Talking to stranger women in the streets...

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... and even asking them out?

Or coming forward to a stranger woman I don’t know sitting in coffee shop, and talk to her?

All these sound too odd.

Is that normal in some cultures? I really don’t buy it.

This topic is direct continuation to the discussion here:
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=363455&start=75


Two Australian users claimed there that it’s normal in Australia - honesty, I don’t buy their words much either because they gave weak examples : The Zoo example yellowmartin gave is more like meeting someone through a shared activity; it is totally different than the street scene.
And Raleigh gave example of speed dating in coffee shops... which is a dating event and it has nothing to do with the coffee scenario that I am talking about.

In goldfish’s world; all these look normal... that guys ask out women (compelete strangers... no mutual friends) everywhere, in the streets, in coffee shops, in elevators, at the beaches.

I still don’t buy that this is socially acceptable or at least commin in most parts of the world.

So any thoughts?

I think the risk of rejection is much higher than with some other methods. It is most definitely possible to do it in ways that are not socially acceptable.

I'll just list some cases and you can decide whether they count or not:

.) (White guy, quite attractive) We were at a train station and he asked me when and from which platform a train to the town he wanted to go to would leave. I didn't know. After he had gone away (15m to sit down) I looked it up and looked for him to tell him where his train would leave from. He already knew though. So I went away again. A few minutes later he came back and told me about a questionnaire he needed people to fill out for his bachelor thesis. He didn't have it there so he needed my phone number or E-mail address. I gave him my E-mail address because back then I didn't have a phone number (which I didn't tell him because everyone assumes that everyone has a phone).
He sent me an E-mail but didn't mail me the questionnaire but ask me for my phone number and when we could meet up. I actually bought a phone because sooner or later I'd need one anyway and I didn't want to admit that I didn't have one. From that point on he didn't mention the questionnaire anymore therefore I assume this wasn't mainly about the questionnaire, especially since it would have been easier to find other random people to fill it out.
We failed to meet though, because when we planned to he missed his train (neither of us lived in the town we wanted to meet up but I studied there and he had studied there and only needed to complete his bachelor thesis that semester), I failed at writing sms because the phone always wanted to guess which word I was going to write after I typed in the first letter and it always guessed wrong and I failed to deactivate that and phone calls didn't work as soon as he was on the train. Therefore I did not know he had missed his train and after about an hour of waiting I left. My family was also going to go on a vacation for a few weeks soon after that day and I went with them.
In the end it was a compete failure.

.) (Black guy, probably a bit too old for me, not particularly attractive) We were on a tram. He tried to ask me out but I at first didn't even notice that he was talking to me. I had a bad headache and wasn't paying attention to what was going on around me. After I noticed that he was trying to ask me out I had a hard time replying because I hadn't heard half of what he said. I suppose I may have seemed rather rude as he did not know about the headache and my initial failure to notice he was trying to talk to me. I would not have been particularly interested anyway.

.) (Indian guy, relatively attractive but not really my type) He approached me with a broad smile and talked to me as if we already knew each other. Initially I didn't notice that we didn't because I have a hard time recognizing faces and a similarly looking very extroverted guy talked to me a few days earlier at university (he was barely an acquaintance but for such an extroverted person how he approached me would not have been unusual - only in reality it wasn't the same guy). The guy asked me out for coffee which I agreed to (still assuming that nothing about the situation was unusual because I thought I already talked to him earlier). I noticed that he wasn't that guy soon after because he didn't speak the native language well enough. I didn't end it there because I figured that I lack pretty much every kind of life-experience - so why not. There was a lot of miscommunication because he neither spoke the native language nor English well. Somehow we never arrived at a cafe because we went somewhere but didn't actually know where we were going. He tried to initiate physical contact pretty soon and was selectively unable to understand me when I tried to slow him down. He pretended he actually didn't understand me because he didn't speak the language that well but his failure to understand was a bit too selective. He also didn't want to understand me when I tried to end the situation because it just wasn't worth being late to a lecture. He ask me to have sex with him but pretending not to understand me when I tried to slow him down kind of disqualified him for that. In the end I ended our interaction somewhat rudely because that was the only way he'd understand.

