Anon doesn't know what she's doing wrong

In the unlikely event a woman reads this.
We are stupid creatures. Be direct. I reiterate, we are stupid. Or scared of being labeled a creep. Same result.
So, be direct.
- Here is the thing, this is terrible flirting. Men are not clueless or dumb. We have been told by women that a woman looking at us or smiling at us or being nice to us is not her flirting. It is her being nice because society has told women they have to be that way all the time. So now women have to use their adult voices and actually say what they want and actually flirt back.
  
  Well, some of us are also clueless when it comes to reading female interest, or were at an earlier point in life
  
  Hands down, some of us are just deaf to flirting. Because it's portrayed as so much more uncommon that a Girl flirts with a Guy. You are 100% right. But I've seen dudes getting hit on with a Baseball bat, and they were like "Whaaat? You sure?!" I tried to help a Girl Friend of mine out to set her up with another friend of mine. Bro was dumb as a Golden Retriever but twice as loyal. And now they are going steady for years.
  
  this is terrible flirting
  Absolutely.
  Men are not clueless
  A LOT of us are, though..
  smiling at us or being nice to us is not her flirting. It is her being nice because society has told women they have to be that way all the time.
  Usually correct, though sometimes it IS and other times it's just her being nice voluntarily. Such is the mysteries of interpersonal interaction!
  women have to use their adult voices
  Boo! Adulting sucks! /j
  
  Based and true
- Not sure if stupid is the word I’d use, but we tend not to pick up on subtlety very well.
  Paraphrasing from memory a comment I saw in a similar thread on a different site:
  What’s subtle to you is entirely invisible to him
  What’s obvious to you is still mostly invisible to him
  What’s embarrassingly obvious to you is just starting to become subtle and therefore potentially noticeable to him
  We don’t have nearly as much practice on picking up subtlety, and many of us are well aware of the potential blowback of perceiving interest and acting on it (“ew gross i’m just being nice you creep”).
  We aren’t mind readers. Frankly, if I was a mindreader, I wouldn’t be hanging out on Lemmy. I’d be hanging out in the casino at the poker tables.
  
  Obtuse is the word you're looking for
  
  Eh, I usually pick up on relatively subtle cues, I just have trouble interpreting them. I can tell they're flirting, I just don't know if they're doing it because they're interested in me, or they just want something from me (better service, helpful directions, or material to laugh about later w/ friends). So even if I pick up on it, I'm unlikely to actually act differently until I have verbal confirmation.
  This causes some issues w/ my wife, so I try to reassure her that I understand she's frustrated or whatever, but that I'm unsure what she's expecting me to do about it (is she looking to vent or does she want me to problem-solve). This occasionally pisses her off (why can't you tell what I want?!?), but she usually realizes that I have a valid reason to be confused and is more direct after a bit of time thinking about it.
  Communication is absolutely key in any kind of relationship, and that goes both ways. I don't think I'm autistic (wouldn't be surprised if I'm at the mild end of the spectrum though), but I do appreciate confirmation of certain social cues.
  
  I am not a mind-reader, but if you were a mind-reader, I would think you'd have a better ROI hanging out in the gallery of Congress
  
  I think stupid pretty descriptive. I have not once but twice regularly slept with a woman and not get it.
  The first I consider kinda excusable because I was 18. We hung out and just somehow naturally transitioned into having sex. We never really talked about it and I didn't question it because at 18 you don't question free pussy. It went on for months and then we just drifted apart. I thought she met someone else and left it at that. Years later I found out she was expecting something more but didn't know how to move forward with me so she moved on.
  The second however. I was is my late twenties and should've known better. We met on Tinder, she was quick to get in bed and I was quick to get in bed and so quickly in bed we got. This time we "had the talk" to make sure this is just sex and we're not looking for anything more. Months go by and we're hooking up almost daily. We start hanging out a bit more, she starts staying over etc etc. Eventually a year and a half passes and I haven't given a single thought to our situation, so out of the blue she's "we can't continue like this". And I'm just puzzled because I have no idea what we're talking about. So she said that she was always a bit into me and it just grew and grew and now she wants more. In hindsight it's obvious but I was completely oblivious the entire time.
  So we are stupid. I could be balls deep in some pussy and not know if they're actually into me. I'm so oblivious I told my wife "no hints, no roundabouts. If you have an issue you tell it to me straight because I do not understand anything less than straight".
- Now that I'm an older, very married guy I look back at the times in my late teens and twenties when women were trying to flirt with me and I was pretty clueless about it.
  
