I used to be a giant creep. I knew I had no social skills, tried to develop some, and it backfired more often than not. For example, I knew I was clingy and unable to tell if people wanted to get rid of me. So I reasoned that I should just hover around people I wanted to talk to and make it unclear whether I was there because of them or by coincidence, so they would feel free to talk to me or not as they wished.
What helped was Internet articles like those linked above. Those actually explain what behaviors are desirable and undesirable, and basics of reading people.
I still don’t know the difference between “You should go away” and “Should I go away?”—verbal expressions of these are identical. “I’m leaving, bye” and “I’m leaving, wanna come along?” are also hard to distinguish.
I wonder what a normal person would do in a slightly trickier situation.
You and someone you’re only slightly acquainted with (I’m not sure the relationship I’ve ever had with anyone can be described as more than a slight acquaintance) start walking off along one, broad street both your destinations happen to lie close to, so deliberately avoiding that street is rather impractical and time- and energy-consuming, and you don’t exactly have the latter to spare. You’ve made the trip together once before, the preceding day, uneventfully, and you faintly hoped that might be a chance to break out of your lifelong social isolation. The other person is younger than you, but not to the point that you clearly have no business socializing with them.
Surprise! Someone else quickly catches up with you both. They’re half your age and just about the most popular and high-status person in the group you’re leaving for the day. It goes without saying their social bonds to everyone else in the group are orders of magnitude stronger than any you can dream of ever establishing, including to the person you were walking with. As naturally as they breathe, the third person says goodbye to you and starts talking lively to the other, who, surely enough, reciprocates and forgets about you. They don’t look the slightest bit interested in halting their chat to hear “Actually, I’m heading in the same direction” from you. Hence, you’re stuck with only a few unpleasant options:
Keep walking next to them, quietly and creepily. I suppose crossing the street and walking along the other side may reduce a bit the creepiness, but it’ll still be awkward if they ever notice.
Walk faster to leave them comfortably behind. Oh, if only you were young and fit like them!
Wait for them to leave you comfortably behind. Well, that sucks, because you’re tired, aching and in pressing need of reaching your bed and collapsing on it. You’re not sure you’ll have the energy left to take a shower first. With a fresher mind, you could at least use the wait to read or study a bit, but this is certainly not the case now.
Waste even more time and energy taking a detour.
Of course, the last two options are also massively awkward if they ever find out you did that only to avoid them.
On second thought, my initial question doesn’t make sense: a normal person will never let themself fall into this predicament, will they?
Yes, I know I’m replying to a nine-year-old comment.
As a kinda-maybe-normal person:
I would simply say “Actually, I’m heading in the same direction” loud enough for them to hear (their non-interest be damned).
Other question: Is there anyone here who used to be creepy, and now is significantly less so? How did that happen?
I apparently sometimes come across as intense, and am often bad at small talk, but once people get to know me, they tend to like me. The result is that I have a number of social links where I was originally perceived as a creepy guy who thought we were closer than they thought we were when we met, and through continued interaction the social distance has settled at an agreed-on point (around my initial estimate, though generally a bit further than it. I’ve recalibrated since then, and think I would get it right now for most people).
For example, the first guy I dated told me (after I started dating him) that I was creepy the first time I met him. I basically went to a con just to meet him, and didn’t have anything else to do. So… I ended up following him around. At one point, he said to a friend “hey, let’s go to dinner!” and I said “Great! I’ll come along!” Rookie mistakes fueled by wishful thinking. Later, he told me that he was hoping to get rid of me by going to dinner. At no point did he ask me to leave or make obvious that he didn’t want me around; any subtle cues I either didn’t notice or didn’t want to notice. I must also comment that his friend (who I wasn’t paying much attention to) was more creeped out by me than he was, and later warned him about me, and so he may have reinterpreted his memories in light of that warning and not actually been sending those signals. Memories are fuzzy, but looking back on it the behavior I would describe it as closer to creepy than not creepy.
The second time we met, it was again at a con- but I had brought a friend along (which was both social proof and distraction), and I used proper distance (said “Hey, I’ll be in this game tonight at 8- you should come play it!” and then left). I also lucked out that the people he came with were irresponsible and so I got an easy opportunity to demonstrate responsibility. I ended up driving him the ~six hours back to his place (it was sort of on our way), and then we started dating shortly afterwards.
That transformation was a response to minimal feedback (I think I basically went home, said “hm, that didn’t work. Why might it not have worked?” and guessed correctly), a slight level up in social skills, and a significant level up in social equipment / luck (coming with a friend instead of alone, and his friends bailing on him).
It’s also a different situation- this isn’t me acting poorly around all women (or men in my case), but trying to get over the obstacle of “someone who I only know from the internet is interested in me.” One issue with creeping is underestimating social distance, but that’s the primary element that my creeping and general creeping share.
Moderately related, I creeped out one of his friends who visited with a poorly made joke. (I failed to hide my ability to memorize numbers and joked about being able to look up publicly available information.) I learned that people famous on the internet are way more concerned about stalkers than the general populace, and now don’t make any stalker-related jokes around people famous on the internet.
