I really want to reply to this but I’m also really conflicted about how to do that. I think it is smart to acknowledge that women often associate being alone with an unfamiliar man as a serious risk. As a result it is totally reasonable to make judgments about how a man would behave in that setting. And it is good for men to be aware of this and to calibrate their behavior to take it into account.
But my sense is that using the kind of rhetoric in this post with young, well meaning men with poor social skills causes problems. And since the audience here is mostly young, well meaning men with poor social skills I’m kind of concerned. Nyan’s reply is illustrative of this effect. Let’s suppose there are two kinds of creepy: people who are creepy because you actually can’t trust them to be alone with you and people who just come off that way. With the first group learning about what behaviors seem creepy is not going to actually make the trustworthy. With the second group, well they’re by definition really bad at calibrating how to act in social situations. And it seems like it is pretty routine for men in that group to drastically overcompensate to avoid seeming creepy to the point where they come off as trying to be sexless. A) This is a good way for any possible sexual relationship to immediately fail (penalizing all parties). B) It appears to be really stress-inducing. C) An unexpressed smoldering libido tends to come out indirectly and a man who appears to be hiding his sexual attraction from a woman is it’s own kind of creepy.
I don’t mean any offense to the contributor. But I think it is unfortunate there were not multiple entries on this topic. As with anything, the people who express a concern tend to be more concerned with it than the people who don’t. The vast majority of women would not find a request for their phone number to be creepy so long as it followed an pleasant exchange of 5-10+ minutes. Maybe you get a fake number or a decline—but it isn’t out of line.
I want to largely but not totally agree with this comment.
I agree that the sort of rhetoric that often gets used in talking about these things has these effects (and part of this post might). However, I think much of this post will actually help counteract that sort of thing.
See, here’s my mental model: The sort of men we’re talking about, who overcompensate to avoid being creepy—they’re doing this because they just know to not be creepy; they don’t have a good concrete any idea of what that means, they just know the general direction of it and that it’s bad. And so they step back from anything they think might at all be over the line and… well, you know the rest. Of course, they don’t realize that they were never anywhere near the line in the first place, because the things that are actually over the line are things they wouldn’t even think of doing in the first place. Having actual examples then is helpful because it allows you to see, “Wait, that’s a typical example of what’s over the line? I guess I was never anywhere near the line in the first place after all.”
A lot of the rhetoric that gets thrown around about this sort of thing, it’s easy to get the impression that if you ever ask twice about something, even if much time has passed and the context is totally different, you’re not respecting their “no” and you’re a bad person. This post might not help against that particular misconception[0] (and yes, might even reinforce it) because it doesn’t address that particular axis; nonetheless, examples are helpful in addressing this sort of problem generally, I think.
(Examples of what is OK would help even more, but I guess this post is not really the place for that.)
[0]My own rule of thumb in general—not specifically for things like this, where I have little experience, just when it comes to asking people for things in general—is, asking a second time for confirmation is sensible; asking a third time is beginning to badger the person (assuming the context hasn’t changed in a way that would affect the result). (I don’t know, do people think that’s a sensible rule of thumb? I should hope I’m at least correct in stating that the idea that asking for anything twice ever is disrespectful is a misconception...)
The sort of men we’re talking about, who overcompensate to avoid being creepy—they’re doing this because they just know to not be creepy; they don’t have a good concrete any idea of what that means, they just know the general direction of it and that it’s bad. And so they step back from anything they think might at all be over the line and… well, you know the rest. Of course, they don’t realize that they were never anywhere near the line in the first place, because the things that are actually over the line are things they wouldn’t even think of doing in the first place. Having actual examples then is helpful because it allows you to see, “Wait, that’s a typical example of what’s over the line? I guess I was never anywhere near the line in the first place after all.”
Except we frequently do get called “creepy” when we approach it.
I don’t agree. Treating these problems as skill deficits rather than inherent personal traits is a far better response. Instead of trying to hide one’s sexuality (as if one’s sex desire is inherently creepy), one should attempt to improve the skills so that one can display sexuality without being creepy.
More generally, people who don’t care if they are creepy rely on a fair amount of social license to operate. If there were less social tolerance of creepy, even people who wanted to be creepy would do less creepy behavior.
Sexual desire is not inherently creepy. But if one thinks this routine is productive:
And it seems like it is pretty routine for men in that group to drastically overcompensate to avoid seeming creepy to the point where they come off as trying to be sexless. A) This is a good way for any possible sexual relationship to immediately fail (penalizing all parties). B) It appears to be really stress-inducing. C) An unexpressed smoldering libido tends to come out indirectly and a man who appears to be hiding his sexual attraction from a woman is it’s own kind of creepy.
then one is probably very confused about how to fix one’s problems about expressing sexuality.
Um, I think I was pretty clear that this routine is really, really unproductive and was my central point of concern about “creepiness” rhetoric. In other words I think it’s really bad that what we say to young men leads them to repress their sexuality and walk around on egg shells. I didn’t really give a detailed alternative but my implied position was clearly that men can be both sexual and non-creepy and that not worrying about being creepy so much is part of developing that skill.
Um. On re-reading, my response to ikrase is pretty incoherent. D’oh. To try again:
A certain population of men is noticing a problem, and trying to solve that problem. The first attempted solution makes members of the population very unhappy, and doesn’t seem to solve the problem.
I read your original comment as saying that we should stop trying to highlight the problem to those men because it will cause more people to try to implement the failed solution. Instead, I suggest we should identify what is wrong with the attempted solution.
To cash that out explicitly: Some folks are treating their social deficits as an inherent trait, similar to a grotesque deformity on one side of their face. Their response is to try to hide the deficit, as if they were turning their head so that the deformity doesn’t show. But that solution is very uncomfortable, because it effectively denies a part of their life (sexual desire) actually exists. Thus, it’s a really bad solution. Instead, folks with social deficits should recognize socializing is a skill, which can be improved with practice.
Not worrying about the existence of creepy behavior just allows actual creeps to hide in the tall grass of people who aren’t creepy but don’t care about creepiness. There’s nothing wrong with worrying about coming off as creepy, any more than there is something wrong with worrying about making some other bad impression. That worry will affect what sorts of things one does to practice social skills, but is not a reason to abandon social skills improvement.
