Should you use chat-up lines?
Nowadays chatting-up is mainly done by text and it's just not the same, says Alison Taylor
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Your support makes all the difference.We were in the east London restaurant Bistrotheque, after a Patti Smith gig, feeling high on good vibes and Patti's all-round brilliance, when this guy came up to my friend and said: "Have you got the morning-after pill with you? 'Cause you're gonna need it".
Now, it's not to everyone's taste, I'm sure, but it certainly got us. We couldn't stop laughing. I can't remember the last time I heard a chat-up line. And – you know – I miss them.
Chat-up lines are generally seen as a bad thing – sexist (see above), juvenile (see above), one track-minded (see above)… The "against" list is endless but what about the "fors"? They can be amusing (see above), they demonstrate clear, lustful intentions, albeit in a slightly crude way (see above), and they take major guts to deliver face to face.
This is the big thing for me – the face-to-face bravado. Now, I'm sure men and women felt hard done by in the 1980s, hanging around in yuppie wine bars, either delivering lame chat-up lines and waiting to be shot down, or having to listen to them and question the point of the human race, but at least they were out there living life and interacting with another human. And what if that chat-up line was just funny enough to spark a longer conversation?
Nowadays the chatting-up is mainly done by text and it's just not the same. For a start, you don't need guts (just look at trolls); the humour is all too often lost in digital translation and you certainly don't get to lock a twinkly eye and a raised brow, do you?
Now, as it happens, my friend didn't have the morning-after pill on her (funnily enough) and she didn't go home with him, but we were certainly charmed, and able to appreciate his nod to the lost art of the chat-up line. Bring it back, I say.
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