rejection hurts

August 13, 2004 9:06 PM

Paper Napkin"So here's the scenario: You're out at a bar, riding transit, or even just walking down the street, and some bozo who desperately wants into your pants starts up a conversation with you. Rather than make a scene or make them upset (which, hey, could be dangerous), you're polite and at least nod at the proper times. Then, of course, they ask you for your number. Except this is 2004, so maybe they ask for your email address instead." Ouch.
posted by zannah (32 comments total)

wow, that's pretty harsh. is it really that hard to just say "sorry, not interested."?
posted by sharpener at 9:19 PM on August 13, 2004

"Eventually we'll post some of the desperate messages sent to Paper Napkin from rejected people. This site just went up though, so we don't have any yet. Go reject some people, already."
posted by Guy Smiley at 9:25 PM on August 13, 2004

Only problem is when I get an email address from a domain I don't recognize, I go look at the web site first. They need to hide their message deeper within. And write a better rejection that is gender-specific-free. :)

Cute idea though.

wow, that's pretty harsh. is it really that hard to just say "sorry, not interested."?

You've obviously never met Jo Persistent.
posted by dobbs at 9:47 PM on August 13, 2004

Rather than make a scene or make them upset (which, hey, could be dangerous)

Jeez. Do guys out there realize that they are seen as being backed up by the threat of violence when they approach women they don't yet know and ask for their numbers? Is this the way women normally think (I'd better be nice and play along, otherwise this guy could be dangerous); is this the way women are taught to try and get out of such situations-- by "being nice" to the men who approach them and hoping they will go away? The attempt to use non-gender specific pronouns here isn't fooling anyone, is it? All in all I find this really sad. Why not just say, "I'm not interested", say it like you mean it, and start walking away if the person doesn't get the message? Because you're worried about hurting their feelings? I don't get it. If you stop to talk, and smile in a desperate effort to placate, you can't really expect someone to get the right message, can you?

On the other hand, I haven't had a strange (as in a stranger) man try to hit on me for numbers since I was 19; perhaps due to a cultivated 'don't bother me' attitude? I dunno.
posted by jokeefe at 10:19 PM on August 13, 2004

Amen, jokeefe. I'm five feet tall, and if some 6-foot plus guy of even moderate build comes over all desperate and tries to hit on me, of course he's going to try to use his physical advantage. He is desperate.
posted by halonine at 10:36 PM on August 13, 2004

Women are cowards.
posted by wfrgms at 10:36 PM on August 13, 2004

jokeefe: Good point. There's no real reason that the "dangerous" expression needed to be there, so I took it out.

dobbs: I took out the "ego" line from the response, so now it's more gender-neutral.

In general, I think that folks should be honest if they're not interested in someone, but PN is there for the overly-persistent asses that deserve a little embarrassment.
posted by endquote at 10:40 PM on August 13, 2004

This seems familiar.
posted by coelecanth at 10:57 PM on August 13, 2004

It'd be better if the domain that people actually give out was a little more innocuous-sounding.
posted by reklaw at 11:19 PM on August 13, 2004

endquote, I really think you should put a fake front page on (maybe just a "Email address | Password" submission field that doesn't do anything except maybe bring up an "incorrect password" screen). That way, people like me who check out domains first will think it's a legit email site. Then, just bury the other content down a layer and maybe drop the url into the email that's sent out.
posted by dobbs at 11:45 PM on August 13, 2004

reklaw: Agreed. Got any ideas?
posted by endquote at 11:45 PM on August 13, 2004

Whatever the reason, you have been rejected. If you see the rejector again, they don't want to talk to you. They will pretend you don't exist. You are equivalent to the mole they had removed from their face last year.

Themole comment just adds an edge of snide cruelty that turns it into the contemptuous slap of the too-good-for-you bitch, rather than the mere delayed brush-off of the wussy coward. How about: "They'd prefer that you and they pretend each other don't exist."

Let's face it, your target market is the wussy coward, and they won't want to make their brush-off-ee's angry. The reaction you really want to provoke is rueful amusement, not misery, and definitely not vengeance.

