Unfortunately, that doesn't always work.

I may seriously add this to my own pool of creeper deflection techniques.

OP ruined his life? How?

Yeah, last time somebody ran away from me yelling, "Stranger danger!" I woke up on a hospital bed with a doctor telling me I came this close to dying and holding up her fingers really close together to illustrate her point. I was one of the lucky ones. People don't realize how serious an accusation stranger danger is.

Yeah how dare the OP get out of a potentially dangerous situation! Poor creepy invasive dude. ): Seriously who the **** goes up to a stranger and asks a millions questions. Ick.

#7 please excuse me if I'm missing the sarcasm in your post. But the guy is creepy for asking questions? They were probably innocent and he was just hitting on OP. Well at least that's what I got out of the situation.

9, OP was clearly creeped out, ergo , the stranger was creepy. One casual question or comment as an icebreaker is fine, I guess, though I'd prefer strangers leave me alone entirely once I'm off the clock. Persisting when the questionee is clearly not interested or asking deeply personal questions is a no-go.

If some stranger (male or female) bombarded me with questions I'd call it rude at best and creepy and intrusive at worse. Especially questions like: where are you going? where do you live? how old are you? etc. for me, as a woman, those sort of questions unprovoked when we're just out minding our business are often scary and intimidating. And even if it's "just" hitting on someone, it's rude to do that when they're just minding their business and then are (I'd assume) obviously uncomfortable.

Observe the situation: She's posting from France. The guy is asking her "many" questions. Her first reaction is to yell "stranger danger"? All things considered, what's going to happen to this woman? Chances are she's in a public place and this guy is trying to sell her something. She probably doesn't understand a word this poor dude is saying. And to yell out stranger danger and possibly get this guy arrested for asking her questions and then to be flagged as a sexual predator? For what? Wanting to sell her a baguette?

What's going to happen to her? Oh, I dunno...verbal and physical harassment for being a frigid bitch, perhaps? That's happened to me after I've turned down male advances, and since you never know when or how someone larger than you and possibly armed (I live in the mountains with a mix of trust fund hippies, ski bums, and gun nuts, and I'll let you guess which group is the most confrontational and certain of what a woman's role should be), a public exit strategy like OP's, comical as it reads here, is actually not a bad idea. I don't care whether the guy was just trying to sell OP a baguette. He was clearly going about it the wrong way, and if he gets publicly put on notice as a result of this encounter, well...good. He was asking for it with his behavior.

#20 If it's true that the guy can get in trouble because someone yells "stranger danger" (which I doubt is the case) then the law needs to change because that's stupid. He was just asking questions, which can someone uncomfortable and might be a bit creepy depending on the situation but it doesn't sound like he was dangerous. At most, it should make the guy confused and uncomfortable because someone is yelling that at him. I imagine it was embarrassing for OP too and may have even felt bad for the guy, which is why it's a FML. They just felt overwhelmed and freaked out (maybe they even have Social anxiety or something.)

Mechazilla, I can't even understand you. So you feel no sympathy for OP's discomfort from a stranger bombarding her with unwanted and possibly personal questions (hence, why OP felt uncomfortable to begin with) YET, you feel bad for said stranger because OP ran away saying "stranger danger"? Okay.

Mechazilla is clearly not female and therefore can never truly understand.

20, I'm having a lot of trouble with your assumption that, because she's in France, she didn't understand what he was saying and that he was trying to sell her something. First of all, a lot of French people are bilingual—it's not that uncommon. Secondly, even if she was a tourist who didn't speak the language, it's generally pretty easy to figure out when people on the street want to sell you something. I've visited and lived in places where I didn't speak the dominant language. There are usually pretty clear context clues when someone wants to sell you something (like someone actually holding out the item they're trying to sell you). Street harassment is a very real problem for women in many parts of the world. OP's reaction was actually a good one—better to call attention and shame the creep, than to let him think he can harass people without consequences.

Man, there's so much projecting going on in this thread. Look, we have a story about a "weird" guy asking a lot of questions. The story is told by someone who is so socially awkward to that they yelled "stranger danger!" to get out of the situation. If ever there was a case where you should get more information about what happened before judging, it's this one. Maybe the guy was a creep. Or maybe he was just as socially awkward as OP. Yelling like that could have caused the guy some problems. We have no idea if he deserved it or not.

There's no equivalent of "Stranger Danger" in French, so she yelled that in English. The people around them probably wouldn't understand what she just said, so the probability of negative consequences for the man is very close to zero.

There’s a lot of assumptions here. Maybe simply OP is very shy and not comfortable with people she/he does not know asking questions or striking a conversation. I would classify it as an uncomfortable situation, not dangerous

This might be one of the best comments I've seen on an Internet forum.

same here... I'd love to make scene like that. Good Job OP

Or perhaps make dinosaur noises. That'll scare anyone off.

Does it work likes dogs? Can you growl and bite them in the ear to show you'RE the alpha?

the internet is srs bizness, son.