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Comment by ekidd | Hacker News Reader

This varies enormously by where you live.

I live out in the countryside. If I run into someone in the road, I will nod my head, maybe introduce myself, and maybe chat, if the other person is interested. (To be fair, I know about 80% of the people I see in the road.) This is normal behavior. Sometimes, two cars will pass each other and stop to talk.

I have also lived in the city. If a stranger wants to talk to me in the city, either they're looking for directions (happy to help!), or they are deeply confused about appropriate social behavior in crowded spaces. In the latter case, I'm lucky if the stranger-with-no-boundaries merely wants to warn me about the dangers of the lizard people. So I've learned to ignore strangers.

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> If a stranger wants to talk to me in the city, either they're looking for directions (happy to help!), or they are deeply confused about appropriate social behavior in crowded spaces

A neat summary of the article.

Talk to the old fogies in said city and they will saddle you with complaints of how people used to say good morning, how are you doing, etc. It didn’t used to be this way. Alas, we probably won’t be talking to the old fogies either.

We used to have a much more rigid system of social enforcement - for good and for bad. People used to feel bad when they did things society disliked. It had real consequences. People knew what you did and you wouldn't be invited to events or be hired. The downside was that people who lived alternative lifestyles (such as those who were gay) were also ostracised.

Unfortunately we threw the baby out with the bathwater, and decided that all actions are equally socially acceptable and there should be no social repercussions for living "differently."

This is why I prefer smaller, culturally homogenous communities. We all understand the rules and we generally abide.

> People knew what you did and you wouldn't be invited to events or be hired.

I feel like this has almost never been true in big cities: it's impossible to know everyone and unless they made the news for what they did word wouldn't travel very far.

Besides that, I also haven't observed what you're describing in both the smaller communities and the cities I've lived in. People absolutely do still get socially ostracized all the time in real life.

You're just taking the Western code of social conduct as "normal". Human interaction is completely normal and natural.

Isolating yourself in certain situations isn't the same as not having human interaction and sticking 10 million humans in a small area and expecting them to always interact with all of the others is in no way normal or natural. Sometimes interacting with ~100ish people (within an order of magnitude) over your month is natural. Too many is both exhausting and diluting of the meaning, too few is lonely and over isolating.

You're trying to follow an out-of-date map. Our technology-infused growth of the past 50 years has produced more widespread mental illness and psycopathy than someone in the 80's could have even imagined. At this point in our societal evolution, you cannot assume that HUMANS THEMSELVES are either normal or natural.

Human interaction, sure. Human interaction with complete strangers, 10 inches away from you, enclosed in a metal tube you cannot escape from easily... not so much.

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