Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things)

[Cobalt]

I am having a super rough patch of insomnia. I'm getting about four hours of sleep to every 24-28hrs, no matter how tired I am my brain flat out won't let me sleep. So this morning I decided to play some Warframe. I end up in a group of randos who are two guys, and a one woman. They're all on voice chat talking to each other but I'm too shy for that so just run around ragekitty murdering everything in sight silently (well OOCly silent, ICly Valkyr screams all the time, it's her thing).

After the mission is over I send the chick a message basically saying "Hi, I'm shy, but you guys seem cool so hit me up if you need a warm body for missions." And toss the three of them friend requests. One of the dude's immediately starts sending me whispers, and a PS4 friend request. But the whisper convo goes like this:

Dude: hi
Me: Hi!
Dude: hru
Me: I'm sleepy, you?
Dude: I'm sleepy too hun, but I have insomnia so it's hard to sleep alone.

Me: That sucks.
Him: ikr?
Me: My bf is passed way out, I'm kind of jealous of him.
Him: Wake him up with a blowjob lmao

Me: silently turns off her PS4

(What're your stories of when you tried to make new friends and then someone was creepy?)

[Ghost]

@Cobaltasaurus A long while ago we (my SO and I) ran into this constant bump of creepers. We needed more people for a tabletop RPG game, and this one guy kept suggesting these players (Who had cars and could give him a ride to game night) that were just...entirely creepy towards my SO. For clarification, everyone knew my SO and I were a couple.

1. One night at the end of a Street Fighter RPG game, new guy handed my SO a folded piece of paper that said "Sucks we had to end there, my character was going to invite yours to the hot tub." UNINVITED

2. Guy who would never look my SO in the eyes while talking to her (would look to the wall or floor) but constantly looked at her boobs while doing everything else. UNINVITED

3. After game, with no context: "...hey if you ever want someone to run an RPG for you while <GhostRLName> is at work, I can..." UNINVITED

4. Walks up behind SO, hugs her by grabbing boobs from behind. "It's okay because I'm not straight" UNINVITED

[Aria]

One time I decided I wanted to try heavy fighting in the SCA. Really, trying heavy fighting was why I joined the SCA. So I went to an event designed very specifically for new people who might not even be members yet. They had fighters there! I was super excited!

So I went up to the fighter in charge. I explained how I know heavy fighters in other areas around the country and they were really encouraging and nice, and told me not to be shy and just ask the person in exactly his position to help me get started!

He proceeds to stare at my silently for several seconds, then explain that they won't be able to fit me into any of the loaner armor because <waves his hands about half an inch from my admittedly very large boobs>. Then shrugs apologetically and walked away.

I'm still in the SCA. I don't do heavy fighting.

(Also, PS: I've seen some of our most successful fighters from my area. Some of our most successful and really very large fighters. If their man boobs will fit in armor, so will my regular ones. Jerk.)

[Cobalt]

@Ghost ...yikes

@Aria What an asshole.

[Deleted]

Guys can be creepers. I was escorting a photographer downtown the other day while she took pictures of a building for marketing purposes. She had multiple creepers come up trying to hit on her. We had expected me to be there to protect her from random homeless people. Instead I had to be like 'We're working here. Go away.' to random fucking dudebros. No shame whatsoever.

[Auspice]

I played M:tG for a while when I first lived in SC (so, 2007/2008). The first store I played at closed because the owner was diagnosed with cancer. The only other store in the area that held tournaments (without driving really far)....... well. I only went once.

I know my chest gets stared at. Hard to be a 36HH and not. And in the summer, in the south, it's gonna happen more (cause tanktops or v-necks or). I've just accepted this.

But the guy who owned that place couldn't stop staring or leering. He'd be in conversations with other people and just blatantly staring.

I've been creeped on. Hit on awkwardly.

But no one's ever made me feel ashamed of my body in the way that guy did.

I never went back to that stop and was so glad when this other guy opened one closer to my house. He was vastly, amazingly better, and had no qualms banning creepers from his store. Even after I stopped playing regularly, I'd go back for the occasional draft or FNM to support his shop.

