Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing | Hacker News Reader

Mister Rogers had a point – routinely greeting six neighbors maximizes wellbeing

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505 pointsRickJWagner319 comments

As a kid, I had extreme social anxiety. I had a hard time talking to people and making friends. I never felt like I “belonged.”

As an adult, I still have crippling social anxiety.

I can’t speak for everywhere, I’m pretty much only in the U.S., but I’ve noticed that most fellow adults I come across are chronically deprived of social interaction.

My social anxiety doesn’t actually matter. Me being awkward, and weird, and a little bit out there doesn’t actually matter. If you talk to people, ask them questions about themselves, laugh with them when they want to laugh, listen to them when they want to vent, rant with them when they want to rant, and feel pain with them when they’re vulnerable, a sweeping majority of the people I’ve met in the U.S. engage.

And the more you do it, the more you realize the world is actually full of amazing people. They’re all living their lives, making mistakes, getting things wrong, and making bad calls. But overwhelmingly they’re trying to figure life out and get through the best they can; and they want people with them on that journey.

I still have crippling social anxiety but my friend group is steadily growing and it feels good. I still play the fun game in my head of “haha did we all have a good time today or did I actually say something terrible and now everyone hates me or thinks I’m a fool?” on pretty much a daily basis. But I wouldn’t go back to being lonely. Not just for me, but for these amazing people who want more folks with them on their journey.

Rationally, I know what you've said to be the truth.

In reality, I cut my own hair because it stresses me out to go to a Greatclips.

In your defense, if you asked me where to get this most stressful haircut, I’d suggest Great Clips.

I used to have trouble going to get my hair cut after a barber clipped my ear with a blade.

Whenever I go to a new city what I do is, I read up a ton of reviews from multiple sources and find a few barbers I think ill like. Then I go for a quick trim to understand how comfortable I feel around them (this is the hardest part, I usually explain to them about my anxiety before I make a booking except for one instance everyone is really understanding usually), I have been lucky enough to find someone good after trying 2-3 barbers.

My current barber is an awesome older gentleman from Iran who migrated to the same city as I am, knows my exact haircut I want, so all I have to do is show up on time and get a great stress free haircut, and get to hear some really interesting story from him. lol if I go out of the city for a while, I wont mind looking like an escaped lunatic for a few days extra until I come back home.

I went for a haircut in the US once and I didn't know you were supposed to tip. I still remember the offended look on the barbers face when I held out my hand for my change. That was 20 years ago.

Now days I don't care as much and just do my own with the clippers and save myself $40. Can you believe a hair cut at the barber costs $40 now here in Australia. You know you are getting old when everything seems shockingly expensive.

> You know you are getting old when everything seems shockingly expensive.

Or conversely you have vivid memories of how quickly the AUD, or USD or any fiat currency really has been so immensely rapidly inflated in the last 20 years; hell just in the last 3 years its been from tolerable to eye watering to get a haircut. I like my barber, she is the head stylist-owner and I don't mind paying nearly $50 (with tip), but that is also because she does such a good job and we talk shop and what good restaurants still exist. It's also that I can trim it on my own for a month later to keep my sculpted hair style in a customer facing role for that cost.

I used to get a haircut twice a month when I was in HS, and they were $10, because it gave me a place where I could hang out on the weekend and chat for a few hours. I also realized I had developed a taste for aged and smoked whisky at 15 despite hating the smell of cigarettes in that place.

I have several size clippers with all the accessories and while I played around with the idea of doing my own hair, as I had during COVID, the truth is I'd rather pay a pro for something that I don't have to much to look good. Mine always were passable from about 7 feet away kind of things because I can't properly fade, mine always look like I'm 3 weeks from my last haircut as a result.

> you have vivid memories of how quickly the AUD, or USD or any fiat currency really has been so immensely rapidly inflated in the last 20 years; hell just in the last 3 years

I actually think the last 20 years have had remarkably little inflation in the grand scheme of things, compared to the last 100 years, at least in the UK.

I first got interested in this just under 20 years ago when my mum said that my grandma's first house cost exactly £100, and at the time the property market was towards the end of a massive boom (and then was stagnant for about the next 10 years). At the time, her £100 house would have been worth somewhere around £100k, which got me thinking to how crazy that it could have increased a thousand fold. Looking at UK historical inflation rates, it was interesting that from 1900 until the mid 1980s, inflation was pretty constant at around 7% per year, which has the interesting side effect that when compounded, prices approximately double every decade.

Obviously, my data points are skewed towards the UK, but I suspect the US and Europe at least experienced similar effects, because of the ease of international trade, so any imbalances would be rapidly exploited by the market until they equalised. However, one data point I have from the US, which is a bit fuzzy in my recollection so it might be slightly off, was from reading Grapes of Wrath set in the 1930s Great Depression. IIRC the daily salary for a long day picking cotton was around 20 cents, so maybe the specific inflection points in the US timeline were different, but it seems to have followed a similar long-term inflation pattern when considered over several decades.

Things got weird in the UK, as the mid-late 80s had some unprecedented high inflation rates (I remember my parents paying 12% interest on our house at the time), followed by very low inflation for about a decade (the UK government was targetting 2%), which led to a lot of surplus money around, easy borrowing for industry, and ultimately a massive rise in house prices in the early 2000s (and I was interested then because I was trying to buy my first home, and for example where I was looking house prices rose 50% in 2003 alone). Since then, we've had unprecedentedly low interest rates (nearly zero) leading to quite low inflation for a couple of decades.

What's interesting now though is that people are seeing "high" interest rates of 5% and panicking because younger buyers now have only ever experienced relatively low interest and inflation rates, but actually if you consider a longer time frame, the last 20 years with its sudden inflation spurt then prolonged price stagnation and now "high" inflation again, it's probably on average bringing us back to that average of 7% that we saw over a longer period.

Another thing that's really interesting is when and why inflation started happening, sometime around the 15th and 16th centuries, when people started speculatively investing in companies. Prior to that, prices of commodities and housing had been rather static for quite a few centuries.

There are lots of fascinating articles online about medieval prices, e.g. https://blog.datawrapper.de/medieval-prices-wages/

You’re good at what you practice and bad at what you don’t. If this bothers you then just go to the salon it until it stops being stressful.

What I learned is that it makes a huge difference to get a haircut from someone professional. Going to some cheap random mall hair place is a terrible experience. They don't care about their work, it's going to be awkward and it'll look terrible.

I have been going to a fancy hair place in recent years. AUD $85 seems like a lot of money for a mens haircut, but it makes all the difference. It's a proper craft. No "what haircut would you like?", instead it's pretty much at her discretion and suited to the actual person. Zero regrets.

Adding to this, I'd like to say that it's the difference between getting your code written by some outsourced underpaid and overworked junior and someone who has a decade of experience and clearly takes pride in their craftsmanship.

But Tonsorial Debt grows on its own even when the use-cases have been static for years. :P

Nah, you can definitely find great people that love their jobs even at places like that.

I used to cut at a Supercuts in PHL (the Rodin place one for those in the know) and there was this great lady there that was both very skillful and incredibly nice, we always had great conversations.

Agreed, I don't doubt that. But starting from a place of anxiety I'd say it is much more likely to come away with a bad experience from there. At least that has been my experience.

Counterpoint: I am much, much more comfortable at the cheapo place at the mall than at some fancy pants salon. Find what works for you.

Yep, I prefer a chain place where the staff are mildly disinterested, aren't trying to push conversation and just want to get the job done quickly.

> Find what works for you.

I wholeheartedly agree. In my mind it's fancy because it's expensive. It's not the high society designer fashion nose high kind of fancy. More boutique :)

My hair is thick, curly, and I tend to let it grow long. I've found that, more often than not:

- 90% of male barbers are butchers

- clippers are for butchers

- anyone who tries to cut your hair without washing it first is probably a butcher

I'm sorry you don't like your hair cuts, but clippers, like scissors, are just a tool.

IMO thick or curly hair is always best cut dry and washed after. The hair changes way too much when wet to get a realistic idea of what it will look like when done if you wash it first. If time and patience were infinite, sure, maybe, wash and treat curly hair first, but it has to then be fully dry and it has to dry slowly without blowdrying before cutting because it completely changes shape and size between wet and dry.

For short hair or for someone who wants it styled, I'd agree that curly hair should be dry when cut.

I'm not PP but I'm a dude with long, curly hair and I just want an even trim, so it's much better if my hair is wet.

(Also, shampoo is harder on curly hair than straight hair; "wash" curly hair with water every day and use some conditioner, and only use shampoo if it feels dirty. That may only be once week or two, maybe once a month if the hair is short. Yes, really.)

You ... can tell them what style you want? I even think long hair cuts are easier to do as they won't look asymmetrical as easily.

Have you checked out barbers in the Black parts of your town? African hair is very curly and though most men don't keep it long, it's common enough and many barbers know how to handle it.

If you're just looking for an even trim, then almost anyone should be able to do it. (And I usually clean my hair right before I go in.)

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only thing barbershop stylists know how to do is an undercut, a taper fade, or some variation of those two.

"I'd like layers. I don't want an undercut or fade. Here's a photo." "You got it." --> Undercut.

$85 does seem like a lot of money for a haircut. I used to use the Great Clips, $10 places before switching to a “proper” barber that was more like $30 (US). Was it better? Yes. But I’m still not sure if it’s worth the money. I have a lot of hair that grows quickly, so I probably would go for a haircut once every 3-4 weeks. At $30 a pop that’s around $400-500 a year on cutting my hair. I don’t care how nice of a job they do, it’s hard for me, personally, to not feel like I’m just setting cash on fire.

These days I do neither. When the pandemic hit and people were socially distancing, my wife tried giving me a haircut, which wasn’t great but also wasn’t terrible. So we bought a hair trimming kit, watched a few YouTube videos and after a couple attempts she got pretty good at cutting my hair. She is by no means a proper barber, but she also only has a single client, me, so she doesn’t need to become great at cutting hair, we are just fine if she gets good at cutting my hair. And she has. I think the results are at least as good as any barber (and more consistent), and we now aren’t spending half a thousand dollars a year on cutting my hair. Obviously that isn’t a situation that will work for everyone, but I definitely recommend exploring it for those it does.

It helps to get the same person too. It is unnerving having a different person each time cutting your hair, I'd rather have someone who's "done me before" than play with dice over it. A bad haircut is a nightmare

Hey I save dozens of dollars cutting my own hair each year! I'm no longer socially anxious but it's a habit I developed 15 years ago thanks to it!

Just go to an ethnic barber that doesn’t speak English lol

One way around social anxiety: think about how little you care about the person in front of you. If you heard that they died how long would you be thinking about it? That’s how much they care about what you do. Or don’t do.

You're assuming that anxiety can be mitigated by just logically convincing oneself that there's no need to be anxious. This might be the case for some people, but for many of us it's a fundamentally irrational condition; the issue isn't that I think something bad will happen if I talk to someone and make a mistake, it's that sometimes having to talk to someone _is_ the bad thing I don't want to happen. You've probably met people who are afraid of spiders, or snakes, or something of that nature, even the ones that don't pose a threat, and the issue is similar here;

But anxiety CAN be mitigated by logically convincing yourself that there's no need to be (as) anxious in the moment. That's the whole point of various forms of behavioural therapy: to teach you ways to arrest spiralling, maladaptive thoughts and lead them to a more functional landing.

