Agreed. While I get the fear of interacting with strangers, I’ve never gotten more than mild annoyance from someone when I actually do it. I have never felt lik

Agreed. While I get the fear of interacting with strangers, I’ve never gotten more than mild annoyance from someone when I actually do it. I have never felt like I was overstepping bounds—people rarely mind being spoken to with respect, even if they don’t respond and engage. Camaraderie is harder, and making jokes others don’t like can be stigmatizing. I wonder if one’s culture of informality is just less assumably universal than it has been in the recent past. I also wonder if living in a city can desensitize you to how exhausting it can be to invest in a social interaction with no clear payoff.