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Comment by Slow_Hand | Hacker News Reader

This matches my personal experience. When I moved from Boston to Austin it was like night and day how different interactions with strangers were. Strangers in Boston kept to themselves and when you approached them it would have an air of “what are you trying to sell me?” in which their feet were already pointed away from you and they were prepared to keep walking.

On the other hand, Texans are far more open to speak with strangers and shoot the shit with people in public. There’s less rush to keep moving and people are far more open to chatting.

My theory is that population density may have an effect on this behavior. Boston is far more dense and when you ride the train or bus everyday people keep to themselves. It’s far more emotionally draining to keep interacting with everyone that you meet so people conserve their energy.

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Density is attractive to individuals who want to exploit as many other people as efficiently as possible.

For example, in the downtown areas of Canada's densest cities, before smartphones, about 90-95% of random strangers coming up to me wanted money, either as beggars or seeking donations for some "charity". The other 5-10% would generally be asking for directions or the time. Even those interactions could have always just been a ruse to see if I have a watch worth stealing, or as a distraction to help enable pickpocketing.

Since smartphones became widespread and nearly everybody has access to the time and directions on their own, pretty much 100% of the time I've been approached by strangers in public is because they want me to give them money. One person mistook me for somebody they knew.

It's just not worth me spending any time responding to random strangers because it's almost guaranteed they just want money.

> Density is attractive to individuals who want to exploit as many other people as efficiently as possible.

> For example, in the downtown areas of Canada's densest cities, before smartphones, about 90-95% of random strangers coming up to me wanted money either as beggars or seeking donations for some "charity". The other 5-10% would generally be asking for directions or the time.

That's selection bias.

You are interacting with the most desperate, entrepreneurial, and lost people, who are not a random and unbiased sample of the whole city.

This doesn't really explain the PNW social freeze in places like Bellingham tho.

What part of Austin are you in? I unfortunately moved to the yuppie part of east 6th and it’s decidedly less friendly than other places I’ve lived.

Density is a factor in this for sure, but I think weather/climate is also a factor. It gets cold in Boston in the winter for example, and in the PNW it's raining and on the cooler side for a good chunk of the year. In those climates people tend to want to get back indoors quickly and not loiter around, and that carries over even into the warmer months.

Try going to Minnesota or Wisconsin. People are extremely friendly and want to chat. It’s almost a cliche.

I think it’s something other than weather.

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