Did Millennials Finally Kill Flirting?

Not yet, but they have tried and are still trying. Let’s hope they fail utterly and go down in defeat and humiliation, which should be the lot of all such exemplars of loserdom.

This is because we have expanded the definition of “harassment.” In the past, something was only harassment if a boundary had been clearly established or communicated, and then someone repeatedly transgressed it. Not any more. Now the mere expression of interest can be considered a potential violation.

But flirting is not completely dead! In the supermarket yesterday I was staring at all the peanut butters in confusion and annoyance, wondering why there must be 900 different types and brands, none of them that good. Just as I was about to make a decision, I got that prickly feeling of someone’s eyes on me. I turned my head slightly to the side and saw a younger woman, maybe 19-21, looking right at me — and not subtly, either. She gave me a very sweet smile and I smiled back at her and nodded a little, just to acknowledge her. I could’ve talked to her and when I was younger, I would have.

Who was the “predator” here? Ha, trick question that only liberals will fall for! No one. The answer is that no one was a predator. She saw someone she liked, was pretty bold, and I acknowledged her interest and gave her a subtle signal that I thought she was a cutie too (she was) but that I was not in the game that day. That interaction took all of three seconds, no harm done to anyone.

As a side note, since I got ridiculously fit the above happens to me about 1000x as much as it did before. It’s an absolutely shocking difference. I highly recommend it for all sorts of reasons (not just the above).

Feminism sought to shift the power dynamics between men and women, and shift them it did – right into total sterility. We’re now firmly held inside a bubble-wrap culture in which women view the mere expression of interest as a potential violation and men are too afraid to make a move for fear of being branded “creepy.”

That young woman was a Zoomer (Gen Z). I wonder if that gen will reject this view and resume some sort of non-algorithmic existence? I don’t have much hope, but I do want to believe it’s true.

That said, I think this article puts a little too much blame on women and feminism for the problem of any interest expressed in the real world being seen as predatory and creepy. Men share some of the blame, as there truly are many very scary creeps out there. Neoliberal capitalism also deserves some of the culpability for the algorithm eating everything. It prefers you constrained, contained, classified and commodified. And unfortunately, liberals are completely on board with all of this.