- "modern" also ~optimize for social fluidity, you can do everything alone, in your flat, no need to be bothered by others right ? until you end up sad and addicted to fill the void (capitalism/consumerism makes money on this.. people need money so it's a downlevelling cycle)

- long ago, when i was crippled socially, i ended up at a birthday party, i didn't speak 95% of the time, drank some whiskey to pass the time. the next morning i was happier and healthier than i've been for a long time. somehow being surrounded, seeing others, even afar, satisfies something in your brain

people are weird, i am weird, it's .. weird we don't connect that much, or maybe our lifestyles cut us from a natural emerging habit of being together and we forgot how to bootstrap it back

One thing that helps is to consider how much you've gained by trying and failing to socialise versus not trying at all. My failures to fit in were far less impactful than my failures to try. So I try more.

I know that you can't rationalise your way out of irrational fears, but the thought still helps.

Just keep doing what you're doing. Like with everything, expose yourself to your fear and it'll get better.

> I still play the fun game in my head of “haha did we all have a good time today or did I actually say something terrible and now everyone hates me or thinks I’m a fool?”

Appearing as a fool, saying controversial things, getting rejected over and over again - that is how you get over social anxiety.

- Someone who had a great deal of social anxiety and now has no problem at all meeting random strangers at random events.

Exposing yourself to fear doesn’t work for everyone (though good to hear it worked for you!)

For some it activates the parasympathetic nervous system too much and you won’t have much luck easing the anxiety. Other means are available, often therapy or learning ways to cope with Parasympathetic activation. Usually focussed on calming the nervous system through various methods.

You need tools to help deal with the anxiety, but exposure therapy and CBT is pretty much the only thing that can help resolve anxiety long-term.

Avoiding anxiety producing situations usually just makes it worse.

> Appearing as a fool, saying controversial things, getting rejected over and over again - that is how you get over social anxiety.

This works well, only thing is sometimes you start having fun with it and then you're always saying the wrong things but not caring.

This is a good point. You might become a confident asshole who wants to compensate for all the suffering that you experienced because of social anxiety.

I'm not usually one for drugs, but the thing that helped me get out of extreme social anxiety (I had selective mutism into my 20s), was anti-anxiety meds (off-label Modafinil). I didn't take it for long, but being able to be in a social situation without that feeling of dread and anxiety was actually mind blowing.

It helped me recognize a state of mind where I didn't immediately go to massive anxiety. After that, with therapy and forcing myself to do more social interactions, I got into a much better place. I still have some anxiety, but it's largely manageable - and most people think I'm quite social now.

It's something you might want to consider talking to a doctor about. I don't think anyone should have to suffer from social anxiety if there is some option to help them get out of it.

Can you tell more about using modafinil for anti anxiety? I only heard about it in the context of wakefulness

I have modafinil for a different off-label use, but it has been helpful for some of my anxiety's symptoms. It's helpful for the brain fog and the paralyzing that comes with 'too many things to do = shut down and do NOTHING and PANIC' type of being overwhelmed.

Makes me REALLY irritable though.

There is off label usage for depression and anxiety.

No idea if it would help everyone but it certainly did for me in the short time I took it.

I didn't like taking it longer term - it made me very irritable. The only time I've ever yelled/got angry on the spot at someone was when on mod - and it surprised and scared me. It also gave me bad stomach cramps.

Magic mushrooms are another fantastic option if you're in a legal jurisdiction and medically able!

I found that listening is a lot easier than talking. Just plain listening and paying full attention to the person - that is, making eye contact, acknowledging when they say something, asking stuff based on what they are saying etc.

I find that easier to do than actually talking

L-theanine and/or magnesium can be a godsend for social anxiety.

Dale Carnegie approves.

Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor in Pittsburgh in 1999-2000, while I was at CMU. He would really go out of his way to have social interactions. He would always say hello and ask how you were doing in a way that felt like he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer. Case of the person in real life being exactly like what he seems like on TV.

This is one thing that always got me about the United States: people will ask you how you are doing, but they don't actually mean it, it's just a required pre-amble, a bit like the tones a modem uses to sync up with the other end.

If he did it in a way that he actually genuinely wanted to know the answer that alone would set him apart in a very distinctive way. Most people really don't want to know the answer, but they'll still ask the question.

This depends on the region of the United States and the context.

"How's it going?" can be either a throwaway acknowledgment, or it can be a light opener to a longer conversation.

I mean it's not generally accepted to say "I'm dying of cancer, you?" but it's a good jumping point for lighter conversation, which is healthier than not having the interaction at all.

Speaking for myself, the question is always fairly routine but sometimes people answer genuinely. In almost all those cases I really do care, but the register of the conversation usually only shifts after it’s apparent that the person is looking for more than a routine conversation

That reminds me of Tig Notaro's incredible stand-up set when she found out she had cancer:

"I have cancer, how are you?" "Is everyone having a good time? I have cancer."

It's a masterpiece, in my opinion. Tig finds an intensely awkward situation with an audience that showed up for comedy, and just presses on it relentlessly. I really hope that when it's my turn, I can handle it like her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXk1DSbXsZk

That's very powerful, in the beginning the audience is totally unable to calibrate their responses but it gets better over time. Props to her, her tone and delivery are absolutely perfect, aiming straight for the heart.

> I really hope that when it's my turn

I watched mother-in-law go through the expensive and painful burn/cut/poison and hospice with two morphine patches. On flight home I determined I was going to learn about it and find a different course than what was offered by the medical establishment. The book World Without Cancer helped start my journey. It's not just random bad luck, so take action.

Some cancers are treatable; some aren't. Delaying treatment for the first and giving false hope to the latter by advocating treatments that have _never_ been effective is actually harmful.

That book has nothing to do with improving actual human health.

Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CMZjXHhMR0 (first Canadian PSA)

Isn't it just how speech works? There are examples of this probably in any culture. It would actually be odd to respond to the question as asked instead of the expected ACK; you'd get something like this classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhEYXcCB1Qw

The problem is in the United States, most people don’t really know how they are doing.

I don’t know how I’m doing right now. If you asked me you wouldn’t get much of an answer. I might say I’m doing just fine to end the conversation.

But what is there to really say? We are simply going about this world trying to survive, trying to not get shot, trying to make so much money so that we never befall the fate of those who have been damned to a life of poverty. And all the time, a war wages for the control of our minds, and our privacy and free agency threatened at every opportunity. Big corporations and lobbyists want to hold us down, keep us in offices toiling away so princely investors can prop up their commercial real estate empires and ensure the working rich never get a chance to break free of their chains and embrace their own financial independence, because that would mean they become uncontrollable, a threat to those in power whose primary tool of coercion is money. The climate is falling apart and it makes little sense to have even one child, assuming you could even find a partner unsullied by the toxic dating culture that has been brewed by impossible standards hoisted upon us by social medias. I had to step over two homeless bums overdosing on the sidewalk this morning, victims of a drug epidemic that goes quietly unnoticed, swept under the rug as an inconvenient truth. It is clear the best days of this nation are far behind it. The future is perilously dark and uncertain.

How am I really doing? Don’t know. I don’t try to think about it.

I can't tell if this is serious or a joke.

I'd hate to have your so pessimistic and negative view of the world though.

I don't think most people are viewing things this way (i.e. makes little sense to have one child). Plenty of people are having children and families and enjoying life.

If this isn't a joke, it seems you might need some help as there's no way that's a normal way to feel, at least in my experience.

HN is not a place for jokes.

It's not a joke. I feel exactly the same way as grandparent. The more you learn about the world and its workings, the more unhappy you become. It's a hopeless feeling. Like civilization has already peaked before I was even born. I can see where the world's going and I don't like it but can't change it.

I'd say it's the people who don't feel this way who need help but on second thought I wouldn't wish these feelings on anyone.

Hang in there brother.

> The problem

there is no problem. It's a friendly greeting. Sorry your life is such a bummer.

Try saying, "Great, and you?" even if you don't mean it at all. You get back what you give out.

Edit: you can also say, "Shitty. It sucks to be me." That might even be honest, judging from the responses.

> Try saying, "Great, and you?" even if you don't mean it at all. You get back what you give out.

Yes, that is exactly the problem. It invites fake responses and real responses are not appreciated at all. It's just noise.

as I said: there is no problem. You prefer to live in a private hell, and there are lots of ways to signal that non-verbally.

> You prefer to live in a private hell

Sorry? Are you a mind reader or something?

a mind reader? no, it's fairly clear in your writing.

Forgive me if I think you're offensive. If it would please you to ignore my writings and refrain from commenting from now on that would help to reduce the discomfort.

Unbelievable.

If you don't want comments, you can always refrain from commenting yourself. It'll save you from "offensive" replies. Try it.

I think you got confused about who you were replying to.

I see one name all the way down, and it's not you.

Private hell or public hell, you’re still in hell.

> Try saying, "Great, and you?" even if you don't mean it at all.

Nothing I hate more than a liar.

Try going without lying for a week. I think there are even movies about that.

https://imdb.com/title/tt0119528/

> Was it good for you?

> I've had better.

In linguistics these are called "phatic expressions", and are far from unique to American English. Similar to idioms, phatic expressions don't have the literal meaning implied by their component words and instead serve a social purpose (in this case, serving to signify the beginning of a communication protocol). In British English the analogous phrase would be "you alright?"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=eGnH0KAXhCw

I find it curious/interesting on how you don't notice your own versions of these from just being immersed in the language. It's not until noticing these in other languages/dialects that I really paid attention. UK English's "Watcha" and "innit" (if that's even how they spell them) are some of my favorites

Interesting: so this is one of those things where my ESL background is shining through. I'm sure if I introspect on Dutch I'll find equivalents that I might be using myself which when literally translated to English would upset an English or American counterpart in the same way. Never thought of this. And I didn't know the term Phatic Expression.

Thank you for posting this and the video link.

“Graag gedaan” (“you’re welcome”, “my pleasure”, but more lit. “I did it with pleasure”) can be dropped quite casually, right?

Yes, but it actually does have meaning, and it is appreciated for that meaning rather than ignored.

Conversely:Americans probably think I'm rude because I don't first ask them how they are but start the actual conversation without pre-amble.

I would find it normal if you started a conversation after a simple “hi” or “hello”, and I think many other Americans would agree.

“How are you doing?” also has a meaning, and sometimes is used in “the deeper sense”, i.e. the literal one.

Graag gedaan is also something you say to be polite, not only when it really was your pleasure to do it, so it could qualify as a phatic expression - I don’t think anyone on the other side thinks “oh well, that person surely cares about me: it’s a pleasure doing something for me!”.

There is a perfect equivalent in ‘hoe is het?’ or ‘alles goed?’ Those are mostly used as a syn/ack-phrase so to speak.

I treat "how are you" as an opening for a quick update if there's something to say (e.g. "it was Billie's first day of school today"), or a chance to set up a deeper discussion later (e.g. "oh man, long story, let's catch up later").

