One social etiquette I was taught as a child was to acknowledge a stranger with eye contact and a “hello” or similar remark when passing them on the street, or entering an elevator etc.I can remember receiving an appropriate reciprocation on every single occasion. Then, at some point, less and less people were willing to respond in kind. So much so that I no longer make a point of initiating this little ritual (but will respond if acknowledged, so it hasn’t totally disappeared). Are folks just too busy these days, carrying so many responsibilities that they don’t see anything/anyone around them? Or has the level of insensitivity and indifference we currently endure desensitised us to a point where the friendly greeting has been nearly killed off?
People these days (esp. in large cities) seem to read an ulterior motive behind greetings and open friendliness. In the city that I work in (Long Beach, CA), if a stranger greets me on the street, it is invariably an overture to a panhandler’s line (“I just need two dollars for gas to get home.”) I don’t usually initiate a greeting on the street, because I know that the recipiant will assume I want something from them.
Kinda sad, huh?
I still greet people in elevators, though.
Once again, I beg you to move to upstate NY where we still not only say “hello” on the streets or whereever to strangers, we wave to passing cars when taking a walk.
Zette
Love is like popsicles…you get too much you get too high.
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Click here for some GOOD news for a change Zettecity
Greetings to strangers are still the norm in my part of the world (southeast Texas).
I’ll have to agree with Zette on this one. We still make eye contact or say hello even if we don’t know you. Maybe it’s a rural vs. urban thing. I wave and get waved at from people I don’t know, especially when I’m on the tractor.
wow, I’ve got to get off campus more often. Suffice to say, most of the people at this school are not from upstate NY. Many people won’t make eye contact even if they know your name! (and it’s not just me, either. Several perfectly nice people I know have been annoyed by the same thing)
Not everyone’s this rude; there are a few decent people who will always smile and ask how you’re doing even though you’re little more than a stranger to them. Sadly I can count them all on one hand. . .
and of course, that’s just when I’m going around on foot. 
I usually suspect people who try to say hello to me on the street are either
A> Marketing researchers or
b> Scientologists
well I live in Mayberry USA (almost…it was about a town close to me…and a lot of the little cities mentioned are actually cities and are close by). Here we smile and speak to everyone…and one thing that can be good or bad…almost everyone knows everyone…and their business…which can be trying at times. I work in a larger city…and I can tell the difference…although not to the extreme that you are talking about…we all still smile and speak. I think we will see this change…as we are teaching our children not to speak or talk to strangers…that will carry over into adulthood. I hope it never changes here (I’m sure it will) cause neighbors still look after neighbors…
I think it might be a regional thing as well. As I said above, greetings are the norm here and I’m in the middle of a very big city (Houston).
I’m a native of the Chicago area and moved to the Texas panhandle 8 years ago. The first time a stranger said “Hi, how ya doing?” to me in a gas station, I was terrified. I thought, “what the hell does he want from me?” as I fumbled in my pocket for a firm grip on my keychain, planning to plunge my housekey into his eyeball if he took a step toward me.
After a few months, I wasn’t afraid anymore; just annoyed.
Now I’ve taken up the habit of making small talk with strangers. It’s just the way things are done around here. This IS a significantly smaller city than I’m used to, but the population is a couple hundred thousand so it’s not exactly a small town. It does have that small town mentality, though.
When I’ve travelled to Dallas, I’ve noticed the people there aren’t as friendly as they are in the panhandle, but they’re much more friendly to strangers than Midwesterners.
Guess that depends which part of the midwest you’re talking about. When I moved from Michigan to Boston, strangers who didn’t flee in terror would stop and say “You’re from the Midwest aren’t you?” when I greeted them.
Leslie Irish Evans
http://leslie.scrappy.net
Count me in as one who thinks that both regional variations, and city size have a lot to do with outward friendliness.
I’ve lived in suburban Detroit, small town Oklahoma, San Antonio, Maryland 'burbs of DC, Germany, and El Paso. I’ve also lived in the ultimate fishbowl - on post military housing.
Somewhere along the spectrum, friendly crosses the line into nosy, but where that line occurs varies tremendously from person to person.
But everywhere I’ve been, a spontaneous greeting with a smile has seldom gone unreciprocated, and may just set off a chian reaction of smiles and good will - I’ve sometimes been pretty tired & carrying grim thoughts around, only to have someone hold the door or say something like “I hope the rest rest of day is better” - and I do an attitude adjustment on-the-spot.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Like Beatle, I live in Houston. However, I do not greet strangers, and only rarely am I greeted by them. And it annoys me when I am. I’d much prefer to believe that I slip unnoticed through society, free to do my nefarious deeds
Perhaps the practice is more common here than elsewhere, but if one doesn’t initiate, then it’s still not going to happen too often.
Here in Iowa, we’re so friendly, it borders on silliness.
Imagine walking around the factory and saying hi and smiling to the same people two or three times a day. Well, we do it.
But it gets annoying when you let that smile drop and the next person you see says “smile!” – Hey, I just did, sorry you missed it.
I don’t know if this relates to this thread, but I thought it did. I used to work in a gift shop in Southwest Missouri. One day a woman stopped in there. She just went on and on about how friendly I and the other girl working were. We were just being our usual selves. It turned out she was from Boston and she wasn’t used to being greeted at the door with a smile and being shown around the store to what she was looking for. To this day I get a big kick out of that. I was happy to do that for her, but the truth is I would have been fired for not doing that with the store as empty as it was that day.
Come to California, in LA the women ask guys for dates on the street all the time and in SF, Calif, guys asks you to stay at their house if you need to. Very warm people here.
Yeah, that happens to me all the time.
Interesting to note The Nerd and I report very different experience from the same geographic region. There are disparate demographic regions involved as well. IIRC, are you, TheNerd, not a college student here? Are you displaced from somewhere else recently? I’m not trying to challenge you on our regional demeanor. Your experience is as valid as mine. I easily recognize when somebody is broadcasting “Don’t say Hello to me!” And there’s well enough of them. My experience has been that there is a little tightening up of social discourse amongst those around 20 +/- 3 years. And then it gets better.
If one does initiate, then it happens just that often.
Comments, pal?
Way to go Zette, you come from upstate New York too! Boondocks represent! Anyway, although I was never taught to do so, I’ve picked up the “hello” tradition on my many long, tedious, walks home from school. It is usually an uncomfortable situation, because the person is walking towards you, and if you say hello too soon, you just keep looking at them and not talking for about twenty seconds. However, trying to time it so you say it just before they pass is equally difficult, as you have to avoid looking at them so you aren’t just staring at them not saying anything with a strange look on your face (which usually scares the little girls who walk home the opposite way from me off). Anyway, it usually just happens no matter what I do, but I DO notice a little reluctance in the more asshole-y people I encounter. They say “Hi,” give a little “What a freaking weirdo,” look on their way down to staring at the ground, and then walk off. Jerks.
I don’t care to bestow a smile on people that can make those kinds of snap judgements about perfect strangers. And anyway, sometimes I’m not in the mood to give a reacharound to Mr. Smiley Face coming at me from the other way, and I’m a little annoyed by the fact that he’ll get all pouty if I don’t.
DHR