Not quite as bad, but I went on a date with someone that just explained video games I hadn't played. He would ask about a video game and if I hadn't played it he'd speak about it uninterrupted for 10-20 minutes explaining the levels. Not even interesting lore or anything. It would be like listening to someone explain a speedrun, but their speedrun is just playing the game normally. I like video games and play with my partners and friends, and I even watch videos about video games I haven't played and I could only stand 3 of these rounds before ending the date. He was completely uninterested in talking about anything else and didn't even want to talk about games I had actually played. Only games I knew nothing about. Totally bizarre. It felt like a prank. Would make a great greentext from his perspective though.
You literally describe my fear with my 10 y/o. He is a talker. He's pretty quick witted and can even make jokes that adults can appreciate. But hell if he can't just talk at you.
We are slowly engaging it. I hope he becomes an interesting, empathetic young adult who gives space and shows real interest in others. I'll do my best, but I didn't get better at this till my late twenties.
It's good parenting to be aware of that sort of thing, but as you seem to guess I wouldn't worry too much. Kids are kind of just like that. I have a 13 yr old in my life right now and she is pretty similar, so I think it's healthy. The last thing we want to do as adults is make them feel small or like their thoughts and interests don't matter.
For what it's worth I don't mind talkers, it really is just about place/time/topic. I'm sure he'll make it through. I hear encouraging questions about others helps, "thank you for asking"/"what a great question" etc. but I don't know if it really helps so much as is something we do in the interim to feel like we're helping while they just mature in the background. Seems like you're on top of it though. Best of luck to you both!
Man that reminds me a lot of the game, oh I forget the name of it, but it had some vowels in the name, where you go in thinking the point is to kick a lot of butts and towers but it turns out the real point of the game is getting your ass kicked and having your team yell at you.
Like this one time I was playing and wanted to try this annoying character that bugged the hell out of me when others played him. Can't remember the name but he'd go like "ahhhhh" and then you'd be slow and couldn't use abilities even if you ran away and the ground would do this explody thing. Doesn't that sound soooo annoying? Anyways, I decided to try playing as this guy but I kept just dying instead of annoying the other team.
I see you want to say something but shut up for a bit, I'm not done yet.
So then I decided to try jungling. No, not juggling, I mean fighting the guys in the jungle. That way, I don't keep giving gold and xp to the other team when I repeatedly die, except for a few times when I accidentally thought their base was the jungle.
Anyways, we should play some games after we have sex at the end of the date. If you brought a gaming laptop, at least. If not, you can watch me play or give me a bj while I play or something so it's fun for you, too.
The cringe is so real. I had a guy bring his gaming laptop to a third date at my place. I was super into him and we went to my bedroom and he just set up his laptop. I could not pull him away from showing me his cool single player gaming collection. It's my fault because I kept going out with guys I met at cons. After the third time you think I'd learn my lesson but I didn't stop until poly became more pervasive and I ended up on dates with people who just forgot to mention that. I don't mind poly but you should be upfront about it. So glad I don't have to date anymore. It's an absolute disaster out there. Best of luck to everyone still doing it.
I had a coworker which just talked about Destiny just like you said. It was the main thing you'd hear from him, and he would just talk about the plays he did. I don't even play Destiny... People just started avoid talking to him
OH this instantly reminded me of some people, of which one person who's small talk of choice before and after lectures was what a turn on blood letting was, in that class there was also a chick who went to someones house in the forest to see the kitten they just got. without knowing thier name because they just met them (is it meet if you know 0% about someone except they live in the forest and have a cat at the end of "meeting" them)...it is almost surprising they have not been assaulted more.
This reminded me of this date I went on with a girl in college. I don't remember exactly what she said, but she talked about how she killed her pet hamster for a while when she was younger. I don't remember how, but it wasn't an accident IIRC. It's fair to say there wasn't a second date. Lol.
I smiled at a girl in college once. A day later she infodumped everything she knew about Capgras syndrome on me out of the blue. 11/10 would recommend.
Also, when people say meet others at college they don't mean in the classes, especially not in the lecture halls lol. They mean in the social events...
I was pretty shy when I started college and have always disliked social events. I skipped a few years in highschool so I was young when I started. Combined with working 30+ hours a week to pay for college and my social life was pretty dead.
My junior/senior year I decided to sit next to the most beautiful woman in class on day one. I would then smile, say hello, and leave them alone. Then smile, say goodbye at the end of class and leave.
A few weeks of this and most of them started talking to me a bit before or after class. By mid-terms I was friendly with a few beautiful women and had a couple dates. The last quarter of my senior year, I sat down next to my now wife.
I did get called out by my wife on knowing so many beautiful women when we were dating. She was a bit annoyed but I did sit down next to her after all.
2.5 years. So is it a couple or a few? I started college when I turned 16.
I ended up being a burned out after my 2nd year in college and I turned 18. I had also amassed some savings by working so much. So I bought a ticket to Europe and bummed around for a couple years. When I started back up I was the same age as everyone else.
My friend group was always on the nerdier side in high school. One thing I'm really glad we did come senior year was we'd play poker, and the loser, if single, would be have to go and ask a random gal out on a date (with the rest of the group trying-yet-failing to act casual hanging out nearby to make sure it happened lol)
It's liberating to know that, as long as you're not being a creep, you can just talk to someone you think is cute and ask them out. It was especially nice to know back in the high school days lol.
Generally, yes, but if you're a pleasant person to be around you can easily get things going from lectures as well. You just need to strike up a conversation like a normal person and be friendly. The problem most of these people have is they treat women like something to be won, when instead they're just people.
I feel I get that way when Iโm out of practice for too long. These days, I just need a bit of coffee and Iโm usually good to go with some light small talk lol.
