Remember all the times I’ve said “You can’t tediously argue someone into liking you?” (Pretend you remember) This guy did not get the message. Chill out, Painfully Literal Dude! YOU MUST CHILL.
While we’re linking, here are some recent favorites.
When is it ok to fart in a new dude’s bed? (Bitches Gotta Eat).
Yelping with Cormac (If Cormac McCarthy wrote Yelp reviews). This is one of the things that makes me glad to be alive at this and no other time.
The Roots’ new album, ‘undun’ is seriously amazing. Listen here.
Cary Tennis likes us. He really likes us. Welcome, Salon horde! I’m about to go into a day of classes and won’t be moderating your comments, so be patient if they don’t show up right away. Read the site polices and FAQs – we have different rules for discussion around here.
CaptainAwkward.com 
Wow, that Painfully Literal Dude letter was scary, but I have to say that the Reddit commenters gave me a good laugh and a little hope for humanity! (Which Reddit commenters do not always do!)
Bless your heart for that fart post. I tried not to snort out loud as I read it here in my cubicle. I still find it amazing that I went a WHOLE YEAR without farting in front of my (now) husband. Given how much my intestines love to dance the polka, I don’t know how I didn’t explode.
When is it OK? I’d say about sixty seconds after you’ve finished having sex for the first time. When one acquires a sexytimes partner, one acquires the whole person, farts included.
Hopefully not poop though.
IAWTC
“In addition, even if you don’t want to go out again, I would like to get feedback as to why you wouldn’t want to go again.”
Because you’re a patronizing stalker who has massive barely repressed seething rage bubbling below the surface of your creepy personality. That’s why!
JFC. I tried to read Painfully Literal Dude’s e-mail, I really did. I made it to the end of his interpretation of the date, even, but then something in me just snapped and my entire ability to read went “Screw you guys, Ima goin home.” Props to anyone who made it to the end, I say, and also, I so want to know Lauren’s description of this HORRIFIC first date, because dude. Dude. D:
“In addition, even if you don’t want to go out again, I would like to get feedback as to why you wouldn’t want to go again.”
The actual reason for this is so he can mansplain why all your reasons are invalid, and you should reconsider because he is such a catch. I know this because it happened to me on OKCupid. I was contacted by a married poly guy who knew that since I didn’t exclusively date, and he wanted to bone me, we had so! much! in common! and should meet forthwith. When I responded with being politely disinterested because of $REASON, he responded with arguments as to why $REASON was irrelevant. (Admittedly, I did make the rookie mistake of saying something flattering while telling him I was not interested.)
He then sent a bunch more messages over the course of several months (I think around five total) before I finally got fed up and responded, pointing out that he was disrespecting my boundaries/lack of interest. I then got a somewhat pissy message in reply indicating that I had somehow been too vague at communicating my disinterest. But he quit messaging me, so I guess I won.
I just…
Some fucking people.
The first thing I thought when I saw the Painfully Literal Dude letter on Gawker was that I needed to send it to you, but you beat me to it!
Many readers and Tweeters were on the case!
Same here (though I found it on Observer: http://www.observer.com/2011/12/new-york-investment-banker-sends-1615-word-email-re-you-leading-him-on-during-your-date-together/).
Painfully Literal Dude’s letter reminds me of the only time I broke up with someone by cutting contact with him. It was a long-distance thing and he was a pretty okay guy most of the time but he’d brood about things that had happened to him in high school (he was 38) and have occasional outbursts of rage which were scary enough for me to decide to cut contact with him.
Of course, six weeks later, he calls me at work, somehow finding the phone number I not only didn’t give him but didn’t know myself since I didn’t work in a customer-facing role. I was confident my decision to disappear on him was the right one.
Yikes, Painfully Literal Dude’s use of google (“According to the internet, you’re 33 or 32”) is the most convincing argument I’ve ever seen for protecting my own online privacy!
33 or 32 is ancient, dessicated mummy corpse in MRA years. She’d better learn to settle for a nice classical music fan/philosopher/investment banker who thinks with BOTH his right AND his left brain right quick!
I have to know, like right now, if The Roots based the album title on Guess Who’s song, or if “undun” is a common thing and I’m woefully out of it.
*hies to Wikipedia*
Correct, xtinas. The band’s manager has said that the “title was partially inspired by The Guess Who song of the same name (sometimes known as “She’s Come Undone”)”. Also a wordplay on the protagonist’s life coming “undone”.
