Dating as most men seem to do it is basically a game where every move is some kind of deception or manipulation.
The only rule is to never state your intentions.
Before a man approaches a woman he never met, everything he knows about her is superficial. The fact that heterosexual men rarely find reason to approach other men they never met make their motivations for talking to women rather obvious. If a man approaches a random woman for no particular reason, it's because he likes her optics.