> Where people consider talking to someone a chore.
This bit in particular really hit me. I've noticed a rising trend around the Internet (or maybe I was just blind to it before), mostly on Reddit, of people who really do seem to consider any sort of real-life social interaction a chore and an attack.
I forget the exact context, I think the conversation that stood out to me was about someone in a gas station or something, trying to make friendly conversation with another shopper next to them, along the lines of "oh that's a cool hat". And the consensus of the thread was "yeah that's awful, why would you do that, why are you subjecting them to the labor of talking to you" or such.
Guys... we're humans. It isn't a crime to make small talk. It's not a chore to open your mouth. Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I'm not even old) that enjoyable. What happened?
Reddit has a culture that normalizes the symptoms of social anxiety. They call it introversion, but the way its described is 100% social anxiety.
I am sympathetic, I have it too. Hell, ever male in my dad's family line seems to have it.
But its a problem that needs to be treated and not a character trait that needs to be respected. The WORST thing you can do for social anxiety (or any anxiety) is to avoid trigger it. You'll become a depressed shut in.
Actually there is, if it's contextualized correctly. It's called Exposure Therapy [0] and it's scientifically proven to help phobias/anxiety/fears. Avoiding the anxiety-provoking situations makes things worse.
I don't think people would ever become accustomed to being losers.
It might work for fear of flying or heights
But being in a social setting and trying to penetrate into the "in crowd" and being rejected would only make things worse.
You need a controlled environment to exogenously make the socially anxious person "in" so that they then have enough momentum and confidence to go out in the real world and go through an X amount of rejections on their way to thier first real win.
If they lose confidence before achieving a real win because the X amount of rejections is too high , then you gotta go back to the controlled environment.
It's basically like baseball with Major and Minor leagues.
Minor league aces are way more confident than sluggish Major league players.
Social anxiety spurs from not being popular or commanding a presence in a room, not being in the "in" crowd.
In short it spurs from not being a winner.
The socially anxious person maybe knows at the intellectual level that social wins can be achieved by working the numbers game, but they are too apathetic or nihlistic or scared that their first attempt is going to be a loss which will further depress them.
When you immerse the socially anxious person in a controlled environment you make sure that his first attempt is a Win, and the second and the third and the fourth etc.
And you make them win enough times that they maybe venture into hubris, so that they have a full tank to go into the real world and face the natural X amount of rejections and losses which comes before a win.
Again success, dominating the room, being at the center of the attention at parties, people being receptive when you go talk to them, after the aforementioned positive reception also showing openess for a second encounter.
But when you get caught in curating the environment that leads to a "win", it would probably hit strongly the other way.
I disagree about the win/loss theory in general though. I think it is really a dissonance about what people expect and value in in or out groups.
Someone afraid to speak up in certain groups might be quite outgoing in another. So there isn't really an absolute level of success. There are also very successful people that are anxious. Expectations towards yourself play a large role though.
> But when you get caught in curating the environment that leads to a "win", it would probably hit strongly the other way.
Everybody curates their environment, people just do so unconsciously and without realizing it. An American movie star might dominate the room in Los Angeles...but they'd find a hard time even speaking to people in Iran, and if they are recognized people would be hostile towards them.
Exposure therapy is not the same as randomly triggering the person. It is not going into situations where you will fail either. It is quite deliberate process where you expose person to dose the the person can handle with some difficulty and then you give them break to recover.
There are many strategies and pacing that exposure therapy can take (the link I provided has several examples); the slow, deliberate process you describe is one of them, as is what's being described upthread.
If you don't do it deliberately, it is not therapy tho.
And there is effect of becoming oversensitive when encountering strong stressor randomly and often. I stead of getting less sensitive people can start reacting more aggressively at smaller threat.
Saying to yourself, "I will respond with 1 line of dialog to the next person who hits me up" is deliberate, although the event itself will come randomly.
Your train of thought here reflects classic avoidant behavior -- it's not therapeutic unless I'm in control of all the variables. Certainly you're correct depending on the type of fear being extinguished -- dropping buckets of spiders randomly on someone afraid of spiders isn't likely to help things at all, nor is dropping someone with GAD in the middle of a crowded concert -- but for the particular phobia (social anxiety) and exposure (small talk with strangers in public) we're talking about in this thread, it's definitely the low-stakes kind of exposure exposure therapy aims to provide.
Being introverted isn't the same as social anxiety. I do agree that it seems that way on parts of reddit though (there are also completely socially oblivious people that perhaps are even unable to suffer social anxiety).
That people suffer from it is no wonder when you go from one purity spiral to the next one but that is certainly something large social media companies reproduce at least involuntarily.
