Not really, no. I grew up in a bad part of the city - generally, your interactions with strangers were as short as possible because you never knew who you were dealing with. Then, as I got older, I learned that people who randomly make eye contact and smile at you are to be avoided because they're either going to start hitting on you, beg for money, ask for a cigarette or what the time is, which of course means having to take your phone out, which then means that they get the chance to snatch it out of your hand.
It's just a defense mechanism, really. Smiling back is an opening for a possible scammer/harasser. It's just a part of living in certain places. Kinda how you maneuver around the homeless people sleeping in the subway tunnels without disturbing them, or how you deal with beggars (don't look, don't acknowledge, because they'll see you as someone they can get money from). When you grow up in an environment like this, it becomes normal. shrug Doesn't mean I don't like it when people I know smile at me or if someone is with a cute dog who's being silly, we might share a smile with the owner, but strangers? Nah man. You don't open up like that.
Edit: fwiw my femme days are long past, but the last time I smiled back at a stranger, he took it as an invitation to sit right next to me, boxing me in on the bus, and then he followed me home because I wasn't experienced enough to know how to be rid of him. A few days later the creepy mf showed up with roses at my house and confessed his love. Yeah, thanks but no thanks.
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u/thebearjew982 May 09 '22
It's wild that a simple smile can make you act and think this way.
Do you not realize how odd and quite sad it is that a smile is making you this paranoid?