Negative self-talk of the form “I’m bad at socializing, so there’s no way that practice will make me better” is JerkBrain talk, and can be safely ignored. Emotionally, it’s really hard to deal with negative self-talk, but that is incredibly weak evidence that the negative self-talk is true.
I read your original comment as saying that we should stop trying to highlight the problem to those men because it will cause more people to try to implement the failed solution.
I definitely didn’t mean to say we should stop trying to highlight the problem at all. My concern is the problem being presented a) to a general audience instead of specific individuals who are actually known to come off as creepy b) in a way that seems to inflate how common it is, c) in way the imputes creepiness to behaviors that aren’t generally understood to be creepy and d) unaccompanied by any other socializing advice.
So I’m totally okay with going up to someone and saying, “Hey, you’re coming off as really creepy because you’re doing x under conditions y. In general, try to avoid doing things that have characteristic z and make sure to do p and q.” Similarly, any kind of socializing manual ought to include something about it. But the way creepiness was dealt with in the post, at least how I saw it was more, “Creepiness is this awful thing women have to deal with. It happens whenever people (generally men) do things that meet this vague criteria. Here are some examples that I think meet this criteria. Please don’t act like this men.” It seems really plausible that inexperienced men with poor social skills who aren’t creepy at all read posts like this and think “Oh my God, am I creepy? I really don’t want to be creepy. Let me try really hard to avoid being creepy at any point in my interactions with women.” The above is totally counterproductive to good socializing and I think a net negative. Most men of the Less Wrong demographic, in my experience, don’t have a problem of worrying insufficiently about being creepy.
So I generally agree that socializing is a skill and can be improved. But the post read to me not as socializing advice but as an admonition.
It seems really plausible that inexperienced men with poor social skills who aren’t creepy at all read posts like this and think “Oh my God, am I creepy? I really don’t want to be creepy. Let me try really hard to avoid being creepy at any point in my interactions with women.” The above is totally counterproductive to good socializing and I think a net negative.
This seems to be a general problem with psychological “self-medication”.
Imagine that a standard medicine would practiced in the following way: There would exist a pill to cure almost any problem. Those pills would be freely available in shops. The only missing part would be the diagnosis. So you could go to a shop and buy a pill for increasing blood pressure, or a pill for decreasing blood pressure. But you would not have information about which of these pills (if any) you need.
Even worse, imagine that people would have a bias to medicate themselves the wrong way. For example, people with high blood pressure would be more likely to choose the pill for increasing blood pressure, and vice versa. So despite having a magic pill for almost anything, the medicine practiced this way would be mostly harming people.
Seems to me that psychological “self-medication” works exactly this way. (Except that unlike the reliable magical pill, the therapy is less reliable.) People are often out of their optimal mental state, because their perception of the world and themselves is wrong. So if they choose a therapy, they choose something to move them even more towards their wrongly perceived goal.
There are methods to make yourself less agressive, and there are methods to make yourself more assertive. Unfortunately, people who already are almost doormats, seem to prefer the methods to decrease their perceived “agressivity”, until they make themselves complete doormats, which is their “ethical” ideal. On the other hand, agressive people, who (and everyone around them) could greatly benefit from the former methods, are attracted to the methods for increasing their “assertivity”, until they become dictators.
Unfortunately, most of the feminist advice has the same effect, even when it is essentially a good advice. The man who beats his girlfriends and then rapes them, he is very unlikely to visit a feminist lecture or to read a feminist web page; their words don’t reach him; and the feminists are probably aware of this, so they try to voice their message louder and with stronger words.
Then we have a shy boy who tries to make everyone happy, he hears the lecture, reads the website, and he thinks this is all about him, that he is a horrible monster, that his sexual feelings are something to be ashamed of, that it makes him subhuman, that his mere existence hurts women, and that the whole world would greatly benefit from his suicide or at least castration. And nobody tells him that he is wrong, because simply he is not a priority for anyone. Weak males don’t get any mercy.
And in a same way, “don’t be creepy” messages are typically unheard by creepy people, but catch the attention of insecure people, who are then afraid to even say hello to a stranger, to smile at an attractive person, to ask a phone number or an e-mail, etc., because it is better to be safe than sorry, and anything can be pattern-matched to something negative, especially by an insecure person.
We need two different words for what’s been called “high-status creep” (e.g. a hypermasculine, fashionably-dressed guy who snatches your phone and dials his own number, or similar) and what’s been called “low-status creep” (e.g. someone with very poor social skills and poor personal grooming). So long as there are people using that word for the former and people using that word for the latter, confusion will keep on ensuing.
Excellent comment! If you came up with a few more examples of the psychological self-medication problem in addition to the creepiness one, I think this would make for a good LW post.
Thankyou for the effort you have been putting in to your replies in this series Viliam. You are injecting much needed balance and perspective into the the conversation.
This is a very good point. To extent your metaphor, I think the problem is that people feel ashamed to seek expert advice (or any outside advice) about what sort of pill to buy.
If we could do something to make it less shameful to seek outside advice, from either professional expert or informal expert, I think some of this problem would disappear. I think these types of posts have the potential to help in that process, but making explicit what the current rules really are, how different folks implement them, and what hypocrisies may exist within a particular set of rules. Hopefully, when one has a better sense of those things, one will be in a better position to figure out what intervention to select.
I’m afraid I run in exactly this kind of failure mode. I have read a lot about the problems and dangers women face on a daily basis in interactions with men, I understand why they’re creeped out, and I do my very best to avoid coming off as creepy. Together with my poor social skills and low empathy, this attitude leads to other problems. I turn down invitations by females (repeatedly by the same female, currently, though in the past it have been different females) which may or may not indicate romantic interest—invitations to the cinema, to their place, for studying, etc.. I refuse to hand out my cell phone number, I don’t answer e-mails, I consciously avoid eye contact and try to get out of conversations quickly. I know that this creates huge amounts of disutility for all parties involved, whether there is a romantic interest on either one’s behalf or not, and it certainly is stressful for myself and makes engaging with persons of the opposite gender unpleasant.
Though on the abstract level, with my “conscious” parts, I act this way, I frequently catch myself subconsciously participating in the “dance”, which annoys me since most times there definitely is no romantic interest on her behalf. As soon as I notice this behaviour, I stop it. As the parent wrote, it’s probably visible that I try to hide my sexual attraction, which comes across as creepy on its own. All in all, I regularly end up frustrated and wish I had no sexuality.
