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In my experience in New York City, people will generally ignore you, except (usually) when there’s a real emergency.
Someone crying? No big deal. Let them cry.
Saw a lady trip and fall down the stairs in the subway, and a bunch of people ran over to help her and return the stuff she dropped.
This is normal city stuff to be honest.
As someone living in a (different) city I can’t imagine trying to comfort a stranger, even though I would definitely feel for them if I saw them crying.
“don’t cry” is repressive behavior, tears wash you clean, the best thing you can do if somebody cries is let them cry. not interfering is the way to go.
It’s a beautiful city full of beautiful people
Nyc gives you the freedom to have your emotions. The south tells you god planned it and you should pray harder
As a southerner - agreed, and also to hide your emotions
Southern culture prizes conformity and strict, traditional gender roles, shuns individual thought and enforces social harmony at all costs through emotional repression and false personas. If your mental well being is collateral damage, its because you don’t go to church or pray enough, obviously. The culture isn’t toxic and anti-human, you’re just an overly sensitive sissy liberal or something. The food is pretty good though ngl.
Ive visited NYC many times. The subway is a magical place. Once you’re on the subway, you can do almost anything and people will leave you alone as long as you don’t bother them too much. Crying is nothing. Ive seen Zoom calls, Competitive Chess, Sex, Drugs, Rock n Roll (live instruments), Talking in tongues (or just crazy in general), a medieval knight in full armor, and probably a bunch im just not remembering at the moment.
If you start inconveniencing people though, you will hear about it very quickly.It happens in smaller cities too. A few months ago, a man died in a bus where I live. Nobody noticed or cared except for some guy who called the emergency line. But get this, he did it after getting off the bus (because he didn’t want to be late or something), so the ambulance had to find and follow the moving bus around town. It feels like we’re all growing colder and more disconnected.
I can see how this comes across as a backhanded compliment against New York, but having this city where you are simultaneously surrounded by people, and people respect your personal space is kind of nice.
You’re not expected to put on some presentable front just to exist outside, you get people in pajamas walking their dog through a midtown block full of people in suits. Its nice that kind of everyone is just accepted and allowed to just live in peace no matter how shitty their day is going.
If this is true it just sucks. He could have just as easily alerted the bus driver when getting off the bus. On the other hand. he could have seen it, ignored it, and later when it was nagging called it in.
As walking off the bus: “thanks for ride, oh BTW guw in row g is dead. Hope you have a good day”
This was honestly one of my favorite parts of living in a big city. Let me cry in peace on the subways plz.
I don’t have public transport in my city but if I’m distraught enough to be crying in it then one thing I don’t want is strangers trying to console me
“live in New York once, but leave before it makes you too hard”
Is that from the ‘wear sunscreen’ thing?
Yep :)
I need to move somewhere that is the exact opposite of this. The amount of apathy in the modern world is distressing. People were a lot friendlier and more willing to help out a stranger even just 15-20 years ago when I was a teenager. Now you can’t get anyone to care about anything anymore.
I blame stagnating wages. No one is financially comfortable enough anymore to have the energy to care about anything other than their own survival.
Given the amount of people saying they don’t want a stranger engaging with them in this thread, and the op describing it as liberating, you may be in the minority.
And it’s not apathy really. It’s more like… respect. If someone asks for help, that’s different than just barging into their space.
The stagnating wages and fraying social bonds are problems, though.
There is a quote by Marcel Reich-Ranicki: Money doesn’t make you happy, but when you’re sad, you rather cry in a taxi than in a tram.
Guess he’s proven wrong.
