Bryan wrote:Diverging off topic.. but what would a target person be doing in such a situation which might push you over the edge to make (physical/verbal/otherwise) contact? Smiling, earbuds in ear, reading a book, looking bored, gazing dreamily into the distance, leaning/open body posture, a look of shock as they notice something about you, checking out your feet/shoes, holding a token of conversation ("I love X!"), etc? During the #vanlife I noticed that if I'm just killing some time at a bar reading a book (somewhere approachable like at the bar instead of a table), there's a decent chance some person will have the confidence/curiosity to interrupt my reading
. Nice though, as stranger conversation is probably more enthralling than whatever I'm reading. Similarly, if you are dancing by yourself earnestly, others will approach and dip their toes into the possibility of initiating something. Public situations e.g. bus rides seem much more costly/risky, but seems like it's a market where one could profit.
It's very hard for me to answer this question because from my perspective the market is completely out of whack because a chubby old messy woman whose estate consists of a 40 year old camper parked on a vacant lot in a decrepit neighborhood can pick up attractive men on the internet easier than shooting fish in a barrel, so I would only approach men in a public setting if something else was at play. However, I have recently noted that I seem to be receptive to conversation if somebody tells me that I have a cool backpack, even if that somebody looks exactly like Santa Claus, and therefore the fact that maybe he is hitting on me means that maybe I really do look like Mrs. Santa Claus now (sigh.)
The market seemed much more egalitarian to me 30 years ago when I was a college student living among peers who were almost all also single and there was no internet dating. I think this might be a factor, because in a culture where families no longer involve themselves in the process; school, work, dating specific venue, or public setting would be the options for meeting/macking, and some people seem to be slower on the uptake that work is no longer an acceptable option unless you are very, very careful. I mean, if Matt Lauer had been outed simply for adulterous behavior for which he found partners on Seeking Arrangements, or even Craigslist, that would be gossip-worthy, but not likely to be directly causative of career collapse, until/unless his employers determined how it played in audience-poll. However, I would also note for the record that internet dating sites are very strict about booting off participants that cross the line of acceptable behavior based on complaints, but there is also likely some site out there on which any sort of behavior anybody found acceptable would be considered acceptable.