>I forget the exact context, I think the conversation that stood out to me was about someone in a gas station or something, trying to make friendly conversation with another shopper next to them, along the lines of "oh that's a cool hat". And the consensus of the thread was "yeah that's awful, why would you do that, why are you subjecting them to the labor of talking to you" or such.
This is kind of an American way of thinking. Small talk with strangers is weird in many places.
If you're a woman spurning it can get ugly fast (you are not obligated to a reply from a stranger). It's not at all unusual for a woman to ignore small talk from a male stranger and instantly be met with vitriol. I've been in situations where an ignored comment like "smile honey" is instantly met with "bitch". If this is the cost of small talk, it isn't worth it.
There's also the newfound respect for mental health, some people are extremely anxious or agoraphobic, and attempting small talk with strangers in places where people are required to be (grocery, fuel, etc) seems unnecessary. Is complementing someone's hat really worth the potential anxiety? not remotely.
If you're lonely and want to meet people, don't try to do it via small talk with strangers. Join a club, take a class, volunteer. Go to places where interaction is expected, do not foist it upon strangers just trying to go about their daily lives.
If you must small talk, please do not take it personally if someone ignores you.
I hear this all the time I'm these discussions, but I call bunk. Sure, small talk is filler content, but you're not going to jump straight into the more meaningful conversations with people you don't yet know.
The filler small talk content isn't the substance, it's the launching point for those more substantive conversations.
For instance, maybe you got the hat at a concert in Wichita, and this person at the gas station grew up in Wichita. Maybe they spent their career designing hats. Maybe their deceased kid used to love hats and seeing it reminded them of their kid. You don't know what the "actually interesting" topics available are until you actually spend ten seconds talking to someone.
As with almost anything, people are free to ignore you or reject social conventions, that's totally their right. But it's also totally fine to try to start a conversation with someone.
You're right that some people, for one reason another, might not want to carry a conversation. In those cases, they can simply not carry the conversation. One of the joys of being human, though, is commiserating with fellow humans. If the location isn't one where conversation is strictly verboten (e.g. movie theaters, gym machines, library study rooms), I see no reason why people shouldn't (respectfully) see if the other is up for a conversation.
>But it's also totally fine to try to start a conversation with someone.
I would agree (and really wish I could) if most people would recognize disinterest and stop there, but anecdotally I'd say half the time it's met with anger or some form of pointed dissatisfaction. People have outright touched me to get my attention about some off-hand comment I ignored initially. It's frequent enough where I'm conditioned to start looking for an exit when I'm approached by someone in public.
It's incredibly unpleasant to feel obligated to continue small talk because you fear what happens if you don't. I can not support any kind of small talk under the reality of what comes along with it. It's one of those cases where some people ruin it for everyone else.
> I would agree (and really wish I could) if most people would recognize disinterest and stop there,
For all the whinging about anti-social nerds, I've found the people most obtuse when it comes to social niceties to be the overtalkative that don't pick up on subtle cues that the person they are haranguing just wants to be left alone and get on with whatever they were involved in before they were so rudely interrupted.
No one owes anyone attention, particularly undivided.
> I can not support any kind of small talk under the reality of what comes along with it.
Eh, I can understand that, but in my mind this seems like one of the purest instances of not letting the assholes co-opt the thing I like.
Some people can't take no for an answer in loads of contexts. In my mind, the proper response is to call those people out for their misbehavior, stigmatize those bad actions, and let the vast majority of good actors and positive experiences carry on.
Thanks for the understanding, and I totally get that your experience is different from my own.
I just don't feel like I have the physical or mental capacity to call everyone out, though I'm incredibly grateful for those who help out if someone's clearly being bothered in public (especially men calling out other men who are just out there hitting on strangers). Bystanders have gotten me out of a couple very uncomfortable situations in the past.
>The filler small talk content isn't the substance, it's the launching point for those more substantive conversations.
While that's certainly possible, it doesn't need to be a launching point for anything.
It can just be an offhand remark, a chuckle and a reply and off you go. Not every interaction needs to have some sort of agenda or goal associated with it.
The "launching point" is often the scary part. If I knew that every remark from a stranger was just a remark and I could say thanks and move on with my life I'd feel much better.
Instead it's a tightrope walk. You have to be appreciative but not too appreciative, you need to be disinterested but not too disinterested. Sometimes it doesn't matter and you lose anyway.
Appear too appreciative and you're hounded by someone (or worse, I've had friends that have been followed)... look too disinterested and you've earned their ire.
