Although recent years have seen a shift in public attitudes away from the traditional “boys will be boys” perception of catcalling to the understanding that it constitutes harassment, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still a significant number of people engaging in the same behavior.
So while this shift makes it clear that people who experience this harassment shouldn’t have to put up with it, that doesn’t necessarily make them feel any more safe when they’re alone with someone who’s making them uncomfortable.
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And while it’s fortunate that one teen who experienced this during a live recording wasn’t as alone as she seemed, it’s nonetheless clear from her videos what effect this incident had on her.
On April 28, an 18-year-old TikTok user who goes by @maassassin_ was holding a live chat with her followers when a man approached her in a hotel courtyard.
In a separate TikTok following up on the incident , she was in the process of explaining an upcoming absence from social media at the time and said that the man appeared to be in his late 20s or early 30s.
At first, she thought he was approaching her to move a chair elsewhere and told him he could.
However, he proceeded to sit down and talk to her, to which she said, “Oh, I didn’t mean you could sit there.”
Once he clarified that he asked whether the seat was taken, he asked, “may I?” to which she hesitantly replied, “I don’t know.”
Although these responses made it clear that the teen was uncomfortable with his presence, he hung around anyway.
After some awkward small talk, he asked for her name and she gave him a fake name in response. When he extended his hand to her, she nervously chuckles and says, “No thank you.”
This leads him to take note of her “hesitancy” but he nonetheless he continues chatting her up.
This takes the form of vague statements about how he “couldn’t help but notice” that she was alone and that his “intentions” were to come hang out by the pool.
As the second part of the video began, @maassassin_ informed us through text she added later that her anxiety with this conversation was making her heart beat faster.
Fortunately, the man started to back off after she told him that she was live-streaming to an audience.
It is soon after this point that she learned a friend was watching the exchange from a nearby balcony and stepped in to check on her.
In the caption of her original video, she described this encounter as the “Scariest night of my life so far.”
In what she called her final update on the matter, @maassassin_ said that she reported the encounter to staff at the hotel’s front office.
She was then told that this guest was known to one of the employees, who then assured the teen that she would talk to him and tell him to leave people alone.
Although she expressed that she wasn’t confident this would change his behavior, she nonetheless felt it was right to blow the whistle.
In her words, “Just stay safe out there, guys, and keep yourselves protected.”