Do you shake hands? No one in my life shakes hands anymore. "Hi, how are you," is no more rational, but at least it's more hygienic. As polite social conventions go, I'd call it pretty harmless. Sort of miss the handshakes though.

Edit: FWIW, I often ask people how they are, and while I hope and am delighted to hear how people are, you're right, objectively, I think it's really more just sort of a default template that invites any kind of response vaguely correlating with one's status. But, "Hi, I invite you to tell me anything on your mind that might correlate with how you or the world are, or anything else; I'm just being social," is a bit clumsy.

I still handshake new people that I meet who I know I may meet again. Neighbours, tradesmen, new coworkers etc. It's a sign of respect and openness where i'm from.

COVID was really weird because I knew that on meeting someone I would, and I knew they would normally shake as a greeting, but instead we would stand around hands awkwardly at our sides.

As an American, I view it as an option to start a light conversation. You can decline the option with a simple "Good, thanks", or you can genuinely answer with a light comment and see if the other person reciprocates. Answering with a particularly serious topic will likely catch the other person off guard, so people avoid that, but to say Americans don't actually mean it when they ask how are you misses some of the nuance of the situation.

There are important contextual and regional difference that apply too. You're more likely to get a genuine reply in a place like the rural Midwest than you are in NYC. You also are more likely to get a genuine reply from a person relaxing at a bar than the cashier at a fast food drive through window. There are many people who will take the question as an invitation to talk if the situation is right.

>people will ask you how you are doing, but they don't actually mean it,

it is common to hear a reply as "oh, you know" an an equally un-engaged response. i remember the first time an uncle responed "well, no, I don't. that's why I asked." i had never realized how i had become desensitized to the question that i gave an equally meaningless response. so now, if it's a stranger, it's just a simple "doing good" or "just fine" followed by a "thanks". if it's someone i am familiar with like family or friend, but not coworkers, then i might stop to provide a more truthful response

it's a good culture tbh, gives you a chance to avoid the interaction if you don't feel like it, or get into it if you want to have a chat.

- How are you doing? - How are you doing?

- How are you doing? - Well, you know, yesterday..

both are equally socially acceptable

The entire world probably has the equivalent of "how are you" in every which language available. Not sure where you're going with this "take" on American culture.

Some cultures ask “have you eaten?” and I like that. A lot.

Yes, I've heard 'have you had rice today?' and that gave me a similar feeling. It inquires about health, hunger, affluence and is an open invitation to share some food all at once.

I think it's less that people don't actually want to know than it is that people don't actually want to share. But I'm from the Midwest, originally, and that's just kind of how we are.

Expanding on this just a little bit... I think that, in the Midwest but I'm sure in many other distinct American cultural regions, there's a sort of shared, but subdued, understanding that each of us is uniquely going through some shit. We answer the way we do because we don't want to trouble others with said shit.

https://twitter.com/midwestern_ope/status/122834785331730022...

My default response is, "Oh, you know." I never know if I mean it as a statement or a question. Send help.

My English lessons from when I was a kid 30+ years ago spring to mind too: "how do you do?"

Still, other languages do that too: que tal (Spanish), šta ima (Serbian), wie gehts (German),...

FWIW, I'm American but well-traveled/encultured, and I work a lot with people in other parts of the world. I ask this question, and I use it as an opportunity for the other person to set the tone of the conversation. I actually find it pretty refreshing when I get a blunt and meaningful answer in response, it's one reason I love working with Dutch and German engineers, because they will give a real answer and not be so concerned as to how it may be perceived.

I think it's exactly a bit like a modem preamble, but it's an opportunity to create a conversation and give both people in the conversation a chance to set the tone. It can really be used to genuinely find out the answer to the question, but a lot of people don't want to share their personal challenges with strangers, coworkers, or even acquaintances. You may not enough know exactly what level of intimacy is included in your relationship with another person or whether you are at the point to move to that next level, this simple question gives them the opportunity to either dive into something that's very personal or to keep it light-hearted and move along.

It's not a throwaway, it's a respectful way to start a conversation that gives the other person agency in setting the tone.

The first time I experienced it, I was dumbfounded when someone asked "How are you?" and then just kept walking past. It took me a while to accept certain questions like this have become greetings and often aren't actually intended as questions.

> This is one thing that always got me about the United States: people will ask you how you are doing, but they don't actually mean it

Yes, we use it like "hello" -- but not always. Sometimes we mean it.

Since this use of "How are you?" trips up people from other nations so much, I've tried to be more aware of this. My compromise is that when I mean it as a greeting rather than a query, I'll say "Howzitgoing" like a single word. If I mean it as a query, I'll look the person in the eye and ask "How are you doing?"

Fun fact: I recently learned that in Fiji they ask "where are you going?" instead of "how are you doing?". They have a "how are you doing" greeting as well, but passing someone in the street you would say "where are you going?" to which there can be both generic and specific responses. I'm not sure if they're any more or less interested in the response but I just found it interesting.

It’s really person dependent. I really mean it, and a lot of folks do. Additionally if you said “not good,” most people will be caught off guard but pivot into sympathy and asking what’s wrong etc. It’s a perfectly acceptable answer. A key thing though is to make sure it’s appropriate to the moment. If my boss asks me how I’m doing I’ll tell them if it’s not good in some way related to work or my performance (I.e., “not good, I can’t get this to compile” or “not good, my mom died I need to take time off,” or even, “not good, I didn’t sleep well last night.”) for friends the “not good” can be deeper, and for family it’s pretty open. For strangers, I still might say “not good” if something particularly acute is happening (“not good, my mom just died,” “not good, I just got out of the hospital this morning.”) I’ve never had someone get uppity about a “not good” response, and have always had an appropriate pivot to sympathy and a refocus on the question.

As such, I’ve always found it odd people narrow in on the “how are you” question being perfunctory and people don’t genuinely care. They routinely ask it and generally expect “good thanks” but react appropriately to other answers.

Off topic: this comment subthread is collapsed by default on page load. I haven't seen this before, is it a new type of mod action?

Candid camera set out to test this theory, and found that underneath the softhearted exterior was… exactly what it seemed.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vV-eVYahckA

http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/misc/candid_camera/index....

Mister Rogers was a genuinely wonderful person, who I always strived to emulate (and always failed to do as well as I should).

The world is much poorer without him.

But people are still talking about him and trying because of him. He’s left a rich legacy behind. Being kind is mostly free.

Indeed, the world is much richer because he existed.

Me too! I lived in Squirrel Hill and would see him doing things like going into the stationary store with one of his grandchildren to buy a card. Seeing him around was always magical.

We live in a mid sized city in the midwest, typical city block with single family homes. Folks keep to themselves a bit - not everyone, but enough that you have to make an effort to connect with neighbors.

My son and I had the idea that we should just organize a block party. I think this was in early 2021 after covid was letting up a bit. He was 7 years old and said we should get a food truck to come.

So that's what we did. Made homemade invitations and handed them out to a couple blocks around us and sent out emails to friends.

I think we had like 75 people show up to the first one! It was great. Had a taco truck come, and the local fire station rolled the engine by for the kids.

Blocked off the street so everyone could sit together and the kids could run around without worrying about traffic.

We've been trying to do this every 6 months or so since then. Great way to meet tons of folks in the immediate vicinity and strike up some new friendships - highly recommend it.

That is such a great idea. Nice work! Spread the word!

I live on a block that’s somewhat bookended by a railway line in London. People organise similar things and it’s so lovely. Even organised a group of people to go and sing happy birthday on one of our neighbour’s doorsteps (they’re > 100).

Sometimes the creativity and passion of a child can just completely shake up the doldrums of being an adult! Thanks for sharing this.

Let's not forget to praise the adult here for seeing possibilities, instead of impossibilities, either! Plenty of parents would find plenty of reasons why such a thing would be impossible.

In our last house we knew 90% of the people on our street and regularly interacted with them. We have been in our new house for just over 2 years and only know our neighbors on one side of our house. The neighbor in the other house moved in just a week after we did. In those 2 years we have seen him only once, they day he moved in when he pulled up in his car, got out (without looking our way), opened the garage door, drove in, and closed the door. We literally have not seen him a single time since. The only way we know anyone still lives there is the garbage cans going out and coming back in each week (though, nobody has ever seen him putting out or retrieving his cans). Anyway, it’s hard to get to know a neighbor who doesn’t seem to exist.

In our previous house, we lived about halfway down a dead end street, so anyone from one end walking by would come past our house. Also, there was a neighborhood garden which brought people together. In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors.

The global pandemic may be affecting their behavior.

My street was full of older folks that we got to know over the years. Some moved to assisted living, some are getting there, and some passed away from unexpected diagnoses.

We have new Gen Z neighbours for the last two years who seem to exist in their bubble, shutting out the immediate world and interacting only with their social circle. Barely an acknowledgement even if we’re out in the yard, shovelling snow or cutting grass.

I don’t expect much, but maybe small talk once every couple of months to get a sense they’re alright, and not gone off the deep end and bottling their urine in mason jars.

At some point, you start to fill in the blanks by noticing little things like what’s on TV through the window (hockey 24/7) when you drive by, who does the yard work (she does) or the decorations they put up on the outside.

I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online.

It’s also possible that we seem intimidating or unsocial — but our interactions with other neighbours don’t seem to give this vibe.

> I am wondering if this is some generational divide at play where some slice of the population had been conditioned that the only valid interactions are those that happen online.

I think it's likely some of that is at play, yeah. A less confrontational way to phrase this could be: perhaps people who were raised with the Internet feel they find sufficient socialization through talking with their friends online, and don't go looking for it elsewhere.

In any case, I wouldn't read too much into it, or take it personally. I'm 35 and have lived in my house for 10 years and have only really met three of my neighbors beyond "hi". If we were neighbors, maybe you would think I think you're intimidating or unsocial, but that's not the case, I'm just shy and have a hard time being around new people. Talking with strangers is a major event for me, and I'm usually not up to the task without a lot of mental prep work. I wish I was more social, but well, I've tried, and I'm just not comfortable with it. It is what it is.

I agree.

I'm not quite so shy, but on that same side of the spectrum for sure. The deal with me these days is that I've got a couple kids; one thing that comes along with that is quite a bit of social interaction with people you're not 100 percent at ease with. So, that energy - the same type id use to do some small talking with the neighbors - is almost always on E for me.

I definitely see a pattern regarding younger folks.

I got some Gen-Z co-workers, and most of them immigrated here alone. A lot of them don't interact much with other co-workers, don't join parties, activities or happy hours, don't speak the language of the country, and report spending all weekend alone at their single-room apartments.

I also ask them to not work overtime but they just mute Slack and continue working after 6pm and lie on their monthly timesheets (yep we got those now because of this). They haven't learned how to change git timestamps yet, though.

Most will go back to their country sometime after claiming they couldn't adapt to the "cold culture" here. At least that's what happened for the last few years.

I wonder about this, and not in the sense that this person is being extra cautious still. In my case, I moved into my house a few months before the pandemic struck. When I moved in, the couple across the street came by to introduce themselves when I was moving in. We had a short friendly chat and exchanged numbers.