The commonality of both of those examples, though, is that I recognized that I wasn’t going about things properly and I fixed my behaviors. That’s not the problem with these creepers, which is a limited case of someone who is generating social pollution as a byproduct of trying to get what they want. The general case is thorny and hard to deal with.
Other question: Is there anyone here who used to be creepy, and now is significantly less so? How did that happen?
raises hand
I read this, included the comments thread, and thought about it.
OTOH, there’s the huge confounding factor that it was shortly after I came back from Ireland to Italy, and Italians are harder to creep out than Anglo-Saxon people. Stand one metre from (say) an American and they will freak the hell out; stand one metre from an Italian and they’ll wonder whether they smell. Also, I can’t see any evidence that many women in Italy are anywhere nearly as scared of potential rapists as Starling describes (at least where I am—in larger cities and/or more fucked-up regions the situation might be different). So, to be sure it’s my absolute creepiness that decreased and not the standard by which it’s measured that increased, I’d have to go back to an English-speaking country and see how I’m received there.
OTOH, there’s the huge confounding factor that it was shortly after I came back from Ireland to Italy, and Italians are harder to creep out than Anglo-Saxon people. Stand one metre from (say) an American and they will freak the hell out; stand one metre from an Italian and they’ll wonder whether they smell.
The example you give illustrates the difference in personal space norms between cultures, I’ll take it on your word that Italians also happen to be less easily creeped out. But the difference in personal space norms doesn’t itself indicate much about who is most easily creeped out. Trying to make a social approach and standing a more than appropriate distance away could itself be creepy (although obviously not as creepy as a personal space invasion itself.)
Neither does French, by the way, which seems to indicate some difference on how that topic is considered in different cultures.
I’m not familiar enough with gender issues in geek conventions in France to tell what forms similar concerns take here; though I do remember a girl complaining that Richard Stallman kept staring at her boobs.
The example you give illustrates the difference in personal space norms between cultures, I’ll take it on your word that Italians also happen to be less easily creeped out. But the difference in personal space norms doesn’t itself indicate much about who is most easily creeped out.
I suspect, based to the limited number of cultures I’m familiar with, that if you did cross-cultural studies you’d find that the two are correlated.
Not obvious to me that that can be generalized to other interactions. Some people could be much less creeped out by someone waiting in a line two feet behind them but not otherwise interacting with them in any way than by someone standing in front of them talking to them at the same distance.
Question: Is there anyone here who has helped a creep become substantially less creepy? How did you help that happen?
Other question: Is there anyone here who used to be creepy, and now is significantly less so? How did that happen?
I used to be a giant creep. I knew I had no social skills, tried to develop some, and it backfired more often than not. For example, I knew I was clingy and unable to tell if people wanted to get rid of me. So I reasoned that I should just hover around people I wanted to talk to and make it unclear whether I was there because of them or by coincidence, so they would feel free to talk to me or not as they wished.
What helped was Internet articles like those linked above. Those actually explain what behaviors are desirable and undesirable, and basics of reading people.
I still don’t know the difference between “You should go away” and “Should I go away?”—verbal expressions of these are identical. “I’m leaving, bye” and “I’m leaving, wanna come along?” are also hard to distinguish.
If they don’t tell you where they’re going, I guess it’s definitely the former.
I wonder what a normal person would do in a slightly trickier situation.
You and someone you’re only slightly acquainted with (I’m not sure the relationship I’ve ever had with anyone can be described as more than a slight acquaintance) start walking off along one, broad street both your destinations happen to lie close to, so deliberately avoiding that street is rather impractical and time- and energy-consuming, and you don’t exactly have the latter to spare. You’ve made the trip together once before, the preceding day, uneventfully, and you faintly hoped that might be a chance to break out of your lifelong social isolation. The other person is younger than you, but not to the point that you clearly have no business socializing with them.
Surprise! Someone else quickly catches up with you both. They’re half your age and just about the most popular and high-status person in the group you’re leaving for the day. It goes without saying their social bonds to everyone else in the group are orders of magnitude stronger than any you can dream of ever establishing, including to the person you were walking with. As naturally as they breathe, the third person says goodbye to you and starts talking lively to the other, who, surely enough, reciprocates and forgets about you. They don’t look the slightest bit interested in halting their chat to hear “Actually, I’m heading in the same direction” from you. Hence, you’re stuck with only a few unpleasant options:
Keep walking next to them, quietly and creepily. I suppose crossing the street and walking along the other side may reduce a bit the creepiness, but it’ll still be awkward if they ever notice.
Walk faster to leave them comfortably behind. Oh, if only you were young and fit like them!
Wait for them to leave you comfortably behind. Well, that sucks, because you’re tired, aching and in pressing need of reaching your bed and collapsing on it. You’re not sure you’ll have the energy left to take a shower first. With a fresher mind, you could at least use the wait to read or study a bit, but this is certainly not the case now.
