I don't like it personally but I am someone who has led most of their life being lonely and I have been severely mentally ill. People often end up taking it too far and then it's goodbye, I have a partner btw. 
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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What counts as flirting in the year 2026?
Took me way more comments to realize i also need to know this
I've been flirting with the beautiful mods so they don't remove my posts. It's all about flattery.
We are not old 
some of the perspectives shared make me want to brandonize myself with a railroad spike a little bit.
You want to flirt with someone, there's bound to be people who want to be courted, but if there's explicit consent then the relationship between the Flirter and the Flirted on crumbles, because the thrill is in either being dominated or dominating others. This relationship dynamic is impossible to resolve, at best you can create a 3rd space where you let people consent to non-consensual acts.
That is an application of Dialectical materialism.
Personally as a third party this would not bother me really. I could see myself being a little disappointed if I wanted to take things further, but to me someone casually flirting with me has never implied to me that there’s necessarily anything more there. I’m pretty surprised at how negatively some of the other people here are reacting, honestly.
I'm starting to think flirting means something more explicit to the majority here than it does to me.
Trying to figure out if it was implied that the person being flirted with gets given a phone number or contact information?
Are we assuming OP is going to be laying it on thick then just go "ah, just kidding, thanks for the validation" or what?
Yeah I don't know what others are imagining here, I have to think they're seeing flirting as something more committal than me, but I don't know if that's us talking about different things or others being entitled. Like to me it just feels good to be flirted with. it gives me a boost in confidence, and I like returning that feeling. I think mutual flirting with someone opens up an appropriate avenue for asking to take things further without worrying about coming across as creepy, but expecting things to go further is totally different. Frankly, if I was on the fence about whether to date someone and they reacted angrily to me flirting with no intent to go further, that would be a huge red flag and tell me I made the right choice avoiding going further with them.
Frankly, if I was on the fence about whether to date someone and they reacted angrily to me flirting with no intent to go further, that would be a huge red flag and tell me I made the right choice avoiding going further with them.
And if I found out that someone was "flirting" with me while deliberately avoiding mentioning that they have an SO so that I would provide them with "validation" over the course of a conversation, it'd be at least a mild consolation to know that the person in question was not worth being involved with.
That's fine, that's your preference. The thing I said that you quoted wasn't super applicable to this situation anyways, since the OP knows they don't want to pursue any sort of relationship, whereas I was commenting from a perspective of uncertainty, so maybe I shouldn't have even included that part. Personally I wouldn't hide that I have an SO if I were in the OP's shoes, but I still don't think that's really the other parties business if OP is never intending to be romantic/sexual with their flirting partner anyways. To me it feels reminiscent of cis people getting mad if I don't disclose that I'm trans to someone I'm flirting with because they may not be into me if they knew. But like if we aren't actually committing to anything, then why is it their business? It's not quite the same because there is an actual danger to disclosing transness to someone you don't know, whereas disclosing that you have a partner likely won't put you in danger, but I think the general idea that it isn't actually the other person's business unless you are going to have a romantic/sexual relationship with them is the same.
Why put flirting and validation in scare quotes? Mutual flirting goes both ways after all, both participants are validated. I don't think that validation or the words expressed become less real just because there is no intent to follow up on them.
That's fine, that's your preference.
Maybe it's worth considering then that, if we're talking about a proposed habitual behavior toward strangers, what matters is not just if anyone is fine with it but what the odds are that over several goes, it will be hurtful to some people?
To me it feels reminiscent of cis people getting mad if I don't disclose that I'm trans to someone I'm flirting with because they may not be into me if they knew. But like if we aren't actually committing to anything, then why is it their business? It's not quite the same because there is an actual danger to disclosing transness to someone you don't know, whereas disclosing that you have a partner likely won't put you in danger, but I think the general idea that it isn't actually the other person's business unless you are going to have a romantic/sexual relationship with them is the same.
I think the part about you potentially being put in danger is a pretty important distinction! In fact, I think it's pretty difficult to abstract away from that fact. Let me know if another analogy occurs to you.
Why put flirting and validation in scare quotes?
For the sake of brevity, disgust at the cutesy way they describe this behavior, etc. Let me know if you think further explanation is important.
Mutual flirting goes both ways after all, both participants are validated. I don't think that validation or the words expressed become less real just because there is no intent to follow up on them.
I'm sure you have already come to the conclusion that our perspectives are wildly different and quite difficult to reconcile owing at least in part to our different experiences (statistically, you've been hit on more in a ~2 year period than I have in my whole life, based on your other comment), but I hope that you can understand why someone deliberately misleading me to milk some compliments out of me for the sake of their "need"* for validation while not having the slightest possibility of any genuine interest in me at any point might not actually be a super validating experience for me. Someone condescending to telling me what they think I want to hear so that I express interest in them and they feel good about themselves does not appeal to me.
*in this case I meant it as the more straightforward "what they are calling it is absolutely not what it really is" marker, if you're wondering.
do you get people trying to flirt with you a lot? I have had people express interest in me maybe three times in my entire life.
Nah I wouldn't say a lot, but it's not super rare for it to happen. At one point it was maybe once every 4-6 months or so[^1]? But these days I don't go out much because of the pandemic, so it doesn't happen as often. It happens a lot more now than it did before I started transitioning, I think partly because I became a lot more friendly and comfortable with complimenting people once I felt more like myself. I'm also non-monogamous, pretty openly sex-positive, and live in an area with a lot of other queer people, so I'm sure that contributes plenty as well.