Once the pandemic hit, everyone sort of disappeared, and I hadn't even talked to the neighbors on one side of the house. During that period, I got more introverted and sort of started avoiding social interactions with people, and not because of a fear of catching COVID. I just became more withdrawn since I wasn't socializing in general.

Anyway, after it got safer and more people were getting out, I now felt awkward seeing the people who introduced themselves on that first day since so much time has elapsed without conversation. (That's on me and my social anxiety, though.) I think it'll require me getting over my introversion to chat with them now.

On the other hand, I have been over to a neighbor on one side of my house a couple of times, but that was them going out of their way to include me.

I think what I'm saying is the pandemic created this weird empty period where people who had just moved in to neighborhoods didn't necessarily build connections with their neighbors and now it'll take some effort to bridge those gaps. On top of that, I think there was some social practice that many of us were out of, which made it even more difficult to just chat up strangers, but I feel like for me this is finally starting to go away.

I also have an experience where the design of the neighborhood heavily affects interaction with my neighbours. I live in a street whose entrance is too narrow for cars. Except for the occasional motorcycle, the soundscape makes it possible to chat every time I exit my house and there’s no barrier between the houses affecting visibility. Hanging out in front of the house is enjoyable because the backyards are tiny. We have a great relationship with all our neighbours and they form a sort of extended family. In the beginning, one thing that surprised me was the social dynamics reminding me of school, but it still beats anonymity. There are great demonstrations of support with the elders, the parents, or the alcoholics of the street when they can’t open their door at night. We are quite different from each other but physical proximity overcomes it.

Did you move into an affluent & predominantly white neighborhood? I will probably get shit for this, but this has been the norm in those from my experience.

After I got into tech I lived in a couple of them for five years then just gave up and moved back to the underdeveloped part of the city I grew up in, where people are willing to acknowledge each other.

here’s your counter-point. now the sample size is two.

lived in a diverse, affluent, tech/corpo neighborhood, most neighbors ignored or were passive aggressive - the kind where you know you aren’t being ignored because the behavior is too egregious to not be aware of the impact. you aren’t being ignored, you aren’t worth ignoring.

lived in an older, affluent neighborhood. four neighbors that would likely be described as caucasian regardless of their names or backgrounds were nothing but kind, offering to help the first time we interacted.

lived in an older, rural, poor neighborhood. most folks would stop and talk if you were outside, see how stuff is going. place was shit. some of the folks were gold.

the issue isn’t the skin color, the wallet fullness, the religion, or the race. you can look any which way and be an asshole on the inside. you can have a lot or a lot of nothing, and be an asshole.

affluence just let’s the asshole shine through a bit more. after all, the asshole deserves a lot, and the money is proof.

larger cities develop these little bubbles of halfluence - starter mcmansions for the white collar “elite,” close to their cubicle farms or at least a fat internet pipe and a starbucks within uber. the environment is shit - these aren’t actually elites - so the individuals tend to act up in their burbclaves.

established vs gentrified might be a better distinction. established doesn’t always mean affluent, but it does have a different sort of wealth.

Yes I was using those as lazy shorthands to avoid litigating the exact definitions or having to account for all of the nuance elided by them. They're affiliations and trends, not geo-destiny. Historical immigrant enclaves specifically tend to be really interesting counterexamples, one way or another.

Being Established not meaning specifically wealth, I like that

> established vs gentrified might be a better distinction. established doesn’t always mean affluent, but it does have a different sort of wealth.

long term residents vs. new blood. different motivations and world view, and playing different games.

i'm in a well off 'burb next to a university, no one talks. lots of community leagues, posters about clubs, etc. but none of the neighbors interact. lots of renters, med students, et al, and they'll be gone in 3 years.

previous neighborhood was a poorer downtown apartment neighborhood owned by old italian ladies. they didn't do management companies or automated rent transfers, they made a point to come around every month, both to collect, but also to check in. they genuinely cared about knowing people, and wanted us to talk to each other -- helped prevent things like break-ins and accidental fires, etc.

Not the person you responded to, but I'll bite. I live in an affluent nearly all-white suburban neighborhood. I know everyone within two houses in any direction, and a few that are even farther than that. We have one recluse and one Karen, but everyone else is super laid back. It's delightful.

I've lived in a range of neighborhoods over my life, and I haven't really seen a pattern. My gut instinct is that attitude is contagious, and friendly neighborhoods have (or had) someone who spreads the love. People reflect the way they are treated.

No shade but I'd like to hear from one of the non-white neighbors about how delightful it is? I do generally assume the white people living in all-white places are having a good time with it.

I'm non-white. My friendliest and kindest neighbor is white, an old timer who has been in the same house for over 50 years. His wife bakes cakes for us and they share produce from their vegetable patch. The only other neighbor who talks to me regularly is also white. He is also from an "older" generation with grown up kids who have moved away.

The rest of the neighbors are a younger and more diverse crowd who have moved here within the last decade. A few of them will wave hi occasionally. More commonly they will avoid eye contact.

IMO it is a generational thing and not racial.

I've never felt quite that comfortable that I'd ask. Our token black family is a pair of lawyers who seem plenty affluent and comfortable, and they certainly socialize with the rest of the neighborhood as much as anyone else. Are they consciously aware of their minority status? I imagine so. I feel the same way when I'm the only white person in a black neighborhood. It's a pretty laid back neighborhood, and I've seen zero indication that anyone here is racist.

But this is the PNW, and while our history is far from crystal clean, we mostly don't have anything like the tension that is normal in areas of the country farther south.

I'm a brown man living in an extremely wealthy, extremely white pocket of Portland Oregon (whitest city in the country) in my mixed race marriage

No one cares.

Racism exists but most white social activists way overemphasize the role it plays in my life.

White people, like all races, are extremely friendly. All Americans are really.

I'm not sure race or affluence has anything to do with it so much as how the place you're living is designed. There needs to be a reason for people to walk - like going to some shops, the train, nice parks, etc. When you have that then people see each other often and recognize each other and say hi and stop and chat for a few minutes. And some of those relationships grow as you find out you have certain shared interests (kids, hobbies, etc) and someone gets the courage to invite the others over for a BBQ with some others and it's nice. And it becomes contagious as people begin to blend and the next thing you know the entire block you live on, most everyone knows most everyone else.

But if you live in a place where there's nothing walkable and walking isn't even encouraged (no sidewalks, etc) then people don't really leave their back yards. Everyone is isolated. And to be sure this is what a good deal of people want. But if you want community and getting to know each other then you need to live in a place that encourages walking around.

I'm sure you're right but I've never lived in a suburb. Even in the dense urban neighborhoods of my experience there is a big difference. Car ownership & use may play a role though. The wealthier neighborhoods are more walkable & bikeable and closer to transit but still have more people with cars, more space taken up by garages.

I live in a predominantly white extremely rich neighborhood in Portland. We even have a private club that costs thousands to belong to ( one of these fancy social clubs... We do not belong to it).

Anyway... No this is not the norm. My neighborhood is extremely social and has constant get togethers.

I agree with the comments on 'half fluence'. I have some friends who've moved in to newer developments. Those neighborhoods are much less social. Ours is more established.

Why would you move away from such a nice situation?

"In our new house, there is no community gathering space and we leave in a culdesac at the end of a road. The result is we don’t get to know our neighbors. "

Some people like people ..

Yeah I had a similar experience at my last place. I actually attribute it at least in part to what kind of weather your area has. My last house was in a very temperate place, and I and my neighbors were very often outside where spontaneous conversation could manifest.

I’m currently in Phoenix, AZ, and given regular temperatures over 105* F, there just typically aren’t many people out and about, save for a few hours in the morning. And that’s usually before sun up.

I have noticed a general decline in my spirits not shooting the breeze with my neighbors from time to time.

Sounds blissful.

I'm a fairly introverted, reclusive person. Much like your one neighbour. I keep to myself.

I do know my neighbours. The couple on one side is delightful and the woman on the other side is a "Karen" who I prefer not associate with. She is an outdoor person and only "talks" to me when she has a problem with how I keep my yard. Ironically I would probably use my yard more (and thus tend to it more) if she were not always outside in her yard being loud.

We have alley parking and garages in the rear, and I have workshop in my garage so I met a lot of my neighbours on the other side of the alley when working on projects... they came and introduced themselves and asked me what I was working on. They are delightful, but they also interrupted me which is annoying.

My wife and I are easy to get along with and go out of our way to be friendly, but would honestly rather not know that our neighbours exist. Car doors, the sound of people talking, dogs barking, kids being loud, lack of privacy in our back yard are all things that really bother us. On the flip-side, when the tree in our front yard shed a branch so large that it was practically a small tree, the delightful couple next door helped us clean it up. I felt a sense of community that day and I started to get what others find enjoyable about it. Still, we often talk of going "going rural" and not having neighbours at all.

I think you'll find that community matters even more in rural towns.

We are social animals. We can't do it all alone. That modern society has enabled us to be 'reclusive' is frankly a maladaptive outcome.

Hell is other people. Since we're apparently doing borderline thought-terminating cliches.

HN is a social community too. So are other online forums, discord chat groups, mailing lists, gaming communities, open source communities, etc. People are driven to social interaction, whether virtual or in-person. I don't know what is the big deal in acknowledging that.

That may be technically true, but is really just an implementation detail. If HN quietly replaced all the accounts with suitably capable LLM bots, it wouldn't make any difference. What this type of service really has on offer is solitary activity: Writing for one's own enjoyment, differing from a private journal only in that the software here provides some colour back to spark additional thoughts in order avoid writer's block.

I'm not sure the same is true in 'real' communities.

"It wouldn't make a difference" - To whom? And how do you know? Even if a bot passes the Turing test, a community where there isn't any creativity or new information will die out. LLM is not the be all and end all of the human experience.

To take it further. even if we were all in the matrix, the statement "it wouldn't make a difference" is not true - philosophically speaking.

Also, humans have a circular reference with society at-large. Humans shape society, and society shapes humans. So something completely different might shape future societies, but I'd rather discuss the situation as it exists today, rather than an imagined future.

There have always been hermits even before modern times, but I agree it's a high risk life strategy.

Loners are probably much more likely to die of say, having a heart attack and not receiving help promptly.

"Loners are probably much more likely to die of say, having a heart attack and not receiving help promptly."

On the other hand, loners won't get a heart attack caused by other people ..

"People who experienced social isolation had a 32% higher risk of dying early from any cause compared with those who weren't socially isolated."

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/19/health/loneliness-social-...

Oh for sure.

I guess except for rare exceptions, allmost no one really wants to be alone by default. But I know that I am rather alone, than in bad company.. and I met quite some people, who lived in misery, because they were too scared of being on their own for some time.

I always wonder about those statistics, I could imagine an extrovert is going to have a much tougher time being alone than an introvert. To apply it across the whole population seems dubious.

Falls are a fairly common cause of death. If you are elderly and fall and no one is around to help, that is in many cases a death sentence. Consider also the parent's comment about heart attacks, which you seem to have glossed over. Seems this factor alone can explain the data.

Why would an introvert be more likely to have a heart attack from being alone? People stress me out so much. I imagine less stress would lead to fewer heart attacks.

Seriously? I'm going to copy the parent's comment in full:

> "Loners are probably much more likely to die of say, having a heart attack and not receiving help promptly." On the other hand, loners won't get a heart attack caused by other people ..