Oh, man…I was going along happily WTF-ing and then suddenly remembered a very, very awkward non-clue-getting time in my early dating years. I was the one ignoring that he clearly wasn’t into it anymore and was avoiding me. But we’d had such a great time on that one date and that other date that started kinda weird but we really were clicking and hooked up and stuff! Many unreturned voicemails. A later hookup that started and then ended weirdly. Why in the world did I think that it was going well? There was a letter written which included some explicit stuff and oh my stars, I actually mailed part of it. Ugh….the awkward, it burns!
But I was very young!!
I have sent people Painfully Literal Love Letters that I am hoping have been well and truly deleted and there is not a blog of “I was stalked by Captain Awkward” survivors out there.
All lessons of this blog were learned the hard, awkward way.
True story: each and every one of my suave text messages is, to this day, engineered with great precision.
If not for my devotion to this craft, I’m pretty sure Painful Literalism would be the only thing dudes would ever receive from me in text form.
Oh god, me too. At least the not-picking-up-clues/spending-more-time-agonising-than-living part. Fortunately I saved most of the angry ranting for a very sound mate who knows both of us quite well.
Alas, I cannot exactly blame it on being young ‘then’ as then was only this summer and I am under 25.
On the other side of the fence, I pulled a guy recently, had semi-casual sex and went clubbing a few times with him, then decided, no not for me. I told him the day after our clubbing ‘date’, and he went off on one, demanding to know why he wasn’t to my taste. Bewailing that nobody. ever. has. wanted. him. Scary. Thank f*ck I told him via text rather than in person, ’cause in person I would not have been able to escape him.
Eep. Dating. Iz hard!
It would be very convenient for you to date me because we have the same interests.
This is the point where I just burst out laughing. “Look, even if you don’t like me all that much, can’t you just arrange your calendar so that our genitals bump into each other every so often? C’mon, ya might as well.”
I do feel like I’ve been at the receiving end of “mixed signals” maybe once or twice in my life, but I’ve never, ever called anyone out for it, because of an overbearing (and probably legitimate) fear that my perspective on their “signals” might be a bit unreasonable and self-interested.
Really I can’t think of a lot of legitimate reasons to levy an accusation of “mixed signals.” There’s just nothing to be gained by saying, “Well if you don’t want to bone me, how come your body language earlier said you totally did?” It’s not like they’re going to respond, “Oh damn, you’re right. I guess I’d better bone you now.” Just accept that they feel how they feel at the moment, and however they felt or appeared to feel in the past is no longer relevant.
Now if they explicitly say, “I want to have sex with you,” and then change their minds later, that’s legit annoying, but still well within their rights. In a situation like that you certainly have a right to be annoyed, preferably within the privacy of your own mind. Again, there’s nothing to be gained by calling them out on it. They may well have a good reason for changing their mind, but even if they don’t, so what? Find someone who wants to have sex with you NOW instead of someone who wanted to have sex with you yesterday but not today.
Yay you for the boost on Salon, Cap’n! Though Cary is playing a dangerous game – once you discover Captain Awkward other advice columns aren’t quite the same, I found. 🙂
Playing with hair is a sign of flirtation? I guess I’ve been flirting with all the finals I’ve been taking. I have a habit of playing with my hair during intense thought (tests, planning, calculating, etc.); this ranges from hair-twirling (I’m assuming this is what man-mags say to be flirting), running my fingers through the back-ends of my hair, twisting my bangs, braiding my bangs with one hand (don’t ask; I just can)…
All I know is, it certainly as hell isn’t preening. I can find tons of things on Google search too, lies and truths.
Apparently I flirt my way through job interviews, too. (Well, not so much, because I try and stop myself from faffing with my hair, but I don’t always succeed.) You’d think I’d have landed a job by now, then.
I never flirt, seeing as how I have exceedingly short hair. Maybe short (or no) hair is the reverse of flirting? Man-hating, probably.
Yes: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/12/02/sl-letter-of-the-day-the-kindest-cut
I change my hair and beard all the time because I get tired of the same thing fairly quickly. People usually remark on it and occasionally even say they liked it better the old way. I have a friend who does the same thing and everyone thinks she’s a crazy dyke who needs to be put in a mental institution. It’s very, very weird. Hair makes people lose their minds.
I haven’t gotten much of that, fortunately. And I shaved my head in May, and have been dyeing it incredibly bright colours randomly since September. No idea why I’ve escaped censure!
Hee hee, I just had a date on Wednesday too who has since told me that he was thinking dirty thoughts all the way through. It’s still long enough to pull, boys!
Yeah, I thought that was pretty creepy too. (Not that anything in that letter wasn’t creepy.) I think there is a whole pickup-artist-spawned genre about women’s nonverbal signals of sexual interest. And then, if you perform the supposed signals without being sexually interested, it’s not that the translation manual is wrong. No, it’s that women are deceptive and want to lead men on.
Barf.