If you're lucky, you'll only get me talking about glacial surficial geology
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2026
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I’m sure this happened
What’s hard to believe here? It’s a pretty common pickup line and the most effective non confrontational way to make a person regret trying to talk to you. I’ve had basically the same experience more than once, except I rant about grammatical cases instead (just as boring for most).
more boring I would say
You almost got me monologuing for a moment there!
But yeah, it’s not inherently a topic of broad appeal, which is why it’s so effective in filtering out people who don’t ever want to talk about grammar.
Seems like kind of a dick move on her part though IMO.
Well I guess it may have happened. It just seems weird to me to be be so insufferably petty over a thing so minor.
Who was being petty? They asked, they got an honest answer.
I didn’t even realize, but you’re right. What are the options here for someone who doesn’t want to talk to a stranger in that moment?
A) She’s polite and tries to make conversation B) she doesn’t respond, C) she answers rudely, D) she gives a non seqitur, or E) she answers honestly
A) sucks for her and could create a situation where a stranger feels led on and entitled to her further attention
B or C) she’s antisocial, full of herself, or an asshole
D) she’s crazy
E) she’s insufferably petty
E doesn't need to be petty? 'Sorry, I'm not in the mood to chat' is fine?
I agree, I’m just using the words above that were used to characterize my honest answer.
As an autist I don’t really know how to feel about wether i am or am not in the mood to express my theoretical frameworks to explore causality with faster then light mechanics to a random stranger in public
it would be an accurate response to their question and easier then confronting a long pause as i try to gather and organise my spacetime thoughts back into a decisive communication about wether i consent to conversating.
You're forgetting another option ->
"Oh, I'm thinking about a fair deal right now, but I'm not really in the mood to talk about it, I'd prefer to mull it over myself."
You can honestly and politely tell someone that you don't want to talk to them, that you'd rather have the solitude.
This is not impossible, and it is not petty.
You can, but you’ll still get called stuck up. Or the other person will say they didn’t want to talk to you anyway and you’re pompous for assuming they did.
Well, I wouldn't call you stuck up for doing that, I would say that a person who was politely refused a conversation, and then themselves acted stuck up and offended by this, I would percieve them as the asshole.
That would be an immature person with a large and fragile ego, reacting like a middle schooler, to the idea that not everyone thinks they are always worth talking to.
Yep, some people are extraverted assholes like that.
I've had many women react in this way when they approached me for whatever reason and I told them that I would just prefer to be alone, thank you.
But I'm fine with this, because they're just making a fool of themselves.
Yeah, I suspect there’s a selection bias with people who approach strangers and ask what they’re thinking.
I’m fine with it as long as they don’t follow me off the bus or train. That’s happened five or six times. My bff’s ponytail was cut off because someone much larger thought she should be paying more attention to them. And I’ve been told I deserve to be raped, but I don’t really care about that if there’s no additional physical intimidation, because some rando’s opinion on what I deserve is irrelevant unless they intend to mete it out.
I hear you that physical/sexual harassment is a serious concern, but what connection is there to that and the specific method of trying to defuse/reject an unwanted conversation?
I totally get that you've had traumatic expediences, I'm not trying to minimize that.
I've also had traumatic experiences of both men and women saying things like that to me, and stalking me, and physically attacking me, in extremely similar situations, busses and lightrail and such.
But 99% of the time, where a similarly awkward conversation or non-conversation plays out... yeah its maybe uncomfortable or annoying, but I don't end up harmed.
Also, you're somewhat misconstruing the context of OP's story.
He didn't really approach her in the sense of totally out of no where, in a random public location, where she was otherwise alone... like randomly coming out of the shadows to chat up someone on a walk through an empty park.
They were on a bus, a confined space with many other people, and the two of them appeared to be the only two people not glued to their phones, and he directly stated that.
To me, that implies that he thought that presumably someone not glued to their phone was at least potentially having some kind of active or passive thoughts, as opposed to everyone else in zombie mode.
The story does not include him physically making himself nearer to her. It includes him tapping her knee.
As if they just happened to be sitting next to her, or her to him, and he just tried to start a conversation with his passenger-neighbor.
This does not to me imply potentially malicious/predatory targetting.
It also implies that at least while you are on the bus... you're in public with a lot of nearby other humans that could/would intervene in case the dude starts to literally force himself in some way.
And, this very story does not end with the dude stalking her after bus disembarkation... so it shows that is a possible outcome as well, that it can just be a convo with a rando in a public space, and everything ends up fine.
Asserting that you don’t want to interact is provocative for some assholes. That was the context of each of the episodes I listed, all of which happened on buses, which I neglected to make clear.
Absolutely, it just makes me wary of ending up in that type of interaction at all.
To be clear, she chose option E, and the circumstances in my comment above relate to choosing option A, B, or C. I also choose option E and it tends to work, but a commenter above called it relentlessly petty, which is why I’m suggesting there isn’t an option that doesn’t either potentially endanger you or make people think negatively of you in some way.
Getting the same pickup line over and over is minor, but tedious enough that it makes you want to create your own fun.
Plus, if they are down for grammar rants, that increases the chances that we could actually have something in common.
Maybe that'd work on me. I find passion hot
Yeah, especially since the person immediately felt the need to post this on a social media. Truly a non-phone user.