They do not have a dog. It is unusual for people to have the garage door closing while the car is still running and their foot is still on the brake (brake lights illuminated). And no one else around here peels-off down the street when they are leaving.
Agree with this - it’s like if the interaction does not come thru their smart phone, they are unsure how to behave.
It’s strange; the house across the alley behind us has been rented out off and on since we moved in fifteen years ago. Pretty much the people who have been roughly our age (I’m 49, wife is a few years younger) have been plenty sociable. But the younger people have been uniformly peculiar, and it gets worse the younger they are. It’s not only that they don’t seem to know how to talk to people, but they actively seem to not want to. Not even for basic introductions, etc…
IME, neither of these are typical of the under-40s. My kids and their friends are all pretty neighborly. My young neighbors across the hall are friendly. I’m not saying there isn’t a trend toward isolation. I’m just not sure it’s generational.
I’m over 40, and notoriously anti-social 
I’m also HUGELY introverted; interpersonal interaction is tremendously taxing on me. I seldom leave my house, and almost never interact with my neighbors. Today is the first time I’ve spoken to my new neighbors (the old ones sold their house five or six months ago), and even then only because I had to take my daughter to an appointment and the neighbor happened to be outside.
I would also love it if my house was just a house with no yard…
The FBI doesn’t have jurisdiction in Alberta.
@Spoons is in Alberta, which although many think of as “America Lite”, doesn’t have a “just shoot’em” policy.
I’m going to vote for this. We had new neighbors move next door a year ago, and it was at least 2 months before they were staying there full time. They were keeping their old place until the end of the school year so their kids could finish out the year without changing schools.
I live in a condo complex, not huge, but not small either. The way it was constructed there are smaller mini-neighborhoods within the complex. For example, we are in a grouping of 15 townhouses (5 attached facing the other 5 attached units with the final 5 crosswise on one end so the grouping is T-shaped).
We’re friendly with all our neighbors. But it’s amazing how long we can go without seeing certain neighbors. If your schedules don’t meet, you can go weeks – months! – without actually seeing them out. Sometimes we’ll actually ask each other “Say, have you seen Monica lately?” Then, one of us will see her, and we know she’s not rotting inside her place!
Edited to say I meant to mention that we’re both retired now, and with the pandemic, we’re home 99% of the time. Still don’t see some people for ages.
Or that, even as adults, they’re still so consumed by “stranger danger” panic they can’t face talking to anyone they don’t already know.
When I moved into my house from my parents’ house in 2005 there was no moving van. I packed up my SUV for a couple trips worth of stuff. At some point my friend helped me pick up a couch in his truck, and that was it. The appliances were already here. My bed fit in my SUV, and so did my kitchen table (the legs come off).
I work from home, and park in my garage so you don’t quite know when I’m here anyway. I have a light on a timer in the front room. I keep the office window blacked out for half the year because of the way the sun hits the house, so you can’t see inside anyway.
I eventually got around to saying hi to my neighbors. Over the back fence and stuff. The other neighbors all kind of know each other because their kids hung out together. Now everybody’s kids are gone and they are all elderly empty nesters and I’m the “young person” at 43. I’ve always gotten the impression that they think I’m a bitch because I’m just so quiet. Then again, I don’t really see anyone out there having neighbor get-togethers without me.
Everyone has watched me struggle though the rejuvenation of my yard over the past 17 years, though. But it took time for me to get started on that. There’s a lot to do in a new house, excuse your neighbors if they haven’t managed to work out a plan for the flower beds yet.
It’s likely that these people spent every penny they had obtaining that house and no matter what else is going on there they are living in a barely furnished house, eating hot dogs and ramen, and wondering how they’ll ever pay that mortgage every month.
Where are you at? Will be interesting if they don’t start doing some mowing eventually. Unless they hire it out.
Maybe they’re recently unseated oligarchs. Do they have thick Russian accents?
How’s your daughter doing these days? Fully recovered?
Yes, thanks! Despite originally wanting to go to Oregon for school, she ended up actually deciding on… Montana Tech. Weird left turn there
Heading up to Butte in a couple of weeks to help her load up her stuff to come home for the summer; she is also now engaged (they are waiting until after they both finish school to actually tie the knot, though) to her long-time boyfriend (the same whose family was so helpful when she was in the hospital).
Perhaps they are a surveillance team. What illegal-in-Canada activities have you been conducting? Failing to apologize? Using corn syrup instead of maple? Refusing to eat timbits or poutine? Hmmm???
Heh heh. Heh heh heh.
I think that almost anti-social behavior is pretty normal for that generation. I have 2 nieces in their 20s. While one has worked hard to master social behavior, she is really only comfortable texting back and forth with her friends and family. The other, I’ve barely seen since she went to college (yes, in Butte) because she elected to settle in Montana. She’s more social, but pretty much with her own generation.
I also have two 20 something friends who volunteers at the car races with me. One has learned to be outgoing but sometimes has a hard time of it because his autism makes him unsure of himself and the other is a young woman who has always been riddled with anxiety about how she is perceived. I’ve had some long talks with her because I was similar, but not cripplingly so and you wouldn’t believe it if you met me now.
They will grow or not as they choose.
The couple, who never go anywhere or do anything, have no furniture, nothing that a few pickup trucks can’t haul, just moved in without moving in a bed or two, a couch, refrigerator and stove, are surveillance people from one of the alphabet agencies, FBI, CIA, HMO, someone is being watched. Could be you.
Sometimes it seems like half or more of the people on Reddit have “social anxiety.” Maybe we’re just now starting to understand the long-term consequences of so much virtual interaction.