I will note that this is largely a problem of male strangers talking to women (it's not universal of course, I've personally witnessed these issues across all varieties of people).
>The "launching point" is often the scary part. If I knew that every remark from a stranger was just a remark and I could say thanks and move on with my life I'd feel much better.
>Instead it's a tightrope walk. You have to be appreciative but not too appreciative, you need to be disinterested but not too disinterested. Sometimes it doesn't matter and you lose anyway.
You don't have to do anything. A polite nod and walking away isn't bad, but not even that is required.
>Appear too appreciative and you're hounded by someone (or worse, I've had friends that have been followed)... look too disinterested and you've earned their ire.
Well, yes, there are crazies out there, and it's probably best to stay away from them. But IME, those folks are few and far between.
>I will note that this is largely a problem of male strangers talking to women (it's not universal of course, I've personally witnessed these issues across all varieties of people).
Yes. That's definitely a problem. And one that pisses me off a great deal. But that's not a problem with small talk, that's a problem with entitled assholes and the aforementioned crazies.
That's not about small talk though. That's about power and, sadly, that's always been, and likely always will be, a problem.
And women have had to come up with a variety of ways to deal with this. Whether it's to ignore the person and walk away or politely (or not so politely) decline to continue the interaction.
Until every human is well-adjusted and relatively sane (meaning never), that will be an issue.
You appear to be arguing that because a small group of jerks make interaction occasionally uncomfortable, no one should ever interact with anyone. That seems a little extreme to me.
Note that I'm not telling you (or anyone else) what to do or not do.
This exchange is a very good illustration of what happened with the #metoo movement: a woman explains the toll that street harassment has on their life, and a man that has never experienced that brushes it off with a #notallmen.
While I agree that having small talk with strangers once in a while could be very healthy, I also try to remember that a woman has to unwillingly interact tens of times a day with male strangers just by walking in the street, sometimes with very scary outcomes, and being like "yeah but I am different" is not an appropriate response.
I'd also point out that commenting on the quality of the chicken noodle soup while on line at the supermarket (that's small talk) and randomly walking up to someone and tell them how sexy they look and suggest they sit on your face (that's harassment) are wildly different things.
Or do you believe they are exactly the same thing?
You say that you don't brush it off at all, but just before you said "But IME, those folks are few and far between.". Your experience does not really matter here if you are not a woman that experiences that type of harassment.
What the person you were replying to was trying to tell you is not that the problem are men who start the conversation with "hey pretty girl, can you sit on my face?", but rather people who start with a polite conversation, and if they feel they are met with a warm reaction think it opens the door to more.
It might be only a small percentage of guys who follow up with inappropriate actions, but when as a woman you get 20+ men a day starting to make small talk with you, you end up with a high probability of having at least some of them being weirdos.
On the other hand if the woman answers coldly to the small talk tentative, some people may take it in a bad way. The line you have to walk to not appear too warm to weirdos and not too cold to easily offended people is very thin.
If you can't understand that under these circumstances some women become anxious at the idea of men starting small talk with them, well that's too bad.
As for what you can do, maybe start with asking women you know how they feel about it. Maybe they are all fine with it. It is also very dependent of where you live. If you live in a dense city women get harassed way more often than in a suburb area, it's kind of a number problem.
You assume bad faith and evil from everyone except yourself.
You read what you wanted to read into my comment and ignored anything that contradicted your view that I'm ignorant/oblivious/probably an evil harassing rapist.
I live in the most densely populated city in the US, and was born, raised and have lived here most of my life.
I am acutely aware of the situation and the issue, but you assume you know know better than anyone else. Which is a bunch of entitled (although entitlement of a different kind than I mentioned in the comment to which you responded) bullshit from an entitled, self-righteous asshole. That'd be you, in case there was some confusion about that.
So, as I should have said (which was my initial impression, given your deliberately obtuse and clearly bad faith response to my comment), fuck off jerk.
Which is what most women I know will say to entitled assholes like you.
Edit: It occurs to me that I didn't explain myself clearly enough. As such, I will. And I'll use small words so you'll be sure to understand.
>If you can't understand that under these circumstances some women become anxious at the idea of men starting small talk with them, well that's too bad.
Who said that? Not me. In fact, I said just the opposite.
>As for what you can do, maybe start with asking women you know how they feel about it.
Who says I haven't? I'm sure I've had more conversations about stuff like this than you have. But you seem to be so wrapped up in how sensitive you are to even imagine that someone else could have been there long before you.
>Maybe they are all fine with it. It is also very dependent of where you live. If you live in a dense city women get harassed way more often than in a suburb area, it's kind of a number problem
I am quite aware. But small talk isn't harassment. That you equate them says more about you than it does about the very serious problem of harassment.
