I was just sitting at the mall taking a break from mall walking. A man walked over to me when I wasn’t even looking up. He said "I haven’t seen you here before. " I said I wasn’t really here to talk to people and got up and walked away. He said he would leave, he may even have said sorry. I said I was ready to leave anyway. In retrospect I think he may have just been slightly mentally challenged so I wish I had been a little softer, he did not turn out to be aggressive. Looking for suggestions on something still clear and firm but more polite? This scared me for some reason, I think how fast he walked up and sat down near me.
Editing to add a key detail, he sat down close to me which is probably what made me more nervous than I would have otherwise been. I appreciate all the thoughtful feedback I’ve gotten and interesting discussion.
Looking for suggestions
With a username (feelings67@lemmy.world) that matches
\w+\d+and has no comments since its creation (2 weeks for you), I would tell you to lurk more because we are flooded by spam and your account is suspicious.People have to shoot their shot somehow.
It’s fine to not be interested, neither one of you did anything wrong.
You know, somehow we have got to get back to the place where strangers can talk to each other in public places. I understand your position and why you needed to do that. I just regret the fact that conversations in public seem to be a lost art.
My dad is one of those people who makes friends everywhere he goes - talking to people in elevators, etc. and people react well to it. Everybody can’t be that outgoing and shouldn’t be. But I think the % of people who can do that now is going to be much less than it was in the past, which is a shame.
I say hi to almost everyone I pass. This gets me some weird looks when I’m away from home where people are not as friendly. I absolutely understand why women don’t do the same. At least 50% of guys are dangerously delusional in how they view and approach interacting with women. If I was a chick, I would be Lesbian as fuck on safety grounds alone.
Hey you were nice to me in your post. This means you want to fuck, right?
Honestly the fact heterosexual women still exist is proof enough to me that sexuality isn’t a choice. What woman would willingly choose to coin flip whether or not they’ll be a crime statistic every time they go for a date?
It is a shame, but it’s not simply individual personal attitudes that’s causing this. People are afraid of strangers. The problem is, there are too many cases where that’s actually justified now.
The bad people have in fact ruined it for everybody. They have made it legitimately dangerous to have this sort of openness and trust in most slices of society, at least for people who look and behave a certain way, or were born certain ways. The problem is, under the influence of traditional media and social media and government and all the other dysfunctional and corrupt systems in our society, we’ve started tolerating the actually bad and dangerous people in society, instead of punishing them. Often we’re actually celebrating them, and in some cases even electing them President. It makes it almost impossible to sustain a functioning society when bad people are allowed to do bad things with impunity or worse, reward for their behavior. This is what’s causing the breakdown of society. Trust is hard to build and easily broken, and now it’s been broken and it seems like fewer and fewer people are interested in trying to rebuild it.
Why the fuck would women trust anyone in this society when allegedly half of the people in the world’s most economically powerful and culturally influential country voted for a party who is now occasionally saying women shouldn’t have the right to make decisions about their own bodies or even have the right to vote. These horrifyingly regressive attitudes are not just extremist throwaway comments because they are being paired with actions in the US and around the world, and they have serious consequences.
And yes, I am allowed to bring politics into this, because society is literally made out of politics. That’s what politics is, it’s the primary ingredient for making civilization function and it defines how it functions. Our aversion to discussing contentious “politics” is what has allowed society to decay to the point it has. This is not about being “woke” this is about being intelligent enough to want to live in a civilized society. Civilization requires not just moral boundaries but also the willingness to treat those who push at or exceed those moral boundaries as an existential threat, because they are. If you want your society to be good, you cannot tolerate evil. The boundaries and definitions are not always clear, but we must grapple with them as they stand, not avoid them. Grappling with these issues is the day-to-day work required to make civilization function. It is not a failing that we will always have these issues and always struggle with these issues, but it is a failing if we stop trying to struggle with them, because then we’re no longer keeping society functioning. Politics is life. Life is politics.
The irony here is that… you are one of those bad people.
You’re entire attitude here is the pure hostility and suspicion without any evidnece to back it up.
A random stranger on the street has nothing to do with Epstein or Trump, and your assumption they do until otherwise proven ‘innocent’ an incredibly toxic and hostile way of living life.