Waste even more time and energy taking a detour.
Of course, the last two options are also massively awkward if they ever find out you did that only to avoid them.
On second thought, my initial question doesn’t make sense: a normal person will never let themself fall into this predicament, will they?
Yes, I know I’m replying to a nine-year-old comment.
As a kinda-maybe-normal person: I would simply say “Actually, I’m heading in the same direction” loud enough for them to hear (their non-interest be damned).
I apparently sometimes come across as intense, and am often bad at small talk, but once people get to know me, they tend to like me. The result is that I have a number of social links where I was originally perceived as a creepy guy who thought we were closer than they thought we were when we met, and through continued interaction the social distance has settled at an agreed-on point (around my initial estimate, though generally a bit further than it. I’ve recalibrated since then, and think I would get it right now for most people).
For example, the first guy I dated told me (after I started dating him) that I was creepy the first time I met him. I basically went to a con just to meet him, and didn’t have anything else to do. So… I ended up following him around. At one point, he said to a friend “hey, let’s go to dinner!” and I said “Great! I’ll come along!” Rookie mistakes fueled by wishful thinking. Later, he told me that he was hoping to get rid of me by going to dinner. At no point did he ask me to leave or make obvious that he didn’t want me around; any subtle cues I either didn’t notice or didn’t want to notice. I must also comment that his friend (who I wasn’t paying much attention to) was more creeped out by me than he was, and later warned him about me, and so he may have reinterpreted his memories in light of that warning and not actually been sending those signals. Memories are fuzzy, but looking back on it the behavior I would describe it as closer to creepy than not creepy.
The second time we met, it was again at a con- but I had brought a friend along (which was both social proof and distraction), and I used proper distance (said “Hey, I’ll be in this game tonight at 8- you should come play it!” and then left). I also lucked out that the people he came with were irresponsible and so I got an easy opportunity to demonstrate responsibility. I ended up driving him the ~six hours back to his place (it was sort of on our way), and then we started dating shortly afterwards.
That transformation was a response to minimal feedback (I think I basically went home, said “hm, that didn’t work. Why might it not have worked?” and guessed correctly), a slight level up in social skills, and a significant level up in social equipment / luck (coming with a friend instead of alone, and his friends bailing on him).
It’s also a different situation- this isn’t me acting poorly around all women (or men in my case), but trying to get over the obstacle of “someone who I only know from the internet is interested in me.” One issue with creeping is underestimating social distance, but that’s the primary element that my creeping and general creeping share.
Moderately related, I creeped out one of his friends who visited with a poorly made joke. (I failed to hide my ability to memorize numbers and joked about being able to look up publicly available information.) I learned that people famous on the internet are way more concerned about stalkers than the general populace, and now don’t make any stalker-related jokes around people famous on the internet.
The commonality of both of those examples, though, is that I recognized that I wasn’t going about things properly and I fixed my behaviors. That’s not the problem with these creepers, which is a limited case of someone who is generating social pollution as a byproduct of trying to get what they want. The general case is thorny and hard to deal with.
raises hand
I read this, included the comments thread, and thought about it.
OTOH, there’s the huge confounding factor that it was shortly after I came back from Ireland to Italy, and Italians are harder to creep out than Anglo-Saxon people. Stand one metre from (say) an American and they will freak the hell out; stand one metre from an Italian and they’ll wonder whether they smell. Also, I can’t see any evidence that many women in Italy are anywhere nearly as scared of potential rapists as Starling describes (at least where I am—in larger cities and/or more fucked-up regions the situation might be different). So, to be sure it’s my absolute creepiness that decreased and not the standard by which it’s measured that increased, I’d have to go back to an English-speaking country and see how I’m received there.
The example you give illustrates the difference in personal space norms between cultures, I’ll take it on your word that Italians also happen to be less easily creeped out. But the difference in personal space norms doesn’t itself indicate much about who is most easily creeped out. Trying to make a social approach and standing a more than appropriate distance away could itself be creepy (although obviously not as creepy as a personal space invasion itself.)
Italian doesn’t even have a good translation for creepy! (Inquietante ‘unsettling’ is close, but not quite there.) :-)
(Smiley obligatory per Poe’s Law, as some people seem to take such arguments seriously.)
Neither does French, by the way, which seems to indicate some difference on how that topic is considered in different cultures.
I’m not familiar enough with gender issues in geek conventions in France to tell what forms similar concerns take here; though I do remember a girl complaining that Richard Stallman kept staring at her boobs.
Have heard that some parts of Europe have very large problems with sexual harassment of an agressive form beyond creepyness.
I suspect, based to the limited number of cultures I’m familiar with, that if you did cross-cultural studies you’d find that the two are correlated.
That wouldn’t surprise me.
From what I’m told about queues in New York, there might be significant regional variations among Americans in that respect.
Not obvious to me that that can be generalized to other interactions. Some people could be much less creeped out by someone waiting in a line two feet behind them but not otherwise interacting with them in any way than by someone standing in front of them talking to them at the same distance.