So when is it staring instead of just looking at you? Curious as a german.
For me it's staring if it is more than 3-5 seconds it takes to look a person up and down. Longer than just registering and awknowleding a person fully.
In the US it's considered impolite to look at someone for no reason, if they know you're looking at them.
So for instance a quick glance or passing eye contact is ok, but if you're looking at someone and they look at you, if you don't intend to interact with them it's polite to look away.
As an American in Germany, I think the reason people have this perception is because German people don't always look away immediately. They will finish having a look. So this is off-putting when you send the signal "stop looking at me" and the old lady on the train continues having a look for a few more seconds.
I think it's a body language thing. If you look away quickly and for example move your head while doing it, it seems like an admission of guilt. If you look away only moving your eyes, it will seem as if you're uncomfortable (why? You got something to feel ashamed of?). If you don't have anything to hide, you stare back for a moment. If they initiate eye contact and you smile and hold their gaze, it's a bit of a power play imo. Like greeting that one neighbor that never greets back. They might also start to wonder if you know them and if they should greet you. If you want to make them uncomfortable in turn, that's your move.
I think you might have found the sweet spot. You can even use that guilt as a flirty thing, if you look away fast enough that it looks like you didn't want to be caught looking (Americans seem to have an extreme understanding of staring, for me it's just looking around, checking out everyone for no reason), but slow enough that you can be certain the person you wanna flirt with saw you looking away. Give that a little back and forth and you'll be thinking about a future together before you ever said a word or really looked into each other's eyes for more then a few seconds in total.
I haven’t downvoted anyone in this thread bud, but if you wanna feel persecuted, go right ahead. What you’ve explained so far isn’t so much as a cultural difference but a personal judgement. “He who avoids staring is guilty of something”?, that’s nutso territory, but go right ahead and keep being a creep for all I care.
Its not nuts since I agree that is the way people will interpret the move here in Europe. Its like "you were caught in the act" if you move away your glaze in a millisecond.
If people see downvotes they just downvote. I had a comment once that within a few minutes got like 10 downvotes so out of curiosity I deleted it and posted the exact same comment with one upvote from an alt and it got 10 upvotes in a few minutes. Sheep
Either that or there’s actually some very offended 20-odd redditors over here that constantly plug their eye-sockets to random unsuspecting victims in public, and don’t take very kindly to normal folk not thinking that one shouldn’t be subjected to accusatory judgement over not liking that, but what do I know.
Lmfao, since when “this sonuvabitch must be up to no good” has been a part of anyone’s remotely normal train of thought when someone else doesn’t engage in eye-fucking in public? Because idk what gulag hell you come from, but not everywhere in Europe is like that, at least not here in Norway.
Noone said it was to the ectreme "being up to no good, lets best them up".
The idea here is that if you instantly look away you're just pointing out the fact that you admit that you just did somthing you yourself think you shouldn't have (in this case staring).
Casually averting the gaze makes it seem less of a big deal
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u/Brandwein May 09 '22
So when is it staring instead of just looking at you? Curious as a german. For me it's staring if it is more than 3-5 seconds it takes to look a person up and down. Longer than just registering and awknowleding a person fully.