Perhaps you should stop obsessing over this stupid shit because you have no control over it and never will. Nor will anyone else who isn’t also part of the social elite.
Your political beliefs also have no bearing on your personal deeds with other people. Plenty of hardcore leftist liberals lie, cheat, and steal and would do so from you if given the opportunity. Perhaps even you yourself have done those things, and you certainly seem to think they’d be justified against the ‘enemy’ you imagine is lurking around every corner.
Sincerely: someone with privilege
Your political beliefs also have no bearing on your personal deeds with other people.
I find this highly unlikely. Both stem from your internal sense of morality / your values / the way you see the world, and will be influenced accordingly and therefore very related.
Speaking of which:
A random stranger on the street has nothing to do with Epstein or Trump
A third of the US voted for the latter. Anyone willing to put him in charge is delusional in their judgement to the point that I would consider myself in danger if I needed to rely on them. Not to mention that, as above, their moral axioms are likely to be disgusting, and that affects how they will treat me. Most social interactions can go fine, but any sort of extended relationship will not be.
100% this ☝️
Very well said
I talk to folks around me all the time. Standing in line for checkout at a store or something? I’ma talk to you.
I don’t walk up on folks out of nowhere, but if we are in near proximity for more than a minute, I’ma talk to you.
Being in line together is different. I’m curious though, if someone is giving you one word answers and seems like you don’t wish to continue the conversation do you back off ?
I talk to people in public a lot but if they seem closed off I’ll end it
Yeah, no point in talking to someone who isn’t talking back. Most folks I meet out seem to be dying for someone to talk to though.
Most people are told to be afraid because of TB/Twitter and internalize it. That makes them, partly, losers. The people that go out and make human connections usually know this, and do it to remind people that real life isn’t on the internet or in their heads. I do it too sometimes for fun, other times I’m like the rest of them.
Most people are told to be afraid because of TB/Twitter and internalize it.
No, most women are afraid because 1 in every 4 of us have been raped. Women all know someone who has been raped, whether it’s themselves or the other women in their life.
We don’t need social media to tell us to be afraid. Men do a good enough job of making us scared already.
Okay so I assume TB isn’t tuberculosis here, but what did it stand for?
I suspect they meant FB, although Facebook feels like tb sometimes lol
Ahh I’m dumb I figured I just wasn’t aware of some other platform. I was going twitter… twitch… tiktok… where the fuck is a B lol
or real life expereince with people like the OP have taught us it’s not worth it.
Frankly, I don’t want to interact with people who assume I’m mentally ill for being friendly to them. And where I live at least, that’s the way a lot of folks react to friendly conversation if you are like standing in line with them. they act like you’re trying to assault them.
Then they go on reddit and lament how body wants to be their friend… well because you reject anyone who tries to be friendly to you and you mischaracterize them in your mind as some terrible person.
and it’s very aged based. I have a dog. people over 50 have no problem petting and asking me about my dog. millennials and younger folks, are like visible anxious and paranoid about interacting with me and asking me to pet my dog. I am also a millennial, I do not understand any of it. But I’m not on social media and I barely use my smart phone for anything other than phone calls and email, so I understand I’m an outlier in the way I interact with people. People my own age think I am weird for not wanting to text, and think my preference for phone calls and face to face interact is ‘demanding’.
I suspect this might be cultural. In some parts of Switzerland (e.g. rural LU) you’re expected to greet strangers walking past you. Do that in Zurich and you might get the same kind of negative feedback. OTOH, OP’s case was more than a courteous “hello”…
Yes, it’s cultural. It’s also part of the ‘loneliness epidemic’ that is affecting most westernized countries. As a larger and larger cohort of the population becomes socially isolated, especially young adults.
And frankly, I’ve noticed a huge cultural shift in my own city the past 5 years. I used to have way more casual interactions, and now many of those same casual interactions are viewed with hostility and suspicion… just like OP’s reaction.
