Approaching women in public
I posted this elsenet and it got a lot of positive comments, so I wanted to save it.
In response to:
See this is pretty much what I thought. I rarely ever see people my age that aren't wearing headphones or engaged with a phone thingy, though, so I might try to break that rule sometime.
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Yeah, don't. Seriously, do not do this. As McClain said, headphones are a great big Do Not Disturb sign... but a lot of guys ignore them and try to engage girls that they find attractive anyway. All the time. Multiple times a day.
So look at it from the girl's perspective: Oh god, yet another asshole who doesn't understand boundaries.
You don't want your first impression to be Yet Another Asshole, particularly when the very next thing she thinks is almost certainly going to be "Is this one going to call me a bitch when I don't smile fast enough, or -- oh shit -- what if he starts following me?" Because dudes who ignore boundaries often get verbally abusive and scary if they don't get the reaction that they want.
Here's what you do to get the attention of an earbud-wearing girl: Make eye contact and smile at her. Once. Don't stare. Let her decide whether she wants to be social; if she does, then she'll take the earbuds out. If it doesn't happen then it was not meant to be, plenty of birds in the sea, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here, etc. etc.
Note that even if she smiles back at you that's not necessarily an encouragement. Women smile at strange men all the time in the hopes that he'll go away and leave them alone. That's why waiting to see if she removes her earbuds is key; that's an actual sign of interest and not just a polite defense mechanism.