m putting out before, I understand. I haven’t seen this much diversion since the Department of Highways sent three emergency crews to the same intersection by mistake.
Way to miss the point, dude. You really are determined to ignore everything that doesn’t support your hypothesis.
No,
up until now, you’ve been claiming that both men were turned down in the same way. That both the attractive band non-attractive man were turned down by saying “no thanks.” That both men were being treated absolutely identically until their second attempt at trying to get the woman’s attention.
Women in the thread have been saying that they probably would treat the men differently on the first attempt. But that if they did not treat the men differently on the first attempt, then they would not treat subsequent events differently.
Now, with your Maggie & Rachel explanation, you changed the hypothetical. NOW, you’re saying that on the first attempt, the men are treated differently - now it’s not “no thanks” for both, but one “no thanks” and one “hey asshole.”* Which means, that the men are getting wildly different responses on the first attempt. Well, duh. Which is what most women have said all along in the thread. And what you’ve been unable to grasp.
*Also this? For a question about directions? I’ve never said anything like that, nor have I met anyone who would. That’s ridiculous and says something about the poser of the hypothetical.
I don’t know about anyone else, but anyone asking me for directions and then immediately segueing into compliments about my voice (of all things) would either elicit a guffaw or some eye rolls. If the guy was handsome, I’d think he was trying to feed me a line of BS and would feel mildly insulted that he’d assume some crap like that would send me swooning into the bushes. Because it would be obvious to me that the only reason he’d think such a line would work is because he thinks his looks would counteract the supreme lameness of complimenting my voice after hearing me utter only 5 words. Very presumptious and very wrong.
If the guy wasn’t cute, I’d also think he was feeding me a line of BS but instead of feeling insulted, I’d just be annoyed and maybe a little awestruck that someone would pull such a lame line out of his pocket without even having good looks to fall back on. Add the fact that I just called him an asshole, and my impression of him worsens.
Both guys would give me creepy vibes, though.
Not even sure I’ve offered a hypothesis here. I’ve simply observed some unusual behavior and am trying to find a hypothesis that might explain it, but thanks again for playing.
No one wants to identify the cinematic reference? It’s from an Academy-award winner, I’m pretty sure (also from memory, so not necessarily verbatim.)
It’s become pretty clear that you haven’t even observed the behavior that you think you have. In your own hypothetical you have the handsome man demonstrating better social skills than the ugly man. The fact that you believe the only difference is the way the men look demonstrates that you have a very poor grasp of what constitutes appropriate social behavior. That’s why you’re confused. It’s not your coworkers, it’s you.
There’s a lot that clear to you that isn’t clear to me. In which hypothetical is the handsome man demonstrating better social skills than the ugly man? I’ve offered several hypotheticals.
And I have only responded to one of them. I explained the difference between the two men’s behavior at length in post #167, but you chose to ignore this. Instead you picked out one phrase that was unrelated to my larger point and accused me of irrelevant nitpicking. This led me to conclude that you are either unwilling or unable to accept any answer that isn’t what you wanted to hear. And that’s where we are now. I’m afraid you’re either going to have to accept being confused by other people’s behavior or seek out a good therapist, because you’re not going to get the kind of help you need in this thread.
Oh, so you’ve dismissed my criticism as “unrelated” to your point, when it was IMO utterly related–you rejected my hypothetical, by pointing out that I had two different women having two different reactions instead of the SAME woman have two different reactions at different times --exactly as if this was a big deal. It isn’t. It’s completely irrelevant since we’re discussing hypothetical women in the first place–or I am.
So thank you for your contributions, and have a nice day. Why don’t we give some other women their turn at this? You’ve already contributed all you have to contribute, in my estimation.
You may refer back to post #169 for my original response to this.
*This is perhaps the only thing you’ve been right about in the entire thread.
Ok prr, let’s step Rachel through another scenario.
This totally hot guy, looked kinda Brad Pitt-Matthew McConaghey-ish, said to me just outside the entrance of the school, ‘Excuse me, Miss, I’m new in town and I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to the Statue of Liberty?’, but I’m having a shitty day and running late and he just caught me in the wrong mood so I snapped at him and said ‘yeah, asshole, she’s up in Central Park, taking a leak. If you hurry, you can catch the supper show.’ Then he says, ‘What a lovely voice you have, I’d love to hear just a little more,’ and I looked around for a cop but there weren’t any so I walked inside the building. I mean, he was kinda hot but what a clueless creep! God, I hate it when these good looking guys think you should just fall at their feet because they fed you some lame-assed line. He-llo? I couldn’t have acted less interested if I tried and he just kept on. Men! -snip half hour monologue on men who think they’re God’s gift to women-
Okay, I’ll bite:
I’d say, “Now THERE’s a woman, poor thing, who doesn’t like it a tiny bit when some strange dude hits on her, and I can totally understand her feeling upset. Maybe I’ll buy her lunch and try to cheer her up.”
That might be the typical thought pattern of a sociopath.