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This caught my eye: > I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to I’m wondering what we lose as a society if people never have to be in
by dabinat 4mo ago
This caught my eye:
> I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to
I’m wondering what we lose as a society if people never have to be in even a mildly uncomfortable situation. There’s a book called The Comfort Crisis about this topic.
EDIT: The full quote is “I get privacy, time back, a safe ride, and I'm not obligated to talk to someone that I don't want to talk to.”
In her quote she chose to separate safety and having a conversation with a stranger as two separate issues.
- junon 4mo agoAs a gay dude I experienced my fair share of "uncomfortable" Uber rides from or to various places. No thanks. I don't need to stimulate those kinds of social skills or whatever. Can't even imagine what women go through.
- klmarks 4mo ago[flagged]
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago> the human supervisors in the Philippines watch you through the Waymo cameras and talk about you Literally don't care. What I don't need is to be evangelised with whatever conspiracy theory or fringe religion my driver just joined the entire way back from JFK.
- dml2135 4mo agoAre you kidding me? That's like my favorite part about landing at JFK. How else am I supposed to keep up with the latest crypto developments?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoIn case you’re being serious, sometimes it’s fun. Most of the time, I don’t care. But the reliability advantage of Waymo is usually something I’m willing to pay a bit extra, and wait a bit longer, for.
- dml2135 4mo agoHaha I was obviously being a bit tongue-in-cheek, and it’s not true every time, but yes I do generally appreciate the wacky convos with cabbies when I land, it feels like a warm welcome home. Your comment resonated with me because this doesn’t really happen when just taking ubers around town. I don’t really know what’s special about the drive from JFK — maybe the length? or the drivers being used to picking up tourists, who are more chatty? — that brings out the hustle chat and conspiracy theories, but I guess it’s a thing!
- MBlume 4mo agoYes, and? What is your threat model here?
- daheza 4mo agoSome regulation that limited the operators to work in the city they supervise would be an easy job win for some politicians. Create some jobs and look like you’re standing up to big tech.
- junon 4mo agoI don't care what people think about me. I care about the guy who has Jesus hung in every nook and cranny with a candle lit in his front cupholder telling me that I need to repent. In San Francisco, I might add. I couldn't care less what people in the Philippines - one of the most gay-friendly countries in Asia - think of me through a camera stream.
- init2null 4mo agoGay here, but I've only experienced a concerning conversation once, and that was a longer trip where sometimes you find out too much. I took an exit ramp away from that topic of conversation and it was fine. Otherwise everyone has been decent to downright pleasant. I'd feel like I'm losing something by giving up that human interaction, such that it is.
- saberience 4mo ago[flagged]
- miltonlost 4mo agoSome people do, and those people are homophobic Uber drivers
- wewtyflakes 4mo agoThat would be lovely; I want to live in the world you think we live in.
- junon 4mo agoUber drivers often do. Hence my comment.
- ihsw 4mo ago[dead]
- lern_too_spel 4mo agoThere are uncomfortable situations that you can walk away from like a checkout counter, and then there are uncomfortable situations where you are in a car in an unfamiliar location driven by the person making you uncomfortable.
- fartcoin67 4mo ago[dead]
- pirate787 4mo agoThis is the real issue: "Uber received over 400,000 sexual assault and misconduct reports between 2017 and 2022" https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/uber-liable-pay-8-5-million-driver-rape-suit.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/06/uber-liable-pay-8-5-million-...
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoThat averages out at 220 reports a day, which kind of sounds like a lot to me.
- llbbdd 4mo agoI'm a man, and I've been using Uber since it launched. Most rides are fine, but there are enough weirdos on the platform that 220 incidents per day that are serious enough to report seems reasonable to me, even if you don't consider that they operate internationally. I once had a driver pick me up in downtown Seattle, and it turned out to be that he was driving for Uber as a tactic for his entrepreneurial venture developing antimicrobial and hydrophobic coating. He claimed to have applied it to the fishing boat from Deadliest Catch. He was specifically circling downtown to try to pick up someone who could get the ear of someone in Amazon's grocery division that he could pitch to (which I was not). At a red light in a nightmarish seven-way intersection, he took out a square of cheesecloth that had apparently had the coating applied, and attempted to demonstrate its effectiveness by pouring water onto it. It worked, and the water got all over his passenger seat and center console instead while the light turned green and cars behind us honked. A few months later, Uber tried to match me with that same driver, and I cancelled it and walked instead. I have to imagine that if a guy with that level of high-preparation social ineptitude can stick around in their system, that the number of people making offhand inappropriate moves or remarks must be reasonably high.
- Loocid 4mo agoKeep in mind that Uber does like 30 million rides per day.
- spike021 4mo agoOne time I hopped in an Uber and got a missionary-like lecture on Islam and an invite to go to a mosque. More typical of Christians so it kind of threw me off. But anyway, a paid service shouldn't be starting that kind of conversation unless for some reason I started it and even then that'd make it just as uncomfortable for the driver.
- rafram 4mo agoI think "people should just deal with uncomfortable situations" (while in a vehicle that they have no control over!) is not a winning argument, but the continuing march toward tech-enabled isolation is absolutely bad. It can be annoying to have to deal with irrational humans who make mistakes, but that really is just part of life! I'll take some cumbersome conversations over conducting my entire life via corporate app interfaces.
- klmarks 4mo ago[flagged]
- cflewis 4mo agoThis is a male perspective. My wife will not ride alone in Uber's because she's had one too many uncomfortable -> possibly dangerous situations. This appears to be true for all of her friends as well.
- saberience 4mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- wewtyflakes 4mo agoThey presumably know their wife better than you do, internet stranger. They did not hide that they were talking from their experience, and not from a published paper on Uber statistics.
- junon 4mo ago> hilarious I worked for Uber about a decade ago. I was aware of the stories as they'd circulate internally. It's fine, until it isn't. Calling it hilarious is a lack of imagination or critical thinking at best.
- nutjob2 4mo agoI don't know, what am I gaining from listening to the 100th anti immigrant/POC/trans/gay/poor-person rant? For some reason people feel comfortable telling me this sort of shit. Maybe I look like a bigot. Interacting with the general public absolutely sucks.