Given that you've decided that anyone who doesn't explicitly mirror your talking points, they're obviously idiots, evil or both, shows exactly how disrespectful, self-centered and entitled you are. I definitely wouldn't leave any woman alone with you.
Wow, that was a very measured response to my comment.
From what you wrote it looks obvious to me that you completely missed the point I was trying to make, but I share the responsibility for that at least as much as you do, it is not easy to get points across through HN comments, especially when you have no clue who you are talking to (+ I am not an english native speaker in case that was not obvious yet).
I could try to re-explain things better, but you have shown that you are not in a state to take in anything that I say anymore, so I hope you will eventually find a friend who can explain it to you better than I did (and that you will refrain to insult them just because you feel attacked).
>Stopping the conversation with a friendly dismissal, a as you said, is a reasonable reaction.
To clarify, I didn't mean that "chuckle and a reply and off you go" was the means to extricate oneself from such a situation although, as you said, it's a reasonable thing to do.
I meant that an "offhand remark, a chuckle and a reply and off you go" was the whole point of such an interaction -- not some sort of prelude to something beyond that.
>If you're lonely and want to meet people, don't try to do it via small talk with strangers. Join a club, take a class, volunteer. Go to places where interaction is expected, do not foist it upon strangers just trying to go about their daily lives.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't make small talk to meet other people.
If the moment allows it and I'm in the mood, I enjoy making an offhand comment about something interesting or amusing that's going on around me.
If that's not well received, I just move on. It's no big deal (at least not to me) if others aren't interested.
I will say that, at least for me, 7-8 times out of 10, the interaction is welcomed and comfortable. That said, I do try hard to be personable and polite. That usually makes a big difference.
> This is kind of an American way of thinking. Small talk with strangers is weird in many places.
I agree it depends on where you are, though I'm not sure about the "American" categorization.
I was in Seoul where small talk with strangers was completely weird... then I went to a different city in South Korea, Busan, where people would chat you up all over the place (waiting in line, in a street food stall, at the sauna, etc).
I later learned that Busan was a city of refugees in the Korean War where the entire country was pushed into a single city - people had to learn to live closely packed together and cooperate, and the culture stuck.
I'm an introvert and prefer to not have small talk, but as a tourist in Busan, it wasn't that bad (fun, actually) to randomly hear about a stranger's daughter's upcoming wedding, completely unprompted.
Thank you to share you insights about Seoul vs Busan! I never knew about the history of Busan. I have heard similar things about Tokyo vs Osaka, where people in Tokyo are comparatively less open (to random, public interactions) and more personally reserved.
Yeah I'm with you on this one. I consider small talk sometimes but honestly, the emotional/social effort it takes + the risks of engaging with stranger men (as a gal myself) aren't worth it. I'll do my grocery shopping in silence, because with how stressed I am right now, I don't have extra bandwidth for entertaining chatty strangers.
> Is complementing someone's hat really worth the potential anxiety?
I still remember the compliments one of my jackets got me 1, 4 and 6 years ago. That probably helped making it my favorite jacket, especially since those are the only non-family compliments I got in the past 10 years.
When you like something about someone, please make their year and compliment them on it.
I think it's an over-correction around the introversion/extroversion divide.
It's true that sometimes I just don't want to be bothered while I'm running errands, but I wouldn't consider someone making small talk, cracking a joke in the elevator, etc. to be some sort of social transgression. As an introvert, chatting or small talk isn't really a chore, and I waste enough of my own time on my own time, so what's a few words with a stranger?
That said, it should be considered perfectly acceptable to signal that you don't want to stay engaged in a conversation if it's someone trying to explain their theory on building a perpetual motion machine. That actually happened. I did not want to stay in that conversation. But even extroverts don't like dealing with crazy.
It only becomes a chore when the talking itself is the work, such as dealing with Comcast charging you for a modem you totally did return, or dealing with the hospital when they incorrectly billed your health insurance and now they're trying to make you pay for the difference.
I disagree with this. What people consider funny varies a lot from person to person, and a stranger trying to joke with me comes across as rude. A friendly nod, saying hello, that's fine. Approaching me and immediately assuming that we have enough in common to enjoy the same humor? Sorry, but that's creepy.
>a stranger trying to joke with me comes across as rude
This is such a miserable perspective.
Yes, in theory, humour varies significantly amongst different groups. But if we're in the elevator together and I mistakenly press the Door Open instead of Door Close and I jokingly apologize for the delay and that we'll be taking off shortly, the idea of you being offended or "creeped out" by such a harmless joke is ridiculous to me.
