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It's an indie short, and the YouTube channel from what I've seen doesn't post non-fiction (documentaries). Could be it's a mockumentary compiled from rl experiences from one or more people. Idk. I thought it was cute. And it does make you think about the possibilities (rl) of any one of us doing the same thing.

I've never "just asked." Either it was a situation where a bunch of people were stuck together for a week, or it was someone I'd gotten to know. Not too many years ago I used to strike up convos with women at a park where I used to walk. I believe the possibility was there. But there aren't really THAT many openings where men and women both have the understanding they could walk away with a date. Picking up someone at a bar seems to be one of those exceptions, i.e. that's the whole point. But a purely cold approach in another context? That would be interesting.

Also notice the guy in the story is not your typical PUA type. Not a Nice Guy, either, but he was really rockin' the whole little lost puppy act. If this were a rl scenario, it seems to me that it's honesty and authenticity that matter most.

I love old fashioned anything. The sweetest movie scene I know is from Penny Serenade (Cary Grant, 1941), where he meets his future wife in a record shop while listening to a phonograph. He's shy and humble but he introduces himself. I wish I could link the video, but I can only find this montage or the whole film. Of course that's Hollywood, but that's similar to how my grandparents and other ancestors met. It wasn't rocket science to say hello to someone who caught your eye.

No doubt. It's most likely staged.

By "old fashioned" I just meant without using electronics. TBH, I think same principles apply either way. You wouldn't go out with the first man who said "Hai" on a dating site or otherwise. And once you DID meet up the first time, that doesn't mean an automatic LTR. The guy seems harmless to me, but how does anyone else KNOW that?

Something else I found interesting: more than once, some women played the boyfriend card but got really giggly about it, partly because it's unexpected, but they weren't just repulsed, either. I've noticed IRL that's often a mild invitation because status can change. Relationships are volatile. If he were to slow down and get to know these women, results might be different. If I'd known a girl, especially if I knew her well enough to know for a fact he was lying, I'd do one of two things: 1. GREAT! Tell him he can come, too. 2. Ok, so exactly how much boyfriend do you have? Don't worry. I just want to buy you dinner and talk for a while. It's not a marriage proposal.

Exactly!! !

Love those old ones. "An Affair To Remember" is just the best.

Higher up in the "random stranger" list:

7-Year Itch
Roman Holiday
Breakfast At Tiffany's

Breakfast at Tiffany’s was more like a friendship that turned into a relationship than anything else.

They were friends all while she was intent on marrying one of the richest men in America (or Portugal) who was under 50.

I rewatched it, recently. It’s one of my favorite movies.

Both sets of my grandparents had really bad marriages that ended in divorce, so I don’t romanticize the past in any way or find it superior to our current way of doing things.

Fewer marriages ended in divorce back then, but it doesn’t mean that marriages were happier.

I enjoy old movies, but I don’t see them as a reflection of reality in any way, not that there isn’t happiness out there (then or now).

Ugh...looks like I have a half hour of free time, so...I mean, I don't know if I can write a short response to that! I'm starting to think you've learned all my triggers.

Old films were more artistic expressions than entertainment back then. They had VERY limited resources and thus had to squeeze more movie magic out of the camera than they do now. Even in a CGI era, filmmakers are essentially using computers to get old-film results. The only thing that's different is maybe a little less work and a little more photo-realism. But the old films had a certain pleasing aesthetic that you lose with more "real" films. Camera angles, lighting...they just don't make 'em like Citizen Kane anymore!

I think what you might possibly be missing when you talk "reality" is that many films like "Tiffany's," "Roman Holiday," "Affair to Remember," and countless others, just like more recent "chick flicks" like "Serendipity," "You've Got Mail," "Something's Gotta Give," "He's Just Not That Into You," all target a female audience. They're trying to sell women what they think women want. Books by Nora Roberts, Danielle Steele, Diane Gabaldon, same thing. Cosmo. Redbook. Daytime dramas (I'm a HUGE fan of "The Bold and the Beautiful"). They target women and women's interests. "Bold" right now is highlighting human trafficking. I mean, a woman's worst nightmare, her baby being switched with a stillborn and sold for a quarter mil. I keep up with the chatter on Twitter and it's caused a huge outrage. The writers are aware and know it makes them a lot of money and keeps women coming back for more.

