The Creep

How do you avoid coming off as a Creep?

What makes a guy “creepy”?

I’ve asked this question countless times on various podcasts and in one-on-one talks with women, and I’ve concluded that what women feel is creepy is often very different from what men feel is creepy. I’ve emphasized the word ‘feel’ here for a reason. “Creepy” is a term we give to an instinctual feeling we get from someone or something, but we can’t quite acknowledge why. 

It’s similar to the word “vibing” when we seem to click with another individual romantically. Women tend to give names to psychological dynamics that their cognitive mind registers as feelings but have empirical reasons and subconscious functions. Vibing is the word used for an emotive state of communication that leads to a sympathetic emotional connection (and often sex). Creepy is the opposite of Vibing.

Creepy, like Vibing, is a gendered term. Men and women instinctually interpret the feeling of ‘creepiness’ using different criteria and prompted by other imperatives. As the vulnerable sex, women have a more refined sensitivity to creepiness than men, but that’s not to say men don’t know creepy when they feel it. The root emotions of creepiness combine fear and revulsion (disgust). From an evolutionary perspective, women’s innate vulnerability predisposes them to be more fearful and disgusted by far more things than men. Snakes and spiders innately frighten women, but as long as a man knows where the pest is, he will probably kill it.