Andrea Lazzarotto
Aug 9, 2017 · 2 min read

“find something interesting to remark about and start a conversation around that”

Yeah, that’s basically the method I use every single time. Doesn’t work.

“The point of sending a message is to start a conversation, not make yourself interesting”

Please. OK, I am not a native speaker, but don’t pretend you didn’t get what I wanted to say. Of course you are starting a conversation, but no person in the world would join a conversation if said person didn’t consider it an interesting conversation with a person that has something interesting to say.

The approach you suggested would seem the most reasonable (and in fact I would not be able to come up with a better one) but it still doesn’t work. Due to old sexist stereotypes, men are supposed to approach and women are supposed to limit responses.

Gosh, in some places there is still a believe that presumes women who engage in messaging with men for the potential purpose of dating are “lascivious”. This utterly ridiculous stereotype may (and does) give qualms to some women who are then hesitant to even reply to a message like “Hey I saw you like reading, what do you think about author [X]?” (personally tried).

Even worse, some people create a profile on an app for meeting people and then consider “harassment” if you drop a “hello, nice to meet you […]”. These are cultural issues that must be solved, otherwise the pledge is completely useless. Useless and scary, because now nothing stops people from considering a salutation an “unsolicited harassing message” and users may get banned for that.