You die anyway at some point. Not sure what this obsession about maximizing lifetime is about. I rather live like I prefer to and when I die I won't care anymore anyway.

Those people may be perfectly happy with such an outcome though?

Of any cause? What about COVID, or leukemia?

No we aren’t social animals, certainly not in rural areas. Give me a good book and a quiet afternoon in the shade of a tree with no neighbours any day.

You maybe not. But having lived in very rural areas you quickly realize that your neighbors are your safety net far more than the authorities and that in a pinch you all need to be able to rely on each other. A good book isn't going to get your car out of a ditch or help locate your kid or pet when it has gone missing.

You may be, I may be not. That doesn’t lead to any conclusion than “some people like other people”

I’ve never need to rely on anyone, other than of course normal economic transactions.

Why would I park my car in a ditch?

> I’ve never need to rely on anyone, other than of course normal economic transactions.

That's funny. You are relying on thousands of other people every day, all day long. you just don't realize it. And not all of those are economic transactions there is plenty of goodwill involved. For instance, you rely on other people not to kill you when you are driving. Every time a stranger saves your bacon when you make a mistake, for instance. They don't have to! But if that's your worldview I don't think I'll be able to change it.

> Why would I park my car in a ditch?

I don't think anybody who ever parked their car in a ditch asked that question prior to it happening and afterwards they probably still didn't know. But in areas where there is snow it isn't rare at all to have vehicles do stuff that wasn't quite in the plan. My neighbor in Canada managed to do this with a tractor. Fortunately for him I had a bigger tractor and was able to pull his out of the ditch. And when it was my turn someone kindly brought over an excavator...

Society is a fabric, and no man is an island, not even you. You may have the illusion that you are but from the cradle to the grave you are 100% dependent on other people. Unless you live in the boonies and grow your own food and hunt, but if that were the case you wouldn't be writing here. Speaking of which: right now you rely on me to converse with you.

Those are normal expectation of living in society. Talking you your neighbour is not.

I’m sure it was decades ago in the curtain twitching world where people stayed living int he same street for decades, but not today in a highly movable world. Certainly not for me any my peers. any interactions I make are slot my own choosing, that I happen to live near someone is of no consequence.

If I did park my car in a ditch there a plethora of recovery services that will retrieve it, whether I’m a mile from home of 200 miles from home. I have no need or desire to know anything about the recovery driver, or the pilot who flew the plane I was last on, or the guy who delivers my mail, nor the plumber who replaced my boiler last year.

> Those are normal expectation of living in society. Talking you your neighbour is not.

Errm.. yes, that's perfectly normal.

> Those are normal expectation of living in society. Talking you your neighbour is not.

Given how our language has a word, "neighborly", to describe friendly, helpful behavior, I think the burden is on you here for explaining why talking to your neighbor isn't a thing one can normally expect. I don't think you've done that yet.

> I’m sure it was decades ago in the curtain twitching world where people stayed living int he same street for decades, but not today in a highly movable world. Certainly not for me any my peers.

How old are you? I'm in my mid 30s and this describes none of my peers, including the younger ones in their late 20s. I can imagine younger folks wanting this. I certainly remember having friends who talked about wanting to move around to different cities/countries all the time in college and shortly after, but their priorities shifted over time. I have friends who love to travel, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't love either a house or an apartment they didn't have to worry about losing each year due to the landlord jacking up the rent or the building being sold to someone who wants to convert the building to condos.

> any interactions I make are slot my own choosing, that I happen to live near someone is of no consequence.

I'm not sure what this means. I can't imagine it's literally true as you can't really control if someone else approaches you, unless you just flatly refuse to acknowledge their presence.

> If I did park my car in a ditch there a plethora of recovery services that will retrieve it, whether I’m a mile from home of 200 miles from home.

I've had to wait a long time on a tow truck before when the weather was pleasant. When there's a snowstorm emergency services get slammed and delays increase. My neighbor has a truck and a snow plow, and I wouldn't hesitate to ask him if he could help unstick my car if it sank into the mud a bit. Also, he plows my driveway when the snow is heavy. We do neighborly things for them as well, like helping out when a tree falls in their yard.

I don't have kids yet, but from our experiences helping our neighbors out and having grown up with neighbors we knew well, they're invaluable for raising kids. "It takes a village to raise a child" is quite real!

I'm not sure if age has much to do with people's feelings on the importance of "neighborliness", but since you think it matters - I am in my 40s.

I live happily alone. I have never owned a house and I have no desire to ever own one. I don't greet my neighbors and never have. And yet, somehow, I am still able to function in society. In my current place, I have spoken to my neighbors once or twice, when a problem was affecting the building, or the floor, or just our section of the floor. We communicated well enough to contact the landlord and decide who would stay home when the workman came. We have collaborated to solve shared problems, as any human in society does. I don't know their names or anything about their private lives, though. It's not relevant. They're not my friends, they are just part of my community.

From my perspective the idea that only friends are capable of helping one another out is a really pessimistic view of the world that - when applied broadly - results in corruption and injustice. I place a greater importance on civil society then on friendship, and I am grateful to live amongst neighbors who apparently feel the same.

> I'm not sure if age has much to do with people's feelings on the importance of "neighborliness", but since you think it matters - I am in my 40s.

I think someone's experience of major life events probably plays into this. I don't think it fully determines someone's position obviously, but I'd be pretty surprised if it didn't correlate somewhat. There are always going to be outliers though.

> I don't greet my neighbors and never have. And yet, somehow, I am still able to function in society.

I don't doubt that's true, and I didn't say you couldn't function in society either. When I lived in apartments I didn't say hi to my neighbors much either, as in that case the landlord fulfills a lot of the same type of role, and neighbors come and go much faster.

> From my perspective the idea that only friends are capable of helping one another out is a really pessimistic view of the world that - when applied broadly - results in corruption and injustice.

I agree. That would indeed be a very pessimistic view of the world. For what it's worth I don't think I said anything of the sort. I do think people are more likely to help out people they know and like though. I don't know if that's good or not, but I think it's true. Regardless, I don't know how you'd reach out to someone you didn't have contact info for, and knowing someone's routine surely helps as well.

>decades ago in the curtain twitching world where people stayed living int he same street for decades, but not today in a highly movable world

You're simply wrong - decades ago people moved much more than they do now.

https://www.businessinsider.com/americans-are-moving-less-so...

>In 2021, 8.4% of Americans lived in a different residence than they did a year ago, per the Census Bureau's annual Current Population survey. This was not only a decline from 9.8% in 2019 and 9.3% in 2020, but the lowest "mover rate" since at least 1948 — the earliest data period measured. Back then, the mover rate was roughly 20%, and it's been on a steady decline since the 1980's.

> in very rural areas you quickly realize that your neighbors are your safety net far more than the authorities

Unless you are non-white, an immigrant, LGBTQ, neurodivergent, etc...

It's a bit odd to make such a blanket statement for people living in rural areas all over the world. These are "my peeps" and we're not any of those things.

It's not about you or "your peeps" but rather about the repressive laws (and predominant culture which gives rise to such laws) in these places.

I was specifically talking about rural areas in the US, since HN is predominantly a US-centric website, but my argument applies to other countries as well.

I've lived in rural areas and while there was some messed up stuff, your blanket statement wasn't entirely my experience.

I would suggest that, while you might find less cosmopolitan people in rural areas, they're also more willing to overlook aspects of you that they dislike. You can't really afford to be too picky about your friendships when there's not much to choose from.

>You can't really afford to be too picky about your friendships when there's not much to choose from.

Only someone extremely privileged could twist the desire for basic safety as being "picky"

No we aren’t social animals

And yet, here you are...

Here's a great book recommendation for you - "The Little Book of Lykke: Secrets of the World's Happiest People" by Meik Wiking

The fuck you doing posting your opinions on social media then?

The flip side of this is that -if you’re rather unlucky- being so codependent on the community can get ugly, quite fast; especially in such a remote environment. All it takes is one crazy neighbor to start turn the village against you for no particularly compelling reason.

Are you sure we can't?

I'm pretty sure there are people who live alone like up in the mountains or out in the wilderness alone and do just fine.

If you lower your standards, sure. "Just fine" is survivable, but unless one derives enjoyment out of solitude and playing "is it wet or is it cold" all the time, I don't think you'll win many people over to such viewpoints.

(I've done solo trips and hiked the AT; it's a great experience, but definitely not for everyone.)

Living in the wilderness doesn't mean living in squalor. Off-grid houses can be downright luxurious compared to the typical suburban tract McMansion.

Ah well, that is possible too. I feel that if the housing crisis is bad now, sparse off-grid housing sounds like a far worse way to solve it. And that's besides the wilderness-ruining prospects it has unless one is to build without heavy machinery (access also sounds expensive in environmental and financial costs). And with wildfires becoming more prevalent…location becomes way more important.

So again, not a solution for many in my mind (even if they want it).

Try living in a block of flats. The fact that even though you have hundreds of people living super close to you an yet you have benefits of complete anonimity is a pure bliss.

I'm one of those neighbors who doesn't seem to exist. I don't dislike my neighbors and would like to interact with them more often, unfortunately I don't often have time for it.

I wonder if perhaps the neighbor might feel the same about you?

Spooky. If not for the garbage cans you'd wonder if he was even alive.

“What’s He Building?”

— <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04qPdGNA_KM>

I feel like I read this comment on another thread a while ago. Did I?

One thing my wife and I noticed during COVID (I live in suburban NJ):

6pm-6:30pm seems to be a prime time for people in general and families specifically to go for a walk. If you are outside with kids playing on the front lawn, this leads to a lot of organic conversation since no one is in a rush.

If you happen to be preparing and eating dinner inside during this time (like we used to), you can miss out on a lot of opportunities to get to know your neighbors (assuming they are friendly).

It’s funny, I’ve always known my neighbors and talk to everyone on the block, but then I realized that most of them don’t talk to each other. Strange way to live because we are increasingly living in a world where you’re going to need help sooner or later and who else can you seek help from in emergencies other than your neighbors?

We had a mom who had recently moved in, screaming in hysterics on the block one day because she thought her toddler ran away when she stepped out for a moment to throw out trash. My neighbor (who also talks to everyone) and I came out, and along with the mailman and a couple of construction guys around the corner, immediately did a search on the neighborhood blocks. She eventually found him hiding in the house, and was relieved, but then just walked away without so much as a thank you to anyone. Such a strange way to live.

In the novel I’m currently reading, Popco (which I think the HN crowd would totally dig), there’s a section where there’s a seminar in network theory talking about the reason things like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, or any network of connected nodes, manage to have connections with so few hops is because there end up being superconnectors which are connected to a large number of other nodes. I realized I had that role in my circle of friends in my 20s after I moved away and then came back for a visit a few months later and discovered that few of them had seen each other in the intervening months. You likely play that role on your block. Remember, with great power comes great responsibility.

Yep, in the last place I lived we had a really kind and friendly neighbor who is also a handyman of sorts and helps people on the block with whatever random small problems they have in their houses. He knows everyone and regularly introduces people to each other. I'd be standing on the sidewalk talking with him and someone else would walk by. He'd say "oh have you met Such-and-such?" and call the person over. He single-handedly makes that block like an order of magnitude more neighborly and sociable than it otherwise would be.