Except if the joke is straight up offensive or aims at mocking or stereotyping a certain type of people (whether you're part of this group or not), I fail to see how it can feel "creepy." Even doing a bad pun or joke related to the context has nothing creepy in it. At worst, it's cringey.
Internet people are usually a lot angrier than real world people. Hard to explain but they always seem a bundle of neuroticism and mental pathologies. HN is no exception.
I find that when I participate I also start mimicking this behavior and insulation is required.
Fortunately, nothing happened to small talk. I’m a talkative fellow and people still react cheerfully and converse with me. One can only suppose that everyone who hates this went online.
> Internet people are usually a lot angrier than real world people.
Out of 100 people who read a comment, 99 of them move on even if they found it provocative. So the 1 that bothered to reply is the angriest of the bunch.
Yeah, I realize that I post too much on HN, but I don't feel that angry. More like a know-it-all motormouth who types fast enough to pollute a pretty big swath of the 'net in a short time. But I do think that the effort to participate online filters for motivated people, and frequently that's going to be some form of anger. "Wait a second, be right there, someone on the Internet is WRONG!" (paraphrased from an ancient comic)
I am concerned that long term commenting has negatively shifted my real life behavior towards being slightly more aggressive. Given enough time it feels like a behavioral shift can happen to people who are online way too much.
> Guys... we're humans. It isn't a crime to make small talk. It's not a chore to open your mouth. Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I'm not even old) that enjoyable. What happened?
We are humans, but we are also ambitious. Most people have, in their mind, a clear idea of the profile and type of person they want to be having a conversation with.
Inevitably the person making the small talk is never that type and profile of person.
So there is the double whammy of the disappointment with one's social status and a feeling of missing out on something else (or in this case someone else) which kicks in .
And with all this psychological shit going on in the mind of the person on the receiving end of the small talk....no wonder that a conversation doesn't organically ensue.
And, to wrap around to the original topic, I think social media can really enforce a particular vision of what that ideal conversational partner “”should”” be like, making the disappointment stronger.
Oh for sure, but social media doesn't enforce anything, it just shows rare shit that has always been there. Point is it was hidden or not as visible.
It's a very rare thing for Victoria Secret's models to be the ones start making small talk, and yet Brad Pitt or Leonardo di Caprio are on the receiving end of that.
That would happen regardless of social media, but somehow a paparazzi or a photographer is there to immortalize the moment and then the content gets on the platform which again makes money showing very rare shit to the public.
The combination of rare shit being thrown in the public's face and the unprecedented amount of free time that the public has on their hands to absorb the aforementioned rare shit causes unhappiness with the not so rare shit happening during the mundane daily life of the populace, like Joe Average complimenting your hat at the gas station.
Wow, this is such an eye opening post. Thank you. You specifically point out "rareness". I never considered how much of a draw is rareness to human beings. I admit that rareness is like catnip for my discovery-addicted science mind. ("How is that possible? What are the chances? etc.")
On YouTube, there is a whole category of silly (but fun) videos that are nothing more than incredibly rare events (some funny, some scary) being caught on film. Example: Freak waves
A more thoughtful version of this would be a "supercut" which was quite popular about 10 years ago. Someone with a LOT of free time would find a particular actor/actress or view or pose in 25 to 100 different films, then curate a very short, but impressive video.
Wider: Many of the posts you have made here today are very thoughtful. Keep up the good work! :)
> Guys... we're humans. It isn't a crime to make small talk. It's not a chore to open your mouth.
That's not uncommon in many parts of Europe, Germany for example. People in Germany are commonly rude (compared to American standards) in response to attempts at small talk (by strangers). Some cultures plainly frown upon small talk with strangers and in those cultures people find it uncomfortable at best.
That is a complete wrong stereotype in my opinion. While there are such people, there are as many that talk your ear off if you don't stop them. Perhaps I belong to the former group and perceive it this way, but it certainly isn't seen as rude or anything.
> Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I'm not even old) that enjoyable.
Eh, I’m 50 years old and don’t really use social media (certainly not Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, twitter, etc.). I don’t even really text other people. But, I don’t agree with your sentiment. I’ve never understood people who want to have small talk with strangers. It is the opposite of enjoyable.
Someone complimented my hat in the subway today. I mentioned I got it back in Toronto, and we chatted about how disappointed we are in the Leafs.
What is so unenjoyable about that? How can one spend 50 years on this earth and find human conversation, something we literally evolved to do, so uninviting? I just don't understand.
