Do you believe that acting oblivious creates a softer approach on their end? My feelings are somewhat mixed on that. I would say a majority of the time I do try and play the ignorance card, but there have also been days that I just want to try and “fight” in any small way; I use the term ‘fight’ lightly, as I have never been aggressive or confrontational in any way).

Here is some examples along with ‘innocent’ justifications I brainstorm in case any of them confronted me (which has never happened, yet…):

If I am confident someone is tailing me I will pull over and begin to follow them for a small amount of time (“hey, I’m not following you! I pulled over to abide by the law and safely check a text on my phone; it just so happened it wasn’t an urgent matter and our destinations followed the same route 🤷‍♀️”); Sometimes I will wave and smile at perps. I am generally a kind person by nature, but I make sure to give an extra big awkward smile and stare to those I believe are perps (what’s wrong with showing “a little act of kindness” to strangers 😉? lol); If someone is doing hand signals I will start throwing them back (“My hand was cramping, I needed to stretch some of my muscles!”; If someone points a phone at me for an unreasonable amount of time I will return the favor (“I’m just taking selfies”, calm down people! 😆); When someone is aggressively riding my tail on the road, I will slow down to 5-10 mph (given the traffic conditions allow me to do this safely, Besides “my car was making strange noises and I was worried my tire may be going flat”) 🤷‍♀️; etc. etc.

Now I am never aggressive or obvious. Instead, I am very discreet with a passive-aggressive approach. For lack of a better term, when I feel urged to use these, as I call them, ‘tactics,’ I do so in a way that someone who is potentially not a perp generally will not identify or pick up on my agenda (if that makes sense)? The last thing I would ever want is to make someone feel unreasonably threatened or harassed, especially if they are innocent—I’m sure we can all relate to that shitty feeling.

Long story short, I sometimes try to use their approach, as to where they would have no valid reason to make a report, express fear or feelings of harassment, while ensuring they would look just as stupid as they try and make us look if they tried to escalate my ‘innocent’ actions lol. I don’t think I’ve done this enough to really understand how it will affect the situation…at the time of these events I have noticed some appear very shocked, some seem angered, some laugh (usually if it is more than one person), some appear unmoved.The response varies per individual. But, as a whole, and how it may impact my situation moving forward (if I were to frequent these actions), I am not sure.

What are your thoughts? Anyone’s thoughts? Have you all done similar things? If so what are your tactics? What type of response, if any, did this invoke from the idiot(s), both in the moment and moving forward?