But that other one.
Ugh.

[Herja]

So, after a rough break-up this summer, I made an attempt a couple of months ago to very hesitantly dip my toes back into the local dating pool. Ended up kind of casually talking to a friend of a friend. He was cute. We have similar interests. Seemed like a good place to start.

Literally, after a week of talking, he starts getting... weird. First was him making repeated comments about how I don't post a lot of pictures of myself on Facebook and then very quickly assuming that I don't like the way I look and trying to reassure me how attractive he finds me in a really 'off' way while trying to wheedle pictures out of me.

Look, I don't put picture on Facebook because that has become nothing more than a place for me to post memes. Period. Also, I know that I'm attractive. You don't need to reassure me like you are going to be the white knight to come and boost my self-confidence so that I can reward you with my eternal gratefulness in the form of oral sex. I have plenty of self-esteem, which I why I don't feel the need to post pictures of myself on Facebook for validation!

Then, he started getting weird about me not talking to him for days at a time because I was busy with my life and getting some strange vibes with him. He kept commenting really passive-aggressively on my silence, then claiming it was a 'joke' whenever I called him on it.

Needless to say, I decided to skip the dating pool and just hang out on the side of it drinking cocktails instead.

[Auspice]

@Herja I've been having a heckin' hard time getting back into dating myself. Like, I purposefully pulled myself out of it for a while and getting back into it has... been hard.

I don't even know what do this do anymore. And then the fear of guys who are damn creepers god yes.

[Testament]

@Auspice Hit up r/niceguys if your skin hasn't crawled lately. Some of those stories that are posted are just....Y I K E S.

[Alamias]

I seriously would like a group of people that can come over on a consistent basis and play table top games (Be it an RPG or just a board game). The friends we have in the area that play are...well...not exactly consistent all the time. Love them, but we can't rely on them to be available when they say they are.

Most of what Ghost says is why I don't try and find random people at the local game store, or anything like that. I'm a guy, I don't have parts that get ogled like women do, but I have a wife and I have a kid and I don't know these random people so why would I want to invite them into my house where they could be creepy or worse?

So I sit with all these games that remain underplayed save for the times I can actually manage to wrangle some players up.

It sucks. I wish I could trust people so I could make some new friends, but I feel bad for the women because they have it so much worse.

[Auspice]

Oh.
So most everyone in the ladygeeks group I'm in is awesome (esp. the cross-stitch sub-group them).

There's one woman tho.

I'm p open about being bi. At least around other women.
But she......... like.... pounced on it the first time it came up.
And brings it up frequently elsewise.
She's married.
But there's the.... 'I need girlfriends.' or even sometimes, 'My husband and I are looking for a girlfriend.'
'We should go on a date sometimes!'

And one time she did bring this up in the Discord rather than PM me and I got PMs of 'oh god please be careful she and her husband are v predatory' and I reassured the person in question of uh yeah I already got that vibe but thank you.

And really? Honestly?
when it's another woman is when I hate it most

[Alamias]

@Auspice Sorry you (and other women) have to deal with this kinda thing. It's bad enough having to worry about predatory men, but to get it from both sides has to be tiresome and frustrating.

[Ifrit]

[Ghost]

@Alamias Yeah, hindsight 20/20 I later realized that those people then knew where I lived because we were hosting game night at our place. Sure, on game night's our resident cop with 4 black-belts, a 9mm and a backup .45 is excellent security, but he doesnt live with us SoOOoOoo.

We had trusted our buddy to vet these people. Nothing bad happened afterwards, so I guess he didn't vet them enough to not be creepy but trusted them enough to not do a home invasion?

The random game store LFG approach is a crapshoot. Most of the best, sane RPers already have go-to groups consisting of other same, mature adults. There are a looooooot of fucking mutants.

Best to err on the side of caution with wife and kid. I got lucky.

[Alamias]

@Ghost Yeah, that is exactly why I don't go that route and suffer with the flaky friends I do have...lol. I'm sure that there could be decent people that I could get to know and play with at the FLGS, but I don't have the time to vet people.