[^1]: Definitely more frequently if you include online, but if someone is flirting with me online it's probably in an online space that is explicitly sexual so I wouldn't count that for this conversation.
that sounds like a lot to me, but i haven't spoken to anyone outside of a workplace in years
Yeah, I'm thinking what we consider flirting may be equivalent to a friendly chat to some.
I haven't had to worry about it in a long time so 
You should talk to a therapist to help you figure out why you have this urge to hurt random strangers to make you feel better about yourself.
Are we assuming OP is going to like ask for someone's number and call them beautiful just to ghost them or something? What about being flirted with by a random person you never talk to again hurts?
I am trying to see if my idea of flirting is off from the majority
What makes it flirting rather than a nice chat between strangers? I don't mean in general, i mean specifically in your imagined scenario what would make it flirting?
call me oldschool but if you've had a conversation about it with your partner and they don't mind, a bit of flirting is nice as a treat.
I'm really asking about the perspective of the third party. I'm OK with it, my partner's OK with it. What I want to know is the stranger in the bar OK with it. I know every stranger is different, but in general, how big a deal is this?
yeah and I'm saying in my opinion its not even a factor
just like accepting a drink from a man doesn't obligate a woman to have sex with him, neither does flirting with a person obligate or necessitate that you be available for further romantic complications.
Dating already sucks and is miserable. Self-consciously going into an interaction with the goal of deceiving someone for attention is a shitty behavior. No, that does not oblige you to fuck them or whatever, literally no one here is saying that and such an idea is ridiculous and disgusting. What some people (myself included) are saying is that that initial action, the pre-meditated deception, is hurtful to people for no good reason.
Self-consciously going into an interaction with the goal of deceiving someone for attention is a shitty behavior
Thats not what flirting is and I'm concerned with how transactional some people seem to see it being.
That's a horseshit accusation. Obviously that's not what flirting in general is, and I never made a claim to the contrary. From the OP:
but I guess maybe I am leading people on a bit if I chat with them without mentioning my partner.
What is the relevance of mentioning or not mentioning their partner? Might we glean that the OP acknowledges something about the social nature of their behavior?
What sort of transaction are you trying to accuse me of asserting? I don't want to fuck some asshole behaving deceptively toward me, I just don't want to be deceived in the first place. I have no interest in any sort of "transaction" here, I want to be treated with an extremely baseline respect, not on a transactional basis but because I'm a human being, just like me treating other people with baseline respect should not depend on them doing something for me first or being somehow bound to do something for me after.
that is what OP literally described doing
flirting implies the further complications are possible to begin with. the whole social purpose of flirting is a plausibly deniable offer to escalate towards them.
it is incredibly cruel to dangle something in front of someone when you have no intention of following through.
it's one thing if you flirt for a while and don't feel it, but it's evil if you go into it misrepresenting your intentions.
At what point is flirting so obvious that it's dangling in front of you but is also at the same time "plausibly deniable?"
a successful run goes something like
opening move -> reciprocity -> escalation -> escalation -> escalation -> etc -> romantic and/or sexual entanglement
so i'd say 3 is where you have the opportunity to say thanks and move on having had an exchange of compliments rather than necessarily flirting, and if you stick around for the second round of escalation then you're indicating you're potentially down for something and somebody like OP would be there in bad faith.
and again this is about the case where OP is deliberately being a vampire, if you're flirting with somebody for a while and decide not to continue for whatever reason that's fine, but you shouldn't start the process if you're completely closed off to begin with.
I suppose the framing of flirtation in the OP is necessarily different than something you may not even realize was happening until 2 weeks later because of the intention.
I don't really understand the flowchart but i see what you're saying. There's a point where both parties are aware that explicit flirting is happening and if that wasnt where OP wanted to take it there wouldn't be a question.
The amount of times I've had someone tell me I've been flirted with or thought about an interaction weeks later where "...wait were they flirting or just being nice?" Made me think OP was gonna go around complimenting people and seeing if they got a nice response...
don't fucking give me hope if you're categorically unwilling to fulfill that hope
I've been in this position so many times.
I appreciate your comment. I absolutely don't want to bum anyone out.
I think it can be a little hurtful to people to, as you put it yourself, "lead them on". Obviously people misuse that phrase ("led me on") to justify hurting people and that's a much worse thing, but it's still fucked to give someone the idea that you're interested in them so they give you attention. I would never forgive someone for treating me as an instrument to be used for their validation in such a deceptive and one-sided manner, like one of those assholes who goes on dating apps to get attention and then says "I have an SO 
" after talking with someone for a few days.
I would encourage you to ask yourself why you feel the need for romantic/sexual "validation from strangers," and if it means there might be some aspect of your mindset that might be worth addressing rather than using someone else's self-esteem and emotional investment as a soothing balm. I have no interest in the answer to that question, I mention it only for your sake.
There are some cultural contexts, of course, where people's ideas are very different and it's more of the expectation that you might make out or something and then never see each other again, having never even learned their name, so perhaps if you're in that kind of situation then it's different
I've also craved validation within a relationship because of self-esteem problems and relationship problems and it led me to very bad decisions that I deeply regret. I know this advice is uncalled for and I'm likely projecting, but ask yourself if you're lacking something within the relationship that leads you to wanting this external validation, or whether no amount of intra-relationship validation will be enough and you crave for the new thing.
you know what you are doing isn't right. That's all I'm going to say.
OK.
Ask your partner if they are okay with it.
If you aren't comfortable asking your partner if they are okay with you flirting with other people, then it's not okay.
I'm comfortable in terms of my partner. I'm specifically asking about the other people.
If you think you are making other people uncomfortable then you should stop.
I don't think I am? I definitely don't want to.
I'd personally be uncomfortable with it but you should just ask your partner if its cool