  It's why I can never cheat on my girlfriend. Even if the opportunity arose, I wouldn't notice anyway.
- Hello. I'm a woman. And I'm also a dumbass who thinks she has no shot with pretty much anyone. Plus I'm easily embarrassed.
  Plus if I'm interested I'm like "Ugh i don't want to be a creep who'd approach someone for their looks", projecting because I get uncomfortable if someone finds me attractive, completely ignoring in the moment that if you don't do that you'll never get to know the person.
  This behaviour makes no sense. Just wanted to reassure(?) you that guys don't have a monopoly on stupidity.
- I wouldn't even say it's men being stupid for the most part (everyone is stupid sometimes of course) but most men are having anxiety or other social problems AND a lot of them are afraid they come off as a creep. Unfortunately it's usually the ones that will almost never be creepy, but that's just how it is.
  So yeah I totally agree, being direct is good, and also trying to pay attention to what men do over what they say, because we find the worst ways to express the best things often and that shit can be confusing. If you're not sure, you can always revert to directly asking them and most men will be honest.
  But yeah, seems like there's a slow shift from men actively pursuing over to the whole thing being genderless. Some people are pursuing, and some are being pursued. I think it's a good change, because no matter the gender, usually the way to pursue someone is very similar and I think all the gender roles in all of this just enforce traditions that cease to be healthy.
  
  most people don't have anxiety or other social problems, only the terminally online do
- Nah, most women I met are just as bad in flirting as men. It is has to do with the personality and attraction.
  If one finds the other attractive there is not much you can do wrong. If one finds the other one not attractive there is not much you can do right.
- More accurately, we don't get hints.
  
  Iv been hit in it the past by her asking me if I want to go to a bar with her friends?
  How was I meant to interrupt "me and my friends" as intimate?
- It’s so weird. Half of y’all will pull the earbuds out of our ears on the subway to shoot your shot and the other half will be actively getting motorboated and wondering if we like you.
  The second type of guy is perfect, by the way. You’re doing good, stay humble.
  
  the other half will be actively getting motorboated and wondering if we like you
  Once at a bar I had two women that I knew hug each other across the seat I was sitting in, with my head trapped between their chests. I didn't think anything of it (although I was attracted to both of them), but years later another friend told me that they were both into me and were having a sort of competition for months to see who could get with me first. They both lost, of course, thanks to my utter cluelessness.
  
  I'm really not
- I'm male, but i can imagine that a woman might feel insecure too.
- aaaaaaaand unnecessarily gendered
  I'm a gal looking for gals. I hate flirting because it never did me well and all I get from this is usually rejection. I know I am doing it bad but this is the way I am: a shitty flirter.
  That could be the same with any man, woman, dog, cat, robot, anyone in fact. This is certainly not depending on gender whatsoever
  
  Is it unnecessarily gendered when the original post was about a woman looking for a man?

- I'm not going to proposition every woman that makes eye contact with me.
  You aren't the vast majority of men on 4chan who assume any woman that glances at them is hitting on them. That's why femanon is so confused at why her approach is failing.
  
  Glancing isn't even needed, physical proximity is also an indicator.

I saw this girl staring straight into my eyes. I almost told her Arch btw, but the memes told me not to.
jk, I tipped my fedora and said a passing hello. No room in life for a trad sub
- "Good day, m'lady!"
  
  "Are you perchance familiar with the glorious medium of Japanese animations?"

Girls think looking at people indicates interest? How the hell am I meant to know that?
Please, use your words!
- Girls ≠ Girls that are on 4chan
- Me + You = fun
  
  Context?

- I actually do this as well because I've been told so much about guys looking at boobs when talking to women. I make extra effort to keep eye contact. So because of that I've been told "it's intense." That's from people that know me so that is probably the polite version.
  
