I would say they are more rude. Just look at cell phones. I guess if you don’t consider screaming out your problems into a phone on a public bus to be rude, than…
Everyday I hear at least one person, usually a lot more, people screaming out problems on a cell phone. I am talking top of their lungs yelling.
I can’t believe how loud my library is. I don’t know how anyone can use it to study. People talk in normal voices on cell phones, (yes, they are banned, but everyone used them for 10 seconds at a time, and then hangs up, then calls again for 10 seconds so it quickly adds up)
Customer Service is way worse now than even ten years ago.
One thing that was really interesting was I live in Chicago and about two weeks ago I had a job interview out in the Northwest Suburbs. So I went to a big shopping mall out their Woodfield Mall. I was SO SHOCKED at the difference in customer service. Clerks there were nice, the bus drivers we polite.
Maybe it’s the frustrations of city life that cause rudeness
I haven’t personally noticed a change - I’m too young (22) - but going on what I know, I voted for the third option, by which I mean “fool, you’ve forgotten…!”.
People now are ruder than they used to be, if you measure by the same yardstick. But rudeness, IMO, is all about societal expectations. What was disrespectful once isn’t necessarily disrespectful now; what was once seen as extreme isn’t necessarily extreme now, whether it’s about not tipping hats, or about fistfighting. I think the level of disrespect - at least, where I live - is the same as its ever been.
I also think levels of disrespect vary more from place to place than they do over time.
I can’t vote on this because it depends on what you consider rude.
Back in the first half of the twentieth century, people were what we might call more formal, especially when addressing someone equal or higher on the socio-economic ladder. You would never have had a CEO of a big company telling his employees “Call me Jim,” and you certainly would never have had employees calling that CEO by his first name without invitation. But the fact that things are less formal now doesn’t make them ruder; it’s just that the custom has changed.
On the other hand, you had minorities and women treated with utter dismissal or contempt. Women were consistently patronized and/or harrassed; minorities were expected to “keep their place,” with potentially lethal consequences and certainly legal consequences in many parts of the US. Does that qualify as rudeness?
On the whole, it is no longer socially acceptable to be rude to entire classes of people by virtue of their supposed ‘inferiority,’ and it’s less necessary to be grovelingly polite to classes of people because of their supposed ‘superiority.’ So I’d guess we’re more polite to those down the socio-economic ladder and less polite (or at least, less formal) to those up it. On the other hand, there is a significant and vocal political movement in the country that hearkens back to the previous standards and pats itself on the back for eschewing “political correctness.”
I think there is less emphasis in general child-rearing about being considerate of other people than there was when I was a child in the fifties and sixties. But that may be “Get off my lawn” syndrome or the peculiarities of my own upbringing, as my mother is almost pathologically considerate. Yes, it seems to me that society as a whole seems more geared toward self-gratification and less toward courtesy than it was. But almost every generation thinks that about subsequent generations. The fact is, standards change, and what is rude today may be considered warm and welcoming tomorrow, or vice versa. I don’t think human nature has changed much.
I don’t think human nature has changed much, but I think expectations do. I’ve heard it said that a society with a lot of laws and policepeople will be a more lawless society than one where people are self-policing; when people have the expectation that they will be caught and punished for rule-breaking by an external force, they start to figure that anything they can get away with is acceptable. In a society that is self-governed, the consequences for actions is more emphasized; you don’t do X because it causes Y for other people, and that doesn’t change whether you get caught or not.
That sounds very good in an abstract philosophical way, but it also sounds pretty impractical, and likely to quickly devolve into mob-law and lynchings. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Heinlein notes that the moon penal colony society is much more polite than earthside society, but underlying that was the fact that rude behavior was likely to get you thrown out of the airlock.
I am more worried about that kind of thing now then I was, say 10-15 years ago. IME, the chances of some kind of violent response from someone feeling “dissed” seem more likely than in the past.
DO you think that is because our culture is becoming more accepting of aggressive behaviour, or that it is a disproportionate response to a build up of frustration with no outlet?