That's what I meant though. It shouldn't be "a thing." It's just a conversation. Group conversations are still conversations. You just have to see them as people, not as a goal. Once you get to know them and you find out of you actually like them, as a person, then you can more easily persue them without seeming weird.
I think the trick to it is that you shouldn't force any situations like this to have any sort of outcome, just keep yourself open to new people. Like set up situations where you can meet new people, and have your attitude be "I'd like to get to know you, so we can either be friends, more than friends or never meet again if that's how it shakes out", and just keeping it low stakes. And then just try to get into those situations as much as you can.
Don't they? The culture might be different in different schools or different generations, but I've made quite a few friends just by chatting with people in the lecture halls before class.
It's funny how this post is just a greentext story about a guy trying to talk to a girl in class. But some of the comments are negative or have such divisive vote ratios: assume bad hygiene or "Seems like an appropriate response to a man who takes a womens studies course to try and pick up women"
Am I the only one that's surprised that the comments are so negative? The interaction from the greentext seems like a somewhat "standard" thing to happen in one's life
assume bad hygiene or โSeems like an appropriate response to a man who takes a womens studies course to try and pick up womenโ
I gotta say, I never had any of these problems in college. And I won't even pretend I had great hygiene or particularly good social skills. The trick with college is that 19 year old girls also didn't have great hygiene or well-developed social skills. We were all a bunch of clueless, fumbling, young adults trying to figure each other out.
Let's set aside the fact that OP is probably lying. When one guy gets ostracized by an entire classroom of other students, it's safe to assume one of two things:
The classroom is full of bigots who hate This One Guy for a very particular cultural reason (maybe you made a mistake going to South Confederacy Technical College as a black guy looking to meet white chicks)
The guy is so universally obnoxious that he can't get the time of day from the second biggest loser in the room
Am I the only one thatโs surprised that the comments are so negative?
If it was posted on anything but 4chan, maybe. But anyone who knows the reputation of the average 4chan user can come up with a host of reasons why people are avoiding him like the plague.
The trick with college is that 19 year old girls also didn't have great hygiene or well-developed social skills. We were all a bunch of clueless, fumbling, young adults trying to figure each other out.
Brother, ain't this the truth.
I didn't make any friends with my same-age classmates just by casually talking.
Then I went to night classes with full grown adults and i was invited to dinners and birthday parties immediately.
The post implies the 30% of men in the class weren't giving him the time of day, either.
So, maybe it was an entire room full of NPCs. Maybe they were all psychic and he was just the odd guy out. Maybe it's a Greentext and you shouldn't take it at face value. Who can say? But as anecdotes go, the "everyone acted like an emotionally sterile zombie hobbling from class to class in a daze" sounds... out of line with my experience in virtually any social setting. Nevermind one with dozens of teenagers all packed in together.
Like, I've got a few friends who teach high school. And the "I've got these kids who won't stfu during class" stories are a regular part of the "how was your day?" conversation. What magic is happening between Senior HS and Freshman College that turns everyone's most pernicious socializing instincts off in this one guy's classroom?
Now, if I'm someone's parent and I'm talking to my kid after school... and I ask how their day was? Did you make any new friends? What's your homework? Can you name any of your teachers? Do you remember what grade you're in? And they just give me nothing because they're burned out? That's extremely normal.
I graduated in 2024. I have been in the exact classroom described by the greentext countless times. It wasnโt every single class but it was many of them. All those NPCs/zombies you describe are people in the same boat as greentext. Everyone is wondering when someone else will step up to dip their toe in the water. The moment is fleeting though because soon all the phones are out and people are texting their friends, oblivious to the horror around them.
I agree. If this were a screenshot from pretty much any other app/site that isn't 4chan, the response would be different.
Seriously, if someone were to create an account and tell this exact story on Tumblr or something, and screenshot it here on Lemmy, they'd get completely different responses.
Honestly, I have seen many classrooms in which no one was talking to anyone. There would be a break in the lecture, and the lecture hall would be absolutely silent for 10-15 minutes until the lecture resumed. Other classes were a bit more chattery, or even way more. As a teacher now, it seems anecdotally that the problem is getting worse, but thatโs what every teacher always said (โthese younger generations!! Mumble mumbleโ)
It does seem to be a very 21st century thing to treat an unwanted romantic conversational overture as a form of assault.
I suspect it's even more so with terminally online people who are too socially awkward to be able to just brush someone off and move on, without being haunted by it for the next four decades.
I get that sometimes there are men who go too far and make a situation untenable, and absolutely fuck those guys, but overall I think we're going in the wrong direction in society where people just don't talk to each other any more.
Try calling anyone under 30 on the phone. They also think you are assaulting and traumatizing them. Or just ask someone a direct question to their face, however innocuous...
Everyone is terminally online now. And asking them to give you their direct one on one attention is considered demanding and rude. Everything has to be a text or a chat. Half the time when you interact with people IRL, they are on their phones. I see so many couples at bars now who are just... sitting there together on their phones.
I have a dog. She loves people and likes asking strangers for pets. People over 40/50 are happy to chat me up about my dog, ask me what her name is, make a comment about how cute she is. People under that age look like I am attacking them if I try to socialize with them about me dog. They just want to pet her and run away asap. they don't ask me what breed she is, what her name is, or anything. They avoid all eye contact or conversation with me. It's insane. Male or female.
People generally only want to socialize with people they already know and they primary want to do it via group chat or discord. Everyone and everything else is 'scary' or gives them 'anxiety'.
Hell I told a person in line at the book store a few months ago she and it was really good and I'd read it I hope she enjoys it. She looked at me with daggers in her eyes, didn't smile, said nothing. She was clearly around 30 too. It's insane. 5-10 years ago that person would have been like 'oh cool thanks! yeah I'm excited'. I remember being able to talk to people in book stores... about books. Nowadays... nope you are assaulting/attacking someone if you talk to them about books in a bookstore. Unless it's an employee.
as a man who went to university, and had women in my class, never had a negative reaction like that when trying to talk to girls about whatever is relevant.
