it’s just eye contact. look open and neutral. if people notice you paying attention to them, they’ll engage more likely than if you have your head down covered in hood with headphones on

Have you tried falling off a ladder. Anyone who doesnt run to offer assistance is not someone you wanna prone bone anyway. Time your ladder fall as the hottie approaches.

To steal a tip from JB Smoove - walk around with one shoelace untied. Someone will notice.

“Hey, your shoelace is untied”

“Oh, thanks”

Ice: broken

chatting someone up is out of the question for me

Some basic life advice for you: focus on things you can control, not on things you can’t. Approach the people you want to interact with. That’s completely under your control. You can’t really control whether other people approach you. Spending your effort on that is a waste.

Wear a button that says “I’m approachable!”

Maybe go on a site like meetup or find local events you are interested in. Go out and do something with strangers: help a charity, go on an organized hike, take a language class, do some volunteering.

Just hanging at the park putting out the vibe likely won’t get you where you want to be.

Go to the singles park on a bicycle. Ride somewhere with cute single girls in your area. Fall on the bicycle and hurt your knee. Wait for help. If the cute girls don’t help, they’re probably not that nice. Phew, you just saved a bullet there.

Is it this kind of stupid methods you want?

Okay, buy a shitload of oranges. Put them in a bag. Cut a hole in the bag, so it barely keeps together. Go to the park and find the cute girls again. Give the bag a firm shake so it falls apart and the oranges start rolling all over the place. Look sad. Attempt to pick up the oranges but keep dropping some, until they come and help.

Now for the next one, you will need to get out of your comfort zone. Go to the grocery store. Find the laundry detergent isle. Keep staring at the products until a cute single girl comes by. Look confused. Say to her: “excuse me, I’m really confused about all these, which one are you getting?” Eventually thank her for help and turn the conversation into something else " I’m new in this town, do you know any other great places to get laundry detergents (or whatever)"

Oh, I forgot to mention, you need to be wearing a suit or at least a blazer and proper shoes. None of the above will work very well if you look like a hobo who washes with a toilet brush.

If you’re a dude and you wanna be approached by regular women and not gold-diggers, you kinda have to be cute. If you’re not too handsome you will have to go outside and wait a lot, I guess, even more so if you don’t give off “approachable vibes”. Or you could do what most men have done since time immemorial: learn a bit about people and what makes them smile and go do that regardless of your fears.

And what is this nonsense about being progressive and “gender roles”. Women are scared kittens and the mere possibility of rejection, public or not, wrecks most of their psyches. And men are hornier (else the prostitution market would look very different, lol), so they know they’ll be approached eventually, at least in their younger years. You’re not battling ideology, you’re battling economy! You will have to make a move, unless you’re handsome enough that a woman makes a cost-benefit analysis and finds the risk of EMOTIONAL DAMAGE worth the prize. You might be! If so, well, go outside. If not, you’re gonna have to be brave and do the unthinkable: talk to women and risk ridicule. Most women are nice, sweet and non-confrontational, at least IME, and if you know the least about women you can tell the bad apples apart easily, so give it a go.

Wear a t-shirt that says I’m single you can talk to me.

I’m kidding. Sort of.

I’ve been approached by a woman exactly one time. We’ve now been married for 21 years.

By being interesting.

How you do that is up to you. Like visibly enjoying hobbies, having an eccentric look, going for a fun personality, or being in cool locations. It also allows you to talk about something you personally enjoy.

girls will signal to me that they might be open to having a conversation, but it’s rare that one would directly initiate. the trick for me is recognizing the signals when i see them, and not hanging around for too long especially if it doesn’t look like it’s working out.

Try to look like you might have cocaine on you.

(Sorry man, I got nothing 😔 )

People here talking about “props”, and that’s fair and dandy but only and only if you truly like or are into said props. Because you will attract people who are into that too, but also repel those who aren’t. As a woman I never cared much about either people with dogs or babies. None of my business. But I have approached people with other animals or doing arts for example.

My recommendation would be to join a group activity and stick to it for a couple months. See how it goes, then switch to something else. It can be life drawing, bushwalking, patisserie, guitar, board games- you name it. This puts you back in control because the activity acts as the prop, and by context you are allowed to say “oh such nice drawings, how do you do xyz?” " Are those shoes good for walking?" “Do you bake often?” You start the conversation and it doesn’t need to be personal at all. I’m always surprised to see normal people cross the line and start asking personal questions about me once I make it obvious that I’m open to conversation.

Until very recently, I had neon colored hair. Pink, blue, green, orange, purple, red; the whole rainbow. Changed it once every few months.

Women very frequently came up to me to compliment my hair and often would lead to conversations about where I got my dye, who did it, etc. like women stopping their cars in parking lots just to give me a compliment. More often than not it turned into a short convo, that usually ended around the time I mentioned my wife was the artist who did my hair.

Had I known this was a thing before I was married, I would have died my hair in a heartbeat.

I think it may have been a little disarming and was something unique enough that it was worth striking up a convo.