I can literally go weeks without speaking a word (I have), and I am totally comfortable with that. I would have made a great monk with a vow of silence. I am very comfortable in my own skin and don't need interaction with other people to maintain good and positive mental health.
Ah. Very interesting. I really appreciate you sharing this, makes me ponder how people can have very different preferences. I would become incredibly restless after 3-4 days of not speaking to anyone. Different strokes for different folks I guess!
That is completely fair. And I agree it doesn't have to be enjoyable, nor do we all have to specifically seek it out, or even engage in it when offered. But to call it "labor" or "a chore" or (I've even seen this once) an "attack" just seems... excessive, and indicative of an unhealthy mindset.
Heck, I'm not even a fan of small talk. It's not as though I have an aversion to talking. Discussing things of mutual interest is fine. Listening to people who have interesting stories, or even need to get something off their chest, is fine. But small talk has always struck me as the means by which people fill silence. You don't really learn anything about each other.
Small talk can certainly be a vacuous attempt to fill the silence. It also seems to act as a social lubricant, moving with easy questions and accelerating into something more meaningful.
>Where people consider talking to someone a chore.
It is definitely chore to me. I'm however not claiming to be normal. I'm a hardcore misanthropist and overall pessimist.
I have never in my 32 years of life enjoyed talking to people, and I have never been active on social media either (other than posting an extremely rare comment like this).
Think of it like this. I enjoy community clean up days. But if I had to do it every week it’d feel like a chore.
Communicating is the same. It’s fun in small doses. But then by the time the evening or weekend rolls around the last thing I want is to talk with more people. Which is sad, because I’d really like to have a non-work, real-world social network.
For sure talking in real life is not an attack (exempting folks with mental disabilities). But it’s something to think about. Especially as remote work makes our work relationships even more superficial.
Not a fan of small talk, especially while working (I differentiate conversation and small talk). But some people really go to extremes. Perhaps social media is the cause here because people are finally so afraid of each other that having to answer something feels like a terrorist attack.
I do prefer the polite gesture of small talk to not saying anything in some cases and can understand that people generally think so as well. And in some instances you really meet a new friend. Unlikely in business environments and yes there are some people that do too much small talk. But that isn't really an imposition.
I grew up in Midwest USA and lived for an extended period of time in NYC. "Small talk" is almost non-existent in NYC where it is very normal to stop on the street in the Midwest and converse with complete strangers.
>I grew up in Midwest USA and lived for an extended period of time in NYC. "Small talk" is almost non-existent in NYC where it is very normal to stop on the street in the Midwest and converse with complete strangers.
I grew up in NYC and have lived in a variety of places around the US.
To a certain extent, your observation about NYC is valid. But only to a point.
In NYC, if you're walking down the (very crowded) streets or on the subway, since there's so little personal space, it's considered rude to just stop and start talking to someone.
That said, if there's a reason to interact, most NYers are polite, pleasant, kind and helpful.
What's more, if you're in a situation that calls for it, you can have wonderful conversations with New Yorkers. I do it all the time. I just try not to invade the limited personal space of other people.
It's not that "small talk" doesn't exist in NYC, it's just that where and when such conversations happen differs from other places.
I've lived a a bunch of different places around the US, and there are significant differences as to the etiquette surrounding interactions with strangers.
It is a bit of culture shock though. I went to college in the midwest (Cleveland) and for the first month or so was quite taken aback by all the strangers who'd say hello as I walked by. I got used to it after a while.
I think it's more about introverts vs. extroverts.
As an extrovert, I'll pretty much talk to anyone, anytime. In fact, I pretty much never shut up.
OTOH, a goodly number of those who spend a lot of time online are introverted or just misanthropic.
As such, if you ask a lot of folks who are online, you're more likely to get responses like "Why would you want to talk to someone else?" because the folks who actually like interacting with other humans in person are doing that instead.
That's more anecdotal experience and reasoning to consider.
Edit: As tomjen3 pointed out[0], it's not just introverts and misanthropes who are uncomfortable talking to people IRL. Folks with social anxiety disorder and other issues are also in the mix too. Thanks for bringing that up, tomjen3!
> As such, if you ask a lot of folks who are online, you're more likely to get responses like "Why would you want to talk to someone else?" because the folks who actually like interacting with other humans in person are doing that instead.
I think this is hugely important to remember. Many regular people don't spend much time on social media. Of the ones that do, maybe 1 in 100 (or less!) actually ever post anything. It is an extremely biased source of data.
I learned this the hard way when I found out that all these leftist AOC type primaries were failing left and right back in 2018, 2019, and 2020. I spent so much time volunteering for them and online they seemed like winners. However reality is that in real life, the numbers of volunteers and voters is a small percentage of the internet support. Its as if half of the internet is all fake AI bots. I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case.
