SilasBarta comments on How to deal with someone in a LessWrong meeting being creepy - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Douglas_Reay 09 September 2012 04:41AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 08 September 2012 06:15:47AM *  17 points [-]

The fuck it does. This is about creepiness. Actual attempts at unwelcome intimacy. Whoever from and whoever to.

Like how starting a conversation with a stranger who doesn't want to talk to you is unwelcome, and thus creepy?

Or did you think people would never get the C-word for doing just that?

For further enlightenment, see, for example, here.

I missed the enlightenment you were expecting me to get from learning of a case where a high-status person got surprisingly little punishment (and no effective loss to social life) from doing creep things.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2012 09:07:09AM *  -1 points [-]

Like how starting a conversation with a stranger who doesn't want to talk to you is unwelcome, and thus creepy?

You seem to be underestimating how easy it is to guess beforehand whether or not a stranger would want to talk to you. See the comment thread to this. (Well, I disagree that complimenting a stranger's netbook is necessarily creepy, but...)

Comment author: DanArmak 08 September 2012 08:08:56PM 14 points [-]

Well, I disagree that complimenting a stranger's netbook is creepy, but...

This disagreement on what is creepy demonstrates precisely how hard it is to predict in advance if some behavior will be perceived as creepy or not.

Comment author: Dre 10 September 2012 07:06:58PM 1 point [-]

Though I don't think its that simple because both sides are claiming that the other side is not reporting how they truly feel. One side claims that people are calling things creepy semi-arbitrarily to raise their own status, and the other claims that people are intentionally refusing to recognize creepy behavior as creepy so they don't have to stop it (or being slightly more charitable, so they don't take a status hit for being creepy).

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2012 08:27:50PM *  0 points [-]

I should have said/thought had said "is necessarily creepy". (Fixed now.)

Comment author: pjeby 09 September 2012 02:14:05AM *  6 points [-]

You seem to be underestimating how easy it is to guess beforehand whether or not a stranger would want to talk to you. See the comment thread to this. (Well, I disagree that complimenting a stranger's netbook is necessarily creepy, but...)

Upvoted for an excellent link which caused me to update my intuition regarding the nature and frequency of various types of public harassment of women. I didn't update so far as to regard the XKCD cartoon as "promoting rape culture" (which I still think is going overboard), but after reading the (very very long) comment thread with all the subway/public/other harassment stories, I can totally see where they're coming from.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 09 September 2012 04:47:57AM 5 points [-]

That thread gives an important overview of a sort. It's got its limits because women who talk about not having it that bad from men are not kindly treated in the discussion.

I'm not denying any of those stories about behavior ranging from intrusive to seriously threatening and it's obviously fairly common, just saying that it's not a overview of the whole situation. I've never seen an overview of the whole situation for women.

Comment author: Desrtopa 08 September 2012 09:38:48PM 5 points [-]

People who frequently fall into patterns of behavior that others regard as "creepy" tend to be those who do not find this easy.

Could you create a set of instructions that can easily be followed by people with low levels of social fluency, which would allow them to make this judgment with low levels of false positives and false negatives? If so, you'd be doing a big favor both to people who're frequently exposed to "creepy" behavior, and people who frequently engage in that behavior. It would also probably be unique in the world.