… it tried, but i guess, the best it can is good enough.

Hey uh, that second paragraph?

I am not a psychologist, but:

That was when they broke it.

I was working at MSFT when they rolled out Windows 8.

Basically broke all internal workflows for a month or two.

Then quickly had to re-enable the 7 UI they told even us employees did not exist in 8.

They did some kind of hackjob, called that 8.1, and fast forward a decade, Windows 11 had, last time I checked at least 4 different ‘eras’ of UI schemes/frameworks, if you dig far enough into all the settings menus.

I am not even joking when I say that people literally screamed at me when I used the word ‘refactor’ in a sentence, while on the MSFT campus.

… Ok, Computer.

-.-

People misread social cues, emotional states, intent, incorrectly ascribe causality of these things, etc., all the time, every single day, constantly, for a wide array of reasons.

https://mindorigins.com/mind-reading-or-mammalian-instinct-why-we-misinterpret-social-cues/

People with low self awareness or high overconfidence just don’t realize that they are.

You actually have to have a significant amount of humility in order to have “high eq”.

People who make an entire personality or significant personality trait out of their infallible ability to read people?

Who will outright tell people: “I know you better than you know you”?

Vast majority of the time, in the vast majority of contexts, such a person is a delusional manipulative narcissist, a cult leader / grifter scam artist type personality.

Alternative option:

Learn and use LIMO.

https://github.com/limo-app/limo

I’ve been running a heavily modded CP77 for about a year now, on a Steam Deck, via LIMO.

Its basically Linux native MO2, available as a flatpak.

https://flathub.org/en/apps/io.github.limo_app.limo

It also works with literally any game, if you set it up to.

But, it doesn’t do load order imports / nexus bulk mod collection downloads.

But but, it does support FOMODs, LOOT, and has quite useful collision checkers and managers, and can interface with the Nexus API.

She isn’t a telepath, it’s not about what he was thinking…

I mean, you… said it was… about what he may have been thinking, that was part of what you said.

Why throw out an idea and then just retreat on it?

Taking offense/getting defensive is not about what was intended, but how it was taken.

Meaningless tautology.

Being offended is when someone is offended.

Uh huh.

Yep.

So if she, even incorrectly, thought there was a ‘pity date’ being offered she might have been overly mean in her reaction.

So you’re conceeding the point; this woman was needlessly cruel.

You’re trying to explain her actions.

Sure, yeah, maybe you’re right.

… I don’t care what her explanation may be.

I am describing what she did, not why she did it.

Also, your explanation for her actions just makes her look worse.

“Well, I decided I was being demeaned, for no discernible reason, so I acted like a bully first.”

Ah, the pre-emptive, “defensive” invasion of Iraq, or Ukraine, as a strategic paradigm for handling flirting, sounds great.

Also also, stop using hypotheticals to describe her actions.

We agreed we are taking the story at face value, now you’re back to acting like you’re not.

She was needlessly cruel.

Not ‘maybe she may have been’.

She was.

It’s not about judging…

She judged him. Publically. Harshly.

I’m gonna judge her too.

Fair’s fair.

You don’t get to play by two different sets of rules and standards if two people are playing the same game.

Yep, his tactics were not on point, gave major creepo vibes.

I fully understand that it was cringe, poorly executed, poorly worded, conveyed desperation and pathetic…ness.

I understand that just directly saying “So I overheard your conversation…” is nearly 100% guaranteed to creep somebody out.

But he did not insult her.

He did nothing threatening.

He didn’t single her out, didn’t use the crowd traffic to pin her, didn’t just literally grab her, didn’t “accidentally” get her surrounded by all his other dude bro friends in a crowd.

I’ve seen dudes do all kindsa shit like that.

That’s rude, that’s threatening.

This guy literally ran away and cried.

On the reverse of that… I myself have been approached by women with equally terrible opening lines and surrounding contexts/situations, conveying desperation being… agonizingly awkward.

Every one of them that I declined, I politely declined, trying to soothe the rejection with some kind of compliment on the way out.

Only time I ever felt threatened or that they were being rude was when when they would not take no for an answer, when they insulted me after I tried to turn them down gently, and/or they literally grabbed me or tried to physically pin me in some way.

This woman was needlessly cruel.

Further, you’re just making up headcanon that he viewed this as a better deal for her, that he was showing some kind of pity to her by approaching.

There’s nothing in the text that indicates that’s what he was thinking. Literally nothing.

That’s your fancanon, your projection, your invention.

All he does is say “I heard a woman say she wwas looking for a partner. So I tried to ask her out on a date.”

In fact, what he does say about his mindset indicates the opposite.