Maybe you could also add something about how the recipient of the rejection email is probably better off not associating with a person who is too spineless to reject them face-to-face, and/or too tactless to do so without being hurtful about it.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 2:07 AM on August 14, 2004

well ... i guess it's better than giving someone the number of the local police station ... still, my reaction would be that the woman isn't honest enough to have a relationship with

besides ... what's wrong with giving her YOUR e-mail address or phone? ... that way, if she's interested she can call ... and if she's not she can quietly throw it away later ... and she doesn't have to feel as pressured about it
posted by pyramid termite at 2:57 AM on August 14, 2004

Fuck all y'all. I could have been a contender. Are you lookin at me?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:23 AM on August 14, 2004

As aeschenkarnos points out, this really doesn't make sense: "he could be a dangerous psychopath, so let's insult him." Not surprising that they haven't got any takers yet. Plus even "these days", who the hell asks for an email address rather than a phone number?

Can't help envisaging the creators of that site as something like Patty or Selma Bouvier from The Simpsons...
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:35 AM on August 14, 2004

The problem is that after someone gets a papernapkin address once, they're clued into it. They might even get more dangerous (if they were at all) if someone tries to give them a papernapkin address.
posted by thebabelfish at 6:39 AM on August 14, 2004

...after they're in the know.
posted by thebabelfish at 6:45 AM on August 14, 2004

Sounds like you should all stick to dating men to whom you have been introduced properly by trustworthy persons. What were you doing in that bar unescorted anyway? I mean, what did you expect? Signed, your grandparents, who are right.
posted by jfuller at 7:29 AM on August 14, 2004

It's probably worth noting that few of us would need to ask zannah, aka the very well known /usr/bin/girl, what her email address is, though in spite of that enviably low user number she seldom visits mefi. No doubt we feel we already know quite a bit about her. But I, at least, would not walk up to her in the fern bar and say so, unless there were a mutual friend with her or with me.

> I'm five feet tall, and if some 6-foot plus guy of even moderate build comes
> over all desperate and tries to hit on me, of course he's going to try to use
> his physical advantage.

Of course females (well, sober females) may be apprehensive when confronted with a strange male in a coming-on-strong mood. Gentlemen, dear halonine, gentlemen are perfectly well aware of this. That is precisely what the mutual friend is for: reinforcements for you. Can this have been totally forgotten? D'oh!
posted by jfuller at 7:55 AM on August 14, 2004

Area Woman Recalls Days When she Resented Being Hit On
posted by psmealey at 8:11 AM on August 14, 2004

ok, i think jokeefe is objecting to the assumption that all men are using implicit violence. is that right? and if so, is halonine being ironic or not understanding? or am i completely confused?
posted by andrew cooke at 8:17 AM on August 14, 2004

So how are people supposed to meet these days? Seems to me that the only solution is to go gay. At least then you won't have people screaming bloody murder over your blatantly sexist overtures.

There's some law of nature that says no matter how delicately a guy asks out a woman, if she's not interested in you, she'll find you irritating/threatening/insulting/etc. But if she finds you attractive, she'll go out with you regardless of how irritating/threatening/insulting/etc. you are.

And before I get piled on for suggesting this attitude is specific to women, I'd like to add a corollary to this theory, which says that the ugliness of a guy is inversely proportional to how apt this theory applies in reverse.

That is, an ugly guy will not care in the slightest whether an ugly girl is irritating/threatening/insulting in the way she asks him out.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:45 AM on August 14, 2004

I like this part:
What: Paper Napkin is a service to help passive-agreesive cowards avoid people who would like to date them.

It's saying that "the service is for cowards" and I think that's funny.

(Oh and aggressive is misspelled on their site, which is funnier! I mean, wouldn't agreesive mean agreeable?)