Chances are I’m not going to change anytime soon, and that is probably because I know of the vast damages I might be capable of causing if I act on anything although I am clueless about whether I should act and what I should do, which in turn is caused by my low social skills and empathy, which this way have no chance of improving, ever.
I feel like a greedy algorithm caught in a high-cost local minimum with even higher walls. This is, of course, my fault, and harrassment of females is a real problem not to be underestimated, even if it leads to the occasional frustrated and unhappy guy. There’s other things in life which are fun doing, so I try to concentrate my efforts on those. Works pretty well so far, but avoiding those 50% of humans altogether is impossible, so my problems surface regularly.
I turn down invitations by females (repeatedly by the same female, currently, though in the past it have been different females) which may or may not indicate romantic interest—invitations to the cinema, to their place, for studying, etc.. I refuse to hand out my cell phone number, I don’t answer e-mails, I consciously avoid eye contact and try to get out of conversations quickly.
Er… Why? Things usually described as creepy involve wanting to interact with someone regardless of whether they want to interact with you; if it’s them who initiated the interaction (and so you know they want to interact with you), why would they be creeped out when you reciprocate? (Unless you have a reason to believe that the invitation was only for politeness’ sake but didn’t expect you to actually accept, that is.)
I dunno, perhaps this is just anxiety in general, with no line of thought behind it? I feel myself put in a fight-or-flight situation and, basically, stall.
Do you recognize any difference between a man experiencing intense arousal (“smoldering libido”) around a person’s presence and their believing that an intimate relationship with that person would be beneficial?
I’m afraid I run in exactly this kind of failure mode. I have read a lot about the problems and dangers women face on a daily basis in interactions with men, I understand why they’re creeped out, and I do my very best to avoid coming off as creepy. Together with my poor social skills and low empathy, this attitude leads to other problems. I turn down invitations by females (repeatedly by the same female, currently, though in the past it have been different females) which may or may not indicate romantic interest—invitations to the cinema, to their place, for studying, etc.. I refuse to hand out my cell phone number, I don’t answer e-mails, I consciously avoid eye contact and try to get out of conversations quickly. I know that this creates huge amounts of disutility for all parties involved, whether there is a romantic interest on either one’s behalf or not, and it certainly is stressful for myself and makes engaging with persons of the opposite gender unpleasant.
Though on the abstract level, with my “conscious” parts, I act this way, I frequently catch myself subconsciously participating in the “dance”, which annoys me since most times there definitely is no romantic interest on her behalf. As soon as I notice this behaviour, I stop it. As the parent wrote, it’s probably visible that I try to hide my sexual attraction, which comes across as creepy on its own. All in all, I regularly end up frustrated and wish I had no sexuality.
Chances are I’m not going to change anytime soon, and that is probably because I know of the vast damages I might be capable of causing if I act on anything although I am clueless about whether I should act and what I should do, which in turn is caused by my low social skills and empathy, which this way have no chance of improving, ever.
I feel like a greedy algorithm caught in a high-cost local minimum with even higher walls. This is, of course, my fault, and harrassment of females is a real problem not to be underestimated, even if it leads to the occasional frustrated and unhappy guy. There’s other things in life which are fun doing, so I try to concentrate my efforts on those. Works pretty well so far, but avoiding those 50% of humans altogether is impossible, so my problems surface regularly.
I deleted this not because it became invalid, but because actually, I don’t want to talk about this further.
C) a man who appears to be hiding his sexual attraction from a woman is it’s own kind of creepy.
Creepy casts a wide net, but that seems to me the key differentiating aspect to me. It’s the unasserted desire for increased levels of intimacy or physical contact that makes for creepiness. Asserted, it might make someone uncomfortable with dealing with it. If there is a question about whether he would use force, it is more threatening than creepy.
This goes back to the ever expansive use of the word “creepy”.
I take it a little back to the roots of moving slowly along the ground. In terms of humans, that largely became slowly and furtively stalking. Which people find repulsive, so that creep became anyone you find repulsive. I think that’s broad to the point of signifying little but your own repulsion and dislike, just slightly different in connotation from dick or asshole.
The guy was repulsive. Intrusive. Annoying. Lot’s of people would call him a creep, but in a sense largely interchangeable with loser, schmuck, or freak. I wouldn’t call him creepy, as that’s just the wrong connotation to me. There was nothing furtive, slow, or stealthy about his behavior. Quite the opposite. It was a full frontal assault.
Part of it was the author’s discomfort with an inner conflict on ideological grounds, about being open minded towards gays. Maybe that’s really part of what I would consider creepy too. In most cases, there seems to be a conflicted reaction. Wanting to get away or tell the guy to piss off, but feeling constrained in some manner from doing so. I think this is an unexplored general aspect of creepiness, that conflicted feeling within the person feeling creeped out.
Part of the conflict in “classical” creepiness is the slow and furtive stalking, so that one feels uncomfortable with rejecting someone who has yet to make an overt offer. But you want to get it over with too. The unresolved tension makes for discomfort. Sometimes that tension comes from perceived threat, wanting to stop the behavior, but not wanting to escalate the issue either. It’s a discomfort that one can’t resolve.
Except at the very beginning, I wouldn’t have felt conflicted about the guy on the plane. My projected reaction to him would first be discomfort, then annoyance, then violation of boundaries. I didn’t find the guy creepy as much as intrusive, and I wouldn’t have my undies in a bunch over telling him to back off. I wouldn’t have a conflict about asserting my right to space, my disinterest in his offer, or my affront when he got grabby. Knock it off, bozo.
I take it a little back to the roots of moving slowly along the ground. In terms of humans, that largely became slowly and furtively stalking.
I think you’re making the same mistake as Yvain here. I think that etymologically speaking Bob is called “creepy” because he gives Alice the creeps (a visceral feeling of uneasiness, as though spiders were crawling on her skin), not because he’s metaphorically crawling towards her. (The word for the latter is “sneaky”; the two are correlated but not the same concept.)
From what I can see, the verb sense came first, then creeper as one who creeps, then creepy as the feeling of having things crawl on your skin, and then creep as someone who creeps and gives you those feelings.
As a matter of semantic hygiene, if used to indicate one person’s reaction to another, creepy is a two place term. If used to indicate an observer independent fact, such as actions of a person, it is a one place term.