I’m a librarian, mostly in the Children’s Department. I spend about 4 hours a day on the service desk. My interaction with the public is almost uniformly pleasant and respectful. Are people really rude to you all day long? I can’t imagine such a thing. It is the policy of our library that rude or disrespectful behavior is not tolerated, and if patrons exhibiting rude or disrespectful behavior are asked to shape up or leave, and can be banned from the library for such behavior.
Interesting. I only occasionally or even rarely encounter rudeness, but I still say it’s higher than it was before. It seems like something that is coming in from outside.
That’s probably why I’m so hard on rude people. I honestly want bigger repercussions for rude behavior. If not legal, at least social.
Hmm, interesting - maybe the key is either people finding a way to manage themselves (not realistic because as we’re seeing, if people can get away with things, they do), or have the consequences be immediate and consistently enforced. If we put electronic monitors everywhere in a city so that you could be guaranteed to get at least one ticket if you violated any traffic rules while out driving, I think driving habits would change overnight. People do the things they do because they know that 95 times out of 100 they get away with it.
I wouldn’t trust myself to judge whether people had grown more rude in general - I have aged in that time and my expectations no doubt will have changed, as well as possibly the behaviour my presence encourages.
But I feel that the explosion in use of mobile/cellphones, smartphones and mp3 players means it is easier for people to be utterly oblivious to the living breathing human animals around them at any given time; in general, surrounding oneself with ‘virtual’ acquaintances will likely make someone less bothered about their ‘IRL’ counterparts.
People of different ages are rude in different ways. Young people are more likely to yowl into their cell phones about trivial or inappropriate things in public. Old people are more likely to say insulting things about someone or something when the relevant people are right there or snarl and bitch and carp at unreasonable length about stuff that nobody can control.
But the overall amount of rudeness from either end is about the same.
In my particular case, it has to do with the changing demographic of my neighborhood. So, I suppose my perception of “rudeness” is due to both cultural differences and the increase of gangsta-inspired attitude by the young(er) people I encounter.
Yes, I think it’s a mistake to attribute to rudeness things which are really a difference in custom. For example, I live in a poor urban environment. Much of it is Latino, and the custom within that community is simply much louder than I am used to. It seems rude, but it’s not; I am the one whose standards are in the minority. Similarly, on the rare occasions I drive, pedestrians of all ages, sexes, races, and cultures simply do not behave as I expect them to; they make no apparent effort to clear the street quickly for auto traffic. If they’re crossing the street as I’m driving along, they rarely if ever hurry to get out of the road. I find this both rude and foolhardy, but the fact is, it seems to be nearly universal among longtime car-lacking urban residents (at least here), and I don’t see people being hit by cars or hear honking horns with any frequency.
Rudeness is defined by cultural standard. When you are in an alien culture, whether by virtue of travel or age or changing demographic, the result seems rude. Personally, I like the standard by which I was raised; it seems more considerate of others. But then, I would like the standard by which I was raised - it seems natural to me, almost like a law of nature.
I spent a couple of months in Japan in 1990. The people there seemed absurdly rule-bound, and everyone was invited to every meeting, even though they frequently had little or no interest in the topic. I found them inefficient, but looking back, I’m sure they found me quite rude. They were wonderfully tolerant, at least to my face - probably an offshoot of what seemed to me excessive politeness (not to mention that they were being charged through the nose for my time, so getting me done faster was to their financial benefit).
Young people are not only more rude; their music, it’s just noise. Also, my back hurts more than it used to, which I blame on disrespectful youth. And their noise.
i’m 45. been around for awhile. in my 20s? i’d contact people for lunch, drinks, whatever. they’d always commit or cancel. now? not so much. supposed to have lunch with a friend at 1p, it’s 3p. that happens all the time. and don’t even talk to me about driving habits now… :smack:
The only difference I see since my childhood in the 50’s is that now it has become more acceptable to use explicit rude language in public. Nice people are still nice people; assholes remain assholes; the Dude abides.