Whoa there frend-o, that's a yikes from me. I may be a neurodiverse no-pussy guy from Lemmy, but I played Magic The Gathering at the comic con once and while I was explaining the cards to this girl, our hands accidentally touched and she laughed.
Exactly. I just want to get in, get out, and not be late to the next one. I'm paying to listen to the idiot in the front, I'm going to get my money's worth.
jaw drops to floor, eyes pop out of sockets accompanied by trumpets, heart beats out of chest, awooga awooga sound effect, pulls chain on train whistle that has appeared next to head as steam blows out, slams fists on table, rattling any plates, bowls or silverware, whistles loudly, fireworks shoot from top of head, pants loudly as tongue hangs out of mouth, wipes comically large bead of sweat from forehead, clears throat, straightens tie, combs hair Ahem, you look very lovely.
in my first three years of college i spoke to maybe ten students, pretty much all of them because we were assigned a team project together. only one guy talked to me because we were sitting next to each other at the same class and i started a few short-lived conversations with whoever was next to me before exams if the teacher was taking too long to come.
besides that, many people (almost everyone it seems) came into the college as friend groups from high school. they spoke to each other, but you're not within that friend group and it feels awkward to butt in a conversation where everyone's already highschool friends and you're a stranger.
Yep. Dorm life youโre stuck meeting people whether you like it or not. I hated our dorms, but I had a lot of fun with the roomies and others I met in the dorms.
I didn't live on campus but I was in a fraternity, was in the tennis club and I worked as a guide for exchange students. There were plenty of opportunities to meet new people and date.
i don't think we had anything like clubs. there was no campus as they have in america, just a college and a student dorm that was shared with other faculties.
there were some club-like activities like tabletop game evenings every now and then but i always had classes during those and couldn't try them out.
In college, made my own clubs and flyered it around.
One club was the cartoons and cereal club, where people brought cereal and we'd watch 90s cartoons for an hour. Another club was the Bob Ross appreciation club, which was just an excuse to drink wine and paint.
Be weird. You'd be surprised by the people you attract. And it was kind of awesome to go around bragging to people that I got 30 college kids to watch classic Xmen and eat Applejack's.
and it was pretty easy to fish out people that arnt part of the class, and are just sitting in it to scope out the place, there were plently of "vagrant" that pretended to be students and were just some creeps like the "anon" and homeless people.(this was a public university), the cray cray people are in the libraries.
Wow, college has turned rough, to many anxieties, I had fun in college, met new ppl, met my college gf of 3 years no fraternity needed not even socialmedia...and I'm just 44, already someone is calling anon a creep without any prior knowledge of the person or any context, it's that easy now to to judge people and call anyone a creep ...and they are wondering why are ppl lonely, single and anxious
A boomer told me that he observes younger generations as being stand off-ish. I don't disagree. I suppose having grown up with "stranger danger" message being drilled into us made us that way. I don't want to start a generation fight and blame boomers, but who are the parents of millenials who taught us the message that made us hypervigilant? The stranger danger message has merit, but if older generations are complaining why we behave that way, you reap what you sow as the saying goes.
Another consideration is that if Anon is Gen Z, it is very likely that his peers grew up with constant attention to online and digital presence, which makes them socially awkward. It didn't help either that much of Gen Z spent two years cooped up in their own homes during the pandemic. It does not take a genius to figure out what those two phenomena does to an entire generation.
Eh there are a lot of factors, including how your city is designed. Car centric cities usually have less sense of community than cities with good transit or walkability. This is because nobody chats with the person next to them in traffic but some people will chat on the street or on the train. But on the flip side, car centric small towns can have a lot of community, mostly because the place is so small everyone kinda knows everyone and most people rely on the same businesses.
Because there's a trend progressing in radfem groups where misandry is being normalized because it lets them hate men while remaining the victums in every situation instead of going to therapy.
Misandry is not a real concept. Itโs a term used by reactionary worthless dumbfucks who cannot handle the necessity of feminism. People who use the term misandry unironically should be strapped into a rocket and launched into the sun.
I, for one, feel some (shallow) sympathy for the protagonist of this plausibly fake story on the internet. I'm sure he showered and put on roll-on deodorant like a decent citizen, only to be crushed by the reality where social capital has been dwindling for decades, as presented by Robert D. Putnam. In my essay
Because the post was written by someone who clearly feels that these women owe him their attention.
I assumed it's a women's studies class because the kind of male who feels entitled to attention like this would typically think something along the lines of "women's studies would have the highest ratio of women to men of any other class" and so join said class assuming it would be a good place to get a date.
The tone of the post implies that he is upset after realizing the course would not double as his own personal harem of desperate women fighting each other for his affection.
The reactions of the women he mentioned is why I assumed he probably doesn't bathe. I'm guessing he showed up in stained sweatpants or something similar as well.
Mostly in this community, because the whole reason it exists is to laugh at shitty greentexts from 4chan. It has not affected my dating life in the slightest, as I don't talk about this place when I'm not here.
You seem like you must be a real "life of the party" kind of person
I've never had such an easy time talking to girls as I did in college. That's with me being short AF, quiet, and not particularly good looking. Either something has changed since then or OP has bad vibes.
the "anon" sounded like a creep that just goes around public places where they are not supposed to be. like a office party, COLLEGE class, library. especially while class is in session and your trying to flirt with someone trying to pay attention tot he teacher. probably got sussed out immediately. this goes the same for college libraries, if arnt in the class and dont know the person or studied together, or met in the same classes.
Idk, I had a similar experience in my college classes. Male and female students - people were pretty cliquish and didn't seem interested in meeting anyone. I was rarely able to establish even light relationships via my classes, and these never progressed to deeper relationships.
