Blog post : Your typical female analysing monosyllabic responses to death

Your typical female analysing monosyllabic responses to death.

"I'm starting to think that I only attract losers."

"Ouch."

I've been very obsessed with dissecting the reaction to my seemingly casual statement. My initial reaction was: hmm, if he is feeling personal agony, it must mean that he is attracted to me. Backwards logic, you see? If he is feeling personal agony, he thinks that I think that he is a loser. And for me to think that he is a loser, he must be attracted to me.

Then I started thinking, well, maybe it's just a standard cookie-cutter nice-guy response to be sympathetic to the guys whom I think are losers. Maybe it was less of a personal-agony ouch than a I-feel-the-pain-for-them-losers ouch. In order to clarify any doubts, I handpicked three prime guys from my phonebook and put forth the same statement. These guys come from wildly different social spheres, thus providing a suitably varied sample space for me to perform my little social experiment. I also trust that these guys are not attracted to me, hence eliminating bias.

The question: "What if I told you that I'm starting to think that I only attract losers?"

Exhibit A: The pragmatic guy who always has a wisecrack
His answer: Use them! They getting on your nerves?

Exhibit B: The intelligent guy who never fails to question the question
His answer: Who are these losers to begin with, and why call them losers?

Exhibit C: The doubtful, hypersensitive ex-boyfriend
His answer: Oh god. I hope you don't mean me.

You see? No one took my statement personally! Well, Exhibit C seemed like he did take it as a personal affront, suggesting that he thinks that I think that he is attracted to me (gosh what complexity) but he later on tried to redeem himself by saying "Of course I don't honestly think you're referring to me! Hopefully not, at the least. But what kind of losers?" So yes, it does seem like as if "ouch" is not a common response to the generic, world-weary kind of statement I made. When I went on to ask the Exhibits "What if someone said 'ouch'?", this is what they said.

Exhibit A: That's out of the point!
Exhibit B: He must be thinking you were referring to him. Haha. No surprise lah. (HMMM!)
Exhibit C: *some random response chock-full of assumptions and irrelevant contexts*

Is it safe to say that this guy has some modicum of interest in me? (Here's hoping that he doesn't find out about my blog. If he does, well... He might be glad to know that I'm not completely impervious to hints.)