I was just sitting at the mall taking a break from mall walking. A man walked over to me when I wasn’t even looking up. He said "I haven’t seen you here before. " I said I wasn’t really here to talk to people and got up and walked away. He said he would leave, he may even have said sorry. I said I was ready to leave anyway. In retrospect I think he may have just been slightly mentally challenged so I wish I had been a little softer, he did not turn out to be aggressive. Looking for suggestions on something still clear and firm but more polite? This scared me for some reason, I think how fast he walked up and sat down near me.
Editing to add a key detail, he sat down close to me which is probably what made me more nervous than I would have otherwise been. I appreciate all the thoughtful feedback I’ve gotten and interesting discussion.
Most people are told to be afraid because of TB/Twitter and internalize it. That makes them, partly, losers. The people that go out and make human connections usually know this, and do it to remind people that real life isn’t on the internet or in their heads. I do it too sometimes for fun, other times I’m like the rest of them.
or real life expereince with people like the OP have taught us it’s not worth it.
Frankly, I don’t want to interact with people who assume I’m mentally ill for being friendly to them. And where I live at least, that’s the way a lot of folks react to friendly conversation if you are like standing in line with them. they act like you’re trying to assault them.
Then they go on reddit and lament how body wants to be their friend… well because you reject anyone who tries to be friendly to you and you mischaracterize them in your mind as some terrible person.
and it’s very aged based. I have a dog. people over 50 have no problem petting and asking me about my dog. millennials and younger folks, are like visible anxious and paranoid about interacting with me and asking me to pet my dog. I am also a millennial, I do not understand any of it. But I’m not on social media and I barely use my smart phone for anything other than phone calls and email, so I understand I’m an outlier in the way I interact with people. People my own age think I am weird for not wanting to text, and think my preference for phone calls and face to face interact is ‘demanding’.
I suspect this might be cultural. In some parts of Switzerland (e.g. rural LU) you’re expected to greet strangers walking past you. Do that in Zurich and you might get the same kind of negative feedback. OTOH, OP’s case was more than a courteous “hello”…
Yes, it’s cultural. It’s also part of the ‘loneliness epidemic’ that is affecting most westernized countries. As a larger and larger cohort of the population becomes socially isolated, especially young adults.
And frankly, I’ve noticed a huge cultural shift in my own city the past 5 years. I used to have way more casual interactions, and now many of those same casual interactions are viewed with hostility and suspicion… just like OP’s reaction.
10 years ago if someone dropped something and you picked it up for them they’d thank you. Now they act get angry with you for trying to help them, and sometimes accuse you of theft or harassment. And that type of reaction basically teaches folks to just not bother, it’s a type of death spiral. Even personally, as the years go by and the hostility ratio goes up, it makes me increasingly want to socialize less in general. Even many of my closer friends from years ago have gone down this rabbit hole of hostility and suspicion, and I stopped interacting with them because it was so exhausting and miserable to be around someone who thinks the bartender is ‘looking at them funny’… no it’s you whose looking at the bartender funny… you idiot.
It is increasingly difficult to find folks who are receptive and open minded to strangers, which is the building block of any/all socialization. And what’s incredibly rare is folks who can just politely say no without demonizing the other person.
As someone who never really got along with strangers ever, I kind of feel like a bad survivor in a shitty apocalypse.
I socialise at festivals, then I forget the people and they forget me. Otherwise, it’s always been more bother than use.
Sad to hear you’ve lost something though…
Don’t assume of other people, and you’ll think less about thinking less of them. I get ignored most of the time, but that’s the game isn’t it. I secretly know you’re a human down there, even if you want to act like I’m not here. Let’s see just what I can get away with - sorta thing.
I don’t assume. I observe and I listen.
The problem with a lot of folks is that… they are massive massive hypocrites when it comes to this stuff.
And they catastrophize ordinary harmless interactions into these hyperbolic experiences in their head and make insane conclusions about absolute strangers who gave them no evidence to support their judgements. I also encounter it a lot when dating too. I meet strange women and they start lecturing me about myself… when they know absolutely nothing about me. But the weird fiction in their head they have already written so intense and real to them, that often they totally reject any real facts about me that don’t fit the story they have already made up. Especially the past few years I had so many expereinces where people tell me about myself, and I go ‘well that’s not true, I did x instead of y’ and they go ‘NO, YOU’RE LYING I KNOW YOU DID Y’. And weird shit like that.
I wonder if OP has legit dealt with mentally ill folks at all. I have. They don’t act polite and respect your boundaries, they get up in your face and scream and threaten you. And usually fixate on something bizarre. Last time it happened to me a few months ago it was a guy on the subway who started screaming at me about my boots being gay and how he wants to fuck me because they are so beautiful.
OP wrote mentally challenged, not mentally ill.
No, most women are afraid because 1 in every 4 of us have been raped. Women all know someone who has been raped, whether it’s themselves or the other women in their life.
We don’t need social media to tell us to be afraid. Men do a good enough job of making us scared already.
Okay so I assume TB isn’t tuberculosis here, but what did it stand for?
I suspect they meant FB, although Facebook feels like tb sometimes lol
Ahh I’m dumb I figured I just wasn’t aware of some other platform. I was going twitter… twitch… tiktok… where the fuck is a B lol