And this doesn't seem like an "oh, that's just you" problem, since I had no problem meeting people at school events, in clubs, randomly on the quad, in the bars near campus, etc. Classes just, in general, seemed to put people in an asocial mood. Which honestly makes sense to me - if you spend an hour concentrating on a lecture and then have somewhere to be afterwards, you aren't very primed for the openmindedness and creativity necessary to interact with a stranger.
This isnโt just an Anon problem anymore. My partner is a supervisor and he keeps having to have conversations with the 25 and younger crowd about showering, wearing clean clothes, and either wearing deodorant or coming up with other solutions for working in an environment with other people present. Men and women, 18-25.
I supervise soil remediation, which occasionally involves working in a liquid-proof coverall, with a hood, thick rubber gloves and a full face mask. I've had to literally pour a stream of sweat out of my boots. And I'm just standing there watching and writing, not actually doing physical labour.
And I still have to remind people to shower when changing. Even if you don't care about killing yourself, I mean, come on.
It's a trend I'm seeing too. I blame it on the cost of living - people renting with bad bathroom situations or people not able to consistently pay the cost of hot water
People are giving up. Young people more than anyone know they are living on a dying world. Today's college students know that they will likely never own a home. Those of older generations who are aren't in complete denial of climate change are just counting on dying of old age before things get really bad. And many older folks already own homes and are insulated from the worst effects of inequality.
Millions of young people are just giving up. They accept the dystopia they live in and recognize the police state that's been set up to quash any form of dissent or revolt. They have few motivations in life. They just want to earn barely enough to afford a modest apartment and some computer games, and beyond that they have little motivation in life. For many it's all just starting to feel pointless.
I have no idea. I was a bit of the unwashed teenager when I was, like, 14, but I pretty quickly pivoted around to showering in the morning. And using deo if I had to work in a crowded office. I think a lot of that was peer group: if you see all people around you take a bit of care, you start doing it too.
students arnt trying to date while they are class, and the guy is a college creep, hes essentially like brian from family guy that went to college to pickup girls, eventhough he doesnt go there., i had unforunate event of having to listening to one of these pickup artists(my bro was watching) and the creep went to a college library to pickup some chicks, but he was also condescending," oh because she is taking a low level math, i passed in mS in college MEANS THE girl isnt bright at all" , and he was indicating the girl is stupid so it should be easy.
At the start of a semester, turning to a person next to me (guy or girl) and saying "I'm looking to form a study group, would you be free this afternoon to go over the homework" is the most easy, basic-bitch, virtually-never-fails approach to making friends in college.
Guy or girl, cool or geeky, my age or a year or two off - 50% of the time it worked every time.
Women don't like being hit on in public. The idea that people of opposite gender don't ever interact with one another in public is incel-tier paranoia.
Approach a woman who does want to be approached at the time she wants to be approached without communicating any of that information. Ez. /s
In seriousness, consider class time as 'work.' Don't bother women at work. Now if you're in the back of the class and she's browsing Amazon, maybe she's not working as much but don't be creepy and say "I see you're shopping, talk to me instead," because, ew, but at least you know next time you're getting situated you can say "Hey, stupid question, blah blah blah" and test the waters.
Or, just generally treat women like people. That one always works.
Whatever passes for teena... sorry, young adults these days are nothing but braindead NPCs that live online and think chapgpt is their friend.
Every generation is worse that the previous one. Look to Japan to see how the west will be in 10 years.
I wonder if he'll have a moment of clarity in a decade or so about how weird that was?
Nah, he'll blame it all on wokism.
I'm sad to say that I wouldn't bet on it...
Not quite as bad, but I went on a date with someone that just explained video games I hadn't played. He would ask about a video game and if I hadn't played it he'd speak about it uninterrupted for 10-20 minutes explaining the levels. Not even interesting lore or anything. It would be like listening to someone explain a speedrun, but their speedrun is just playing the game normally. I like video games and play with my partners and friends, and I even watch videos about video games I haven't played and I could only stand 3 of these rounds before ending the date. He was completely uninterested in talking about anything else and didn't even want to talk about games I had actually played. Only games I knew nothing about. Totally bizarre. It felt like a prank. Would make a great greentext from his perspective though.
You literally describe my fear with my 10 y/o. He is a talker. He's pretty quick witted and can even make jokes that adults can appreciate. But hell if he can't just talk at you.
We are slowly engaging it. I hope he becomes an interesting, empathetic young adult who gives space and shows real interest in others. I'll do my best, but I didn't get better at this till my late twenties.
It's good parenting to be aware of that sort of thing, but as you seem to guess I wouldn't worry too much. Kids are kind of just like that. I have a 13 yr old in my life right now and she is pretty similar, so I think it's healthy. The last thing we want to do as adults is make them feel small or like their thoughts and interests don't matter.
For what it's worth I don't mind talkers, it really is just about place/time/topic. I'm sure he'll make it through. I hear encouraging questions about others helps, "thank you for asking"/"what a great question" etc. but I don't know if it really helps so much as is something we do in the interim to feel like we're helping while they just mature in the background. Seems like you're on top of it though. Best of luck to you both!
Man that reminds me a lot of the game, oh I forget the name of it, but it had some vowels in the name, where you go in thinking the point is to kick a lot of butts and towers but it turns out the real point of the game is getting your ass kicked and having your team yell at you.
Like this one time I was playing and wanted to try this annoying character that bugged the hell out of me when others played him. Can't remember the name but he'd go like "ahhhhh" and then you'd be slow and couldn't use abilities even if you ran away and the ground would do this explody thing. Doesn't that sound soooo annoying? Anyways, I decided to try playing as this guy but I kept just dying instead of annoying the other team.