It took him 3 hours to work up the nerve, to try to generate the confidence to approach her.

He sat there agonizing about whether or not this would end in disaster for 3 hours, before he tried to pull the trigger.

And sure, yes, we’re taking this story at face value, could be bullshit or very skewed.

… But I was once this guy.

I mean, younger than these two, but oh lordy were some of my high school, and even early college attempts at flirting cringeworthy, still haunt me to this day.

I just managed to keep trying, and find success as I found my confidence and my own more true sense of personality and style, if that makes any sense.

Beyond that, I’ve wingmanned for guys pretty much just like this guy.

This is an entirely plausible story; its not just plausible, its quite common.

Its even more common now than back in my day, what is it, like near 50% of Zoomers, guys and gals, have just… never had a sexual partner, by like age 21?

The wild part is that I’m not even 40 yet.

And, I am literally autistic, struggled with socializing a fair bit in middle and high school, and then forced myself to learn social skills in college, in part through going to bars and learning how to be a wingman and such.

Like… what I have described is the 101 stuff, lol.

Maybe I’m just… too good at masking, or something? I dunno anymore.

Ok.

Let me explain how bars work.

They are generally fairly small and crowded.

There are often a lot of people having conversations with a lot of other people.

You can often hear some, or most of these, depending on where you are sitting.

Overhearing other peoples private conversations, that they are having in a public space, often loudly…

… That is not eavesdropping.

That is existing, in a bar.

Framing this as eavesdropping is absurd.

Eavesdropping, quite literally, derives from the concept of pressing your ear up against a window to a home or bedroom, from outside of it.

The ‘eave’ is basically the part of a roof or window design that hangs over it, kinda like an awning.

So, you hang onto or crouch down on the eave of the window, listen to the private conversation, and then drop down from it once you’ve heard enough.

Yeah, that’s creepy spying shit.

You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a private home.

You do not have this in a bar, or pub.

Pub being a shortening of roughly ‘public house’, a place where people are meant to gather, mingle, and interact.

Maybe anon is not religious.

Try reading all of them.

Nah.

Rude?

On the guy’s part?

No, not at all.

Done pretty clumsily, awkwardly?

Sure.

But, assuming OP actually said what they said they said, that’s not impolite, that’s not rude.

Its not insulting.

It makes literally no difference at all that the guy was sitting in the bar listening to her talk to her friends for 3 hours before he worked up the nerve to attempt to ask her out.

What if he had… just walked in and did this?

Or… been at the table nearby for 30 minutes?

Or was playing Pool for an hour near the table?

None of those things factors in to how rude or not his actions toward her were.

Also… what world are you living in where talking to someone you haven’t previously met, in a bar, is a social faux pas?

The… whole point of going to a place with a bunch of people drinking is to be at a place with a bunch of people drinking.

I met new people at bars all the time back in my college days, made a lot of friends that way, sometimes a bit more than friends.

This is like, how society worked for at least a hundred years, basically before the invention of TikTok/Instagram.

I am honestly baffled by your stance here.

This isn’t a sit down restaurant.

Its a bar. A pub.

Like sure, barging into an ongoing conversation and inserting yourself into it does require some tact, skill, and ability to just bounce off if its clear your presence is not appreciated.

But her level of cruelty was far, far more rude than anything this socially anxious guy did.

I was the guy who apparently was in your 8 to 10 range, as I’d do basically this, though a bit more smoothly, and fairly often it would work.

Sometimes you get a soft, polite no, and that’s totally fine.

Sometimes, you get a hard no, a vicious no, like this one.

And that stings.

This guy, OP? His entire world is hard nos, every time he tries.

He is literally despairing over this, and you call him rude.

This is the kind of mindset that you have, that led to the proliferation of the saying and concept ‘Bros before Hoes’.

That doesn’t mean all women are hoes.

It means guys with pretty privilege wingman for their bros without it, and help their bros recover from brutal rejections like this one.

Honestly, I’ve even wingmanned for socially awkward gals too, work them into a conversation I’m already having with some guy they’ve told me they very much fancy, but are too scared to even approach.

… Extra nips?

Are you… Scaramanga, from the Man with the Golden Gun?

Alternate explanation:

This person is Finnish, English is not their primary language, jokes and colloquial sayings very often do not really directly translate between languages.

Ring.

Ring.

… Who is it?

… Honey, who is testicular torsion, and why do they want to talk to you?

concrete and inescapable, yet whimsical and stylish

objective and happy

Please do go easy on the ‘Twist It!’

What.

How does that logic work?

They say they are bisexual.

This implies they have had sexual encounters with both meat rods and meat flowers.

… You know what to do based on … what shape the sexy time meat is.

… How is this complicated?