Sounds to me like a description of what it feels like to live in any sort of metropolis. Georg Simmel, one of the first sociologists, wrote similar observations

Sounds to me like a description of what it feels like to live in any sort of metropolis. Georg Simmel, one of the first sociologists, wrote similar observations on how city dwellers (in 1900s Berlin) would mentally adapt themselves within the context of this city in his 1903 work »The Metropolis and Mental Life«. The anonymity and (from the POV of a country pumpkin: rudeness) is basically a form of self-protection, because a person would go mad if they had to closely interact with each human being they met. Of course this leads to its own follow-up problems of solitude within a mass of people etc. But if you e.g. come from a close-knit rural community with strict (religious?) rules, a typical rural chit-chat and surveillance, simething like the anonymity of a city can indeed feel like a revalation, especially if you see yourself as an outcast within the rural community, e.g. because you differ from the expected norms there in some way. I am not sure about the English translation of Simmels text as I read it in German, but as I remember it it was quite on point, not too long and made observations that are all still valid today, recommended read.