  No matter what you do, it's wrong. Thus we revert to rule 1 and 2; be attractive
  
  You also have to break eye contact periodically. Body language is complex.
- I find small breasts the most attractive, but sometimes large breasts are just so eye-catching that you can't not look at them, especially when a large proportion of the surface area is not covered. It's especially annoying to have women offended by this when it's not even my thing.
- I feel like making hard eye contact would be creepy so I just don't look at women. Wow that sounds terrible, more I just look at the ground while walking and don't look at anyone. Hmmm, not sure that's an improvement...
- I don't want anyone to learn about my foot fetish, which is why I just stare at my phone's home screen or at a nearby window.
  I think I'm starting to realize why I don't have a real social life.
  
  Well, it's hard to see their butt from the front...
  
  In addition to things others have said in reply, maintaining eye contact is a direction given in speech and leadership classes. Looking at someone you are talking to shows interest, engagement, and respect. It would be weird in a different way if you were speaking to someone and just staring at their hands or staring off into space. It's not that there are two options, but if you're having a conversation with someone, it's normal to be looking at them.
  
  While I get the point you're trying to make, the only normal place to look at when talking to someone is their face, which is kinda small, and the two parts of the face that convey emotion are the eyes and mouth.
- So you can either come off as a creep for looking at her boobs or come off as a creep for making eye contact. The game is fucking rigged.

vagina-bearer
Heh, nerd.

There's a reason why this video exists.
- She could just be Canadian. They're really polite.

The cute boy said I was too intense, so I just stared at him until he started to cry

I think the pendulum of gender empowerment has swung in women’s favor so much that for alot of guys, there’s the fear of coming across as a creep for even trying to flirt or staring too long at a woman. At my work, there’s a fairly sizable amount of women, but the dangers from acting interested towards any women could cost you your job.
We had one lady who got a security guard fired because she said he made her feel uncomfortable, not that any incidents had happened at all, she really couldn’t even say that he had said or done anything offensive, she just had a bad feeling because he seemed “weird” and reported it to HR. Just the feeling of uncomfortableness is enough to get somebody dismissed in some places.
Granted, that’s at a workplace and workplace romances probably aren’t a good idea anyways, but society in general has primed me to think that any advances towards women are unwelcome, unless they’re not. You’ll never know unless you risk getting reported just for trying. So the incentive is to just not try unless it’s blatantly obvious, because I know I could easily misread basic kindness for sexual interest. Even going on walks, I have to avoid walking behind women for fear they’ll think I’m following them or that I’m being a creep.
In day to day encounters between plebs, women have all the power in relationships in Western society, men are like dogs on a leash. If you want to show us interest, just give us a pat on the head, scratch our chin, or something.
- We had one lady who got a security guard fired because she said he made her feel uncomfortable
  I have seen guys report women to HR because of actual, verifiable sexual harassment (physical touching, etc.) and be laughed out of the HR office because “women cannot sexually harass a man” and “men always want it”. Many of these men were also punished for attempting to report, with some even being fired.
  They asymmetric societal standards currently in place are insanely misandric and bleedingly hypocritical.
  
  I guess it depends on how replaceable the man is.
- If you want to show us interest, just give us a pat on the head, scratch our chin, or something.
  Got to be honest, I think them doing that would confuse me even more.
  
  "Lady, I have no idea what the fuck you are doing but please don't stop."
- This is why I have only ever reached out to women on dating sites.
  Dating sites are absolutely horrendous experiences for worthless shitheads like myself, but I will not just hit on random people I see when I'm out and about. They're just trying to live their lives in peace, at least if you're on a dating site you know they are interested in meeting someone.
  Unfortunately though the corpo fucks at MatchGroup bought and killed every good dating app and now that they're all useless tinder clones I don't use anything.

Anon realised not everyone interested in pokemon battle.

I've been hit on by a variety of genders and have never noticed a single time! Except for months/years later. .....I think.

My assumption would be that she's going to punch me in the face for accidentally being offensive.

Use your words
- Use your mouth
  
  👁️👄👁️

Step 2: offer them delicious food OR offer to have sex with them
- offer them delicious food
  She's probably just being friendly.
  offer to have sex with them
  Yeah, still not sure, might just be her way of being friendly.
  
  Yeah, could just be Canadian, they're very polite.
  
  Its a sting operation
- Emphasis on OR. If you do both he will turn into Al Bundy
  
  Yeah, don't make me pick.