Anyway, this site won't last because like someone said, once the word's out, it'll be over.
posted by erratic frog at 5:22 AM on August 15, 2004

AREA WOMAN RECALLS DAYS WHEN SHE RESENTED BEING HIT ON

SALEM, OR—Kimberly Jones, 43, vividly remembers the bygone days when she took umbrage at being pursued by aggressive suitors, sources reported Monday. "I was quite the looker back in college—I couldn't even go out for a few drinks with my girlfriends without some guy macking on me," Jones said from the kitchen of her one-bedroom apartment. "That used to really piss me off for some reason I can no longer even begin to fathom. Maybe my memory is starting to go." Jones then gazed longingly into her cup of tea.
posted by the fire you left me at 7:11 AM on August 15, 2004

Kind of like what coelecanth said above, one of the local radio stations here has what they call the "Loser Line". It doesn't have a funny rejection message when answered, but it is clearly aimed at women passing this out since it has two girls giving a generic greeting. They then play these messages on the air. And, it became so popular it started getting recognized and they have had to already change it once.
posted by thatothrgirl at 7:34 AM on August 15, 2004

Civil_Disobedient: You left out the corollary that, god forbid, if the guy is the one doing the rejecting, he's "a dick." A guy who gave out an email address like this one would be come "WHAT a DICK."

Is this site supposed to be a mean-spirited contribution to the public good, or does it expect to somehow make money? Maybe they're going to sell the email addresses of the people unlucky enough to write them?
posted by bingo at 8:40 AM on August 15, 2004

I would likely never use the site myself, jfuller. :) I'm generally more likely to say "no thanks" politely, as the chances that I'd find myself in the same club seeing the person again is probably pretty high (given the club scene in Seattle), and why irritate someone you might see again in the future?

I will say, though, based on personal experience: some guys just do *not* take no for an answer. Not even if you're sitting next to the guy you came with, and you say, "Sorry, I'm with someone already."
posted by zannah at 12:40 PM on August 15, 2004

Actually, I'm out of my depth in this debate. I've never, and would never, become involved with someone who was not part of a previous social network (introduced by a friend, friend of a friend, corresponded with at length after reading each other's weblogs, etc.) The 'meeting someone in a bar and giving them your number' scenario is out of my experience-- not that I haven't been asked in the past, but if someone was unwelcomingly persistent I would just tell them to fuck off (with varying degrees of rudeness, depending).

And by the way, I'm 45, and I do not wax nostalgic about getting hit on in bars (or being catcalled as I walked by construction sites, something which used to infuriate me-- almost as much as the insinuation from men of my acquaintance that I must secretly find it an ego boost: No.)
posted by jokeefe at 1:03 PM on August 15, 2004

Null & void: at clubs/bars singles do not exchange email addresses. That's just nerdy and queer...too invasive and clumsy. It's all about the digits. Online/virtual dating is probably a different story, though...
posted by naxosaxur at 1:22 PM on August 15, 2004

jokeefe, considering how much importance most women (even very highly educated ones) place on appearance, I think its hard for most men to believe that they don't find it an ego boost. I guess it depends on how often it happens to you. There is probably a threshold, where if it occurs occasionally, its an ego-boost, but if its constant, its harassment.
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posted by nads at 3:12 PM on August 15, 2004

jokeefe, considering how much importance most women (even very highly educated ones) place on appearance, I think its hard for most men to believe that they don't find it an ego boost.

Women do place huge importance on appearance, it's true, but it's a very complicated relationship, rife with fears of inadequacy and insecurity. So much of women's social status is tied to how we look that even friendly compliments can become minefields (let alone being shouted at in the street). So it's not just a simple ego-boost; there's a kind of paranoia that comes with being constantly evaluated, and often for things over which one has little control, like how far your body type deviates from the tall, slender, young (under 25) 'ideal'. Perhaps masculinity, and worrying about living up to a masculine ideal, might cause similar levels of anxiety in men-- I'm having trouble coming up with a good comparison.
posted by jokeefe at 12:48 AM on August 19, 2004

Oops. I always forget to check up on my comments. Andrewcooke-- yes, I was being wry. When interacting with the opposite sex, gentlemen act like gentlemen, and bozos act like the bozos they are. I think I've been alright so far without Papernapkin.
posted by halonine at 10:38 PM on August 24, 2004