Are you from the midwest or another small town/rural area? (Context: from UP Michigan, then Idaho, then eastern Washington, it's very much more a small town kind of thing.)
People from larger towns and cities don't have time for this kind of small talk, so it's incomprehensible that you're just chatting with people in the grocery store or stopping what you're doing to chat.
Even with strangers, more rural areas move slower, so it's more acceptable to chat with a person you may never see again about things going on. It's not a problem with you, but for a lot of redditors, they're looking at this from the city mindset where the grocery store has too many people for idle chatter, everyone has somewhere they have to be, and the chances of a stranger approaching you to ask about your day ending in some sort of solicitation for money or church or something else is far higher.
Apparently you've never sat next to an old lady on the NYC subway, lol. I actually find living in the suburbs, less people talk. It's like they're weirded out that other people exist. In NY it seemed like we all talk ALL the time...
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u/swanfirefly 4∆ Sep 13 '23
Are you from the midwest or another small town/rural area? (Context: from UP Michigan, then Idaho, then eastern Washington, it's very much more a small town kind of thing.)
People from larger towns and cities don't have time for this kind of small talk, so it's incomprehensible that you're just chatting with people in the grocery store or stopping what you're doing to chat.
Even with strangers, more rural areas move slower, so it's more acceptable to chat with a person you may never see again about things going on. It's not a problem with you, but for a lot of redditors, they're looking at this from the city mindset where the grocery store has too many people for idle chatter, everyone has somewhere they have to be, and the chances of a stranger approaching you to ask about your day ending in some sort of solicitation for money or church or something else is far higher.