I see you want to say something but shut up for a bit, I'm not done yet.
So then I decided to try jungling. No, not juggling, I mean fighting the guys in the jungle. That way, I don't keep giving gold and xp to the other team when I repeatedly die, except for a few times when I accidentally thought their base was the jungle.
Anyways, we should play some games after we have sex at the end of the date. If you brought a gaming laptop, at least. If not, you can watch me play or give me a bj while I play or something so it's fun for you, too.
The cringe is so real. I had a guy bring his gaming laptop to a third date at my place. I was super into him and we went to my bedroom and he just set up his laptop. I could not pull him away from showing me his cool single player gaming collection. It's my fault because I kept going out with guys I met at cons. After the third time you think I'd learn my lesson but I didn't stop until poly became more pervasive and I ended up on dates with people who just forgot to mention that. I don't mind poly but you should be upfront about it. So glad I don't have to date anymore. It's an absolute disaster out there. Best of luck to everyone still doing it.
I had a coworker which just talked about Destiny just like you said. It was the main thing you'd hear from him, and he would just talk about the plays he did. I don't even play Destiny... People just started avoid talking to him
OH this instantly reminded me of some people, of which one person who's small talk of choice before and after lectures was what a turn on blood letting was, in that class there was also a chick who went to someones house in the forest to see the kitten they just got. without knowing thier name because they just met them (is it meet if you know 0% about someone except they live in the forest and have a cat at the end of "meeting" them)...it is almost surprising they have not been assaulted more.
I mean, girls have boobs, so they must like to talk about them, right? Right???
Some of them do, but best not to assume so!
Based.
This reminded me of this date I went on with a girl in college. I don't remember exactly what she said, but she talked about how she killed her pet hamster for a while when she was younger. I don't remember how, but it wasn't an accident IIRC. It's fair to say there wasn't a second date. Lol.
Simplest explanation is he wanted you to leave him alone
I smiled at a girl in college once. A day later she infodumped everything she knew about Capgras syndrome on me out of the blue. 11/10 would recommend.
How did you know? ๐คฃ
Also, when people say meet others at college they don't mean in the classes, especially not in the lecture halls lol. They mean in the social events...
I was pretty shy when I started college and have always disliked social events. I skipped a few years in highschool so I was young when I started. Combined with working 30+ hours a week to pay for college and my social life was pretty dead.
My junior/senior year I decided to sit next to the most beautiful woman in class on day one. I would then smile, say hello, and leave them alone. Then smile, say goodbye at the end of class and leave.
A few weeks of this and most of them started talking to me a bit before or after class. By mid-terms I was friendly with a few beautiful women and had a couple dates. The last quarter of my senior year, I sat down next to my now wife.
I did get called out by my wife on knowing so many beautiful women when we were dating. She was a bit annoyed but I did sit down next to her after all.
Wholesome ending.
Though, I am a bit confused by
Did your high school have more than 4 years? When I think of "a few," I think "at least 3," but skipping 3 out of 4 years doesn't sound right.
2.5 years. So is it a couple or a few? I started college when I turned 16.
I ended up being a burned out after my 2nd year in college and I turned 18. I had also amassed some savings by working so much. So I bought a ticket to Europe and bummed around for a couple years. When I started back up I was the same age as everyone else.
My friend group was always on the nerdier side in high school. One thing I'm really glad we did come senior year was we'd play poker, and the loser, if single, would be have to go and ask a random gal out on a date (with the rest of the group trying-yet-failing to act casual hanging out nearby to make sure it happened lol)
It's liberating to know that, as long as you're not being a creep, you can just talk to someone you think is cute and ask them out. It was especially nice to know back in the high school days lol.
Generally, yes, but if you're a pleasant person to be around you can easily get things going from lectures as well. You just need to strike up a conversation like a normal person and be friendly. The problem most of these people have is they treat women like something to be won, when instead they're just people.
Wish I was normal. I am WAY too socially awkward to start a conversation. Usually I need at least a couple of hours to warm up to somebody.
I feel I get that way when Iโm out of practice for too long. These days, I just need a bit of coffee and Iโm usually good to go with some light small talk lol.
How do you warm up to someone without having a conversation?
Stare them straight in the eye while hip thrusting
Occupy the same space and have group conversations instead of one-on-ones I guess.
Like, invite people to join your group instead of going out just with you, it's less threatening and less of a "thing".
That's what I meant though. It shouldn't be "a thing." It's just a conversation. Group conversations are still conversations. You just have to see them as people, not as a goal. Once you get to know them and you find out of you actually like them, as a person, then you can more easily persue them without seeming weird.
Yeah, I guess we are thinking the same thing.
Agreed, I made lifelong friends in my college anime club.
I met the love of my life at a literal exam.
I think the trick to it is that you shouldn't force any situations like this to have any sort of outcome, just keep yourself open to new people. Like set up situations where you can meet new people, and have your attitude be "I'd like to get to know you, so we can either be friends, more than friends or never meet again if that's how it shakes out", and just keeping it low stakes. And then just try to get into those situations as much as you can.
Don't they? The culture might be different in different schools or different generations, but I've made quite a few friends just by chatting with people in the lecture halls before class.
It's funny how this post is just a greentext story about a guy trying to talk to a girl in class. But some of the comments are negative or have such divisive vote ratios: assume bad hygiene or "Seems like an appropriate response to a man who takes a womens studies course to try and pick up women"
Am I the only one that's surprised that the comments are so negative? The interaction from the greentext seems like a somewhat "standard" thing to happen in one's life
I gotta say, I never had any of these problems in college. And I won't even pretend I had great hygiene or particularly good social skills. The trick with college is that 19 year old girls also didn't have great hygiene or well-developed social skills. We were all a bunch of clueless, fumbling, young adults trying to figure each other out.
