Comment by brailsafe
1 day ago
I think it's a mistake to conflate passive signaling with asserting oneself, and whether you like the interaction you might have otherwise had or not (as long as it's not clearly harassment or something) it would be rude to ignore people in public whether that rudeness is delegated to technology or not. It's just another way of turning up one's nose, and it's a gross way to operate imo. If you don't like the people you'd interact with, it seems to me like it should be a personal goal to find a place to work or live that's more palatable from that perspective. If you go about life preferring to pre-emptively refuse interaction with people passively, I'm not aware of a better word than "rude".
You say “as long as it's not clearly harassment” as if that is uncommon. Outside of giving directions at train stations, the times when a stranger has started talking to me in public have been almost universally negative. Often times it starts as a friendly conversation before the harassment or begging for money or scamming starts. Other times the people just start out crazy or harassing.
I feel like your conception that “ignoring people either consciously or through technology is rude” makes more sense in higher social trust situations. Like at a party or a bar, where bad actors are less dense and there is an expectation of socializing.
> I feel like your conception that “ignoring people either consciously or through technology is rude” makes more sense in higher social trust situations.
Yes, but I meant that the more people who block everyone out by default, passively and indiscriminately, contributes to social rust rather than trust. Ignoring or especially telling some people is not inherently rude or bad, but conducting yourself as though everyone is de-facto untrustworthy is a problem that doesn't seem likely to be solved by passively blocking the world out.
Like I added, I don't know why I'd pay to live somewhere where I'd prefer not to interact with anyone. If the place actually does suck, then I should do everything in my power to find somewhere that sucks less.
If you have social anxiety or ADHD, those are personal issues that need to be managed, but I still don't think it's generally a good idea to pick the easiest, least superficially confrontational method to signal that you don't want to talk to anyone.
> people who block everyone out by default, passively and indiscriminately, contributes to social rust rather than trust
I'll turn this around: when I see people wearing headphones on the train or the bus, I appreciate that they respect everyone around them. Silence is a commons, and the headphone people respect that not everyone wants to hear their TikToks, their phone calls, their hallucinations, or their small talk.
> conducting yourself as though everyone is de-facto untrustworthy is a problem that doesn't seem likely to be solved by passively blocking the world out
Actually it does. Dealing with touts and sales people by ignoring them is usually more effective at getting them to leave you alone. If you engage at all, they manipulate your sense of politeness to draw you into a longer conversation or get you to do what they want. This is also true of most types of grifters and assholes.
Every time I got drawn into a scam or harassment, I could have prevented it by simply not engaging in the first place.
> I don't know why I'd pay to live somewhere where I'd prefer not to interact with anyone. If the place actually does suck, then I should do everything in my power to find somewhere that sucks less.
I live in the SF Bay Area and frequently visit Boston and Japan. In this limited experience, I've had a great time meeting strangers in social situations like at bars. I have never had a positive result from giving a stranger the time of day in public places (outside of giving directions). Maybe these places suck and I should leave, idk, but don't judge me for taking a default deny stance after consistently having negative experiences.
And this is just my male perspective. My female friends have even stronger stances against engaging with random people in public.
I think your attitude that going out in public is tacitly opting into interactions with strangers is a much more gross way to operate. The assumption that it's easy to just politely decline a conversation (and that not doing so in the form of a conversation itself) seems like an extremely narrow-minded point of view based on your own subjective experience. You're conflating social anxiety with the desire to "assert oneself", when it's closer the opposite; socially anxious people quite often don't want to assert themselves, which is exactly why the "just politely decline" strategy is misses the mark so badly. The fact that wearing the earbuds opts out of that passively rather than actively is the entire reason it's desirable.
In one of my other comments in this thread, I explicitly called out that this desire has nothing to do with like or dislike of the people who I might have social pressure to interact with. Some people find social interaction a net expenditure of energy even with people they like, and having to do that repeatedly throughout the day because I want to go to the doctor or something and society has decided that it's "rude" if I don't engage with literally anyone who happens to want to talk to me when I'm in public is honestly just silly. It's not like I'm keeping the earbuds in and refusing to talk to anyone when checking in at the waiting room; I just don't care to have to have a chat with my Uber driver or strangers on the subway while I'm out, and it's ridiculous to imply that I should just never go in public if I don't feel the way you do.
What is the public if not the space where we interact with others?
The place between my house and all of the other places I might need to go? Is your argument that people should just not go to the doctor or get driver's licenses unless they're willing to interact with every stranger who wants to talk to them lest they be "rude"? I don't understand how you can in good faith claim that needing to do something obligatory outside of their house or apartment is actively opting into social interaction with literally everyone else in public.
1 reply →
Wow, it’s wild that you think you have a right to the attention of strangers with whom you have no business. How is it rude to wish to go about one’s day unbothered?
I think if you are in public, you can't expect to be in private. You can try, but it obviously doesn't always work and we are exposed to all types when out of the house.
This has nothing to do with expectation of privacy. Private setting or public setting, it’s rude to bother people who are busy.
9 replies →
Seems like a tragedy of the commons. People don't have a right to your attention necessarily, but you also don't have the right to be unbothered arbitrarily.