Who else would? If something makes you uncomfortable and you don't try to correct that... It will keep going. Of course, sometimes that's not possible (threat of physical violence and whatnot), but in many cases it is perfectly fine. Especially if the other person is just naively making you uncomfortable instead of trying to harm you.

And being corrected on the spot is much more effective than someone else telling you days later you did something wrong. At least for me, I remember very well few times I was dumbass and that was made painfully clear to me. I remember those lessons to this day and it sure did help me.

I mean there's a certain amount of social awareness of what to do & what not do due in different contexts I don't think is wrong to assume someone has (barring cultural differences, neurodiverse conditions, the occasional misreading of social cues), asking someone out out of the blue is one of those things

yeah it's not a cardinal sin or explicitly hurting someone, but I would expect a well adjusted 21-23 year old male engineering senior to know this

> barring cultural differences, neurodiverse conditions, the occasional misreading of social cues

All of those is a thing and it does happen. Especially is we include sub-cultural differences into „cultural differences“ bits.

> yeah it's not a cardinal sin or explicitly hurting someone, but I would expect a well adjusted 21-23 year old male engineering senior to know this

Maybe it's a cultural differences or whatever, but I'd say this demographic is VERY prone to misreading social cues..

However, I think this is not age or whatever related. People are different. social circles are different. People move around. Various norms change and people talk across age groups. It's never ending process of finding a common protocol to communicate. I doubt it's possible to rely on a hope that everybody will know how to not upset people around them.