Comment by hypeatei
21 hours ago
The bit about him spilling olive oil onto someone's dress then playing it off with a flirtatious joke seems very strange to me. Maybe it's just my upbringing but trying to pull off a joke like that in a tense situation seems very risky. I would be worried about coming off unserious, indifferent, and sleazy while also stoking an even angrier reaction from the person.
You're right, but consider:
• Of course it's very strange; that's why he wrote about it — the point is to convey what is not obvious.
• Of course it's risky, but that's the point of much of the author's journey of social ease, at least the initial stages up to that point. If you're willing to take the risk of coming off <…>, or of an angry reaction, you open yourself up to a wider range of experiences / social interactions. Probably much of the interaction was non-verbal and even the author's paragraph cannot capture exactly what went on.
Not everyone needs to take such risks of course, but the author consciously chose to “install” social skill, and has shared their experience.
I think it was much more about anchoring the other person's response as quickly as possible and less about what was specifically being said. Sort of like speaking first in a negotiation to anchor your salary expectations. Even if the rate you propose is outlandish - doing so shifts the expected response curve in a way that can be useful.
Britney Spears did it in the music video for Toxic.
early 2000s Britney Spears could get away with a lot of things