I’m in the US, and I’ve had it happen several times recently that men from OLD - US-born ones specifically - will start kind of interrogating me with “oh, I hear an accent? Where are you from?” “No, no, really, I’m pretty sure I hear an accent; where exactly were you born???”, and similar questions. They will do this within the first 2-3 minutes of our first ever conversation, which is one of the things that bother me. We say hello and nice to meet you and how was your day, and then this is the first actual question they will ask me about myself, and some of them get quite insistent about it if I try to lowkey evade the topic. The other thing is I feel like asking about someone’s early childhood isn’t quite appropriate in a first meeting, especially in the first couple of minutes. I’ve lived here continuously since starting high-school, and knew English for years before that as well. I attended college here and am now in my thirties; the vast majority of people I’ve met in these decades don’t notice any accent at all, so it’s pretty clear that anyone choosing to ask these things has to be aware they’re inquiring about childhood events. Only born & raised in the US men ever do this.

Also, coincidentally, all the men from OLD who’ve done this have been ones who only ever suggested a phone or video call with me, proceeded to waste a lot of my time on pointless longwinded blabbering, and never invited me out or called me again. Outside of OLD, in my entire experience as an adult, the only types of men who’ve interrogated me with the whole “You’ve got an accent! Where are you from?? Where were you born?!?!” crap (and it’s always the first ever thing they ask me) have been random creeps with predator vibes / street harasser types, so unsurprisingly I already had very negative feelings about these questions.

Does anyone have personal experience and/or opinions about this? Is it intrinsically LV behavior? Should I even bother to continue talking to a man who does this at the start of a conversation, or how do I deal with this when I have less than zero wish to discuss my childhood with a stranger first thing up front?