Frequency matters. Greeting more than maybe two or three times an hour is quickly getting old, but never acknowledging a face is depressing. People adjust their

Frequency matters. Greeting more than maybe two or three times an hour is quickly getting old, but never acknowledging a face is depressing. People adjust their threshold accordingly: in a dense city environment greeting strangers would put you far above the enjoyable range so you lower the threshold. To people you actually know, or perhaps to people who somehow acted nice specifically to you. People in a place where they don't know anybody at all will often tweak the threshold a bit to strangers that share some standout commonality with them. The opposite happens in an environment with few people. On a lonely road, people start nodding at oncoming traffic or the occasional wanderer, on a very lonely road I've caught myself saying hello to farm animals or wildlife. Lost in the desert I'd probably try to chat up a friendly looking rock. The village is sitting nicely between those extremes.