The only time I encounter rudeness that stands out from, say, 30 years ago is when I’m in a car. Drivers used to do some stupid stuff sometimes, back in the day. Now they are just plain rude and don’t care. Hell, I’m so rude when I’m driving I’m ashamed of myself when I get home.
Three years ago I was more tolerant.
Now I say, screw this poll.
I had to check to see if I had posted this. 
I thought polls automatically closed themselves after a certain timeframe. (30 days?)
I’m not against violence, but the OP and your response sort of frighten me. I don’t like this behavior, I’m going to assault you! I don’t know how things escalate from person annoying you to ass whooping time. You should be in jail if someone is saying something and instead of telling them something back, you decide to hit them. What if that person is crazy?
Exactly, Zombie Ogre.
People are much ruder around me now than they were 30 years ago.
Of course, 30 years ago, I was an adorable little innocent blonde moppet with big blue eyes and a winning overbite. Now I’m just an overweight middle aged woman.
Nope, they stay open indefinitely unless a close date is entered. IIRC you can enter a close date up to 9,999 days in the future.
I think it depends on how far back you want to go. A lot of rudeness was institutionalized. Jim Crow laws for example. Making someone get up and move to the back of a bus because of their skin color is pretty fucking rude, that fact that it was codified in law doesn’t make it less so.
People are a lot more courteous these days but my perception may be skewed by the way they instinctively understand how wonderful I am.
I think there is more rudeness out there because we interact less face-to-face than we did before. People will say stuff in an e-mail that they would never say to you face-to-face or even on the phone.
There are a lot of variables. One of which is cultural- for example, I’m white, and I was raised to let family members know if i’m coming to visit (so they have a chance to clean/be present/etc). To just show up is kind of rude. But my wife’s Latino family is polar opposite- family will just visit. You keep your house clean and your pantry full in case your parents/siblings drop by. When we first moved in together, my in-laws would show up all the time without notice, often taking it upon themselves to trim plants/mow our lawn (helpful and kind in theory, but annoying in practice since you feel compelled to go out there and help them.) I told my wife I felt her parents were being rude, since I would have to drop everything if they showed up. Conversely she thought MY parents were rude for never showimg up/helping us with anything. Ultimately its about different expectations and compromise (her parents are more considerate of my space/privacy, I’m more civil during surprise visits; my mom occasionally stops by/offers help with mundane stuff now).
I admire my wife’s culture because since their family is close and more interconnected, people are more likely to behave themselves. It does not behoove you to be an asshole in a family so willing to help you in need, even when they themselves have so little to begin with. Everybody helps each other and they all disproportionately benefit from it.
I ignored the frequency part of the choices and answered based on the trends. The two are orthogonal, so the poll is misconstructed.
I think it has more to do with population density than then/now. The denser the population, the less people care about strangers.
I live in a medium-sized city (Durham NC) and people are usually polite; the impolite ones are the exceptions.
I spent a lot of my youth in a remote area; whenever we saw anyone we didn’t recognize, we introduced ourselves. Neighbors were far enough between to not cause problems, and anyone you didn’t like was easily avoided. But as time advanced and more people from the cities got vacation property nearby, things changed, and strangers tended to be viewed with suspicion rather than possibility. Fences and “no trespassing” signs appeared where we had run with abandon as kids. Ah well.
and HEY YOU KIDS: GET OFFA MY PROPERTY! Now I’m the crusty old fart.
That would be The Monkeysphere.
I see a lot more awkwardness than I remember from 30 years ago. It does seem that lots of people have forgotten/not acquired social graces and I am puzzled by that. But it isn’t really rudeness, just a lack of poise and knowledge about how to behave socially.
I do agree that rudeness in driving habits is far more common than it used to be. A Chicago cop I know says it’s a combination of suburban driving habits and cell phones, but I don’t know how that explains rampant road-hogging and cutting off other drivers.
If people are more disrespectful in how they drive, it sure doesn’t show up in accident rates.
I think things are about the same. In some respects people are ruder (cell phones.) In other, they’re more polite; I am kind of flabbergasted at Cat Whisperer’s claim people litter more now. The exact opposite is true; people little far LESS now than they used to. They also tend to be a lot more respectful when it comes to smoking, for instance.
I agree with everything you said in your second paragraph actually, but am curious about the first comment.
In Chicago the number of pedestrians hit, especially by turning cars has gone up significantly. I think this is a nationwide trend. The cop’s explanation seems intuitively correct here (in the suburbs pedestrians are rare and cars habitually fail to yield to them) and a driver distracted by the phone is more apt to forget to look ahead after checking that automobile traffic is clear and starting a turn. But there’s a certain measure of rudeness involved, i.e. just not wanting to yield the right of way even though it’s the law and someone else could be seriously hurt.
As to other accident rates, there are lots of reasons why they haven’t gone up including improvements in safety of cars and better road/traffic signal design. Not to mention that the rest of us have gotten used to the roadhogs and drive defensively.
This one is huge. And, what’s worse, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory spills out into real life now. People have gotten used to the anonymity of the Internet and think that that’s how people should be treated in real life and freak out when it causes social consequences.
It’s something I’ve been having to work against in myself now, after having spent more and more time online. Of course, my problem is worse as I spend too much time on “thick skinned” websites. I have a thin skin compared to them, but a thick one compare to nicer websites. Just like a guy who is well-liked online can do the same things and be an asshole in real life.
I think society is courser and ruder in general. It’s also willing to share information that wouldn’t be talked about in the 50s, so it’s both a good and bad trend. Society also seems willing to push the limit more, especially in television, and again that’s both a good thing and bad thing.
I live in Japan now, have off and on for 15 years or so, and social interaction is much more lubricated here. You can go to the store without having a personal encounter. The clerk’s wearing the clerk costume, like Sartre’s waiter pretending to be a waiter. You’re wearing your customer costume. You do your little sketch together. On the whole, it’s very relaxing. A customer or employee who was rude would be like one who laughed hysterically and jumped up and down–strangely immature and ignorant.
It has little to do, really, with genuine consideration or empathy for the partner in an encounter. For example, when I first came here, I had difficulty understanding formal language that a service person would use with a customer. They use an honorific passive a lot, so they said things that sounded like, “How would your excellency prefer to be eaten by a chicken?” And they would not --could not --drop it when I asked them too.
These patterns seem much more relaxed than they used to be, and older people complain about younger people’s manners just as younger people complain about older people’s rigidity. (Since venerability of the aged is a big, but lesser deal, some older people may feel they got the short end of both sticks.)
And the mentioned complementary relationship between individual politeness and group-group incivility is stronger here, or at least more candid (though as a perceived [non-Asian] guest, I get gently handled).
But for all that, there really is less friction here, and I came from a small city where people are generally friendly and tolerant. The changes toward informality I’ve seen over the past 25 years have only made Japan a more relaxed place for me to live. I think a native might have a very different perspective though.
I’m not sure about Chicago, but across the USA, no, pedestrian accident rates are not going up in any meaningful sense. Rates did tick up in the USA and 2010 and 2011, but that was after an all-time low in 2009, and rates are still far, far lower than they used to be.
Why that is is a matter of some debate, but the notion that people are more rude when they drive isn’t supported by any evidence yet presented. In fact, it seems… well, I think it’s absurd, quite frankly. What world were people living in 20, 30 or 40 years ago when people drove really carefully and respectfully?