Did you go over and knock on his door and offer him a tray of brownies or a potted plant or something? I just moved, and that's exactly what happened with us. Nonzero chance we'll be looking after our other neighbors' amazing Bernese within the next 6 months.

Congratulations. You live next to an Oompa Loompa factory.

Most of the year, I live in a midwestern suburb: 1/3rd of an acre lots as far as the eye can see. I go on a walk every day, but it's rare that I ever actually see a human being during said walk: Everyone is cooped up in their houses. In practice, in most of this suburban life, every bit of human interaction is planned. We drive to commerce, and there we are met by workers with constantly changing schedules, who have minimal connection to the businesses they work in. It's not impossible to make connections in this environment, but it takes actual effort. This makes work the main form of social interaction for many people around me.

Over the summer, however, I spend time in Spain. A town with a population under 200k, and yet far more dense than San Francisco. Streets are narrower, and most errands are less than 10 minutes away, on foot. The pharmacist, the baker, the workers at the restaurant, don't change very much. Since everyone walks, you really get to pass by every neighbor in the building every couple of weeks. The parks and playing ares with children are never close to empty, and people tend to have routines, so it's far easier to get to know people from random interactions. It's not uncommon to meet people you know, completely by accident, just because you walk the same streets. I might not stop at a certain coffee shop, but it has seating outside, and friends are be sitting there, and therefore I get a chance social encounter, even when I am not visiting the same business. There's benches in random streets, and people meet there, and chat on the street, so you don't even need a business as a "third place", when you have the street. Thus, getting six non-work social interactions a day becomes trivial.

Large parts of America have chosen forms of development that are naturally isolating: It's no surprise so many feel isolated!

Yes, that's exactly right. A town needs to be designed in a way that encourages walking. Shops to walk to, trains for commuting, a certain density, etc. Walking create so many opportunities to see people regularly without planning and to become comfortable with each other and it grows from there. Multiply that by everyone else doing it and you do get a real sense of community.

> Large parts of America have chosen forms of development that are naturally isolating: It's no surprise so many feel isolated!

Indeed - I have relatives that live in a place like this. Nice homes, etc but few trees, no sidewalks, and nowhere to walk. Why would you other than exercise? And a lot of people like it this way and that's fine. They want privacy and aren't interested in building relationships with people they live near. That's fine.

But if you want a sense of community then you need to live in a place that encourages walking by making it useful.

Designing cities for walking? Sounds like COMMUNISM!

I think it's because immigrants who came over from Europe wanted castles, not hovels. And that's what they got.

Well, there’s lots of land making land ownership very attainable.

During the 1930s and 1940s very little was built. And what was built was seldomly maintained. So after the war there were a lot of people living in old, outdated, cramped, and expensive apartments and tenements in cities.

Suddenly materials were plentiful and there was a lot of available land. The economics of it were such that you could get a car and a home outside the city for less than an apartment inside. And the living conditions were so much better. People still had their bigger families and community bond in their new neighborhoods.

But over time that was lost and we were left with the isolated towns that need a car to get anywhere and there’s no community connection as the new development doubled down on bigger houses, bigger lots, more cars.

I live in an old pre-war town. Most every home was built before 1930 and most around the turn of the century. Lots of walkable shops and a train runs through. There are many old towns like this and they’re wonderful. They also tend to be expensive nowadays.

Also, suburbs were planned and most were explicitly designed to continue segregation.

I grew up in the suburbs, and it was a noteworthy occurrence when someone saw someone they knew out and about at the store or something like that.

Now I live in the city and with so many more people around I see people I know so much more often. It really makes you understand how isolating the suburbs can become.

Great observation. The lack of density and weather unsuitable for walking is a big factor I’ve noticed as well

> As part of the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index, saying hello to more than 1 neighbor was shown to correlate with greater self-perception of well-being.

So this wasn't a study. As far as I can tell, the results can just as easily be summarized as "people who report higher well-being are more likely to greet neighbours."

This is probably just the article to blame, the quotes they pick use words like "correlation."

I find the five vs. six distinction rather interesting though. What's up with that?

> Averaged across five dimensions that included career, communal, physical, financial, and social well-being, the increase which greeting a neighbor had led to around a 2-point increase on a scale of 0-100 up until the sixth neighbor, at which point further greetings had no measured impact.

All finite sets of finite numbers have an average.

The value of the average is the result of the biases in data collection.

There is obviously a cap in the number of people you can practically greet in a day.

> I find the five vs. six distinction rather interesting though. What's up with that?

There's no reasonable mechanism in which greeting people causes well-being. So asking why it caps out at 6 makes no sense, unless you implicitly want to call out their bullshit. It's just another vague correlation in a overinterpreted study of noisy data.

> There's no reasonable mechanism in which greeting people causes well-being.

Socializing increases well-being, and greeting someone is socializing.

You're still making so many assumptions, all of which are unproven and causally unlinked. And how does socializing lead to social, community, career and physical well-being? Why would those peak at 6 but financial well-being at 11? In your hand-waiving explanation, it should keep rising. And even then, the effect wouldn't be caused by greeting, but by socializing. Greeting more people wouldn't help if you wouldn't socialize.

You're also excluding the reverse causality: you can only greet 6 people per day if e.g. you're healthy. On a sickbed, it's much harder to do.

The way it's stated in the headline is bollocks.

Socialization is causally linked to well-being. I assume you know enough about the subject that this isn't up for debate.

Per sociologist Cornelia Mayr, "Greeting is one of the basic functions of socialization and the first step in connecting to people at a more personal level."

Where's the assumptions there? I simply connected two established facts. Socialization increases well-being and greeting is socializing, therefore...

As you point out, there's a lot more nuance to it, but to claim there's "no reasonable mechanism" is absurd. Greeting someone is a type of socialization, and socialization increases well-being.

We got a small, older dog a couple years ago, mostly for my wife. She has health issues and can't walk the dog, so it fell on me. At first I was kind of resentful. The dog is ponderous and doesn't really take direction much, and I'm way too short on free time.

Well, I've lived in the neighborhood for ten years and only when I started walking the dog did I start meeting a bunch of people in the neighborhood. I still would like an extra 30 minutes of free time a day, but my life is a lot richer socially.

When I got a dog, it also fell on me to walk her. When we had a storm a while back, I realized that I only knew the dogs’ names and where they lived.

“Yeah, Fido’s house got tore up pretty bad”. Didn’t know the owner’s name :)

I was a dog park regular at a few parks over course of a few years, as were several others so I met and befriended a lot of people but never knew any names other than dog names. Although I recall exchanging and promptly forgetting a few peoples names

Similar line of thought, I never really met any neighbors but I know all of the right places to pee around the neighborhood.

Walking the dog is sort of the meat space version of having an article to discuss online. It facilitates having a thing to talk about, to politely bond over without being overly personal, an excuse for the interaction so you don't sound like a creepy stalker for talking to a stranger for no reason.

You're sort of forced into it too. The only thing more awkward than striking up conversation with a stranger is not striking up a conversation while your dogs are busy sniffing eachothers butts.

That was COVID for me. My front porch was and still is my office, and I got to know most of my neighbors and all of the gossip.

Smokers talk about having a similar social effect occur when chatting during a smoke break.

It's one of the reasons smoking is hard to quit for some, especially in highly populated areas.

Definitely.

I used to smoke.

It was the easiest way to merge into a group of people. Walk up, ask for a lighter. You are now part of the circle.

This was me with my youngest child, who had croup and I ended up walking her around the block quite frequently at night, especially in the colder months. We got to know so many people and so much about what was going on.

Our buildings, cities and economic life (work) are not organized to support social cohesion and the wellbeing that flows from that condition. Actually the main motto is "there is no such thing as society".

Digital online life has been a major opportunity to partially remedy the isolation induced by designs that maximize anything else (real estate value, GDP) than emotional balance.

Somewhat predictably though, the same driving forces created the same alienating mess. People are starved for social interaction and adopted digital tools en-masse, only to be exploited and reduced to data minable products.

There does not seem to be an exit from the trap we are in the short run. Material well-being has been prioritized above everything else and that is not compatible with social well-being.

We are left we somewhat sad "tips and tricks", like greeting six neighbors. Which obviously wont hurt but are so helplessly far from achieving something tangible.

While this survey is done with neighbors, I wonder how it is in general. In a number of countries complete strangers great each other. Like in The Netherlands, though the likelihood to be greeted depends on where you are, time of day, and age of the people who greet.

In a big city people generally don't greet strangers, unless they meet very early in the morning and the occurence of a chance greeting among early risers grows. When city dwellers enter the suburbs and esp. when going into nature, they start to greet. Smaller towns and villages see a lot of greeting in the circle that one can count as beyond neighbors.

The younger people get the less they seem to participate in this old habit. Maybe they 'learn' to greet at older age, or modern society and smartphones are killing the tradition. I sometimes wonder if in modern society we are shifting more and more to a stance of distrust of the people we don't know, and this affects the greeting culture too.

Overall this casual greeting, often accompanied with a warm smile and sometimes some small talk, feels uplifting and heartwarming. Good for wellbeing I would say.

This is all anecdotal and YMMV, but I encourage to engage in the practice and reap the rewards.

"greeting neighbors is also linked to career wellbeing, physical wellbeing, and financial wellbeing"

Correlation. Happy people are happy. That's not cynical: you can improve your happiness by working on all of those fronts.

My father in law lives in Yorkshire, where people regularly say hello to each other when out and about, particularly in the morning. We live in London, where this is highly unusual.

When visiting he came on our usual morning walk in the park, and said hello, good morning to someone. They were completely flabbergasted and could only muster a garbled reply through the shock.

Awh :')

A Yorkshire hello should be able to break anyone out of their shell though!

Northerner terrifies Londoners by saying "Hello"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4

Just to toss this out there: the reverse is also true. We get along well with all of our neighbors except one. We say "hi" and invite each other over regularly.

That one bad neighbor is a real problem, and a huge source of stress and unhappiness.

Big time. I have a neighbor about half a block from me that would harass me when I would walk my dogs by his house. Based on his behavior I assume he struggles with some mental issues.

The one positive is I avoid his house completely, so now my standard dog walking route is a block longer, so more exercise for me and the dogs.

We have one particular neighbor who would greet everyone and chat with them. He was always out walking his little dog. Very nice. Next thing you know, someone is freaked out, posting a Ring video of him violently knocking on their front door (that was it, nothing else). It was so strange seeing this unfold on camera. Nearly everyone has talked to this guy and thought he was very nice. The people who's door he was banging on didn't know/recognize him. I'm guessing he has some sort of mental health challenges--though he does own and maintain a nice home on our street. Since the incident he has not been out. I saw him in his yard and noticed he looked a bit agitated. Very sad. I think this country is in serious need of a mental health framework that can actually help people. As it stands now, if this behavior escalates at all he will be faced by the police. Zero help.

Those doorbells should be banned. Numerous times I’ve seen videos posted on local Facebook groups of completely innocuous situations that freaked out some paranoid curtain twitcher. Recently someone posted a video of a kid knocking her door: “Anyone know who this is? I think they’re up to something”.

