alt Hacker NewsI 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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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.
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?
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.