However, many habitually deny the two place aspect in all sorts of concepts, claiming objectivity and observer independence. That tension between riding my philosophical hobby horse of pointing out two place terms is coming up against those who would habitually seek to make their reactions a quality of the the object they’re reacting to. There is validity in that if creepy is a two place term, but it is an over generalization as a one place term.
creep (v.)
Old English creopan “to creep” (class II strong verb; past tense creap, past participle cropen), from Proto-Germanic kreupanan (cf. Old Frisian kriapa, Middle Dutch crupen, Old Norse krjupa “to creep”), from PIE root greug-. Related: Crept; creeping.
creeper (n.)
Old English creopera “one who creeps,” agent noun from creep (v.). Also see creep (n.). Meaning “lice” is from 1570s; of certain birds from 1660s; of certain plants from 1620s.
creep (n.)
“a creeping motion,” 1818, from creep (v.). Meaning “despicable person” is 1935, American English slang, perhaps from earlier sense of “sneak thief” (1914). Creeper “a gilded rascal” is recorded from c.1600, and the word also was used of certain classes of thieves, especially those who robbed customers in brothels. The creeps “a feeling of dread or revulsion” first attested 1849, in Dickens.
creepy (adj.)
1794, “characterized by creeping,” from creep + -y (2). Meaning “having a creeping feeling in the flesh” is from 1831; that of producing such a feeling, the main modern sense, is from 1858. Creepy-crawly is from 1858.
See creep, creeper, creeping. Also creep in the sense of
creep (n.)
“a creeping motion,” 1818, from creep (v.). Meaning “despicable person” is 1935, American English slang, perhaps from earlier sense of “sneak thief” (1914). Creeper “a gilded rascal” is recorded from c.1600, and the word also was used of certain classes of thieves, especially those who robbed customers in brothels. The creeps “a feeling of dread or revulsion” first attested 1849, in Dickens.
This reminds me—I wonder if “creepiness” is to some extent a group phenomenon. If one or two (high status?) women in group are creeped out, then they might influence others in the group.
Emotions themselves are contagious, particularly with an ingroup member, and that’s not counting the usual status and ingroup/outgroup dynamics.
One complication. I’d expect real unsafe assault threat creepiness to decrease while you’re in a group from mitigation of the threat, while low status creepiness to increase.
I’d expect real unsafe assault threat creepiness to decrease while you’re in a group from mitigation of the threat, while low status creepiness to increase.
Wait… Why would you be more creeped out by a low-status person if they’re your friend? If anything, I’d expect you to eventually realize that theirs is cluelessness rather than malevolence, and eventually get used to it. (I’m reasonably sure I’m more likely to low-status-creep someone I’ve just met that someone I’ve known for a while—though I might just be insufficiently controlling for the relevant confounding factors.)
Wait… Why would you be more creeped out by a low-status person if they’re your friend?
I wouldn’t. We have a clash of the imaginations.
In the scenario in my head, the Creep was never a member of your group, was an assault threat creep, and you may or may not be in a group. When you’re in a group, you’re safer from the creep, therefore perceived creepiness is diminished along with decreased feeling of threat.
Ohh, I see what you’re saying. I guess I won’t object if you decide that you don’t want to use the word “creep” to describe this guy, but I’m guessing the word originated not from the stealthy behavior of the creep, but the sensation of the person experiencing the feeling of creepiness. Because a creepy feeling is a type of growing discomfort that it’s hard to pinpoint the source of. Even in horror movies, a place can be creepy because you feel like something bad is going to happen, but you don’t quite know why. And indeed, it takes the narrator some thinking before he’s able to figure out what made this guy’s approach so much more disturbing than the usual attention he’s received from gay guys before.
I’m not sure how big the issue surrounding “creep” is actually a language issue, but I think part of what’s happening is that the meaning of words drift slowly enough for people to notice. For example, I have a tendency to disagree when people tell me that “lame” is ableist language, because I always think of lame as referring to jokes and maybe occasionally pack animals and … never people. I think the usage of that word has drifted away from people, but there are enough vocal people who are still sensitive about it. (And I guess I would try to not use it around those people anyway.)
So I guess I would conclude that when you hear other people use the word creep, they probably mean “a nebulous source of discomfort that I can’t quite place” rather than “an agent deliberately trying to cause me discomfort”, which is definitely pretty broad, but maybe a lot less accusatory than the latter?
EDIT: Just to be extra pedantic, here are somelinks! :)
I think people tend not to believe in shyness, unless you’re actually blushing. I used to be shy (still am, depending on the situation). But when I talked about it with my classmates one day, it turned out they actually thought I didn’t want to associate with them and was aloof because I felt superior to them. Nothing could have been farther from the truth...
In general people believe in explanations that involve them more than ones that don’t involve them. “X doesn’t like talking to people” is the x-is-shy explanation, while “X doesn’t like talking to me” is the x-is-aloof explanation.
There are at least two possibilities: a) I’ve always been an elitist asshole but I used to rationalize it as shyness. b) I’ve always been shy and still am but now after overdosing on Robin Hanson and various meta-contrarian writers it flatters my self-image more to think of myself as having base and vain motives for everything.
There was a point at which I realized shyness was unattractive and started acting aloof to cover up shyness. It’s a lot easier than than being friendly and high status.
This sounds testable. Do you find it harder to interact with more awesome people, or less hard? If it’s shyness, I’d expect you to find it harder, because you’re more intimidated, whereas if it’s aloofness, I’d expect you to find it less hard, because you’d be more interested in them.
Yes. My System 1/elephant keeps forgetting that there exists such a thing as shyness,¹ and as a result it repeatedly misinterprets ‘[I like you, but I’m too shy to show you]’ as ‘[I don’t like you, but I’m too polite to show you]’.
Well, I’m often shy myself, but only when initiating an interaction. When the interaction has already started, I usually have no problem whatsoever reciprocating, unless I actually don’t like the other person. And my System 1 generalizes from one example and finds it hard to alieve that other people can be too shy to continue an interaction that’s already started unless they don’t like me.
I certainly sympathize with being shy, as I used to be more shy, and tend to like shy people.
But consider the situation from the perspective of the person the shy person has desire for, but won’t fully assert the desire for. The shy person seems interested. They’re sort of approaching, but they don’t make a move that you feel you could reject without seeming presumptuous. You’re put in a position where either you escalate, or you live with an uncomfortable and unresolved situation.