Let's set aside the fact that OP is probably lying. When one guy gets ostracized by an entire classroom of other students, it's safe to assume one of two things:
The classroom is full of bigots who hate This One Guy for a very particular cultural reason (maybe you made a mistake going to South Confederacy Technical College as a black guy looking to meet white chicks)
The guy is so universally obnoxious that he can't get the time of day from the second biggest loser in the room
If it was posted on anything but 4chan, maybe. But anyone who knows the reputation of the average 4chan user can come up with a host of reasons why people are avoiding him like the plague.
Brother, ain't this the truth.
I didn't make any friends with my same-age classmates just by casually talking.
Then I went to night classes with full grown adults and i was invited to dinners and birthday parties immediately.
The post says that people weren't avoiding him specifically, but no one was talking to one another at all.
The post implies the 30% of men in the class weren't giving him the time of day, either.
So, maybe it was an entire room full of NPCs. Maybe they were all psychic and he was just the odd guy out. Maybe it's a Greentext and you shouldn't take it at face value. Who can say? But as anecdotes go, the "everyone acted like an emotionally sterile zombie hobbling from class to class in a daze" sounds... out of line with my experience in virtually any social setting. Nevermind one with dozens of teenagers all packed in together.
Like, I've got a few friends who teach high school. And the "I've got these kids who won't stfu during class" stories are a regular part of the "how was your day?" conversation. What magic is happening between Senior HS and Freshman College that turns everyone's most pernicious socializing instincts off in this one guy's classroom?
Now, if I'm someone's parent and I'm talking to my kid after school... and I ask how their day was? Did you make any new friends? What's your homework? Can you name any of your teachers? Do you remember what grade you're in? And they just give me nothing because they're burned out? That's extremely normal.
I graduated in 2024. I have been in the exact classroom described by the greentext countless times. It wasnโt every single class but it was many of them. All those NPCs/zombies you describe are people in the same boat as greentext. Everyone is wondering when someone else will step up to dip their toe in the water. The moment is fleeting though because soon all the phones are out and people are texting their friends, oblivious to the horror around them.
Okay, so they're not just quietly ignoring each other. They're fixated on their friend groups on the phone.
Again, seems like the obvious opener is "study group". And that group will inevitably get it's own group chat.
I agree. If this were a screenshot from pretty much any other app/site that isn't 4chan, the response would be different.
Seriously, if someone were to create an account and tell this exact story on Tumblr or something, and screenshot it here on Lemmy, they'd get completely different responses.
Honestly, I have seen many classrooms in which no one was talking to anyone. There would be a break in the lecture, and the lecture hall would be absolutely silent for 10-15 minutes until the lecture resumed. Other classes were a bit more chattery, or even way more. As a teacher now, it seems anecdotally that the problem is getting worse, but thatโs what every teacher always said (โthese younger generations!! Mumble mumbleโ)
Thank you for a civil and thoughtful response :)
It does seem to be a very 21st century thing to treat an unwanted romantic conversational overture as a form of assault.
I suspect it's even more so with terminally online people who are too socially awkward to be able to just brush someone off and move on, without being haunted by it for the next four decades.
I get that sometimes there are men who go too far and make a situation untenable, and absolutely fuck those guys, but overall I think we're going in the wrong direction in society where people just don't talk to each other any more.
It doesn't even have to be romantic.
Try calling anyone under 30 on the phone. They also think you are assaulting and traumatizing them. Or just ask someone a direct question to their face, however innocuous...
Everyone is terminally online now. And asking them to give you their direct one on one attention is considered demanding and rude. Everything has to be a text or a chat. Half the time when you interact with people IRL, they are on their phones. I see so many couples at bars now who are just... sitting there together on their phones.
I have a dog. She loves people and likes asking strangers for pets. People over 40/50 are happy to chat me up about my dog, ask me what her name is, make a comment about how cute she is. People under that age look like I am attacking them if I try to socialize with them about me dog. They just want to pet her and run away asap. they don't ask me what breed she is, what her name is, or anything. They avoid all eye contact or conversation with me. It's insane. Male or female.
People generally only want to socialize with people they already know and they primary want to do it via group chat or discord. Everyone and everything else is 'scary' or gives them 'anxiety'.
Hell I told a person in line at the book store a few months ago she and it was really good and I'd read it I hope she enjoys it. She looked at me with daggers in her eyes, didn't smile, said nothing. She was clearly around 30 too. It's insane. 5-10 years ago that person would have been like 'oh cool thanks! yeah I'm excited'. I remember being able to talk to people in book stores... about books. Nowadays... nope you are assaulting/attacking someone if you talk to them about books in a bookstore. Unless it's an employee.
as a man who went to university, and had women in my class, never had a negative reaction like that when trying to talk to girls about whatever is relevant.
never tried to pick up girls in class either.
Lemmy is filled with incels who are in denial. It's kind of like how the most rabid homophobes are closted gays.
Whoa there frend-o, that's a yikes from me. I may be a neurodiverse no-pussy guy from Lemmy, but I played Magic The Gathering at the comic con once and while I was explaining the cards to this girl, our hands accidentally touched and she laughed.
Lmao
Lemcels, as they (we) are known for
Join a club. There's fliers everywhere.
Yeah clubs/societies are the places to meet people. No one wants so socialise in class.
Exactly. I just want to get in, get out, and not be late to the next one. I'm paying to listen to the idiot in the front, I'm going to get my money's worth.
Helps if you don't start the conversation with " Hello m'lady."
https://www.reddit.com/r/copypasta/comments/hb4nmh/jaw_drops_to_floor_eyes_pop_out_of_sockets/
what is THY interest m'lady.
in my first three years of college i spoke to maybe ten students, pretty much all of them because we were assigned a team project together. only one guy talked to me because we were sitting next to each other at the same class and i started a few short-lived conversations with whoever was next to me before exams if the teacher was taking too long to come.
besides that, many people (almost everyone it seems) came into the college as friend groups from high school. they spoke to each other, but you're not within that friend group and it feels awkward to butt in a conversation where everyone's already highschool friends and you're a stranger.
