“What are you looking at?” is the most basic of foundational questions for a fight. It is more straightforward than “you talkin’ to me?”, much more straightforward than “do you bite your thumb at us, sir?” It’s declaring an action in the most passive of behaviors—looking! not staring, not glaring, just looking!—and suggesting that it has a motive to be challenged. Sure, it has its layers; a look can convey just as much emotion as any set of spoken words, and the same look can have wildly different meanings in different contexts. At face value, though, “what are you looking at?
'What Are You Looking At?': The Question That Started the Pirates-Braves Basebrawl
