Yeah I remember being out with work colleagues IRL at a pub and there was some friends or a company, it was absolutely rammed as well, some guy kept talking to me because I think he was a friend of a colleague, and he kept buying me drinks, but I straight up didn't realize he was even talking to me most of the time because of how packed it was, and at work it was tradition for people to take turns to buy rounds for everyone so I thought I was getting drinks on someone from work 💀

If I even understood that this person was trying to probably approach, my reaction would've been "literally who" because I never even knew him before, but also, that's true for 99% of men.

I feel like it's clear from this seemingly widespread psychological tendency of distrusting strangers that if there's a kernel of truth to the pseudoscience that is evolutionary psychology it's that perhaps we as a species were meant to have a much smaller social circle where we'd know everyone intimately and pick a mate over the course of a long time knowing them or at least knowing about them in our little tribe, transitioning from friends to eventually dating etc. that way also if someone was abusive you'd know just because you'd probably know and possibly be even friends with all their exes, the unknown risk is just kinda not there.

Obviously in a global urban world with the sheer amount of people you'd be lucky to even see the same person more than once, all behavior is effectively inconsequential like in an open world video game because other people might as well despawn as soon as you turn the corner. Dating apps are kind of a market solution to this, but obviously corpos have totally misaligned incentives because men to them are the customer who they need to make pay, with promise of women being the product, and men need to be kept on the app as much as possible and thus single to make them the most money, so it's just fucked.