10 years ago if someone dropped something and you picked it up for them they’d thank you. Now they act get angry with you for trying to help them, and sometimes accuse you of theft or harassment. And that type of reaction basically teaches folks to just not bother, it’s a type of death spiral. Even personally, as the years go by and the hostility ratio goes up, it makes me increasingly want to socialize less in general. Even many of my closer friends from years ago have gone down this rabbit hole of hostility and suspicion, and I stopped interacting with them because it was so exhausting and miserable to be around someone who thinks the bartender is ‘looking at them funny’… no it’s you whose looking at the bartender funny… you idiot.
It is increasingly difficult to find folks who are receptive and open minded to strangers, which is the building block of any/all socialization. And what’s incredibly rare is folks who can just politely say no without demonizing the other person.
As someone who never really got along with strangers ever, I kind of feel like a bad survivor in a shitty apocalypse.
I socialise at festivals, then I forget the people and they forget me. Otherwise, it’s always been more bother than use.
Sad to hear you’ve lost something though…
Don’t assume of other people, and you’ll think less about thinking less of them. I get ignored most of the time, but that’s the game isn’t it. I secretly know you’re a human down there, even if you want to act like I’m not here. Let’s see just what I can get away with - sorta thing.
I don’t assume. I observe and I listen.
The problem with a lot of folks is that… they are massive massive hypocrites when it comes to this stuff.
And they catastrophic ordinary harmless interactions into these hyperbolic experiences in their head and make insane conclusions about absolute strangers who gave them no evidence to support their judgements. I also encounter it a lot when dating too. I meet strange women and they start lecturing me about myself… when they know absolutely nothing about me. But the weird fiction in their head they have already written so intense and real to them, that often they totally reject any real facts about me that don’t fit the story they have already made up. Especially the past few years I had so many expereinces where people tell me about myself, and I go ‘well that’s not true, I did x instead of y’ and they go ‘NO, YOU’RE LYING I KNOW YOU DID Y’. And weird shit like that.
I wonder if OP has legit dealt with mentally ill folks at all. I have. They don’t act polite and respect your boundaries, they get up in your face and scream and threaten you. And usually fixate on something bizarre. Last time it happened to me a few months ago it was a guy on the subway who started screaming at me about my boots being gay and how he wants to fuck me because they are so beautiful.
OP wrote mentally challenged, not mentally ill.
Yes this person is just an asocial mean world syndrome asshole.
Women aren’t required to make small talk because a man wants it.
‘I’m not really here to talk’ and leaving isn’t rude at all, don’t sweat it. If you had screamed at him that he was a creepy POS or something then you’d have a good reason to feel bad if he had some kind of intellectual/developmental disability, but you didn’t, and even if he does there’s a point where you have to learn you’re not a cute kid who can just walk up to people at random and start talking to them anymore (or at least not have everyone be as receptive to it).
I don’t know what it is but recently I’m seeing a lot of content about people “approaching” strangers and people saying it’s normal and people want to be spoken to. Some weird social media trend maybe.
I know I have watched videos about this also, that people say they are not approached or feel like they can’t approach others. My thing is body language and eye contact, if I’m out walking around making eye contact and we exchange a hello and see if more occurs fine. But if someone is totally closed off looking away… take the hint. And like dear lord don’t sit down without being invited to ! Chat a minute and ask first.
Sadly, some of us are unable to ‘take a hint’ as it doesn’t seem like a hint. Not everybody is wired to pick up on small contextual cues and may only notice the big ones; being in a public shopping mall (historically a pretty social location) while not shopping, implies to my brain a desire to be around people, even if you aren’t there for the buildings intended purpose. It’s definitely fine that your intention wasn’t to be social, I don’t desire to be social and try to avoid places with people like the plague.
I don’t think he did anything wrong either though; the few mall walkers I’ve known almost consider it a sport so I get why he would say those exact words (not seeing you during their usual meetup time, he was likely inviting you to walk with their group).
Before social media this was totally normal. See someone you want to talk to? Walk up and say hi. There’s nothing odd about it
yeah im not sure how prevalent it is now but in my city in ages past it was pretty common to talk at public transit stops and grocery lines and such. I mean there is a casual way to strike up a conversation and a creepy way and movies by and large have these two. Even comedies about someone seeming creepy who did not mean to.
I grew up without social media and to me this is not at all normal. The only strangers who talk to you want to sell you something, or they have some mental issues.
