I’m a Lyft Driver. My Passengers Act Like I’m Part of the App

As a relatively anti-social person, at least when it comes to strangers, one of the main reasons that I prefer Uber to Lyft is purely down to the fact that I've personally experienced Uber drivers to more frequently behave as if they ARE part of the app. I ALSO behave as if I'm part of the app. Please just consider me a parcel that you're picking up and dropping off. I'm not dehumanizing the driver, I just prefer the process to be dehumanized altogether.

A really interesting article but in this instance I'm not convinced it's the app that's the problem. Dehumanisation has been around forever and fluctuates depending on wider societal factors.

It's hard to see how this has anything to do with the app. Although it was almost certainly fake, HBO had a show called "Taxicab Confessions" back in 1995 claiming to be real rides filmed with a hidden camera in which the passengers did and said things no one would ever admit to if they expected to ever see the driver again. It has been a trope since well before smart phones became a thing. As Robin Hanson was quoted in this article saying, people not exactly treating service staff the way they treat their friends is not unique to app-mediated transactions.

I've never really lived in a city where cabs were much of a thing, but had a limo for prom, been in buses. People have been having sex and doing drugs in the Greyhound for decades, acting not only like the driver isn't there, but the other passengers aren't, either. It's arguably even worse with a limo, with the privacy shield trying to give you the illusion the driver legitimately doesn't exist at all.

How do you think the janitors at your school felt? What things did they see? Landscapers at your corporate campuses? What about hotel staff? I can hardly remember the number of times one of us forgot to put up the Do Not Disturb sign and a maid walked in on my wife and me.

Thinking about when this was the worst, nothing could ever compare to having a girlfriend in high school. We had public sex all the time, but why? Because we had no privacy at home. Where else were we supposed to do it? I'd rather be seen by a total stranger than my 5 year-old sister. People need me time and couples need we time. If you spend most of your day in a house full of kids or an office full of coworkers, when is that time supposed to come? A commute could potentially be that, but if you find yourself having to rely on someone else to drive you, you might just behave as if you're alone anyway because it's still the best you're gonna get.

Hard to swallow I guess but you are part of the app

But you are a part of the app. You tap a button on the app and a car magically appears and rides you to your destination. You're ordering a transportation service by an anonymous driver.

Well, the apps have made calling a taxi easier than ever. I haven't ever called a taxi or ordered a meal by phone because of my mild social phobia, and I definitely can't even imagine doing that when drunk or high. But I use taxi apps all the time. It's super easy. That's the point.

Either way, this is an expected result of reducing/eliminating many of the (near-imperceptible) barriers to calling a taxi.

Feels like just another expression of a wider anti-social tendency that is spreading in Western societies in general. To tie it in with another symptom: Lots of people use their telephones as anything but telephones -- they seem to be willing to go to great lengths not to conduct any voice calls on them. This is just another facet of that phenomenon.

Unless asked otherwise by the driver, I think etiquette compels the passenger to sit next to the driver and attempt conversation.