I think that’s a consistent theme across similar senses of creepiness. An unresolved discomfort with someone, perceiving a likely escalation on their part, where the removal of the discomfort at your initiative requires confrontation and potential escalation.
There’s no crime to shyness, but one should be aware how your behavior affects other people.
Flip side, however, they didn’t escalate because they already knew they’d be rejected, and don’t want to potentially terminate the non-romantic friendship in pursuit of unrequited feelings.
Is escalation and subsequent rejection an improvement in the general case?
I didn’t mean to imply that it isn’t a serious risk. I would agree that it is. The phrasing was mainly there to avoid making more assertions that might be controversial but aren’t actually relevant to my point.
I really want to reply to this but I’m also really conflicted about how to do that. I think it is smart to acknowledge that women often associate being alone with an unfamiliar man as a serious risk. As a result it is totally reasonable to make judgments about how a man would behave in that setting. And it is good for men to be aware of this and to calibrate their behavior to take it into account.
But my sense is that using the kind of rhetoric in this post with young, well meaning men with poor social skills causes problems. And since the audience here is mostly young, well meaning men with poor social skills I’m kind of concerned. Nyan’s reply is illustrative of this effect. Let’s suppose there are two kinds of creepy: people who are creepy because you actually can’t trust them to be alone with you and people who just come off that way. With the first group learning about what behaviors seem creepy is not going to actually make the trustworthy. With the second group, well they’re by definition really bad at calibrating how to act in social situations. And it seems like it is pretty routine for men in that group to drastically overcompensate to avoid seeming creepy to the point where they come off as trying to be sexless. A) This is a good way for any possible sexual relationship to immediately fail (penalizing all parties). B) It appears to be really stress-inducing. C) An unexpressed smoldering libido tends to come out indirectly and a man who appears to be hiding his sexual attraction from a woman is it’s own kind of creepy.
I don’t mean any offense to the contributor. But I think it is unfortunate there were not multiple entries on this topic. As with anything, the people who express a concern tend to be more concerned with it than the people who don’t. The vast majority of women would not find a request for their phone number to be creepy so long as it followed an pleasant exchange of 5-10+ minutes. Maybe you get a fake number or a decline—but it isn’t out of line.
I want to largely but not totally agree with this comment.
I agree that the sort of rhetoric that often gets used in talking about these things has these effects (and part of this post might). However, I think much of this post will actually help counteract that sort of thing.
See, here’s my mental model: The sort of men we’re talking about, who overcompensate to avoid being creepy—they’re doing this because they just know to not be creepy; they don’t have a good concrete any idea of what that means, they just know the general direction of it and that it’s bad. And so they step back from anything they think might at all be over the line and… well, you know the rest. Of course, they don’t realize that they were never anywhere near the line in the first place, because the things that are actually over the line are things they wouldn’t even think of doing in the first place. Having actual examples then is helpful because it allows you to see, “Wait, that’s a typical example of what’s over the line? I guess I was never anywhere near the line in the first place after all.”
A lot of the rhetoric that gets thrown around about this sort of thing, it’s easy to get the impression that if you ever ask twice about something, even if much time has passed and the context is totally different, you’re not respecting their “no” and you’re a bad person. This post might not help against that particular misconception[0] (and yes, might even reinforce it) because it doesn’t address that particular axis; nonetheless, examples are helpful in addressing this sort of problem generally, I think.
(Examples of what is OK would help even more, but I guess this post is not really the place for that.)
[0]My own rule of thumb in general—not specifically for things like this, where I have little experience, just when it comes to asking people for things in general—is, asking a second time for confirmation is sensible; asking a third time is beginning to badger the person (assuming the context hasn’t changed in a way that would affect the result). (I don’t know, do people think that’s a sensible rule of thumb? I should hope I’m at least correct in stating that the idea that asking for anything twice ever is disrespectful is a misconception...)
Except we frequently do get called “creepy” when we approach it.
I don’t agree. Treating these problems as skill deficits rather than inherent personal traits is a far better response. Instead of trying to hide one’s sexuality (as if one’s sex desire is inherently creepy), one should attempt to improve the skills so that one can display sexuality without being creepy.
More generally, people who don’t care if they are creepy rely on a fair amount of social license to operate. If there were less social tolerance of creepy, even people who wanted to be creepy would do less creepy behavior.
Jack did not say that male sexuality was creepy in itself.
Sexual desire is not inherently creepy. But if one thinks this routine is productive:
then one is probably very confused about how to fix one’s problems about expressing sexuality.
Um, I think I was pretty clear that this routine is really, really unproductive and was my central point of concern about “creepiness” rhetoric. In other words I think it’s really bad that what we say to young men leads them to repress their sexuality and walk around on egg shells. I didn’t really give a detailed alternative but my implied position was clearly that men can be both sexual and non-creepy and that not worrying about being creepy so much is part of developing that skill.
Um. On re-reading, my response to ikrase is pretty incoherent. D’oh. To try again:
A certain population of men is noticing a problem, and trying to solve that problem. The first attempted solution makes members of the population very unhappy, and doesn’t seem to solve the problem.
I read your original comment as saying that we should stop trying to highlight the problem to those men because it will cause more people to try to implement the failed solution. Instead, I suggest we should identify what is wrong with the attempted solution.
To cash that out explicitly: Some folks are treating their social deficits as an inherent trait, similar to a grotesque deformity on one side of their face. Their response is to try to hide the deficit, as if they were turning their head so that the deformity doesn’t show. But that solution is very uncomfortable, because it effectively denies a part of their life (sexual desire) actually exists. Thus, it’s a really bad solution. Instead, folks with social deficits should recognize socializing is a skill, which can be improved with practice.
Not worrying about the existence of creepy behavior just allows actual creeps to hide in the tall grass of people who aren’t creepy but don’t care about creepiness. There’s nothing wrong with worrying about coming off as creepy, any more than there is something wrong with worrying about making some other bad impression. That worry will affect what sorts of things one does to practice social skills, but is not a reason to abandon social skills improvement.
Negative self-talk of the form “I’m bad at socializing, so there’s no way that practice will make me better” is JerkBrain talk, and can be safely ignored. Emotionally, it’s really hard to deal with negative self-talk, but that is incredibly weak evidence that the negative self-talk is true.
