There is a particular type of message that arrives with the enthusiasm of a damp lettuce.
“Hi sexy.”
“Hey beautiful.”
Occasionally, if they are feeling adventurous, “Hello gorgeous 😘”.
This is not conversation. It is not flirting. It is not confidence. It is a verbal shrug. And yet, it persists.
Across dating apps, social media, inboxes and comment sections, women receive these greetings in their thousands, delivered by men who seem genuinely surprised when they do not receive gratitude, enthusiasm or immediate emotional availability in return.
So what is going on here, and why does this style of approach refuse to die? Here is an example of a typical convo:
Calling a woman “sexy” or “beautiful” as a first contact is a sexualised greeting. It places her value entirely in her appearance and positions the interaction as transactional from the outset. You exist to be looked at. I exist to look.
No curiosity. No individuality. No sense that a human being with a mind might be involved. It is not bold. It is not complimentary. It is simply the fastest possible route to reducing a person to a surface.
However, I am told that the reason this tactic is so common is not romance. It is efficiency.
These messages are copy and paste behaviour. They require no observation, no listening, no emotional risk. One word fits all women equally, which is precisely the point. The sender does not need to know who you are. He only needs to announce that he finds women attractive in general and hopes one will engage.
From his side, it feels safe. From hers, it feels lazy and degreading.
There is also a misplaced belief that confidence equals sexual forwardness. Many men have been sold the idea that being direct means being sexual immediately, when in reality confidence looks like comfort with normal human conversation. Someone who is genuinely confident does not need to rush intimacy. They trust that interest can grow.The “hi sexy” approach skips that entirely and jumps straight to outcome. It is not about connection. It is about testing access.
And women know this. Which is why these messages so often fall flat. Women are not rejecting the compliment. They are rejecting the framing. Being addressed as an interchangeable object is not flattering. It is tiring.
There is also the issue of effort imbalance. A woman who has spent time building a profile, expressing interests, or simply existing as a person is met with a greeting that could have been sent to fifty others in under a minute. The mismatch is immediately obvious. It signals that the man is not interested in her, only in what she represents. And guess what guys, some of us are just on chat because we are “admin/ moderators” in rooms.
And then there is the entitlement layer. Many men who use these greetings become irritated when they are ignored. Some escalate. Some accuse women of being cold, rude or full of themselves. This reaction reveals the underlying assumption: I said the words, therefore you owe me engagement. That assumption is the real problem.
None of this means that attraction is wrong or that compliments are forbidden. Context matters. Timing matters. Tone matters. A thoughtful remark later in a conversation can land very differently from a sexual label thrown at a stranger.
But conversation, by definition, involves two people. If your opening line could be sent to anyone with a face, it is not a conversation starter. It is a broadcast.
This still happens because some men are not actually trying to connect. They are trying to sort women quickly into categories: receptive or not. It is a filtering mechanism, not an invitation. And women are increasingly opting out of playing along if they were even flattered in the first place.
The irony is that men who complain that women are “hard to talk to” often rely on the very language that shuts dialogue down. When you open with a label instead of a sentence, you should not be surprised when the response is silence.
Conversation requires curiosity. Attraction grows through presence, not proclamation. So if your best opening line is “hi sexy”, the silence you receive is not confusion. It’s clarity.