I think there's something a little more complicated than that going on. I remember even when I was a college student who rode public transit in Saratoga Springs (small city in up state New York), it was normal to start a conversation with random people on the bus, or with the bus driver. Sometimes I would initiate it, often others would.
That just doesn't happen in New York. Maybe that's due to space constraints, but it's not like I'm blocking the flow of traffic more or less when I talk to someone on a bus.
I like New York a lot, but this sort of small talk with strangers is absolutely something I miss.
>That just doesn't happen in New York. Maybe that's due to space constraints, but it's not like I'm blocking the flow of traffic more or less when I talk to someone on a bus.
>I like New York a lot, but this sort of small talk with strangers is absolutely something I miss.
It's not about blocking the flow of traffic. It's about not invading the (already small) personal space of others. I think the appropriate term is "etiquette."
As I said, there are absolutely appropriate situations in NYC to engage with others. It's just that those situations are different from those that are appropriate in other places.
As someone who was born and raised in NYC (and who lives here again), that's normal to me.
As someone who's lived in a dozen other places all over the US, those situations are different in many places.
In a walkable small town, it's normal to (at a minimum) nod in acknowledgement of those you pass by on the street. In NYC, when you pass by a couple hundred people in the space of a couple blocks, if you tried to do that you'd end up with whiplash.
In places where everyone is in their car unless they're at the place they wish to go, it's not unusual to interact with folks at those places. But you certainly wouldn't roll down your window and say hello every time you encountered another car.
Yeah I never met to disparage or imply people who live in or are from NYC aren't anything less than amazing.
I love NYC and New Yorkers, consider myself one. New Yorkers are deeply misunderstood and it's usually taken for rudeness when it's just the nature of living in such a big and bustling city.
I love talking to strangers. I am just exceedingly anxious about initiating conversation. I’m always worried they’ll take offense or something (‘why is this fat dude talking to me’ kind of stuff)...
Someone asks me something at a bar? I’m a total chatterbox, but I can’t recall a time where I ever started the conversation. The problem is, people don’t usually start conversations with me. I’m 6’4, huge, and a dude. I’ve non-ironically thought about getting a shirt made saying "ask me anything" and wearing it in a public setting.
One of the most fun things I can recall doing in recent memory was going on a pub crawl in Japan in spring 2019 (feels like a lifetime ago). I was vacationing alone after a business trip, and I just decided to sign up for a foreigner-aimed outing. An "all pretenses dropped, you’re coming here to meet and chat with other people" kind of trip. I had an absolute blast. The mix of people was like 60% foreigners and 40% locals. Didn’t really meet anyone I continued further communication with after the event, but it’s a fond memory. Didn’t manage to work up the courage to do a US based one when I got home, and the pandemic started 8 months later.
It really boils down to in my mind, where do I meet people around my age? All my current friends are people I knew in college and we all do a nearly-every-night discord meetup where we talk about life and play games. It certainly doesn’t provide the same happy brain chemicals that doing literally the same thing but in person did when we were all in college, buts it’s kept me sane for the last 5 years.
College was such a different social experience. I wasn’t top of my class grades wise, but I always got top marks in computer science and computer engineering courses. I also had a healthy amount of personal projects on the side. I ended up with this reputation on campus for being able to help with any of the computing classes, and I was always a firm believer in ‘master through teaching". I considered helping other people as part of my own learning process. For anyone who seriously wanted help, you could always reach out to me. I even gave supplemental talks for particularly rough classes during our ACM weekly "coffee and code" meetings.
Needless to say, this made me fairly popular on campus. I knew a lot of people and counted many of them as friends. The group was fairly diverse, both ethnically/culturally and by gender. We ate dinner together, met up and played games, built things, etc. it was a fantastic time of life. But there was one underlying thread - I had never actually initiated a random conversation. Every person I count as a friend today had either looked over my shoulder and was curious about what I was working on, was someone who asked for help in a class, was introduced by a mutual friend, etc.
That period ended 5 and a half years ago when I graduated and started working for a tech company you’ve definitely heard of. Things have been rough since then. I moved to SoCal because of the office I was working in. Only two of the people I knew from college went to SoCal, some moved out of state, the others moved to the Bay Area. I’m about to lose the people in SoCal, as they’re moving out of state to further their careers elsewhere. Now I'm weighing whether or not I should quit a job I actually like in exchange for moving closer to the people I know and a job that's an unknown.