.) (White guy, unattractive and too old for me) He approached literally every woman between 13 and 50 to ask her out and went on directly to the next one as soon as he got rejected. That's not how it works.

.) (white guy, attractive but possibly too young for me) On a tram. He approached me to tell me that my shoelaces weren't tied which was probably an excuse to start a conversation as what followed seemed like flirting (fairly innocently, nothing that could be considered inappropriate). The tram was very noisy however and I had trouble understanding him. Maybe he concluded that I was too boring or that I was not interested. One of us was guessing the others age wrong anyway. I think he was 17 or 18, and if that's true he probably didn't guess that I was 23.

.)(Japanese guy, not particularly attractive but seemed friendly, too old for me) At an underground station. He ask me if I could help him with something he had written because it wasn't his native language and he needed someone to correct his grammar and spelling. I said that I was sorry but I didn't have much time (which was true I actually was very busy with some courses at university and actually spend pretty much all my time on trying not to fail any and it sounded like what he needed corrected was quite a lot). He asked me if we could get to know each other anyway. I actually felt bad for rejecting him because he seemed like a nice person but he was too old for me and I really was busy.

So, those things happened. I'm not sure if any of that is the kind of situation you mean.

The whole cold approach asking every single woman in the area out is way creepy.

I don’t know anyone who just walked up to random woman on the street asking for a date who succeeded.

Cold approaching, striking up conversation, and convincing someone to meet up again at a later date and time? It absolutely can happen.

It just comes down to how you play it. I’ve “met” women in the park before. I’ve “met” women at the gym. I’ve initiated conversations with women wearing earphones. And if someone says something to me, my earphones immediately come out so I can show them I’m interested in what they have to say. I feel confident that I could get a date SOMEWHERE if I tried.

I’ve been told that I come across as creepy at first. So if I start hanging out somewhere new or take up a new activity, I purposefully avoid people at first. For those who are shy, inexperienced, or have poor luck with meeting the opposite sex or getting dates, this is my first piece of advice: make yourself part of the environment; see and be seen. Strangers who see you regularly when you aren’t doing anything unusual for the setting will tend to trust you and at least see you as harmless. Over time you can work up to cold approaches and build acquaintances, possibly friendships. From these early stage relationships, you can ask to meet up in a different casual context. And from there you can work up to asking women out on “date-dates.”

Not exactly the same thing as walking up to a random woman and saying “Hey, you’re cute. Wanna go out?” But I think the idea that you can never in any way for any reason cold approach a woman is lame. If you cannot possibly cold approach anyone for anything EVER, then how do you ever meet anyone at all? Someone HAS to make the first move. If it means the possibility of getting a date, there are very few contexts that I’d actually consider off-limits.

Perfectly normal in the UK I think although I've never actually heard of it happening. Seems to happen in TV programmes and movies though. They usually have a reason for the conversation though, not just "hi, you're pretty, wanna go on a date with me?"

I have to say though, I'd feel very uncomfortable if anybody did it to me. I'm really not a fan of talking to strangers though. More extroverted people might like it.

Boo, I bet it's happened many times right in front of your eyes - you just weren't privy to the conversation in order to know that those people had just met and likely assumed they were longtime friends/acquaintances. You have no idea how many couples you see walking down the street having a conversation just met moments before you saw them.

Your behaviour towards this seems bizarre to me. Or perhaps you truly do live in a culture where people don't meet people on their own and are only ever introduced through friends or family. That is not true of the entire world. People are, in general, quite friendly & will strike up conversations with random people in public or at coffee shops or park benches or wherever quite frequently.. and sometimes those people have a dating agenda and are feeling the other person out to see if there's any interest in return, and if it's sensed, they may offer or ask for contact information, or even ask for a date & schedule it. This is pretty common stuff, especially in parts of the world that believe in dating before marriage and don't separate men and women in public or places of worship etc. It's truly very normal stuff.