This is a good point. There seems to be a lot of untreated mental illness nowadays. Or maybe we're just encountering it more because everything is filmed and sites like r/PublicFreakout exist. Or maybe the pandemic really screwed some people up. Who knows?

I had an Amazon package mistakenly delivered to my house. I recognized the address of one of my (unknown) neighbors a few doors down, and I had time, so I walked it down to their door.. Maybe I'll finally meet this unknown family. I knocked on their door, holding the package, and let me just explain something that's important: I'm a slightly overweight nerd that spends too much time in his office chair. I'm about as threatening looking as a Best Buy worker in his khakis. Well, through the window next to the front door, I saw one of the home's occupants (a young lady probably early 20s) just standing there looking at me through the window, apparently not knowing what to do. I knocked on the door again and gestured towards the Amazon box in my hand. Well the woman let out a shriek from the bowels of hell and damnation, like terrified. Picture Donald Sutherland in Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. I'm just standing there trying to hand a package to a neighbor and she is screaming over and over and over and looking at me like I'm a serial killer. I put the box down on the front porch and backed away. I heard the screaming long after I got down the driveway to the road.

I don't know what's wrong with people. Maybe this person has some kind of traumatic past and can't bear to even see other people. I don't know. This didn't seem like even remotely a thing 10 or 20 years ago.

In the past year three close neighbors who I was friendly with moved out and the couples that moved in have been so rude and shitty. It's been such a massive quality of life decline, and just feels like terrible luck.

Yeah, it's amazing how much difference this factor can make in quality of life, yet it's mostly left up to luck.

When moving and choosing a place, you can try to get some idea of the vibe and whether it seems neighborly at all, but it's very hard to get more than a cursory sense. I'd take a modest house surrounded by friendly/awesome people compared to a much nicer house surrounded by rude/stuck-up people any day.

My new neighbors have a german shepard. As I write this at 2:50am, it has been barking since around 11pm. I've never heard a dog bark so consistently for so long. I'm blasting rain noise on my laptop but this is driving me crazy.

That blows, I bet that's loud as hell. I'd file a nuisance complaint with your city's 3-1-1 service to get the ball rolling. Some people just don't care enough to hire a professional to help them with dog behavior issues and it's just not acceptable.

Random anecdote, COVID re-enforced my neighborhood walking as a exercise I could do while avoiding enclosed spaces. During my walks I always greet the people I meet with a "Good morning", "Good Afternoon", Etc. I consistently got suspicion when I started doing this. People would either not respond or have some non-committal response. I would just smile and keep walking. Generally after the second, or at most third, time people would figure out that I wasn't wanting anything, just being neighborly. They would start responding back with smiles and similar greetings. After a year of walking around saying "Hi" to folks people would start going out of their way to respond and would often add simple exchanges about the weather or the news. The mailman, of all people, who I would wave to and say "Hi" to told me one day that ever since I started walking around and greeting people the neighborhood had become "more friendly and nice." I doubt it was just my doing but I do know people smile more and wave and certainly part of it is they aren't fearing death by disease any day now, and part is that they like it.

I appreciate that I know a lot more of my neighbors.

Be the change. I started waving in the car any time I passed anyone on my street, just a quick "hi" wave over the dashboard while driving. Now all the cars on our block do it. It's cute :)

I live in an apartment, and I don't even know what the person who lives next to me looks like. Why would I ask them? People are living their own lives, why am I going to invade into someone's life to make myself feel better

This seems shortsighted. There are dozens of reasons you may want to get to know your neighbors: help each other out, become friends, watch a package, babysit, petsit, and so forth. Sure, nothing may happen from an interaction, but it seems one of the unique aspects of living in an apartment complex is that you can easily know your neighbors.

I live in a large neighborhood of single-family homes and know many of my neighbors, most of which have become good, trusted friends.

I'm amazed people find pleasant apartments to live in. I think I hate every one of my neighbors. From their annoying behaviors. I have one that just let's their kids run around, blasting music at the moment and kept parking in my assigned spot.

Show HN: My app randomly greets six of your neighbors for you, every day!

This was one of the biggest surprises for me moving to the burbs after 40 years of NYC.

You get to know your neighbors and their kids, you drive more politely because the person you are going to cut off is someone you have likely met and will again. It sort of transforms you - or rather - allows the more communal version of you - to emerge.

Needless to say, this version of me is more at peace and happier.

Interesting; after moving to the suburbs from a large city, I feel much less likely to talk to people near me, since I get in my metal box and drive around them instead of walking past them (or riding public transit with them) and being forced to interact with them.

Different type of burb I guess.

Good morning my Hacker News digital neighbors, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night.

Likewise! Be wary of falling stage lights.

Again a US centric article. While it would have been impossible to achieve such, consistently, in the suburbs of US, in a city like Chicago greeting neighbors became a little more feasible, but to Mr Rogers' point - probably useless beyond four or five. In French cities like Montpellier, Aix-en-Provence, Nice, Vic-sur-Cere, etc., though, it is possible to go way over the "6 limit", with increasing benefits. I know a lot of people on the street where I live for the moment, and some of the neighboring ones, and I greet a lot of folks while walking outside ("walk" = keyword). I also greet my favorite two butchers, two or three boulangers, the fromager and a lot of folks at the farmers markets and small deli stores, cofee shops, etc., on a daily basis. The more - the better it makes you feel.

Where I live, you hardly meet more than one neighbour at random in the winter. In contrast, in villages in the south of Spain, you meet neighbors and family all day long, to the point where it gets tiring. I imagine there are many more places like that in the world. It's definitely not a universal study.

One of the reasons I love living where I do, is because while I don't know any of the neighbours who live directly adjacent to me in their $2m houses, it's a relatively dense and active neighbourhood because of all the people forced to rent rooms from them, and we all walk to get our groceries or to the bars down the street, or meet at the gym, or see each other in the park. There's not a chance I'd move to some cul-de-sac, and it's frustrating that the possibility of securing a longer-term stay here isn't really possible any more.

Aside from that though, in my first 12 years as an adult, I've learned that if you see someone you know when you're out and about, wave to them, always, unless they're really occupied by something else; they might be gone/dead tomorrow, and nobody hates being acknowledged in a friendly way.

Also related:

People underestimate the positive impact of speaking with strangers.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48459940 https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2021/09/deep-convers...

Having neighbors you don't mind and will say hi is probably good for your wellbeing. Bad neighbors is a nightmare. Not having a place where you feel like you can safely retreat to and relax or confidently get a full night of sleep is a bad feeling.

I feel I have lost much of my ability to be a part of a community, due to the covid lockdown, full time work from home, and in general spending so much time on the internet.

There's plenty of jobs out there with an office available. Those of us who like going in to the office would be happy to have you :)

Yeah I'm back in the office most days and I'm really enjoying it.

If you are unhappy, does starting to greet your neighbor makes your happier? Or is it the other way around, when you are happy you greet your neighbor.

This sounds like a "one little weird trick to boost your happiness: greet six neighbors."

The important factors are the other things: having a high income, living in a good neighborhood, and and being a good community member. These increase your wellbeing, then of course you'll say hi to everyone.

People in low-income and "bad" neighbourhoods actually stand to gain a lot more by knowing their neighbours because they get a lot more out of community solidarity when there's trouble, they'll have networks to identify trouble earlier, etc.

I must say I never had this train of thought. Whether I'm unhappy or happy I greet my neighbor as it is just common courtesy.

My neighbourhood which I've lived in all my life has changed drastically, dramatically, creepily.

The original owners were part of a sort of Habitat for Humanity type organization only it was a local thing a co-op. This was 1972 nearly ten years before early 1980s super crazy inflation so even then it was hard to afford a home.

Everyone on the street knew each other even one street over either way people knew everyone's names and children's names. As people moved away new owners bought the homes it was OK for a while new people. But now a younger generation starkly different in attitude and behaviour.

Now it's like living in some dystopian alien hellscape. OK maybe that's a bit too much but it's surreal. Nobody goes outside, not even to sit on decks former owners built, vegetable garden plots and not planted, laundry is not put on lines, food is all "Ubered", windows are all shut (for AC?) blinds down.

Grass on lawns is a foot high, plants of former owners grow wild and are unkempt. Supposedly "no mow may" for dandelions (local bio prof says is bunk) or to be green but I suspect it's linked to never seeing anyone outside ever more than for environmental reasons.

Every single one has a dog too which was rare years ago maybe a few people had dogs. Now maybe 1 in 10 or even 1 in 20 homes has any children human children I should clarify.

Here I am outside in the vegetable garden, or on the deck in summer. Yet all homes are sealed up, no activity except for thumps of car doors as people leave or come home. The bluish glow of monitors nearly constant. Sometimes it feels like I am living in a horror movie.

It's hard to greet people as they run to and from their cars never to be seen again.

This varies wildly neighborhood by neighborhood. In our first house, in suburban Raleigh, NC, we had a modest 1972 split level worth about $200k. We knew all our neighbors and it was, for lack of a better word, neighborly.

In our second house, which was a huge upgrade house-wise (4500sqft on 1/3ac in a subdivision with a big pool greenways, playground, etc), we got to know just two of our neighbors very well, and we almost never saw anyone outdoors in the 6 years we lived there. This house was only about 2 miles from the previous one, but the vibe was entirely different.

In our current house, in San Jose, we're in a neighborhood originally built in the 1950s from what was cherry orchards, and almost all of the original owners have died or moved. We've been here since 2016 and it feels like that year was when the current wave of "refresh" started. Ever since the neighborhood has gotten younger and younger, more and more kids are outside, and the majority go to the neighborhood pool & neighborhood schools. We have tons of friends and acquaintances and it's reminiscent of my neighborhood growing up (in Virginia) in the early 80s. That said, you only have to go a few blocks to get to areas that are more like what you've described.

The morale of this is just that it pays to spend time in, and talk with, a few possible neighbors before buying into a neighborhood. You might not like what you find.

Don’t they at least walk their dogs?

Surprisingly no for many but a few do. Big huge dogs howling stuck in the house I can see them looking out of the windows nose pushing blinds aside. Small dogs too I can see or at least hear barking for hours while the owner is gone.

Mowing lawns is pretty bad for insect life though, to be fair. And even having lawns should be avoided from an environmental perspective.

Not just neighbors, I usually give a quick compliment to people while walking/cycling around, and you can see the smiles and sparking eyes immediately after, a lot of people are lonely, such kindness costs nothing.

Original Study (with pretty charts!): https://news.gallup.com/poll/509543/saying-hello-linked-high...

Interesting, "No meaningful increase in wellbeing is seen for additional neighbors greeted beyond six."

It sounds more to do with correlation vs causation people who are more likely to greet others could have a variety of different factors in their lives making them feel less isolated. One of them unironically states that it helps with the Career Wellbeing of an individual which is indicative that it doesn't really do that.

Ok, we'll change the URL to that from https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/mister-rogers-had-a-point-ro..., which points to this and seems a little spammy.

I guess we'll keep its title though because the top comment ("Mr. Rogers was my actual neighbor") won't make sense without it.

I'm a antisocial person who would commit suicide if they had to live in "a little house on the prairie". However I always greet people and thank them.