[Tinuviel]

I don't really have solid examples, as this sort of thing happened more frequently when I was much younger (late teens through to mid-twenties). For background, in my real person life I'm a rather flamboyant and very obviously gay guy. And with such a flouncy, bouncy attitude comes the expectation of a certain type of girl/woman.

As you can imagine my self-confidence was eroded somewhat during my youth by a near-constant stream of young women attempting to 'claim' me as their personal "gay best friend" while treating me essentially as some combination of a porcelain doll and YSL designer handbag.

[RightMeow]

Years ago. I meet this person that does tabletop gaming. I'm super excited because NO ONE in my friend group at the time had a clue what I was talking about and didn't want to. I met his fiancee who was pregnant with his kid. He was just straight up a nice guy.

The other guys at the first session sort of stared at me, but like others, I'm kind of use to it (not in a vain way. I got boobs man). No one did anything. The next session they were cool. The DM gives me a retainer that he plays to assist me (I know, I know). It was through a few bad rolls on my account, etc.

He asks me over to do a side quest (stop judging me).... nothing happens we just RP. Nothing flirty (I'm always super happy and hyper it does tend to come off as flirting). We are good. I get along with his fiancee who doesn't game, but you know it's still all good.

Two months later, same kind of invite. I'm like sure. It's fine. I come over and he pounces. Like he put me in a situation, I couldn't get to the door exactly and he was like here's my dick. -- I got out of it relatively unscathed, but it made me stop TT'ing for like ever. I started a few months ago with my guy pal and I will only go if he's with me.

So yeah, people can be creeps and some play the fucking long game.

[Scissors]

@RightMeow

Like he put me in a situation, I couldn't get to the door exactly and he was like here's my dick. -- I got out of it relatively unscathed, but it made me stop TT'ing for like ever.

[Quinn]

I've met a lot of fellow mushers over the years in the US, UK, and Canada, and in all but two situations they've all been fine. This was back when meetups were pretty common and in my group of friends I was the one everyone invited over to meet their parents to show them that see, the people they talked to on the computer were perfectly normal! Honestly I have a lot of great memories from the good old days. Except for these two:

The first I went to visit someone I'd been playing with for years and he was cool and I met his girlfriend and we all hung out and had a fun time and then on the way to the airport he was like this wasn't how I thought things would go I was thinking maybe we'd end up having sex in a phone booth or something and I was like oh look I'll just get out here. Pretty sure I barely talked to him after that it so freaked me out.

The other I went with my then boyfriend to meet up with another couple we mushed with. My PC was in a romantic relationship with the guy's PC, but it's all IC so whatever. The meeting was kind of coincidental as it turned out we were all just going to be at the same event that weekend. So we get there and we meet up with them and we shake hands like normal people and the wife in the other couple goes "Handshakes?! I thought for sure with these two it would be hugging and making out!"

It was so awkward and we got out of there quick.

[Aria]

@Auspice said in Why We Don't Make New Friends Anymore (Or Creepers Do Creepy Things):

I played M:tG for a while when I first lived in SC (so, 2007/2008). The first store I played at closed because the owner was diagnosed with cancer. The only other store in the area that held tournaments (without driving really far)....... well. I only went once.

I know my chest gets stared at. Hard to be a 36HH and not. And in the summer, in the south, it's gonna happen more (cause tanktops or v-necks or). I've just accepted this.

But the guy who owned that place couldn't stop staring or leering. He'd be in conversations with other people and just blatantly staring.

I've been creeped on. Hit on awkwardly.

But no one's ever made me feel ashamed of my body in the way that guy did.

I never went back to that stop and was so glad when this other guy opened one closer to my house. He was vastly, amazingly better, and had no qualms banning creepers from his store. Even after I stopped playing regularly, I'd go back for the occasional draft or FNM to support his shop.

But that other one.
Ugh.

When I'm not literally in the middle of my second game, remind me to tell you the story about the gaming shop owner that basically tried to whore me out when I was 19.