Maybe it’s a cultural thing? Apparently America is unusually friendly compared to the rest of the world, and striking up conversations with strangers is pretty normal.
unusually friendly
It’s more how we define being polite in social situations. In much of the world it’s considered rude to intrude on other people’s time uninvited. I think the term is “negative politeness”. How one feels about that is the cultural difference.
Yeah, I’ve met Americans who somehow manage to do that. As a European, it never happened to me and if I think about doing it myself it just seems creepy and weird.
That’s probably it then. I’d say it feels weirder in America if you’re completely shut off to random small talk. It varies a bit by region, and certainly by individual, but I’ve never been anywhere in America where it’s strange to strike up a conversation standing in line or waiting for a bus or something.
I’ve been to the famously rude Boston area as a European, and I found the people waay to chatty and friendly. I’m buying groceries, for fuck’s sake, don’t ask me how I am doing!
Yeah, it’s cultural. I tend to joke that if someone smiles at me in public here, I’m discreetly checking where my wallet and phone are and which direction I should best run away to.
America is huge huge, there are several different norms across the country. The people who live in the Southern states have a wildly different approach than people who live in the Pacific Northwest, for example.
Before social media this was totally normal.
That depends so much on where and when you are. I’m older than social media and no, strangers didn’t walk up and say hi in my culture/s. There were plenty of places that sort of thing was acceptable but they were places with an implied invitation to socialise, not the street.
The post doesn’t mention being on the street, it mentions walking around a mall and taking a break. Malls have historically been social locations since their inception, especially among those that choose to go there without the intention of shopping at the stores located within it. Nothing wrong with wandering the mall, but other people may think you are there to socialize if you aren’t shopping… Especially if you are partaking in their favorite activity.
The post doesn’t mention being on the street, it mentions walking around a mall and taking a break.
Oh well, it’s a marginally different situation. Might as well just discount my entire comment. It’s what I’m going to do with your forest-for-the-trees comment rather than engage any further.
Their comment directly responds to your point by claiming that the mall, where the OP’s incident took place, is a “place with an implied invitation to socialize”.
Thank God I’m not single.
Feedback unrelated to your core problem. I’ve found that when describing people it’s more appropriate/respectful to use man, woman, person or whichever way you like to describe people, save for male/female. The latter is good for speaking about subjects or patients in a more scientific/clinical/biological way, but can sound impersonal in an “othering” sense. Noones going to throw a fit over this unless you’re in a weird place online, but it does make your language softer and more personable
Yes, using “male” or “female” as a noun (rather than an adjective) is bad form when referring to people. At least, it’s non-standard.
That said, language is constantly evolving, and when there is a need, it will be filled. Convention be damned. And there is a need for a noun that means “girl or woman” that isn’t clunky. There’s no good “standard” word to use. I think that’s one of the reasons this usage is becoming more common. (Personally, it gives me the ick, probably because I heard it used mostly in misogynistic contexts c. 2010 and it’s hard to shed that connotation. But I see it more and more without that subtext more recently. I suspect in 50 years it will be “standard”.)
Similar deal with the singular “they”. Some people still complain about that, even though it’s been in use for a very long time (centuries, I think).
I, for one, am a strong proponent of…well, my username. After all, “bro” can be short for Broseph or Brosephina.
Good point , for some reason I don’t love the term “woman” but I am aware people use female pejoratively probably more often.
It took me a while to get to terms with man/woman, mainly because it feels like I’m a grown-up, and then I realised, fuck, I’ll hit 30 soon…
Boy/girl works in informal contexts (“what’s up, old boy”), but I would not like getting called a boy in a condescending way myself. So I decided to go with the more standard words for adult male/female humans, for no reason other than that they are neutral. In my native language, there is no direct equivalent of the nouns male/female, and the one we have sounds like straight out of a David Attenborough narration.
You do you, my nephew would have taken off running while waving his hands in the air. No shame in either of those responses… Personally I just remain quiet and wait for the person to assume I’m deaf, but we all deal with unwanted conversations differently.
You did fine. That was a learning experience for everybody.
Bro had zero game.
Bro is just like me fr
We are so cooked as a society.
