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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

I think it's pretty simple; human courting is chock full of nonverbals and hints and read-between-the-lines. You take a guy who understands he's supposed to pick up on these things and be bold, but is quite bad at detecting whether interest is reciprocated, and tadah- you have this blog post.

Supporting evidence that I felt greatly bolstered my theory- Not long ago I went for a kiss with a girl I barely knew. I knew from body language alone she wanted that, and I was right. She later explicitly told me how happy she was that I had been bold, taken control, and made the leap totally out of the blue.

So at least to my figuring, it isn't like these people are fundamentally misguided. It isn't like courtship is supposed to be started with "May I stroke your hair? Ok, now I'm going to kiss you, is that Ok?". They are probably just really bad at navigating these waters.

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Bingo, bingo, bingo.

I uh, I do understand what you're saying. My empathy is overflowing, and I've seen friends that have gone from timid to "over confident" in order to find more success in dating... so I can understand that a million thoughts were flying through his head when he decided to go for it.

BUT, the two were strangers, in a topic-oriented setting, and she rebuffed his first attempt. That could have, and should have been the end of the story...

Put another way: if he had hugged her, she said "We just met..." and that was the end of it, we wouldn't be having the conversation at all.

Unfortunately, as you allude, there's not really a definitive way of solving this problem unless we build a way of giving passive signals constantly. Some sort of an indicator or smart phone app "Yes, I am willing to be hit on by you and you, but not you and you". There's a weird idea...

You're right, it could have/should have stopped at the first rebuff. But it does make quite a lot of sense that someone who we are already assuming is very bad at reading attraction and social clues might miss or chose to ignore the first rebuff, especially when it is an indirect rebuff like the one in this story.

Here's how she responded to that,

"I try giving him the benefit of the doubt and make some quip about his being a friendly sort"

To be fair, we don't know exactly what she said, but I can imagine a few ways that she could have said this that would have come across as playful, not corrective. I'm not accusing her of anything of course, but combined with the fact that you pointed out that this guy might not have the social intelligence to pick up on the hints, anything that could be construed as playful would have been.

It's still his fault for missing the hints, but it definitely turns him into socially inept, not sexually assaulting.

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