| ▲ | cubefox 3 hours ago | |
> Being hit on by an unattractive person may even quality for them as something akin to danger, already along the spectrum towards stalking or assault. Just trying to initiate a conversation with someone simply is not stalking nor assault, even if it is perceived that way. Their "perception" is mistaken in this case. > HN is an international forum, and while people are reporting increased loneliness in many countries, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they want attention from strangers. Where I live, a total stranger talking to you in public is annoying; it is strongly associated with foreigners who haven’t learned yet how to behave acceptably within the local culture. I don't know what country you are from, but it is highly probable that even in your culture, public conversations significantly decreased in the past 30 years. Which means that the amount of interactions was higher than it is now, even within the same culture. > A mere friendly stranger in public could lead to such real bonds only rarely, so rarely that it’s not even worth considering. The gym example of this article points in the opposite direction, or do you think that gyms in your culture work differently? | ||
| ▲ | TFNA 2 hours ago | parent [-] | |
> Their "perception" is mistaken in this case. It’s their right to decide how they perceive being approached by a stranger. And most of society is going to empathize with them and their feeling of unsafety, not with the stranger approaching them. > even in your culture, public conversations significantly decreased in the past 30 years The culture in my country never really had many “public conversations” from one stranger to another. This is something that has been noted by foreign travelers for generations now, at least back to the nineteenth or eighteenth centuries. What has changed are that the substantial family and institutional bonds I mentioned earlier have declined. > do you think that gyms in your culture work differently? They definitely do. This has already been mentioned by various people from different countries in this thread. | ||