I’m not so deliberate/strategic about it, but yeah. Like, there’s another ‘algorithm’ that’s more intuitive, which is something like “When interacting with the person, it’s ~always an active part of your mental landscape that you’re into them, and this naturally affects your words and actions. Also, you don’t want to make them uncomfortable, so you suppress anything that you think they wouldn’t welcome”. This produces approximately the same policy, because you’ll naturally leak some bits about your interest in them, and you’ll naturally be monitoring their behaviour to estimate their interest in you, in order to inform your understanding of what they would welcome from you. As you gather more evidence that they’re interested, you’ll automatically become more free in allowing your interest to show, resulting in ~the same ‘escalation of signals of interest’.
I think the key thing about this is like “flirting is not fundamentally about causing someone to be attracted to you, it’s about gracefully navigating the realisation that you’re both attracted to each other”. This is somewhat confused by the fact that “ability to gracefully navigate social situations” is itself attractive, so flirting well can in itself make someone more attracted to you. But I claim that this isn’t fundamentally different from the person seeing you skillfully break up a fight or lead a team through a difficult situation, etc.
Flirting is not fundamentally about causing someone to be attracted to you.
Notwithstanding, I think flirting is substantially (perhaps even fundamentally) about both (i) attraction, and (ii) seduction. Moreover, I think your model is too symmetric between the parties, both in terms of information-symmetry and desire-symmetry across time.
My model of flirting is roughly:
Alice attracts Bob → Bob tries attracting Alice → Alice reveals Bob attracts Alice → Bob tries seducing Alice → Alice reveals Bob seduces Alice → Initiation
I’m not so deliberate/strategic about it, but yeah. Like, there’s another ‘algorithm’ that’s more intuitive, which is something like “When interacting with the person, it’s ~always an active part of your mental landscape that you’re into them, and this naturally affects your words and actions. Also, you don’t want to make them uncomfortable, so you suppress anything that you think they wouldn’t welcome”. This produces approximately the same policy, because you’ll naturally leak some bits about your interest in them, and you’ll naturally be monitoring their behaviour to estimate their interest in you, in order to inform your understanding of what they would welcome from you. As you gather more evidence that they’re interested, you’ll automatically become more free in allowing your interest to show, resulting in ~the same ‘escalation of signals of interest’.
I think the key thing about this is like “flirting is not fundamentally about causing someone to be attracted to you, it’s about gracefully navigating the realisation that you’re both attracted to each other”. This is somewhat confused by the fact that “ability to gracefully navigate social situations” is itself attractive, so flirting well can in itself make someone more attracted to you. But I claim that this isn’t fundamentally different from the person seeing you skillfully break up a fight or lead a team through a difficult situation, etc.
Notwithstanding, I think flirting is substantially (perhaps even fundamentally) about both (i) attraction, and (ii) seduction. Moreover, I think your model is too symmetric between the parties, both in terms of information-symmetry and desire-symmetry across time.
My model of flirting is roughly:
Alice attracts Bob → Bob tries attracting Alice → Alice reveals Bob attracts Alice → Bob tries seducing Alice → Alice reveals Bob seduces Alice → Initiation