Sure, there are likely more people swiping right today than there are people asking others out at a train station, but it's still a normal occurrence.

I would say it’s the case; this whole thing sounds too bizzard to me.

But I do still think your claim that it’s a norm elsewhere is exaggerating.

It's not an exaggeration. You said yourself that you thought it only happened in the movies. Fact is that it happens in the places & cultures that these movies are based on. Sure, they're not usually a scripted fairytale conversation, wink, and a perfect first date.. but it happens, just like in the movies, in real life, in places all over the world from Canada to Australia - as we've been telling you.

I am smart enough to not believe everything from movies.

Anyway your opinion is settled, i would like to hear the others’ experiences.

So you’re saying that it’s not a norm in your country?

NorthWind's experiences, based on my own experience, are pretty typical within a big-city context in the United States. Especially in cities with extensive public transportation networks.

She seems like she is in a big cosmopolitan city in Europe. Her accounts ring true to me.

All in all, people going up to each other and engaging in conversation is fairly common in m experience living in New York City all my life. Sometimes, there is an purpose--like trying to get a date; other times, people just want to gab away.

I would say Beirut is a fairly conservative city nowadays; I am under the impression that it wasn't so conservative in the old days, before the civil wars, rather like Tel Aviv today.

If you want to "cold approach" women, you'd better have a lot of charisma to back it up.

If not, you're going to come across as a massive creep.

The zoo story wasn't meant as an example, it was a joke about never getting to the introduction stage that you put as the first step in your suggested example. I was explaining that going up and saying "hi my name is..." is not as common as being more casual and organic about it, like maybe you happen to be sitting near a girl you are interested in so you say something that fits with what is going on around you.

But I'm not sure really how the zoo is irrelevant. People are in public, doing an activity that they planned to do alone, but an opportunity arose to chat with someone else there. That's the same as in a coffee shop or on a train or in a park. There just might be more chance of thinking of something to say at a zoo.

I don't give off a very friendly vibe, so it likely happens less often to me than the average person. But here's some examples I can think where a male stranger has chatted and flirted with me in places that may or may not fit your strict criteria of what is a public location:

- on the train (multiple times), when sitting next to or opposite someone
- at the airport (LAX), while I was browsing books in a shop
- at university, when I was walking in a stairwell
- along the coast, when me and a guy kept walking past each other at various lookout spots

And I've observed it countless times in various locations. People chat with strangers here. Sometimes with the intention of flirting. Sometimes it turns into flirting. Sometimes it results in numbers being exchanged.

My girlfriend has been hit on twice by African American guys while she was walking down the sidewalk & i wasn't with her. We think they were looking for sex cuz of the way they talked & the fact that she's a big white woman. After she told one of em that she had a boyfriend, the guy said "He doesn't have to know".

It happens on the streets or in public transportation but not extremely frequently, at least not in places I've been in. I don't think it is generally considered inappropriate to approach a stranger woman but some may generally disapprove of it.
Like yellowtamarin said, often they don't walk up to the woman and say 'Hi my name is ... let's go on a date'. Many find some reason to start a conversation but then proceed to flirt or ask her out quickly (like the example with the untied shoelaces).

Generally it seems to be completely normal and frequent for pensioners to talk to other old people they didn't previously know in public. It's a lot less common for young people who are typically preoccupied with their smart phone on public transportation and other such places. Still, it is possible to do it in ways that are not socially inappropriate.

I just remembered one! I used to do shopping for my employer at a bulk buy supermarket, and a guy working there started smiling at me when we'd pass in the aisles (it wasn't the sort of place where the staff serve you out on the floor). After maybe the third trip, he handed me his phone number. I'm not sure if we'd spoken before then, we might have said 'hi how are you' or something. So he was a stranger, and he approached me. Or does this not count either cos he was at his place of work?

Yes, it happens. But it's for conventionally attractive people with decent social skills.