It’s not about being rude it’s about not being nice

The first words are ‘I’m always a little mean’ so I think rude counts. I understand the motivation for doing this, but this is a strategy that the more it is applied the less it works. The core issue is men taking small deviations from their expected social treatment as flirting, and I think that moving the expectation lower by being meaner means that it will take less ‘nice’ to accidentally communicate interest, thereby making it worse in the end.