I definitely didn’t mean to say we should stop trying to highlight the problem at all. My concern is the problem being presented a) to a general audience instead of specific individuals who are actually known to come off as creepy b) in a way that seems to inflate how common it is, c) in way the imputes creepiness to behaviors that aren’t generally understood to be creepy and d) unaccompanied by any other socializing advice.
So I’m totally okay with going up to someone and saying, “Hey, you’re coming off as really creepy because you’re doing x under conditions y. In general, try to avoid doing things that have characteristic z and make sure to do p and q.” Similarly, any kind of socializing manual ought to include something about it. But the way creepiness was dealt with in the post, at least how I saw it was more, “Creepiness is this awful thing women have to deal with. It happens whenever people (generally men) do things that meet this vague criteria. Here are some examples that I think meet this criteria. Please don’t act like this men.” It seems really plausible that inexperienced men with poor social skills who aren’t creepy at all read posts like this and think “Oh my God, am I creepy? I really don’t want to be creepy. Let me try really hard to avoid being creepy at any point in my interactions with women.” The above is totally counterproductive to good socializing and I think a net negative. Most men of the Less Wrong demographic, in my experience, don’t have a problem of worrying insufficiently about being creepy.
So I generally agree that socializing is a skill and can be improved. But the post read to me not as socializing advice but as an admonition.
This seems to be a general problem with psychological “self-medication”.
Imagine that a standard medicine would practiced in the following way: There would exist a pill to cure almost any problem. Those pills would be freely available in shops. The only missing part would be the diagnosis. So you could go to a shop and buy a pill for increasing blood pressure, or a pill for decreasing blood pressure. But you would not have information about which of these pills (if any) you need.
Even worse, imagine that people would have a bias to medicate themselves the wrong way. For example, people with high blood pressure would be more likely to choose the pill for increasing blood pressure, and vice versa. So despite having a magic pill for almost anything, the medicine practiced this way would be mostly harming people.
Seems to me that psychological “self-medication” works exactly this way. (Except that unlike the reliable magical pill, the therapy is less reliable.) People are often out of their optimal mental state, because their perception of the world and themselves is wrong. So if they choose a therapy, they choose something to move them even more towards their wrongly perceived goal.
There are methods to make yourself less agressive, and there are methods to make yourself more assertive. Unfortunately, people who already are almost doormats, seem to prefer the methods to decrease their perceived “agressivity”, until they make themselves complete doormats, which is their “ethical” ideal. On the other hand, agressive people, who (and everyone around them) could greatly benefit from the former methods, are attracted to the methods for increasing their “assertivity”, until they become dictators.
Unfortunately, most of the feminist advice has the same effect, even when it is essentially a good advice. The man who beats his girlfriends and then rapes them, he is very unlikely to visit a feminist lecture or to read a feminist web page; their words don’t reach him; and the feminists are probably aware of this, so they try to voice their message louder and with stronger words.
Then we have a shy boy who tries to make everyone happy, he hears the lecture, reads the website, and he thinks this is all about him, that he is a horrible monster, that his sexual feelings are something to be ashamed of, that it makes him subhuman, that his mere existence hurts women, and that the whole world would greatly benefit from his suicide or at least castration. And nobody tells him that he is wrong, because simply he is not a priority for anyone. Weak males don’t get any mercy.
And in a same way, “don’t be creepy” messages are typically unheard by creepy people, but catch the attention of insecure people, who are then afraid to even say hello to a stranger, to smile at an attractive person, to ask a phone number or an e-mail, etc., because it is better to be safe than sorry, and anything can be pattern-matched to something negative, especially by an insecure person.
We need two different words for what’s been called “high-status creep” (e.g. a hypermasculine, fashionably-dressed guy who snatches your phone and dials his own number, or similar) and what’s been called “low-status creep” (e.g. someone with very poor social skills and poor personal grooming). So long as there are people using that word for the former and people using that word for the latter, confusion will keep on ensuing.
Excellent comment! If you came up with a few more examples of the psychological self-medication problem in addition to the creepiness one, I think this would make for a good LW post.
Thankyou for the effort you have been putting in to your replies in this series Viliam. You are injecting much needed balance and perspective into the the conversation.
Hear, hear!
This is a very good point. To extent your metaphor, I think the problem is that people feel ashamed to seek expert advice (or any outside advice) about what sort of pill to buy.
If we could do something to make it less shameful to seek outside advice, from either professional expert or informal expert, I think some of this problem would disappear. I think these types of posts have the potential to help in that process, but making explicit what the current rules really are, how different folks implement them, and what hypocrisies may exist within a particular set of rules. Hopefully, when one has a better sense of those things, one will be in a better position to figure out what intervention to select.
This is very well put.
I’m afraid I run in exactly this kind of failure mode. I have read a lot about the problems and dangers women face on a daily basis in interactions with men, I understand why they’re creeped out, and I do my very best to avoid coming off as creepy. Together with my poor social skills and low empathy, this attitude leads to other problems. I turn down invitations by females (repeatedly by the same female, currently, though in the past it have been different females) which may or may not indicate romantic interest—invitations to the cinema, to their place, for studying, etc.. I refuse to hand out my cell phone number, I don’t answer e-mails, I consciously avoid eye contact and try to get out of conversations quickly. I know that this creates huge amounts of disutility for all parties involved, whether there is a romantic interest on either one’s behalf or not, and it certainly is stressful for myself and makes engaging with persons of the opposite gender unpleasant.
Though on the abstract level, with my “conscious” parts, I act this way, I frequently catch myself subconsciously participating in the “dance”, which annoys me since most times there definitely is no romantic interest on her behalf. As soon as I notice this behaviour, I stop it. As the parent wrote, it’s probably visible that I try to hide my sexual attraction, which comes across as creepy on its own. All in all, I regularly end up frustrated and wish I had no sexuality.
Chances are I’m not going to change anytime soon, and that is probably because I know of the vast damages I might be capable of causing if I act on anything although I am clueless about whether I should act and what I should do, which in turn is caused by my low social skills and empathy, which this way have no chance of improving, ever.
I feel like a greedy algorithm caught in a high-cost local minimum with even higher walls. This is, of course, my fault, and harrassment of females is a real problem not to be underestimated, even if it leads to the occasional frustrated and unhappy guy. There’s other things in life which are fun doing, so I try to concentrate my efforts on those. Works pretty well so far, but avoiding those 50% of humans altogether is impossible, so my problems surface regularly.
