“Just talk to a guy”: Women are snatching salads and apologizing over LinkedIn in order to meet single men

According to one TikToker, New York women are stealing salads that belong to finance guys in an effort to land a date.

The idea is to grab the man’s lunch order as though it’s your own, look up his name on LinkedIn, and contact him to “apologize” and offer to make it up to him.

Whether this works or not, it says something about the state of dating in the city.

Salad theft as a dating tactic

On July 13, TikToker @nicoleee461 posted a video claiming she’s witnessed a new method of scoring dates with men. According to the beauty and lifestyle vlogger, women are stealing lunches because their real owners won’t approach them.

“There are girls going into Midtown during the week and stealing finance bros’ salads for lunch,” she said, “and then looking their name up from the salad order on LinkedIn and then messaging them through there and being like ‘hey, oh my god, so sorry, grabbed your salad, let me make it up to you and buy you a new one.’”

@nicoleee461 It’s rough out here #nyc #nycdating #dating ♬ original sound – Nicole Or

Nicole admits that the tactic is clever, but laments that the dating scene is this bad.

“Why are we stealing men’s salads?” she asked. “Why can’t they just come up to us at a bar?”

“Men, please step up, or you’re salad’s gonna f*cking get taken.”

She goes on to list other wild tactics, including making bracelets that feature their phone numbers to give to men. Others sneak photos of dudes, make that their home screen, then ask the target to use their phone to take a photo of them with their friends.

“Hauntingly weird”

TikTok commenters widely agree that the salad theft method is a disturbing one. TikToker @emifbaby called it “hauntingly weird” and pointed out that all the finance guys she knows over 25 are unavailable.

“That’s such a bad and CRAZY approach,” agreed @lilweenie469, “just talk to a guy at a bar it’s so easy.”

It’s easy to say it’s easy, but people have been struggling with dating for decades. Many agree that dating apps have only made it worse, and the division in opinions on how to best go about it is confusing everybody.

“Half of TikTok is ‘I hate when men approach me’ and the other half is ‘why don’t men approach anymore,’” wrote @elvisvb.

“But have you been a man in NYC who tries to talk to a girl at a bar?” asked @brianpkennedy. “I’ve had several conversations with friends who say they just stopped trying because they are treated SO poorly if they try to respectfully talk to a girl at a bar.”

Unfortunately, years of bad advice from the manosphere traumatized generations of young women to the point that they treat any approaching man as a threat. It’s to the point that they’d rather look for men at Home Depot than at the club.

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