Are there any activities you might like to do, such as hiking? Nothing too strenuous, but it would help you to join a local club that is not involved in tech.
At first it'll be cliquey but over time you'll start to initiate conversation and get to know new people. Everyone is there to get to know others.
My whole issue, however, is the glorification of social anxiety and the conflation of social anxiety with introversion - exactly as you said yourself, they are not the same thing.
An introvert would probably avoid small talk and would quickly tire of it, yes. I'm definitely not the biggest chatterbox myself. But to see the simplest form of small talk as a "chore" or "labor" - like it's some kind of hostile attack - feels far more like social anxiety than introversion. And social anxiety is not a good thing. We shouldn't be glorifying it. It leads to unhappiness, and life problems, and is considered to fall under the umbrella of mental health for a good reason.
As this thread implies, it's mostly social media, particularly the Reddit crowd, that is hell-bent on glorifying harmful social anxiety and making it out to be just as benevolent as simple introversion.
It is a chore to open your mouth. A person shouldn't be subject to being prepared to engage in a 100 different conversations for the crime of walking outside their house. It also doesn't help that the vast majority of interactions are negative (pan handling, cat calling, sales pitches, political affiliations, religious evangelism, scams, asking for favors / free stuff, bullying, snooping, etc.)
Doesn't this track with human existence? Most of my inbox is spam, even if I fight to control it. That doesn't mean I turn my email off or never use it. All of the activities you noted suck, but there's a lot more humans looking for something other than that. I ride my bike around town a lot and end up meeting a lot of strange people because of that. Some people think it's weird and obviously straight up other me if I say, "hi" -- but who would I be if I didn't? When I lived in San Diego a good number of these interactions ended up in me being able to get someone homeless water (fun fact, not all homeless people look what one might think is homeless.)
One time, I ran across a guy who was clearly struggling with a very messy divorce and struggling to get back on his feet. I sat down and just listened for the better part of an hour. I shared my own story of struggle and loss, and at the end he seemed like a large weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Sometimes, all people need is a bit of connection to get through life. Someone to acknowledge their existence in a world that otherwise doesn't care about them or their story. I'm by no means a priest or hippie, just an average dude who rides a bike and likes to say, "hi".
No it doesn't track with human existence. In the past such things lead to wars and large schisms in societies, it is completely abnormal for the vast majority of anything to be negative and the prevailing wisdom be just grin and bear it.
The USA was founded on the idea of negative rights and an opt in culture, instead today we increasingly see a shift to people demanding positive rights and putting the burden on the individual to opt out. In the future I could totally see a market to have a robot buddy follow you around and have responses ready for all the things people want to pester you with.
I think it's because reddits user base has significantly decreased in age. I have been using it since late 2012, which even then I felt like a late adopter. The content on Reddit back then was like a more ”normie" version of HN and slashdot. It had good articles consistently with maybe 1 or 2 default meme subreddits. Then Reddit started cutting down content it didn't like and now it's just a leftwing cesspool of antisocial, antiwork rhetoric. It's not even worth posting or commenting because if your comment veers slightly off course, instant downvotes. Not to mention the monetizing of posts with stickers. It's just turned into out of touch people who glorify mental illness imo.
Yes and no. Reddit is nothing what it once was. I do wholly recognize that reddit has typically had a younger audience. But it was not as "we need a socialist revolution, hyper-progressive moderatism, 1 letter top comment"-y as it used to be.
On a post about a guy who ran a company and sued himself, I couldn't find the TL;DR until like 15 comments in. All the preceding comments were like "genius!" or "It's perfectly legal so he's smart!"
It feels like Reddit is actively hostile toward actual contributors. They just want eyeballs and clicks. They could care less about the rest. It's just as bad as facebook nowadays.
Real Question / Zero Trolling: What forums do you like these days? I have been reading HN for a few years now. I am still consistently impressed once a day by comments I read here. The community works pretty hard to self-correct. An imperfect social science, but they try. (<hat tip> @dang)
This bit in particular really hit me. I've noticed a rising trend around the Internet (or maybe I was just blind to it before), mostly on Reddit, of people who really do seem to consider any sort of real-life social interaction a chore and an attack.
I forget the exact context, I think the conversation that stood out to me was about someone in a gas station or something, trying to make friendly conversation with another shopper next to them, along the lines of "oh that's a cool hat". And the consensus of the thread was "yeah that's awful, why would you do that, why are you subjecting them to the labor of talking to you" or such.
Guys... we're humans. It isn't a crime to make small talk. It's not a chore to open your mouth. Most of us consider (or used to consider; and I'm not even old) that enjoyable. What happened?