Once you’ve done a few things they ought to have picked up on, and no negative and some seemingly positive interaction has occurred afterwards...
One possibility in my hypothesis space here is that there usually isn’t a mutual dance of plausibly-deniable signals, but instead one person sending progressively less deniable signals and the other person just not responding negatively (but not otherwise sending signals themselves).
I imagine that can happen for a while, but if I’m getting nothing back, I stop once I’m pretty sure they should have noticed what I’m doing. Silence in response to a received message, is a form of response, and not one that indicates “keep getting progressively less subtle please”.
If that is the wrong move (the person is interested in me continuing), they will let me know once I back off.
Another thought: You refer to this as a dance, and one model of what’s happening when one flirts is “demonstrate social skill/difficult-to-fake signal of intelligence by calibrating levels of ambiguity and successfully modeling the other person’s mind --> this is attractive --> get date”, in the same way that dancing successfully in an actual dance can be “demonstrate physical skill/difficult-to-fake signal of health --> this is attractive --> get date”. And I’m sure that happens sometimes, and for some people, but my model of flirting does not involve “demonstrate social skill/intelligence --> get date”. For me, flirting solves a different problem, which is “communicate that you like someone (in the sense one likes people one might like to date), and have them communicate back that they like you, without either of you risking much embarrassment or social awkwardness if it’s not mutual or for any other reason a date can’t happen right now”.
Depending on what you’re trying to do by flirting (demonstrate social skill vs. give someone you’re attracted to a low-pressure way to tell you whether they like you back) the approach may be different. Although, even the latter can be a tricky thing to do and ability to do it successfully demonstrates a useful skill.
I think most people who flirt are like, not super socially skilled around people they’re attracted to, and “try to get a sense of whether it’s mutual in a low-risk way” is the more important problem that flirting solves for them. But maybe that’s just me typical-minding :).
One possibility in my hypothesis space here is that there usually isn’t a mutual dance of plausibly-deniable signals, but instead one person sending progressively less deniable signals and the other person just not responding negatively (but not otherwise sending signals themselves).
I imagine that can happen for a while, but if I’m getting nothing back, I stop once I’m pretty sure they should have noticed what I’m doing. Silence in response to a received message, is a form of response, and not one that indicates “keep getting progressively less subtle please”.
If that is the wrong move (the person is interested in me continuing), they will let me know once I back off.
Another thought: You refer to this as a dance, and one model of what’s happening when one flirts is “demonstrate social skill/difficult-to-fake signal of intelligence by calibrating levels of ambiguity and successfully modeling the other person’s mind --> this is attractive --> get date”, in the same way that dancing successfully in an actual dance can be “demonstrate physical skill/difficult-to-fake signal of health --> this is attractive --> get date”. And I’m sure that happens sometimes, and for some people, but my model of flirting does not involve “demonstrate social skill/intelligence --> get date”. For me, flirting solves a different problem, which is “communicate that you like someone (in the sense one likes people one might like to date), and have them communicate back that they like you, without either of you risking much embarrassment or social awkwardness if it’s not mutual or for any other reason a date can’t happen right now”.
Depending on what you’re trying to do by flirting (demonstrate social skill vs. give someone you’re attracted to a low-pressure way to tell you whether they like you back) the approach may be different. Although, even the latter can be a tricky thing to do and ability to do it successfully demonstrates a useful skill.
I think most people who flirt are like, not super socially skilled around people they’re attracted to, and “try to get a sense of whether it’s mutual in a low-risk way” is the more important problem that flirting solves for them. But maybe that’s just me typical-minding :).