Er… Why? Things usually described as creepy involve wanting to interact with someone regardless of whether they want to interact with you; if it’s them who initiated the interaction (and so you know they want to interact with you), why would they be creeped out when you reciprocate? (Unless you have a reason to believe that the invitation was only for politeness’ sake but didn’t expect you to actually accept, that is.)
I dunno, perhaps this is just anxiety in general, with no line of thought behind it? I feel myself put in a fight-or-flight situation and, basically, stall.
Do you recognize any difference between a man experiencing intense arousal (“smoldering libido”) around a person’s presence and their believing that an intimate relationship with that person would be beneficial?
Sure...
I’m afraid I run in exactly this kind of failure mode. I have read a lot about the problems and dangers women face on a daily basis in interactions with men, I understand why they’re creeped out, and I do my very best to avoid coming off as creepy. Together with my poor social skills and low empathy, this attitude leads to other problems. I turn down invitations by females (repeatedly by the same female, currently, though in the past it have been different females) which may or may not indicate romantic interest—invitations to the cinema, to their place, for studying, etc.. I refuse to hand out my cell phone number, I don’t answer e-mails, I consciously avoid eye contact and try to get out of conversations quickly. I know that this creates huge amounts of disutility for all parties involved, whether there is a romantic interest on either one’s behalf or not, and it certainly is stressful for myself and makes engaging with persons of the opposite gender unpleasant.
Though on the abstract level, with my “conscious” parts, I act this way, I frequently catch myself subconsciously participating in the “dance”, which annoys me since most times there definitely is no romantic interest on her behalf. As soon as I notice this behaviour, I stop it. As the parent wrote, it’s probably visible that I try to hide my sexual attraction, which comes across as creepy on its own. All in all, I regularly end up frustrated and wish I had no sexuality.
Chances are I’m not going to change anytime soon, and that is probably because I know of the vast damages I might be capable of causing if I act on anything although I am clueless about whether I should act and what I should do, which in turn is caused by my low social skills and empathy, which this way have no chance of improving, ever.
I feel like a greedy algorithm caught in a high-cost local minimum with even higher walls. This is, of course, my fault, and harrassment of females is a real problem not to be underestimated, even if it leads to the occasional frustrated and unhappy guy. There’s other things in life which are fun doing, so I try to concentrate my efforts on those. Works pretty well so far, but avoiding those 50% of humans altogether is impossible, so my problems surface regularly.
I deleted this not because it became invalid, but because actually, I don’t want to talk about this further.
Creepy casts a wide net, but that seems to me the key differentiating aspect to me. It’s the unasserted desire for increased levels of intimacy or physical contact that makes for creepiness. Asserted, it might make someone uncomfortable with dealing with it. If there is a question about whether he would use force, it is more threatening than creepy.
Here is a link describing creepy, threatening desire from a man’s perspective.
This goes back to the ever expansive use of the word “creepy”.
I take it a little back to the roots of moving slowly along the ground. In terms of humans, that largely became slowly and furtively stalking. Which people find repulsive, so that creep became anyone you find repulsive. I think that’s broad to the point of signifying little but your own repulsion and dislike, just slightly different in connotation from dick or asshole.
The guy was repulsive. Intrusive. Annoying. Lot’s of people would call him a creep, but in a sense largely interchangeable with loser, schmuck, or freak. I wouldn’t call him creepy, as that’s just the wrong connotation to me. There was nothing furtive, slow, or stealthy about his behavior. Quite the opposite. It was a full frontal assault.
Part of it was the author’s discomfort with an inner conflict on ideological grounds, about being open minded towards gays. Maybe that’s really part of what I would consider creepy too. In most cases, there seems to be a conflicted reaction. Wanting to get away or tell the guy to piss off, but feeling constrained in some manner from doing so. I think this is an unexplored general aspect of creepiness, that conflicted feeling within the person feeling creeped out.
Part of the conflict in “classical” creepiness is the slow and furtive stalking, so that one feels uncomfortable with rejecting someone who has yet to make an overt offer. But you want to get it over with too. The unresolved tension makes for discomfort. Sometimes that tension comes from perceived threat, wanting to stop the behavior, but not wanting to escalate the issue either. It’s a discomfort that one can’t resolve.
Except at the very beginning, I wouldn’t have felt conflicted about the guy on the plane. My projected reaction to him would first be discomfort, then annoyance, then violation of boundaries. I didn’t find the guy creepy as much as intrusive, and I wouldn’t have my undies in a bunch over telling him to back off. I wouldn’t have a conflict about asserting my right to space, my disinterest in his offer, or my affront when he got grabby. Knock it off, bozo.
I think you’re making the same mistake as Yvain here. I think that etymologically speaking Bob is called “creepy” because he gives Alice the creeps (a visceral feeling of uneasiness, as though spiders were crawling on her skin), not because he’s metaphorically crawling towards her. (The word for the latter is “sneaky”; the two are correlated but not the same concept.)
From what I can see, the verb sense came first, then creeper as one who creeps, then creepy as the feeling of having things crawl on your skin, and then creep as someone who creeps and gives you those feelings.
As a matter of semantic hygiene, if used to indicate one person’s reaction to another, creepy is a two place term. If used to indicate an observer independent fact, such as actions of a person, it is a one place term.
However, many habitually deny the two place aspect in all sorts of concepts, claiming objectivity and observer independence. That tension between riding my philosophical hobby horse of pointing out two place terms is coming up against those who would habitually seek to make their reactions a quality of the the object they’re reacting to. There is validity in that if creepy is a two place term, but it is an over generalization as a one place term.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=creep
creep (v.) Old English creopan “to creep” (class II strong verb; past tense creap, past participle cropen), from Proto-Germanic kreupanan (cf. Old Frisian kriapa, Middle Dutch crupen, Old Norse krjupa “to creep”), from PIE root greug-. Related: Crept; creeping.
creeper (n.) Old English creopera “one who creeps,” agent noun from creep (v.). Also see creep (n.). Meaning “lice” is from 1570s; of certain birds from 1660s; of certain plants from 1620s.
creep (n.) “a creeping motion,” 1818, from creep (v.). Meaning “despicable person” is 1935, American English slang, perhaps from earlier sense of “sneak thief” (1914). Creeper “a gilded rascal” is recorded from c.1600, and the word also was used of certain classes of thieves, especially those who robbed customers in brothels. The creeps “a feeling of dread or revulsion” first attested 1849, in Dickens.
creepy (adj.) 1794, “characterized by creeping,” from creep + -y (2). Meaning “having a creeping feeling in the flesh” is from 1831; that of producing such a feeling, the main modern sense, is from 1858. Creepy-crawly is from 1858. See creep, creeper, creeping. Also creep in the sense of
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=creep&allowed_in_frame=0
creep (n.) “a creeping motion,” 1818, from creep (v.). Meaning “despicable person” is 1935, American English slang, perhaps from earlier sense of “sneak thief” (1914). Creeper “a gilded rascal” is recorded from c.1600, and the word also was used of certain classes of thieves, especially those who robbed customers in brothels. The creeps “a feeling of dread or revulsion” first attested 1849, in Dickens.