- Why are women afraid of strangers (men) as a default?
- Men are automatically assumed to be predators
I feel for boys. It’s going to get worse, so much worse.
If someone I don’t know rings my doorbell trying to make a sale on something, I assume it’s a scam. It’s not because everyone who rings a doorbell is a scammer, but because there are enough of them that I’d rather shut off that entire avenue of approach.
That doesn’t mean I don’t buy anything. I just don’t buy things in that way.
It also doesn’t mean that I don’t open the door for strangers. Plenty of people are delivering packages or things someone in my house has specifically ordered. Or people need to do work on or around my property (utility pole, buried lines/pipes, neighbors’ trees/fences, etc.).
Understanding the generational shifts in social expectations is important. Bemoaning the loss of a particular type of interaction just because it’s the type you happened to experience before doesn’t actually say anything about the state of society.
Cold approaches by men to women sitting by themselves have basically gone away. There are a lot of reasons for this, including that we as a society have stopped being bored, to where the prospect of small talk with a stranger has changed from “better than nothing” to “worse than nothing” in just 20 years. But it has happened, and people need to adjust.
Can you take a wild guess at answering your own question here?
Why would women be afraid of men they don’t know as a default?
Oh I’m well aware the answer. I’m 49 so I’ve learned that my world as a middle aged straight white man is not the lived experience of the vast majority of people.
We are not reflecting enough on that question.
But, and it’s a big but, we are also not reflecting on what this is doing to the psyche of men of which the majority are “good”.
I wouldn’t have enjoyed growing up in a world where the default is to demonize me for being a boy.
But, and it’s a big but, we are also not reflecting on what this is doing to the psyche of men of which the majority are “good”.
It is not women’s responsibility to put aside our fear of rape and murder to make men feel better about themselves. It’s on men to call out other men, protect women in these types of situations, and treat others with kindness so that kindness can be returned.
We also need to educate our youth what respect and consent mean and that women aren’t objects to be gained or used by men.
I didn’t enjoy growing up in a world where women are sexualized and raped at such high rates.
They do. Not that it would ever matter to you
https://hbr.org/2020/10/how-men-can-confront-other-men-about-sexist-behavior
Here’s another study for you:
Women’s rights are regressing worldwide, warns UN gender equality chief
Together, these barriers mean that women worldwide have 64 per cent of the legal rights of men whilst 54 per cent of countries lack consent based legal definitions of rape.
This one is also from 2026, by the way.
A new global study conducted by Ipsos in collaboration with the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London and International Women’s Day finds that the majority of men agree that that women won’t achieve equality without their support but half believe they are expected to do too much to support women’s equality.
Is this really the study you wanted to use to prove your point?
Also that study is 6 years old and misogyny has been on the rise since then. Here’s a more up to date study from the same source as yours:
The majority of men feel they are already doing too much for equality. Fifty-four per cent of men across 29 countries feel they are doing too much, compared to 38% of women.
One in two men think the push for equality discriminates against them. On average, 52% of men agree “we have gone so far in promoting women’s equality that we are discriminating against men”. Only 36% of women feel the same.
None of that addresses the point of shutting other men down. That is called moving the goal post
That 36% figure is surprising to me, that’s pretty high actually
I disagree in that it’s on both parties to listen and what I am experiencing as women gain more and more equality and take over (thank God men have fucked up enough), they’re making the same goddamn problems.
There is a urgent and growing problem with young men that is going to impact the lives of women and the response cannot be to point fingers and go “buh buh buh men!”.
Most men will tell you rape is wrong. Most men will tell you overt sexualization is wrong.
The problem, simply stated, is that we have rightly been nurturing and lifting women to reach a point of equality in the system but we have not been spending that same energy in ensuring our boys and now men are not left feeling under threat and marginalized at the same time. They aren’t but it’s easy to feel that way.
I think in person we would have a lot in common and I believe we want the same thing. What matters is the approach. The current approach is going to be very dangerous if we continue down the road. The manosphere is simply one concerning symptom as is the rise of nationalism.
There is a urgent and growing problem with young men that is going to impact the lives of women and the response cannot be to point fingers and go “buh buh buh men!”.
