In effect, you ask them. However, this is not done in the literalist HN style - that is, you do not say "Hi, may I please hit on you?" or any other such set of words.
Nonetheless, one asks, and some will say yes, and some will say no; some will know they're answering, some won't even notice, and sometimes the asker doesn't even notice that they're asking.
To a number of people, this sounds crazy. As crazy as the idea that some authors cannot be read literally to get the meaning of their words. There are languages encoded within language and this is one such. If one happens not to speak this language, I guess it's dating apps or nothing :/
There is so many aspects to this, it's impossible to reasonably discuss it on an online forum. My perspective is living in a major western city that has a lot of culturally middle eastern people living here. The culture is very forward compared to western white culture. Women I know complain about it all the time. A woman living in an area without this culture may wish more men would hit on her.
So what?
Do people really rule out meeting a partner and having a family because of a fear of maybe inconveniencing someone?
There are plenty of social events that are appropriate for this sort of interaction. Running errands or just trying to go about your day is not one of those IMO, and if dozens of people accosted you per day you’d probably feel the same way.
Do you mind sharing more? I thought middle Eastern cultures were generally more traditional and conservative about dating and the like, so this sounds unusual.
Well that sounds too heavy and aggressive. If a lady is actually stopped by strangers while out, I'm not surprised she's sick of it.
There is so many aspects to this, it's impossible to reasonably discuss it on an online forum.
That is very true. This particular aspect of human interaction and communication, relying so much as it does on things other than the pure literal interpretation of words, is perhaps uniquely unsuitable for discussion on a text only forum where the words are all we have, and doubly so here on HN where the preponderance of people who joyfully embrace literal interpretation is so high!
But that is the whole point, if a person gets greeted a lot by strangers when they are out it gets annoying quick. So it is common courtesy to not greet strangers in typical every-day errand places like grocery stores. It might be different where you live, but that is how it works where I live.
If that goes well, ask.
All single men reading this, learn to flirt. Give them a look. Ask with your eyes first.
If they look back, smile, introduce yourself.
This isn't an issue of me being socially incompetent, it's about me trying to be a decent human and not annoy women who are constantly being annoyed. Likewise, I don't want to hit on women in a workplace setting because I feel that people should be able to come to work without being made to feel uncomfortable. Some women may like it but some will feel uncomfortable and it's the latter group I'm being respectful towards.
My policies mean I probably sleep with fewer women than I could but dating in 2019 is already stupidly easy.
You carefully calibrate your approach while she sleeps around with much better looking men who don't need to.
It's pretty sad.
> men made up nearly three-fourths (73%) of Europe’s asylum seekers in 2015.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2016/08/02/number-of-refu...
> Believe me, I used to be terrible socially (like, seriously) and I learned a lot since.
Clearly not! Your obliviousness in this very conversation, let alone how tone deaf you must sound to the many people you inevitably offend through an antiquated conversational tactic you mistakenly think remains applicable, are strong signals to the contrary.
By all means, you live in your fantasy world, but people who are able to communicate effectively with people of the opposite sex do so daily while managing not to get arrested for it.
Your language, with its host of technical sounding terms to hide behind, and your narrow focus, makes it clear that you are the literalist I mentioned in another comment. Your attitude and beliefs are crippling your ability to communicate, even as you tell yourself that you're an excellent communicator, treating the English language as if it were some kind of logical set and treating communication as if it were some kind of well-defined, internally consistent theorem. Hard truths that I wouldn't have said to you in person, but here I'm a line of text on a screen and so are you. Good luck.
I do not buy into incel or MRA language whatsoever, and feel those groups have utterly no point or legs to stand on. I do not at all think that most women are “itching” to make harassment claims as you say, not at all.
Being annoying to the people you approach for dating is not the same thing as harassing them. I’m talking about how the troglodyte approach of assuming you know how to read body language and then hitting on someone at the grocery store leads to bothering people (not harassing them) and is something society clearly doesn’t want, given the dramatic adoption of online dating.
What a self-absorbed assumption to think, “I have good communication skills, therefore I can infer this person’s demeanor means they are receptive to a casual advance.”
People would rather buy groceries or drop off the laundry without having their general friendly demeanor taken as a signal they want to be hit on. Gee, what a shock.
Frankly you sound like a self-righteous kook asserting this dreamed up half Myers-Briggs half horoscope caricature you’re insulting me with based on ~ 4 paragraphs of text data sample. What incredible lack of self-awareness that must take.
Of course you can't read minds, that's why you use things like language.
Of course the risk is high. You will get rejected a lot. So what if you bother them a bit? The chance you bother them a bit might be high, but the impact is low. It's not like pascal's wager where the risk of being wrong is eternal damnation. The impact of being bothered is basically nil.
How do you think people met before, in the decades between the industrial revolution and the internet?
This step here is already too forward, people don't say hi to strangers. At least where I live it would be totally obvious that you were flirting or just generally creepy if you did this.
Dating apps may well be more efficient than in-person flirting, I'm just claiming that the in-person flirting method is not impossible.
It’s perfectly alright to meet people on dating apps, especially if you don’t have much experience dating. At the end of the day all dating advice is spurious IMO, you have to experience it in order to truly understand it.
It's literally how it's done. Tbh if she's into you it doesn't really matter what you say.
Let me put this into an if else statement for you knuckleheads to understand:
print("Wow this is a really long line!")
if response == "Girl turns toward you, looks excited and tries to continue conversation":
keep talking and see where it goes
else if == "Girl continues the conversation but it's difficult to see if she's interested":
keep talking and see where it goes
else if == "Girl doesn't respond or responds without looking at you, or looks away from you":
stop talking, she's not interestedNobody does that, at least where I live. So just that one line would be seen as too forward and flirty and annoying. And it is right, I would be very uncomfortable if I knew that every time I visited the grocery store some stranger would likely try to strike up a conversation with me.
If no reply, move on. If they answer sheepishly, don’t be annoying. If they react with enthusiasm...
“I love spicy”. Escalate.
@wendyshu - I feel ya trying to explain nuanced things to a crowd who take things very, literally, but good job.
Sorry, bored on a flight.
Easier isn't the right metric. It's far less selfishly obnoxious to the world to not actively harass random people just in case one of them might be ok with it.