Key is to live on campus.
Yep. Dorm life youโre stuck meeting people whether you like it or not. I hated our dorms, but I had a lot of fun with the roomies and others I met in the dorms.
I didn't live on campus but I was in a fraternity, was in the tennis club and I worked as a guide for exchange students. There were plenty of opportunities to meet new people and date.
In my experience, even then it's still difficult to talk to people.
ya if you want to meet people, join a club.
I only ever speak to people I don't already know in the same class when there's class assignments that requires us to.
i don't think we had anything like clubs. there was no campus as they have in america, just a college and a student dorm that was shared with other faculties.
there were some club-like activities like tabletop game evenings every now and then but i always had classes during those and couldn't try them out.
In college, made my own clubs and flyered it around.
One club was the cartoons and cereal club, where people brought cereal and we'd watch 90s cartoons for an hour. Another club was the Bob Ross appreciation club, which was just an excuse to drink wine and paint.
Be weird. You'd be surprised by the people you attract. And it was kind of awesome to go around bragging to people that I got 30 college kids to watch classic Xmen and eat Applejack's.
and it was pretty easy to fish out people that arnt part of the class, and are just sitting in it to scope out the place, there were plently of "vagrant" that pretended to be students and were just some creeps like the "anon" and homeless people.(this was a public university), the cray cray people are in the libraries.
Wow, college has turned rough, to many anxieties, I had fun in college, met new ppl, met my college gf of 3 years no fraternity needed not even socialmedia...and I'm just 44, already someone is calling anon a creep without any prior knowledge of the person or any context, it's that easy now to to judge people and call anyone a creep ...and they are wondering why are ppl lonely, single and anxious
A boomer told me that he observes younger generations as being stand off-ish. I don't disagree. I suppose having grown up with "stranger danger" message being drilled into us made us that way. I don't want to start a generation fight and blame boomers, but who are the parents of millenials who taught us the message that made us hypervigilant? The stranger danger message has merit, but if older generations are complaining why we behave that way, you reap what you sow as the saying goes.
Another consideration is that if Anon is Gen Z, it is very likely that his peers grew up with constant attention to online and digital presence, which makes them socially awkward. It didn't help either that much of Gen Z spent two years cooped up in their own homes during the pandemic. It does not take a genius to figure out what those two phenomena does to an entire generation.
You may be interested in reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
There's a lot to blame - dual income households, suburbanization, religion declining in popularity (religious communities are communities)
Decline in local communities sounds like a natural result of mass communication and globalization, imo
Eh there are a lot of factors, including how your city is designed. Car centric cities usually have less sense of community than cities with good transit or walkability. This is because nobody chats with the person next to them in traffic but some people will chat on the street or on the train. But on the flip side, car centric small towns can have a lot of community, mostly because the place is so small everyone kinda knows everyone and most people rely on the same businesses.
Well, posting green-texts is a fair indicator IMO (I mean it's fake but let's pretend).
Would this attract someone just like the anime stickers?
quite likely, but it's not as effective as arch
Eww, no, it's not Arch
You need to wear the Fedora, not run it.
Seems like an appropriate response to a man who takes a womens studies course to try and pick up women
Especially if he doesn't bathe
Why do you assume is a women studies course?
And why do they assume he doesn't bathe?
4chan posting
He's on 4chan?
So much prejudice
Because there's a trend progressing in radfem groups where misandry is being normalized because it lets them hate men while remaining the victums in every situation instead of going to therapy.
Misandry is not a real concept. Itโs a term used by reactionary worthless dumbfucks who cannot handle the necessity of feminism. People who use the term misandry unironically should be strapped into a rocket and launched into the sun.
So is 'misanthropy' also not a real concept, since anyone who is a misanthropist is by definition not hating on an oppressed minority?
If you believe those things are the same, I donโt know how to help you.
What? How could they be the same? They're different things.
Thanks for being the example
Whenever there is a worthless dumbfuck pretending that misandry is real, I will always be the example of a rational person pushing back on it.
Yes, your actions in this thread scream "highly rational" and not hateful in any way.
Itโs completely meaningless and anyone who attempts to argue otherwise belongs in prison.
Bait used to be believable.
I, for one, feel some (shallow) sympathy for the protagonist of this plausibly fake story on the internet. I'm sure he showered and put on roll-on deodorant like a decent citizen, only to be crushed by the reality where social capital has been dwindling for decades, as presented by Robert D. Putnam. In my essay
edit: don't downvote me I'm serious
The makeup of universities these days isn't that far off from that in general.
Yeah, I didn't think anything of that because there are more women than men in college today.
I did life sciences. Classes were 70% women. (Did not hit on them)
so anything bio
Because the post was written by someone who clearly feels that these women owe him their attention.
I assumed it's a women's studies class because the kind of male who feels entitled to attention like this would typically think something along the lines of "women's studies would have the highest ratio of women to men of any other class" and so join said class assuming it would be a good place to get a date.
The tone of the post implies that he is upset after realizing the course would not double as his own personal harem of desperate women fighting each other for his affection.
The reactions of the women he mentioned is why I assumed he probably doesn't bathe. I'm guessing he showed up in stained sweatpants or something similar as well.
Any other questions?
Mostly in this community, because the whole reason it exists is to laugh at shitty greentexts from 4chan. It has not affected my dating life in the slightest, as I don't talk about this place when I'm not here.
You seem like you must be a real "life of the party" kind of person
๐๏ธ ๐ ๐๏ธ
WHOA!!