This reminds me—I wonder if “creepiness” is to some extent a group phenomenon. If one or two (high status?) women in group are creeped out, then they might influence others in the group.
I’m sure it is.
Emotions themselves are contagious, particularly with an ingroup member, and that’s not counting the usual status and ingroup/outgroup dynamics.
One complication. I’d expect real unsafe assault threat creepiness to decrease while you’re in a group from mitigation of the threat, while low status creepiness to increase.
“You” the creeper or “you” the crepee?
You the creepee.
Wait… Why would you be more creeped out by a low-status person if they’re your friend? If anything, I’d expect you to eventually realize that theirs is cluelessness rather than malevolence, and eventually get used to it. (I’m reasonably sure I’m more likely to low-status-creep someone I’ve just met that someone I’ve known for a while—though I might just be insufficiently controlling for the relevant confounding factors.)
I wouldn’t. We have a clash of the imaginations.
In the scenario in my head, the Creep was never a member of your group, was an assault threat creep, and you may or may not be in a group. When you’re in a group, you’re safer from the creep, therefore perceived creepiness is diminished along with decreased feeling of threat.
Yes, I got that, I was talking about the “while low status creepiness to increase” at the end of that comment.
Ohh, I see what you’re saying. I guess I won’t object if you decide that you don’t want to use the word “creep” to describe this guy, but I’m guessing the word originated not from the stealthy behavior of the creep, but the sensation of the person experiencing the feeling of creepiness. Because a creepy feeling is a type of growing discomfort that it’s hard to pinpoint the source of. Even in horror movies, a place can be creepy because you feel like something bad is going to happen, but you don’t quite know why. And indeed, it takes the narrator some thinking before he’s able to figure out what made this guy’s approach so much more disturbing than the usual attention he’s received from gay guys before.
I’m not sure how big the issue surrounding “creep” is actually a language issue, but I think part of what’s happening is that the meaning of words drift slowly enough for people to notice. For example, I have a tendency to disagree when people tell me that “lame” is ableist language, because I always think of lame as referring to jokes and maybe occasionally pack animals and … never people. I think the usage of that word has drifted away from people, but there are enough vocal people who are still sensitive about it. (And I guess I would try to not use it around those people anyway.)
So I guess I would conclude that when you hear other people use the word creep, they probably mean “a nebulous source of discomfort that I can’t quite place” rather than “an agent deliberately trying to cause me discomfort”, which is definitely pretty broad, but maybe a lot less accusatory than the latter?
EDIT: Just to be extra pedantic, here are some links! :)
Creepy also seems to include people who just violate lesser boundaries without expressing desires.
Why is that creepy instead of just shy?
I think people tend not to believe in shyness, unless you’re actually blushing. I used to be shy (still am, depending on the situation). But when I talked about it with my classmates one day, it turned out they actually thought I didn’t want to associate with them and was aloof because I felt superior to them. Nothing could have been farther from the truth...
In general people believe in explanations that involve them more than ones that don’t involve them. “X doesn’t like talking to people” is the x-is-shy explanation, while “X doesn’t like talking to me” is the x-is-aloof explanation.
Huh. I’ve never thought about it in that way before, but I feel sure you’re right.
I used to be shy but now I actually do feel superior to a lot of people and don’t want to associate with them.
There are at least two possibilities: a) I’ve always been an elitist asshole but I used to rationalize it as shyness. b) I’ve always been shy and still am but now after overdosing on Robin Hanson and various meta-contrarian writers it flatters my self-image more to think of myself as having base and vain motives for everything.
There was a point at which I realized shyness was unattractive and started acting aloof to cover up shyness. It’s a lot easier than than being friendly and high status.
This sounds testable. Do you find it harder to interact with more awesome people, or less hard? If it’s shyness, I’d expect you to find it harder, because you’re more intimidated, whereas if it’s aloofness, I’d expect you to find it less hard, because you’d be more interested in them.
Yes. My System 1/elephant keeps forgetting that there exists such a thing as shyness,¹ and as a result it repeatedly misinterprets ‘[I like you, but I’m too shy to show you]’ as ‘[I don’t like you, but I’m too polite to show you]’.
Well, I’m often shy myself, but only when initiating an interaction. When the interaction has already started, I usually have no problem whatsoever reciprocating, unless I actually don’t like the other person. And my System 1 generalizes from one example and finds it hard to alieve that other people can be too shy to continue an interaction that’s already started unless they don’t like me.
I certainly sympathize with being shy, as I used to be more shy, and tend to like shy people.
But consider the situation from the perspective of the person the shy person has desire for, but won’t fully assert the desire for. The shy person seems interested. They’re sort of approaching, but they don’t make a move that you feel you could reject without seeming presumptuous. You’re put in a position where either you escalate, or you live with an uncomfortable and unresolved situation.
I think that’s a consistent theme across similar senses of creepiness. An unresolved discomfort with someone, perceiving a likely escalation on their part, where the removal of the discomfort at your initiative requires confrontation and potential escalation.
There’s no crime to shyness, but one should be aware how your behavior affects other people.
Flip side, however, they didn’t escalate because they already knew they’d be rejected, and don’t want to potentially terminate the non-romantic friendship in pursuit of unrequited feelings.
Is escalation and subsequent rejection an improvement in the general case?
Smarter to acknowledge that for a women to be alone with an unfamiliar man often is a serious risk.
I didn’t mean to imply that it isn’t a serious risk. I would agree that it is. The phrasing was mainly there to avoid making more assertions that might be controversial but aren’t actually relevant to my point.