As a man, I know that the key to understanding women is first understanding that women are human beings and fundamentally no different from men. Knowing that women want basically the same things I want has helped me in relationships. But it's interesting seeing how nuanced those things manifest themselves in issues that, whether naturally or artificially, pertain specifically to women. Hence I'm especially fascinated by women's media.

So whether you're talking fiction or non-fiction, or anything from Kaitlyn Bennett all the way to #metoo, you might be surprised just how realistic the films are. Not in their portrayal of reality, but in reflecting women's interests as a whole. Old films were brilliant in that respect because resources were so limited filmmakers had to rely on a lot of overacting to get the point across. Quiet, low-emotion moments are dead, cold. Happy moments are explosive. The slightest hint of sadness is catastrophic. There's no question what the character is feeling, whereas current films have more behind the actress to add emphasize emotion. "The Matrix" films are almost completely flatline, but there's no mistaking where the characters are. But then, in the "Matrix" it's never about the characters. It's about where the audience is. They're not allowed to express emotion, so they need us to do it for them. The filmmakers are looking at all of us that way and writing us into their stories. They can't write us if they don't know us. So maybe we're not actually inside the matrix, but we do have a pretty good idea of how we'd feel if we were.

And they know where women are, too. Women CERTAINLY know where they are themselves. Women certainly know where they WANT to be, and that's where I think probably most women's media try to go. It's effective. It makes a lot of money! For the rest of us, for people like myself (men), it's highly valuable stuff.

Not only that, but I genuinely like the storytelling. "Tiffany's" is just a beautiful film. There's that scene where she's sitting on the fire escape singing "Moon River" that makes me cry every time, and she looks at him and lets her Oklahoma accent slip: "Whatcha dooin'?" And the scene where they run out in the rain trying desperately to find Cat.

"Seven Year Itch" is obviously a MAN film. If they'd picked ANY actress other than Marilyn Monroe, it would be a perfect date-night movie. But it's funny. It's the kind of movie I could see Adam Sandler doing a remake of. "Couples Retreat" is really "Seven Year Itch" with more dudes.

My thoughts on marriage is that happiness is irrelevant. You SHOULD be happy. You SHOULD love your spouse. But for the sake of what marriage IS, love and happiness aren't enough. There's got to be some real reason for two people to be together. I don't want to assume too much, but from what I've read of you on WP I get the impression you probably never would be interested in marriage. I don't think marriage really is for everyone. My wife agrees with me on most things, such as parenting style, what our roles should be in the home, religion, etc. We had to learn some difficult lessons together. For instance, as much as you'd like to think you or your partner are free to see whoever he or she likes, other people often have bad intentions. She had other men trying to get her away from me, occasionally even an employer, and she had friends who were unfairly critical of me. She learned the hard way the wrong people will make married life very difficult, that you can't keep living life like you're single or still in high school/college. I learned the hard way that for OUR relationship to work, I HAD to speak my mind, to be vocal if I had a moral objection to something, to emphatically say NO, and to take an active interest in our finances. I thought I was being a nice guy by staying out of her way when, in reality, I think she was looking for me to be more decisive. Being firm doesn't mean being a bully. Being concerned for and prioritizing your marriage doesn't mean you're abusive. But that also means you're not always going to be happy. I think two people looking towards marriage MUST sit down together and have a long, HONEST discussion about what marriage looks like and how things will have to change. We've been lucky in that we are on the same page so much that we haven't really had to change who we were when we met. Sure, a few things are different. I remember one time her former boss asked her out for lunch. She said she needed to talk to me first. So she did. I looked at her like, "Really?" She said, "yeah, it's a dumb idea." I said, "No, I don't mind. Make sure you tell him that I'll be there and I'm buying." She told me she had no interest whatsoever in seeing him, and that was that. It wasn't that I'm a jealous husband...more like dude was a creep who thought he could do what he wanted because he had money and was a lawyer. If this thing was all about happiness and freedom, we wouldn't have lasted a month together. We wouldn't have even bothered getting married.

