A disturbing new report from John Hopkins University has confirmed what many have long suspected: There is literally no way of knowing if a person saying “let’s hang out sometime” really means it.
“In this research, we attempted to identify a pattern that would shed some light on the likelihood that someone suggesting you hang out actually has a desire to do that,” explains Dr. Amina Altimimi. “However, we weren’t able to, because there’s just no way to tell.”
The opacity of the phrase has stumped both laypeople and the sharpest minds in psychological, linguistic, and behavioral science.
“Taken at face value, ‘let’s hang out sometime’ would seem to suggest that the speaker wants to hang out sometime,” Dr. Altimimi says. “But that’s simply not the case.”
“One theoretical way to discern the intent behind the weird riddle-statement would be to ask the person, ‘Do you actually want to hang out?’ but obviously you can’t do this, because that would be fully insane,” Dr. Altimimi adds. “Put on the spot like that, they’re bound to say yes, but that’s probably just because they’re scared of you now.”
Other approaches to the mystifying social no man’s land leave subjects in similarly antisocial territory.
“You could follow up by attempting to make plans with the individual in question,” Dr. Altimimi says. “But then you might be trying to make real plans with someone who suggested doing so purely as a performative nicety, which is of course psychotic behavior.”
The report comes as no surprise to anyone who’s ever been on either side of a “let’s hang out sometime” – one can never be sure about its true meaning.
“I once said ‘let’s hang out sometime’ to a girl who I went to high school with and hadn’t seen in seven years because she responded to my Instagram story, then dared to ask how I was doing,” says Natalia Howell. “She said ‘for sure’ then asked me when I was free; it was completely terrifying.”
“On the flip side, there’s this person I have several mutual friends with whom I started DMing recently, and they gave me the let’s hang out,” Howell adds. “Now I’m frozen because I’d love to hang out with them but there’s literally no way to know if they want to.”
No way, indeed!
“The safest thing you can do is exercise no agency whatsoever,” Dr. Altimimi advises. “Just agree that you should hang out, then leave the follow-up all to them.”
“Of course, they also don’t know if you want to hang out or not,” she adds. “So probably you should just settle with only hanging out with the five people you already know for the rest of your life.”