โจ๏ธ ๐ฅต โจ๏ธ
B U R N
A L E R T
๐ฅ ๐ฅ ๐ฅ
๐ญ ๐ญ ๐ญ
Live in the dorms and go to parties. The first week before classes start is magical for making friends.
Ah yes, shroom week.
I've never had such an easy time talking to girls as I did in college. That's with me being short AF, quiet, and not particularly good looking. Either something has changed since then or OP has bad vibes.
Something has. I haven't seen a student speak to another student in a classroom for a long time now.
Now this whole zoomers are having less sex than previous generations is starting to make sense.
Did you go to college before or after covid & social media.
the "anon" sounded like a creep that just goes around public places where they are not supposed to be. like a office party, COLLEGE class, library. especially while class is in session and your trying to flirt with someone trying to pay attention tot he teacher. probably got sussed out immediately. this goes the same for college libraries, if arnt in the class and dont know the person or studied together, or met in the same classes.
Anon is ugly, stinks, or has a terrible personality; or a mix/combination of those.
Idk, I had a similar experience in my college classes. Male and female students - people were pretty cliquish and didn't seem interested in meeting anyone. I was rarely able to establish even light relationships via my classes, and these never progressed to deeper relationships.
And this doesn't seem like an "oh, that's just you" problem, since I had no problem meeting people at school events, in clubs, randomly on the quad, in the bars near campus, etc. Classes just, in general, seemed to put people in an asocial mood. Which honestly makes sense to me - if you spend an hour concentrating on a lecture and then have somewhere to be afterwards, you aren't very primed for the openmindedness and creativity necessary to interact with a stranger.
I had the same thought reading this. If Anon wants to socialize he should go to social events.
He had one dread, and fungus. Worked on people's toilets with plungers.
I've seen a weird amount of Del references on Lemmy and I'm here for it.
it's important to practice good hygiene
He's obnoxious enough to try to pick up women in class. That's enough, really.
It's literally the FIRST rule.
Bruh it could've been me honestly, so sorry I tend to think when strangers speak to me I'm about to get scammed into something ๐ญ
How often do you shower?
This isnโt just an Anon problem anymore. My partner is a supervisor and he keeps having to have conversations with the 25 and younger crowd about showering, wearing clean clothes, and either wearing deodorant or coming up with other solutions for working in an environment with other people present. Men and women, 18-25.
I supervise soil remediation, which occasionally involves working in a liquid-proof coverall, with a hood, thick rubber gloves and a full face mask. I've had to literally pour a stream of sweat out of my boots. And I'm just standing there watching and writing, not actually doing physical labour.
And I still have to remind people to shower when changing. Even if you don't care about killing yourself, I mean, come on.
It's a trend I'm seeing too. I blame it on the cost of living - people renting with bad bathroom situations or people not able to consistently pay the cost of hot water
Really? Why is that a thing
People are giving up. Young people more than anyone know they are living on a dying world. Today's college students know that they will likely never own a home. Those of older generations who are aren't in complete denial of climate change are just counting on dying of old age before things get really bad. And many older folks already own homes and are insulated from the worst effects of inequality.
Millions of young people are just giving up. They accept the dystopia they live in and recognize the police state that's been set up to quash any form of dissent or revolt. They have few motivations in life. They just want to earn barely enough to afford a modest apartment and some computer games, and beyond that they have little motivation in life. For many it's all just starting to feel pointless.
I have no idea. I was a bit of the unwashed teenager when I was, like, 14, but I pretty quickly pivoted around to showering in the morning. And using deo if I had to work in a crowded office. I think a lot of that was peer group: if you see all people around you take a bit of care, you start doing it too.
Iโm too old to be able to answer that correctly.
Anon does online degree is more accurate ๐คทโโ๏ธ
students arnt trying to date while they are class, and the guy is a college creep, hes essentially like brian from family guy that went to college to pickup girls, eventhough he doesnt go there., i had unforunate event of having to listening to one of these pickup artists(my bro was watching) and the creep went to a college library to pickup some chicks, but he was also condescending," oh because she is taking a low level math, i passed in mS in college MEANS THE girl isnt bright at all" , and he was indicating the girl is stupid so it should be easy.
Women don't enjoy being approached in public.
At the start of a semester, turning to a person next to me (guy or girl) and saying "I'm looking to form a study group, would you be free this afternoon to go over the homework" is the most easy, basic-bitch, virtually-never-fails approach to making friends in college.
Guy or girl, cool or geeky, my age or a year or two off - 50% of the time it worked every time.
Women don't like being hit on in public. The idea that people of opposite gender don't ever interact with one another in public is incel-tier paranoia.
If public and private are both out, how does one meet a possible friend or dating partner who's a girl?
Approach a woman who does want to be approached at the time she wants to be approached without communicating any of that information. Ez. /s
In seriousness, consider class time as 'work.' Don't bother women at work. Now if you're in the back of the class and she's browsing Amazon, maybe she's not working as much but don't be creepy and say "I see you're shopping, talk to me instead," because, ew, but at least you know next time you're getting situated you can say "Hey, stupid question, blah blah blah" and test the waters.
Or, just generally treat women like people. That one always works.
I wish I had an immediate solution.
Realistically, our dating sites should be publicly ran so people can meet the way they have shown they prefer, which is online.
The dating site algos were actually pretty good at helping people find partners until too much money got involved.
Ok. I'll just wait inside their house then ๐
Whatever passes for teena... sorry, young adults these days are nothing but braindead NPCs that live online and think chapgpt is their friend. Every generation is worse that the previous one. Look to Japan to see how the west will be in 10 years.
Literally every generation ever
But it does seem every new generation is now more anti-social. Just look how popular Tate is with Gen Z
https://youtu.be/LD0x7ho_IYc
Interesting, thanks.
that would require actually building housing