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malcolmocean comments on "Stupid" questions thread - Less Wrong Discussion

40 Post author: gothgirl420666 13 July 2013 02:42AM

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Comment author: Qiaochu_Yuan 13 July 2013 05:37:48AM *  6 points [-]

Yeah, it was deliberately vague so I'd get answers to a wide variety of possible interpretations. To be more specific, I have trouble figuring out what my opening line should be in situations where I'm not sure what the social script for introducing myself is, e.g. to women at a bar (I'm a straight male). My impression is that "hi, can I buy you a drink?" is cliché but I don't know what reasonable substitutes are.

Comment author: malcolmocean 13 July 2013 06:14:04PM 13 points [-]

"hi, can I buy you a drink?" is also bad for other reasons, because this often opens a kind of transactional model of things where there's kind of an idea that you're buying her time, either for conversation or for other more intimate activities later. Now, this isn't explicitly the case, but it can get really awkward, so I'd seriously caution against opening with it.

I feel like I read something interesting about this on Mark Manson's blog but it's horribly organized so I can't find it now.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 July 2013 11:08:26PM 2 points [-]

"hi, can I buy you a drink?" is also bad for other reasons, because this often opens a kind of transactional model of things where there's kind of an idea that you're buying her time, either for conversation or for other more intimate activities later. Now, this isn't explicitly the case, but it can get really awkward, so I'd seriously caution against opening with it.

That sort of things vary a lot depending on what kind of culture you're in.