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Comment by brailsafe | Hacker News Reader

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".

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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.

There's a subtle difference between what each of us is describing I think. It seems you're arguing that wearing headphones in public isn't generally inherently rude, and you have a selection of anecdotes to support it, and I'd agree that those are plausible and fine.

Incidentally I have no interest in living in SF, Boston, or Japan for various reasons, but it is interesting that I also wouldn't necessarily anticipate they'd be suitable for completely random friendly, welcomed interactions, in transit or wherever. Japan gives me a very siloed, weirdly socially isolated vibe, Boston I haven't been to, and SF just gives me a sort of aggressive individualist capitalism achievement chasing vibe. California cities in general feel like a departure from what I like.

However, I'm not exclusively talking about literally accepting every random encounter in public transit or on the street only. In those places, you do have bars, gyms, third-spaces, cafes, etc.. that are for the most part, "public"; you should be able to connect with people in your community and avoid signalling that you aren't there to participate.

I'd basically agree that wearing headphones out in the world at all is not inherently rude, but wearing them in all of those places, an overwhelming majority of the time, intending to avoid almost any interaction with strangers, is deliberately socially rusty. It almost seems like a strawman I'm arguing against, but it's my impression that's what the ease of AirPods enable, compared to larger less-convenient headphones. You can leave your house with the AirPods in, no wires, take calls without your hands, go to the gym, do your shopping, go to the park, go for a jog, bike ride, and keep the world out end-to-end. It's my view that unless you have a real sensory issue, that's shit for everyone involved at some scale.

Edit: I'd accept that I may not have articulated that so well in prior comments, but thought the overall was implied to mean the degree to which AirPods uniquely enable this

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.

Some of you are unwell.

I am unwell; I have ADHD and if someone interrupts me it takes me a long time to get back on track. It’s very inconsiderate.

That's fair. I'm sorry you have to deal with that.

The problem is that you don’t know what the person that you randomly chat up is dealing with. You could be doing this kind of thing to anyone.

If I have earbuds in, I’m probably listening to classical music. It helps me self-regulate in busy environments. I’m not listening to podcasts (which everyone assumes now, I guess).

If you interrupt me, I’m going to be polite. You won’t know that you’re causing a problem because I don’t like to be a jerk to strangers. That could be happening every time you talk to a stranger for all you know.

People like to make talking to random strangers seem somehow romantic, but it’s actually just selfish. You’re not interrupting my focus for me, you’re doing it for you.

> You’re not interrupting my focus for me, you’re doing it for you.

While it may be selfish and pointless, it's the default expectation that in public space people can be spoken to, but it costs something to remove that possibility without also physically isolating oneself in some way. Not all public space is necessarily social, you can be alone in a wooded glen which creates a proximity barrier, but trying to preserve your whole private sphere while being in an otherwise potentially social space removes something from that space.

When I deliberately don't want to chat with anyone, I just take a side street or something. Not always possible, but it's rarely worth it; usually work is the semi-public space I'd prefer unbroken focus.

I do think it's overblown to make some grand statement about this behavior if it's only an occasional thing, but if the default expectation shifts to people hesitating to talk to people only because they might have headphones in, I think we've lost something.

> it's the default expectation that in public space people can be spoken to

It is not the social norm that anyone can be spoken to in public at any time, you are oversimplifying things. E.g. it is largely considered socially inappropriate to strike up a conversation with a stranger on public transit when you’re squeezed in like sardines; we don’t talk to each other to give the illusion of privacy and space. It’s also not considered socially acceptable to have a conversation with a stranger standing at a urinal. There are significant social rules about which adults and children can speak to each other in social spaces. Etc etc

There are and always have been situations where it is more or less socially acceptable to speak to a stranger in public. Headphones is not a new one, I knew in the 90s that headphones meant “don’t talk to me”.

I also have ADHD, but the onus is not on others to compensate for that; it wouldn't be labelled unless it prevented us from being compatible with the conplexities of daily life unaided by stimulants. People envy the way I can banter with randoms if I want to, but if I don't, I move on, and deliberately have to practice not getting too derailed.

If you legitimately think that anyone who isn't extroverted in the same way as you is "unwell", I feel like you could use a lot of therapy yourself.

Saying things like "it's rude to bother people who are in public" (paraphrased) is antisocial and reflective of our time, where people live increasingly isolated and atomistic lives, not of human nature. My point is people who are not open to experiencing the lives of others around them are, as social animals, unwell. It's also worth noting that I don't think this is the fault of any individual (although my initial comment was not clear on this point) but rather of modern society which so thoroughly devalues what is human in favour of what is material and saleable.

Edit: I'm also very much an introvert, FWIW.

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.

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.

You can simply decline the conversation. It's not as big of a deal as you are making it out to be. I'm not saying you have to actively opt into social interaction, whatever that means. I'm saying its reasonable for others to offer social interaction if you're in public.

"You can simply decline the conversation" and "it's not a big deal" are entirely subjective and based on the assumption that being extroverted is normal. Your rules of etiquette are that I need to go out of my way to give people the opportunity to talk to me so that I can tell them not to rather than just signaling to them that I don't want to (which saves us both time and lets me quietly enjoy some music on the meantime), which is just bizarre.

Your preferred default is also entirely subjective. I'm also not an extrovert. My friends all acknowledge my extreme introversion.

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