In a world of online dating, mixed signals, and several stages of talking, finding love can be hard. Scotland has the highest number of people living alone, according to Age Scotland, which will of course be down to many factors.
One of them, however, may be a difficulty in finding ‘the one’ to settle down with. If you feel you have exhausted all hopes of meeting a significant other, a new flirting trend has arrived on the scene that could change the game.
‘Sticky Eyes’ is a “new way of pulling somebody,” according to This Morning presenters Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary, who spoke about the latest love fad on the show alongside Ashley Louise James this week.
Explaining the movement, Alison said: “So, you meet somebody and they’re across the room… you look at them. As soon as they look at you, you look away.
“When they’re still looking, you look back, you keep that eye contact. You take a deep breath… and you are guaranteed to win over that person.”
Dermot wasn’t so convinced, adding: “Yeah, that’s standard if you find someone attractive,” before concluding: “Weird”.
Ashley Louise pointed out a problem with the technique – people might think you are shooting them a dirty look. “I think I’ve got… shall we call it ‘resting witch face,'” she said. “So, I think if I did that people would think that I was really angry at them.”
The term ‘sticky eyes’ was coined by Chelsea Anderson on TikTok earlier this year. The concept blew up and Chelsea explained how to master it, which essentially involves staring intently at someone so they will approach you.
“This is one of my most powerful hacks,” she told viewers. “This is how to get anyone to come up to you in a bar or in a social setting. It’s a simple formula.
“You pick your target, you stare at them until they look back at you. Once you make eye contact, you look away like you’ve been caught. The next time that you look at them and they meet your eyes again, don’t look away. Let them break first.”
It may feel uncomfortable and strange holding someone’s eye contact, Chelsea noted, as they’ll need to be the one to look away, and when they do, you’re not allowed to look at them again. Instead, wait for them to make a move.
“In about 45 seconds, they will be right in front of you, as if they had been summoned psychically by you,” Anderson promises. “It is such a risk to approach someone in the wild, someone that you don’t know. You either need a really good icebreaker, or balls of steel. By doing sticky eyes, you are basically providing a giant cushion for this person’s ego.”
This Morning viewers chimed in with their views on the trend. One viewer joked: “I thought sticky eyes was conjunctivitis,” while another asserted: “This isn’t new”.
A third gave hope, writing: “I tried it years ago and it does work”. A fourth laughed: “I was doing this in the ’90s!” while a fifth went even further back, adding: “I was doing this in the 1980s before phones”.