When I was in college I heard a story on NPR about a journalist named the Georgia Rambler. He would journey throughout Georgia on a whim, stopping to talk to strangers. [0]

Being a journalism student in the South at the time, I thought, "Hey, that sounds like a fun experiment." A group of friends and I started an informal club called Map Dart. The premise was to toss a dart at a map, travel to wherever it landed and talk to strangers in the city or town to capture their stories.

We received a lot of negative feedback from people who weren't interested in journalism. Mostly, they seemed to predisposed to think that the strangers in rural Georgia and northern Florida would shoe us away from their properties. Some even joked that we would be shot.

The truth was something much different. Sure, the trips were initially awkward. We would arrive at a small-town diner, look around, sigh and think, "Okay, who's going to break the ice..." But once we got talking, the strangers were always welcoming. The owners of a tobacco farm and a turpentine factory even showed us around their properties. [1]

For me, the experiences of MapDart validate the research in this story. The unpleasantness of interacting with strangers almost always has to do with that initial "ice breaking" moment. It's relatively smooth sailing once the ice is broken.

[0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/413/g... [1] http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/the-secret-to-growing-older/