So I'll start off with a story, and segue into more (might be a long post).

A few months ago I joined a great organization here that holds events weekly on different global events. One time I went, and saw a girl in the crowd who I had a great feeling about. As I was leaving (Had to leave early) I made eye contact with her, smiled, and left. I thought "I hope I see her again".

Last week, I was on Bumble fucking around waiting for a Lyft, and saw her on Bumble. Now, not to sidetrack, but I had barely had a match on Bumble for a month, and had a theory that everyone I was seeing was a stale user - I've done some research, and Bumble keeps its stale user profiles up, even if they don't use the app anymore. Turns out I was right, as after I swiped a while longer (I just wiped for hours one day) I got 12 matches in a row. I was looking at her profile, and saw that she had included a reference to something. When I googled it, it turned out to be her blog, which contained all her information including email. I thought to myself "OK, it's likely she doesn't even have a profile on here anymore, she included her blog because she wanted people to see it, and cleary isn't worried about privacy as she included the blog and her personal info. I'm going to reach out". So I did. I wrote her a message, was honest, authentic and confident, explained a bit of the backstory, and said I'd love to take her out. Worst case, she doesn't respond, best case, we get married.

The thing is, I asked some people about it, and almost unanimously people said it was romantic and awesome and they are rooting for me. But I also stupidly asked on reddit, and the universal response was "That's the creepiest thing I've ever heard, you're a stalker". So I know I'm not a stalker, so we can cast that aside. I have a good memory for faces, and I serendipitously saw this girl on a dating app, and I took initiative to reach out and try to make something happen. Not sure how that's creepy.

But the thing is, people went beyond that and said that asking girls out in grocery stores is creepy, in coffee shops. Heck, even my ex who was totally love seeking, said it was creepy when guys would come up and talk to her at dance clubs.

I want to get this straight. According to women (and seemingly some men), writing a girl an email you don't know is creepy, even though writing a stranger a message on a dating app isn't (if she was on OkCupid and I saw her, I could just have easily have written her). Approaching a girl in the store is creepy, approaching a girl at a coffee shop, or on the street, or at an event, is creepy. How exactly is anyone ever supposed to date, or meet someone else? We live in a day and age where everyone stalks everyone else on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram. You can link your instagram on Tinder, people include it on Bumble and OkCupid, it even shows you mutual friends on these apps so you can stalk them on Facebook.

Every girl I know talks about how hard it is to meet guys, how they don't want to meet guys online, how online dating sucks, etc. etc. So if that's the case, then how else do they expect to meet someone, if guys can't just approach them or reach out in other ways?

In the end, what is creepiness, really? It seems to me it's an entirely subjective emotional response to someone, and there's really little you can do about it other than hope the other person responds positively.