Sometimes it seems like flirting is on the way out. People are too serious now. If you aren’t serious about dating someone, then you can’t flirt with them because you’ll get slapped for sexual harassment or something. If you are serious about someone, you have to spell it out like a legal contract, and there goes all that fun coy hinting. And then you have today’s long-distance relationship effect. It just isn’t as easy to spontaneously flirt with someone from 50 miles away over a phone.

In case anybody cares anymore, AskMen tells guys how to flirt. Dating-to-Relating also has an article on how to flirt with women. Meanwhile, Relationship Blackbook has flirting advice for the women. And here’s a beginner’s guide to flirting.

That ought to be enough to get you started. Just remember, it’s fun, like three-year-old playmates teasing each other. But it also serves a function: it helps you be less shy with the opposite sex, lets you test your meddle in situations where you’re not too secure. Like we say, flirting’s going out of style because everybody’s too serious now. You know what the cure for that is? Date a clown.