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Comment by dennisdamenace | Hacker News Reader

I often learn a lot at the check out lines here in Oregon. People chat, exchange information. Often banal, sometimes valuable. Always nice.

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I can confidently say that's _not_ the case in most urban areas.

I dunno. Yesterday at the Farmers Market, I was shopping for produce (salads) and had a conversation with 2 different women. The first offered advice on what to pick, and their health benefits. The second, in turn, was the recipient of my limited knowledge.

I live in San Francisco.

If those supposed health benefits aren't real or are misrepresented, which I would guess is likely, then that social interaction was a net negative for society.

Most HN users live in urban areas. Here in NYC your average check out line is people on their phones and/or with headphones on. And before you say NYC is an outlier, it was the same when I lived in semi-rural suburban Texas.

>> Most HN users live in urban areas.

I didn't know YC published HN's demographics. Do you have a link?

>80% of the American population lived in what is called an urban area in the 2010 census [1]. While their definition of urban is looser than you might use, still >60% lived in 'cities'[2].

Unless the wealthier, more connected, more educated readership of Hacker News strongly bucks every trend suggested by their demographics, it's pretty safe to say we mostly live in urban areas.

[1]https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-w... [2]https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-33....

How do you know HN is made up of only Americans?

The demographic trends in the GP aren't unique to America. They're more or less the rule in most developed countries, and I think it's safe to say most HN users probably come from developed countries.

Can you cite a source for that? How can you infer the demographics of HN in the absence of data?

Where I come from, it's pretty poor form to ask people to cite sources for obvious statements, without any other insight or commentary. After all, you're asking them to do work for you, but not taking basic steps to suggest you might appreciate their effort.

The preferred option is to do a little reading of your own beforehand, and to share whatever it is you know that makes you think the obvious answer might not be right.

Non American HN member here. It will apply here too. Me and most other people from Europe / Asia I know that are on HN are from big cities.

OP said "most[ly]" not "only". Just wanted to point out that your comment shifts the goal posts.

I disagree, we do not know the demographics of HN and the only sources cited deal with America specifically. It’s all speculation.

As someone who lives in what can be considered a rural area for the most part, it's not largely different. The last population count put the town at ~4500 for reference.

You still have people in checkout lines on their phones or parents giving their kids a phone with YouTube or a mobile game to distract them. The older folk, as you might expect, tend to strike up conversation and bump into those they don't know.

I worked retail a few years in this town (which is finally coming to an end) and the few times I can remember strangers striking up a conversation with me were mainly them spreading misinformation.

A few years back, one elderly man swore black and blue that "they" were canning all of the "irradiated fish" from the Fukushima fallout and selling it to unsuspecting customers. Another lady told me the story of a man who just happened to be stumbling around "a major Chinese city" and peering into a factory window only to see that "the Chinese" were turning cardboard into cookies and selling them to us unsuspecting Westerners.

By no means are the above stories an indicator of country folk but let's just say I have my reasons for not jumping at the chance to talk with strangers. Half the time it's just an excuse for them to offload their stories onto me rather than actually being a two way conversation anyway.

EDIT: I just mentioned the overall feel of the discussions to my dad as he's the sort to strike up conversation with anyone. Having presented both sides of the discussion, he instantly discarded one side as "wrong" without actually weighing up any of the points. While it's anecdotal, it's no wonder I'm somewhat the opposite. Each conversation turns into a debate to win rather than a discussion.

Given "equal and opposite reaction[s]", I wonder if tribalism is inevitable? Did we ever actually defuse this kind of stuff in society or was it just hidden away due to geography eg; distance between rural and urban areas?

This is a regional cultural thing. I’ve mostly noticed it in ethnically and linguistically homogenous areas. Absolutely not the case in most American urban centers outside of the northern US.

I'm sorry, but it's completely unclear how nice chats do anything to resolve "American tribalism", or, more pertinently, why it's the responsibility of marketplace owners to generate squares of social interaction at all.

Even if this slight increase in social interaction did anything ("cash or credit?" -- "Credit, ma'am"), that's as ridiculous as fixing race conditions with sleep() calls (hehe, race conditions).

Nice chats don't have to resolve 'American tribalism' to be worthwhile.

Sure, they might be worthwhile in isolation, but the context from the GGP was that they're worthwhile enough to worry about Amazon Go (by being a valuable source of interpersonal contact during times of "increasing tribalism").

Why use a throwaway account?

But to answer your comment: the comment was not about the chit-chat with the cashier, but other people in the line.

I am genuinely afraid of any even modestly political claim being publicly attached to me ("it's not the marketplace owner's responsibility" has a libertarian flavor to it).

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