It's never been about happiness or money. That's not why we got married. We got married because we saw our lives going the same direction and we're best friends. We couldn't see ourselves with anyone else, having anyone else's kids, doing anything else. It never logically followed we'd always be happy. HOWEVER, I'd say we've been happy 98% of the time. We became married in almost every sense. We don't really have an individual identity anymore, but rather an identity TOGETHER, and we like it that way. I have a feeling MOST married couples never get this. I get the impression most marrieds have unrealistic, romantic notions of "love" that just don't happen IRL. For love to work, it has to be objective. It has to be real, to translate into material terms. If you can't see it in action, it doesn't exist. Most people I think base their relationship choices on emotions and nothing else. So when someone cheats, or someone leaves, or someone hits, or when someone just has "irreconcilable differences," it seems like divorce is the cheap and easy solution to make all your problems go away. NFD is relationship suicide. It's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. When you get a divorce, your problems are only solved insofar as there's no longer a marriage to have problems in. It doesn't resolve the internal problems YOU brought into the marriage in the first place. Without owning those problems and dealing with them, you'll never have any kind of successful relationship, marriage or otherwise.

Fewer marriages back then ended in divorce because it was less in vogue to do so. For "regular folks," it was an embarrassment, a failure. Getting fired from a job was the same way. But people have unrealistic expectations of relationships and thus treat them more casually, same as employers refuse to invest in the potential of their employees. In the case of the job/career world, employees have begun expecting more from employers. Jobs don't carry the same value they used to in part because companies no longer recognize talent the way they used to. They're increasingly at the mercy of job-seekers. People now have the kind of attitude if they don't like their job, or if an employer displeases them in any way, they'll just walk off the job and never come back. It's worse for the employer than old-skool quitting because with quitting, at least you KNOW where you stand. It hasn't always been that way. Marriage has the same problem. It's just not that important. It's just a rite of passage and an excuse to eat cake and party and take an expensive vacation. Real life sets in before the month is out and people are lucky if they last 6 months. Add student debt to that, the gotta-have status-symbol mortgage and car notes, etc. Gold diggers. I don't really believe the 50% failure rate. But if we assume 50% failed marriages, geez...is it really all that surprising?

My opinion on past marriage is folks at one time were closer to understand marriage for what it's really supposed to be. It's a little bit of love, convenience, business, solidifying new family relationships (arranged marriages have rich potential for this), corporate solidarity, having children, leaving a legacy. In other words, it's much bigger than just two people. When you lose that, when you lose your values, marriage is not going to survive.

If you want to preserve yourself in the sense of maintaining your status quo--your freedom, independence, autonomy (in the fullest sense), wealth, choices--DON'T GET MARRIED. If you can be honest with yourself and admit it's too much for you and you won't get married, you've got my respect just as much as people who get married and stay married, happy or not. I firmly believe that you can only live for yourself. I don't live for my wife. I don't ask her to live for me. More than anything I WANT her in my life. I don't want anyone else. She feels the same for me. It works. I'm with her not because I define myself by having her, but because I get a selfish pleasure from being with her. She feels the same towards me. And because of how I feel towards her, how she makes me feel, I'll do whatever it takes to try to make her feel happy, loved, and important. I would die for her because she is worth that much and so much more. Most people will say "richer or poorer" at the altar. But when you don't get richer, or you lose everything, she's GONE. Or when you get sick, she's GONE. Or you cuss her because of dementia onset, she's GONE. "Yeah, I know what I said, but this isn't what I signed up for!" REALLY??? Those people have PROBLEMS. Those people never understood what marriage was in the first place.

So if I seem old fashioned or prefer old fashioned things, that's why. It was a lot easier for my grandparents because they didn't have much besides each other and their respective families, and EVERYONE was part of a tight-knit community. It was so much easier, and people had so much more support back then. We don't have that in our day and time. People really do marry perfect strangers and can't figure out why everything falls apart. People claim to value themselves, but what they really value is what other people can do for them without any kind of reward. So when a husband says, "You can't see your girl friend because I don't like how she talks about me," that's grounds for divorce. Or when a wife is too tired between chores and children to pay attention to her husband, he can get a divorce and start dating a pretty, young, unattached thing. People think this is perfectly acceptable. So if you don't want to risk that and choose not getting married, in all seriousness, more power to you. It has worked very well for my wife and I. It works well for a lot of people. I don't judge people for staying single if by staying single it means doing the right thing.

