Quoth Jester
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Quoth Jester
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"You realize I'm morally obligated to give you shit for hitting on my friends. This could be fun to watch play out in person." Then followed shortly by something about the whole exchange putting a huge, shit eating grin on her face.
It's obvious that our friend wasn't meaning anything other than what you define as flirting.
Should it not be obvious to the rest of CS by this point, your friend and your friend's friend are both friends of mine. And couldn't you have given them names? It would be easier to refer to them if you had! There was another conversation between all the women, plus one more, that should be relayed here, and I AM going to give them names, because it would get to confusing.
Me: Well, me.
Jester's and my friend: Elizabeth
Friend's Friend: Natalia
Another friend of all three women: Ana
Another point to note is that while Elizabeth and I live near each other, Natalia and Ana live fairly far away. All four women, along with a number of others, are a fairly tight knit group and spend a fair amount of time communicating via electronic means due to the fact that we're spread out across three countries on two continents.
This topic came up between those of us I just named. Our general consensus closely matches mine, in that we think there's a range of behaviors that doesn't fit neatly into two terms, but that various people are trying to get to do so, and as such, everybody's drawing the line in different places. Elizabeth shared some of the text message conversation with Jester, and we all agreed that while Jester may not have actually been hitting on Natalia, it wasn't really flirting either, since there really was no intent there. All of us agree that real flirting does carry some intent, and the kid of flirtatious behavior that's been talked about isn't real flirting. Ana, who's a linguist, pointed out that we weren't actually talking about only two types of behaviors. So, both Elizabeth and Natalia admitted that they're gonna have to eat crow here, and admit that they had simply put all behavior that wasn't flirting-with-intent-for-something-nice into the same category, even though the intent is different than "hitting on".
For the record, everybody in this group is an academic of some sort, so these types of nerdy conversations are par for the course.
Also, for the record, One of the reasons Elizabeth reacted the way she did, and I agree with her on this point, is that Natalia would be the kind of woman you would be inclined to hit on when you meet her in person. Other than not being red-headed, she's physically what you've described as ideal. She's also smart, witty, strong willed and hysterically funny, which, of course, you will find out for yourself in a few months when we're all in Key West.
So, I'm still going to have to go back to my original statements here, which, if I'm being honest, are mostly colored by Ana's thoughts, that this isn't a matter of "flirting vs. hitting on", but a matter of attempting to define terms too broadly and having it fail miserably.
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