With the on going, and much needed conversation
about how not to approach, pursue, or otherwise
interact with other people - be it for a hopeful
romantic relationship or not - Katelyn and I
decided to share our story again, but this time
from my perspective.
I don't explicitly recall when I first saw her
but I'd wager it was a Follow Friday thread.
After a short time of seeing Katelyn pop up
either from her own posts or linked in others I
became interested in knowing more about the
BADASS org and their mission. So here's tip
number one for the guys out there. And yes, I'm
singling out the cis-males because it's what I
am and the only category I feel comfortable
commenting on. Guys, it's OK to see someone,
find them attractive, and DO NOTHING about it.
From the first tweet I saw of Katelyn's I found
her to be beautiful woman, but that didn't mean
I was entitled to make an advance. However, after
I looked into the work she does I quickly moved
from a visual attraction, to an intellectual one
and wanted to know more. So I listened to her. I
was already following her, I replied to a few of
her tweets, but more important, I listened to the
message she put out. One thing I heard was her
description on difficulty meeting "good" guys in
her area. Second was finding people to play
Boarderlands 2 with. So I though, "I'm a good guy,
and I played the first one, maybe this is my
opportunity to open a conversation?" So I bought
the game, worked on getting to a decent level for
multiplayer, and replied on a tweet of hers that I
was available to play. She didn't respond.
TIP #2: You aren't entitled to a response.
Some time passed. I continued to follow and listen.
The more I learned, the more interested I became.
Then she announced that a podcast was having her
on to talk OSINT techniques. Somewhere in this time
frame I was reading up on BADASS and found a story
where Katelyn had help local police make an arrest.
This was impressive alone, but there was no
information about the over all outcome. So I
tweeted out the story, and asked, "What was the
outcome?" She replied! I was a little giddy, I
admit. In my excitement I replied to her on the
open tweet and hit send... then immediately felt
like I had over shared a bit about a personal
topic of mine so I deleted the reply and re-
posted another more benign version.
But I was terrified she'd seen the original so I
stepped into the danger zone and sent an
unsolicited DM to explain. To increase my
embarrassment she never saw the original. I
apologized and the conversation died.
TIP#3: You aren't entitled to a conversation
And TIP#4: Be OK if the conversation dies, see
TIP#2&3
As I took a time-out and licked my wounds, the
podcast aired. I was impressed with her story
of how she rapidly self-learned tools such as
Google-dorking basically on the fly. I decided to
try an actual conversation. I sent a brief DM
saying I'd enjoyed the podcast, especially the bit
on Google search techniques. I asked if she knew
about the database of searches available on EDB.
She replied that she was aware and thanked me for
the suggestion. So that was that for the topic.
TIP#5: Don't continue to try to educate on a
topic if the other person claims to already know
about it. This is the basis of mansplaining. It's
not your right to evaluate if they "really" know
about it or not.
This thread is getting really long and I think
I've hit the important aspects of opening a
conversation but here are some other notes from
the story of KB+TC:
▷ I didn't compliment her looks until around day
2 of the conversation. Don't rush to gushing over
them.
▷ There were some time gaps in replies. Sure I
got nervous a few times that maybe she'd lost
interest: but see TIPS#2,3,4
▷ I let her know early on that she controlled the
conversation. If she said it was over, then it was
over.
▷ I was hopeful for some kind of romantic
relationship from day one. But it was about a
month before those feelings were returned. And
even then I never felt that the TIPS above didn't
apply to me.
The bottom line I want to relay is this. If you
want to pursue someone; be patient, listen to the
message they project (do they even seem to be
available?), don't be a dick, be ready for and
accepting of rejection.