I didn’t say that I was planning on staying single.

I was in an abusive marriage, but I don’t think I’d want to be in any marriage at this point. It’s just not for me. A relationship doesn’t have to involve marriage.

Overall, marriage should be about mutual happiness and love. If it isn’t, there’s no real point. I’m MUCH happier since I kicked him to the curb.

I know. It just happens to be one of the few things I'm passionate about. I'm pretty wound up tonight. I just spent a significant amount of time explaining to someone that the Eurythmics soundtrack was inappropriate for "1984" and why learning music theory is important. I'm less wordy when I'm busy. The next 5 minutes are looking good.


Marriage is big business. Not everyone is cut out for it. I'm VERY sorry to hear that things didn't work out for you. I can't blame you for feeling that way. I'm wishing you continued healing.

No, a relationship doesn't have to involve marriage. For my wife and I, marriage is a means to an end. We knew once we got married we'd both have a lot at stake. Splitting up would be catastrophic for us because of what we've put into it. However, if something went wrong that made our relationship unlivable, going through divorce proceedings would minimize the damage and afford some legal protection. My main criticism of pre-/extra-marital relationships is you don't get that level of protection that you do while married. You have to be extremely careful of boundaries in relationships outside marriage to make sure you can't get screwed over. I feel like for the most part this isn't something a lot couples have to worry about, but you still have to be careful out there.


You can define marriage however you like. I look at mutual happiness as something that results from doing the right thing--TOGETHER. We have problems. We're not always happy. But we were never in it for happiness. But we see how much good stuff we have together that we don't want to be apart. Because of THAT, yes, we're happy most of the time. When I say "not always happy," I mean stuff like finding mold in the bathroom, or finding a septic system leak in the back yard, or when the car blows a head gasket, or when the lawn mower breaks down and we can't get it repaired in a month. Or when a kid falls at school on the playground and has to go to the hospital. Or when a kid is sick and throwing up.

That's just life. The kinds of things that make us unhappy are the kinds of things that would make us unhappy even if we were single. If you're not happy single, you won't be happy married or IAR. The above kinds of things are exactly what I mean by that.

But do we care about each other? Of course. Our lives would suck without each other. We want each other more than anything else, happy or not.

But the OP video is not some 'old fashioned anything', just a guy asking random girls in the street for a date; this didn't exist in the 'old fashion' things either.

It would be very irresponsible to encourage young aspie guys to do such things and make fools of themselves at best.

So please guys, don't be influenced by Isabella's dreamy posts, in real life the women in the street will tell you No, at best, I don't think I have to remind everyone this may be considered as a sexual harassment too.

Excuse me? Where's my dreamy post? I first replied that I would talk to the guy in public because he was doing an interesting experiment and he would have camera crews, and I wouldn't expect it to amount to a relationship. I would talk to him, because why not? I guess talking to movie makers in public with a camera crew is dreamy?

Please stop belittling me all the time.

It’s pretty stupid if you ask me.

These “social experiments” irritate me no end.

Just like that guy in the bar doing that stupid crap to try to get women to rub his body.

Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart would tell that camera guy to shove it. Audrey Hepburn, too.

Isabella would have wanted to talk to the camera guy to learn something about human character. What’s dreamy about that?

That is actually pretty down-to-earth and logical.

Was referring to your first post.

This kind of cold approach should not be praised in any way.

These social experiments are implying that guys should imitate that behavior which wouldn’t work for most people.

Having a “magical” connection with a stranger and chatting in a public place like a park or coffee shop is a lot different than asking a bunch of random women on a date until someone says yes.

While I’ve never had a magical connection with a stranger, I think that theoretically it could happen. Since it’s unlikely, I think the best thing is to focus on making friendships with a diverse group of people and then, at some point, a friendship could grow into something else.