How will it impact the lives of women?
Andrew Tate.
Oh ok, so if women aren’t nicer to men, they’re going to be raped and trafficked even more?
Great motivation.
Most men will tell you rape is wrong. Most men will tell you overt sexualization is wrong.
If there’s one thing discussions around public cases will show is, this only applies when it’s generic. As soon as you change the question to "Is this rape wrong, many men change their tune, and will find any possible reason to call this particular case not actual rape. So no, I don’t think this actually tracks in the real world
The Cornell case is a perfect example of this.
we are also not reflecting on what this is doing to the psyche of men of which the majority are “good”.
I just expect that women don’t want to talk to me at random because they’ve had bad experiences with strangers in the past. I don’t generally want to talk to random people either because of that and I’m a dude. It doesn’t make me feel bad about myself or demonized because I know there are a whole fucking lot of shitheads in this world and there’s no way to tell who’s who. If anything I’d consider brazenly approaching strangers to be a bit of a red flag. It’s not my fault or the woman who doesn’t want to talk to me.
you dint do anything wrong. i witnessed several times on public transit, and stores, that they would approach women and get in thier face, and try to “flirt” witht them.
I worked with adults (and children) with developmental disabilities and this was a common thing we dealt with. We would take groups of guys out into the community to work and get some socialization. Since I’m a man, I usually worked with guys while women worked with women.
A lot of these people typically don’t get out into the community often so we were there to help them understand what was appropriate and what wasn’t. It was somewhat common for some guys in our groups, and we usually knew who was more prone to it than others, who would do this so we’d have a closer eye on where they were. We also had some who had sexual assault records and we made sure to be very, very close to them in proximity and not letting them out of our sight while ensuring that they had the same opportunities to have a normal life in public as possible.
We worked with both high functioning and low functioning populations, that is to say those who you can tell have some type of disability are lower functioning, as we referred to them back in the day and there may be some more politically correct term used now, with higher functioning population being less recognizable and more like anyone else you’d see in public, usually people with autism.
I say all that to say that if this man had a developmental disability, just from what you said here about how you handled it sounds fine. You didn’t sound rude or violent or anything. Just sounds like you were firm and polite and aware of your own safety which is great.
Most women who were approached by our population handled it very well. I can’t think of a time when someone didn’t and acted inappropriately in return. I think most women could tell seeing our groups and then noticing us as the staff coming along to redirect the guy and prompt him away from what he was doing that was inappropriate.
I remember one guy we had in particular who had a deep fascination for black women (he was Asian but at the same time would talk about how much he hated “Mexicans” and was part of the KKK) and would almost cross the line multiple times with women any chance he got. Not like violently attacking anyone but just overly verbally creepy. But even with him and how aggressive and creepy he’d be, women were very kind and polite but firm and did almost like you, just tried to make their escape. We’d make sure to be near him as much as possible but sometimes he’d get away from our sight and go do things like this. I remember one time he was very much into one woman but she was interested in my coworker who got her number and that set him off into a rage when he saw them talking and her handing him something.
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A woman approaching another woman and a man approaching a woman is different. Why are we pretending it isn’t?
I would absolutely leave if a man approached me like that while I was alone. And it’s not wrong.
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Ive been raped before. I don’t need you to tell me it’s in my fucking head.
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Telling women to stop being afraid of men and get off social media is fucked up.
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I was afraid of men long before social media existed based on personal experiences receiving unwanted and inappropriate attention and comments. Note I’m not saying ALL men but this is based on personal experience, nothing to do with social media, what a stretch.
I think any man that approaches a woman who is alone and exhibiting body language that is not open to conversation and then proceeds to sit down near her and start a conversation rudely is a problem.
It’s not just any man.
I would never approach someone who was not looking up at me unless I really had to, like they had dropped something. I can’t think of a time a woman has approached me in this way.
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Of course I have.
I think it’s good you listened to your instincts and were firm. If he has a disability that makes social things complicated, being obvious was a favor to him. If he did have bad intentions, your immediate willingness to leave showed you weren’t an easy mark.
There are probably good scripts for this, but I don’t know them. I just think you should know it doesn’t sound like you handled it badly.
I appreciate it!