Those people with AirPods on in the supermarket are plain rude.

I once traveled (for work) with a Dutch guy that was a few years older. He loved to travel and loved interacting with people, even though he was not the best bespoken. In an aeroplane, he randomly spoke to people, asked interesting questions and people were generally nice to him. When I saw this, I thought, this is what I want -- speak to any person\stranger without having to overcome any fear.

And my wish appeared to be strong enough, after a while i became a person who will talk to almost anybody at any place. It feels liberating.

However, like with so many things in life, it has a flip side, it comes with disadvantages. Sometimes I get feedback that I am too forthcoming. Also, I get disappointed sometimes. In the q at the bakery, people are often saying nothing, staring at their phone screen (mostly the younger people). So i open up a conversation, people are waiting anyways. Almost each time i have the first and the last word, which feels awkward. Also, i have the feeling that younger people often have a lack of interacting skills, when it is in-person, they seem to be uncomfortable. So talking to them can give an awkward feeling in the end.

Maybe some people recognize this and could give advice?

I can see how this increases your wellbeing.

But what about your neighbor's? Maybe so as well, unless you are that weird neighbor people talk about when they are not around.

And let's be honest. You are that weird neighbor.

People don't care about you nearly as much as you think. Everybody has their own shit going on.

Whoosh

This and /r/awww and such are nice, and we need more warm-fuzzies. But I see this article citing a lot of science, and then dropping the ball on causation.

I recently watched a video [1] about “The Villages”, a massive retirement community in Florida with 100k+ residents. One of the things that surprised me was how friendly all the neighbors seemed in the beginning of the video. The lifestyle had a lot more appeal to me than I was expecting.

[1] https://youtu.be/BX4i8qprP2I

I lived in downtown Seattle (Belltown) for a couple of decades (currently living about 10 minutes away walking time). I can not even contemplate not well-knowing less than 50 of my neighbors. Possibly < 100 neighbors.

I suspect that was really great for my outlook - now I start getting slightly depressed barely knowing about 6-12 neighbors and have to walk over to Belltown to get a mental lift.

I make a point of bringing a bunch of flowers to the 10 or so houses near us at the beginning of every year. It is such a small thing to do but the effects have so far been well beyond what I would expect, immediately 'neighbor' becomes 'person I know a little bit' and from there the network around you will strengthen.

We've started hosting monthly "spaghetti and meatball nights" and invite almost everyone we know, including all the neighbors. We often get 30 people, but spaghetti and meatballs scale trivially so it's not hard to host. It's been tremendous for building community.

That's a cool idea!

I can't take credit. Two dear friends in L.A. started doing it years ago, with similar results, and it sounded so great we just copied it.

Except they make the meatballs from scratch, which I don't have time for. Decent bulk frozen meatballs + excellent Victoria jarred sauce from Costco to the rescue. My Italian wife tarts up the jarred sauce a bit with fresh aromatics and chunks of canned San Marzano tomatoes, and the end result is acceptable even to her exceptionally picky palette... Add a big stack of cheap, mismatched thrift-store china plates and silverware, and dinner for 30 takes us about an hour to prep + an hour to clean up after total.

There was an article about this recently: https://www.seriouseats.com/simpler-entertaining-friday-nigh...

This is a classic example of correlation ≠ causation; it's quite possible that people with already-high wellbeing are more inclined to greet their neighbors (as well as the opposite of people with low wellbeing not being inclined to greet their neighbors). Whether forcing yourself to greet six neighbors every day actually "maximizes wellbeing" is unsupported by the presented evidence.

That said, I wouldn't be too surprised if there was a causative relationship, especially with some of the more specific "social" and "community" wellbeing. Seems like a reasonable guess, and it'd be straightforward to test: evaluate wellbeing scores from before and after one starts making it a point to greet six neighbors per day.

Not so much correlation & causation as Selection Bias.

I wish I could.

I moved way out to the country in 2013 and had only one neighbor half a mile away. I did interact with him some, but it usually wound up with him hitting me up for money or to perform some errand. Fentanyl finally took that neighbor a few years back and now I have 0 neighbors for miles.

I do interact with skunks and birds and snakes and my chickens, cats, dogs and my girlfriend. I also go over to a buddies house in town once a month for beers and to the occasional party.

Girlfriend works in town so I'm completely alone most of the day. It kind of bothered me for a few year but now I like it and think I would have trouble being around people all day every day. Probably not super healthy mentally for most people, but it works for me.

Until last year I lived in a small downtown area. Each morning I'd walk down one of the main streets, and would typically be greeted by up to 3 people. The owner of the corner store at the base of my building, my barber across the street, and then the married couple who ran the breakfast spot I frequented just up the block.

It's a small thing but it does wonders for having a sense of community. After covid, the breakfast spot shut down and my barber went to work at a different shop. The corner store is still around but I got priced out by migrating New Yorkers and had to move. I miss it a lot.

I yelled at one yesterday for looking at their phone while driving, does that count?!

Only if you do it routinely, and your well-being feels maximized

It does not :(

I have literally started tracking being social as a habit on an app for the last few months and it has been a godsend. Every day, if I do something social, I put a tick in my app.

At first it was just to get over my social fears, but now as I get more comfortable, I still keep doing it because I love the rush of talking to new people and seeing if we click.

And of course, the fear never completely goes away in all situations, but it turns into something exhilarating, like before an important test/interview even when you're well prepared.

This isn't going to be read by anyone but just for reference, as a young Muslim I was always told to treat your seven closest neighbors as you would your first neighbor.

Ugh I know it’s good social strategy but I hate doing it so much. I just want to be left alone, and engaging with other casually indicates that I’m open to further interaction.

Italians are said to have 'passeggiata'; daily strolls along the main street or town square to meet and greet neighbors [0]. Might not work as-is in the US due to the lack of town squares and the abundance of stroads.

[0] https://www.myitaliandiaries.com/italian-passeggiata-what-ex...

Mr. Rogers and this gallup cohort have not met my neighbours.

I'm pretty good pals with my immediate neighbors, right, left and across the street and we talk whenever we see each other.

My favorite neighbor Lois moved away after retiring. We used to call her the "CIA agent" because she knew everyone and everything that was going on in the neighborhood. I would talk to her every few weeks or so and get "debriefed". It was awesome.

The difference between greeting six neighbors vs zero is only 12.6 wellness units. I'd prefer to simulate the outside world at the cost of a moderate amount of wellness. I'll make up for the difference by eating a smoothie for breakfast 3 days out of the week for the rest of my life instead of 2 salad bowlfulls of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs.

I guess he lived in a different time when people were kinder, particularly in Pittsburgh. It's hard to greet your neighbors when they rutinely park on sidewalks, take their trash out several days before pick up and don't take care of their lawn. Recently leaving the city for a farm in the country with the next neighbor several hundred feet away seems idyllic.

Will that replicate? I’m pretty sure that it depends on what kind of people you and your neighbors are.

Nobody talks about the miracle Jesus performed by having 12 close friends at age 30+.... :)

Having a cute, friendly dog helps more than I can say. The dog remembers all the houses where our friends live (even if they've moved out, or we just saw them on the street so they can't possibly be home).

Yeah, there are unfriendly people. You just ignore them.

Curious if anyone has studied if intentionally saying hello will boost these things…

Otherwise it’s just, healthy and happy people are more likely to be happy and say hello!

It’s like “study finds rich people spend more money”

It seems silly to me. Can it be that people with higher well being are just more likely to greet their neighbors? I only skimmed the article so I might have missed something.

If six maximises wellbeing, be careful not to greet the seventh one

how disfunctional society are you living in if you need calculate the gain and loss for doing what a decent human being would do in a neighbourhood?

I was told to keep to myself as a child, not bother anyone, and not stare. That was my parents' concept of politeness, so I was never taught to greet people or initiate conversation.

Cultural difference, I suppose.

>Men were more likely to greet neighbors than women, as were people with children under the age of 18 in the household, and people with a household income of more than $120k a year.

ah, so "wealthier people are happier and greet more neighbors". Things are much more simple when you drill down into the confounding variables. The data does not support the causality inferred by "maximizes" in the title.

"Saying Hello Linked to Higher Wellbeing, but With Limits"

Alternatively, happier people greet their neighbors more often.

The second best neighbor is the one you never meet.

Can we replicate this in a VR environment?

Email me your phone number and I'll call you tomorrow afternoon.

How many times was this result replicated?

Where does anyone live that they even see their neighbors to greet? Not here in the suburbs.

Guess it depends on your suburb.

In my area there are people who sit in they are retirees that sit in their front yards and greet not just pedestrians but every vehicle that goes by.

I mean isn't a suburb one of those HOA neighborhoods with houses every 1/4 acre? Seems ripe for neighbor communication.

This seems like a cop out.

In the US most people in suburbs only ever walk from their door to their car (which is itself often inside the garage) and then they sit in their steel and glass box to the minimal possible distance from their desk, then do the reverse on the way home.

Do those "neighborhoods" even have sidewalks then?

Not always, and, in my experience, the answer is increasingly "no".

I have not seen of a single new development in the US without sidewalks in the last 20 years+. It must be the law in 99% of cities to build a sidewalk anytime a property is developed.

Not usually, or if they do, they're merely 'decorative' in that they're not a viable option for pedestrians to get from A to B. They just end without signals or crosswalks. Someone in a wheelchair would literally have to drive in the street in many areas of the south.

they end the sidewalk a good poke from the brown neighborhoods

Idk. I live in a suburb and my little neighborhood is pretty friendly to the point where someone can post to our private Facebook group and ask someone to hold a package or to check out their house while they're on vacation. Really depends on what kind of community you have

What I'm describing is unrelated to friendliness. Our built environment is the number one determinant of encounters with our neighbors. You can be perfectly friendly with people who you rarely see and could never make a routine of greeting (because you rarely see them without prior planning).

If you walk outside you'll see people.

Is there never anybody else outside when you go for a walk?

In a midwest neighborhood of modest houses built in the 1920's inhabited by families with children. Just one example.

I live in the suburbs but these are homes built in the 1950s and a lot of my neighbors are older. My neighbor and I have ¾ acre backyards that are just divided by a chain link fence. We both have dogs and like to do yard work. He's retired and I work from home. We talk across the fence a few times a week. He'll put surplus items from his vegetable garden on our fence, give our dog treats, and I'll exchange with bread I've baked. We shoot the shit about everything - his childhood growing up in the neighborhood, health, things going on, projects we might want to tackle together...

It's definitely possible with the right neighbor, you just have to be intentional and friendly.

I dunno, I live in Redmond, WA and see my neighbors regularly. Greeted at least three people on the trail on my run this morning, greeted a few more on the dog walk. I'll probably wave at the neighbor across the street at some point when we're mutually outside. People walk by the house all day long. I don't know how much more suburban you're going to get than Redmond (you have to cross water to even get to the city).

Now, I'll qualify that by saying that Redmond in general is a lot more pedestrian-friendly than a lot of suburbs I've experienced. And in the last twenty years or so, it's also quite wealthy. And seeing your neighbors also entails getting outside. ;-)

I remember 1990s California and low crime rates. Good times.

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