Re[2]: And the survey said

Fri, 30 Nov 2001 00:58:12 -0800

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Thursday, November 29, 2001, 11:27:23 PM, you wrote:

> On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Lisa Dusseault wrote:

>> Get a woman to perform this survey & I guarantee the results will be very
>> different.  I can't recall the last time I smiled at a man & he didn't smile
>> back.  Women mostly smile back too.

> Dah... Smiling is one of those pre-modern signals.

> Smiling back means either:
> 1) Lets team up to keep the males from killing our young.
> 2) Lets have sex.
> 3) Want some food?

> Thus, women will smile at each other, men will always smile back at a woman,
> and women will smile back only at a male of high social status.

Ok, that's just crap.  I can only hope you're making a joke, as very
seldom can you truly discern a peron's social status walking down the
street in the approximate time it takes to smile.  Assuming that your
comment would hold (That women are indeed that
shallow/instinctual/moneygrubbing, whatever), I would posit that men
don't ALWAYS smile back at women.  Rather, they smile back only at the
women they're either fantasizing about at the time, or could see
themselves having fantasies about in the future -- I.E., the fuckable
ones.

And women, as a general rule don't always smile back at other women,
or at least that hasnt' been the case in my experiences -- IF there
seems to be some kind of silly competition going on, over a man or
otherwise, it usually turns out to be icy glaring stares versus
smiles.

You don't think that there could  be any other motive to smiling past
those three goals?  I'd vote for 'it uses less muscles' or 'it gets
conversations started'.  Neither one have anything to do with
evolutionary issues (save, maybe socialization).

>> A good location for smiling is a bus stop or train stop.  By waiting
>> together, there's enough commonality of purpose, I presume, to make it "OK"
>> for smiling, and people have enough time to notice.

> I find the opposite, as the waiting makes the "if they dont smile back" oh
> so much worse. Usually any eye contact will freak people out in a city of
> more then say 50k people. (of course, that could just be to my appearance)

> - Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
>   http://www.iit.edu/~beberg/
>   beberg@mithral.com

> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

- --
Carey Lening

I need a witty quote.
 carey                            mailto:carey@tstonramp.com