[108] in Depressing_Thoughts
Re: meeting people
aaron@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (aaron@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Tue Aug 2 17:18:10 1988
Perhaps it's just me, but my experience for the past year or so has been
that, yes, in fact, I *do* smile at people I pass in the halls or see in
the store; I *do* talk to people in lines, etc., and the response I get
is almost uniformly one of "who is this jerk? Why is he standing near me?
What can I do to make him go away? and where is my air sickness bag?" at
least in facial expression. Of course, in the cases in which that hasn't
happened, I've actually made some new friends, but the average
gratification from the practice of being nice to people has been
overwhelmingly negative. I think it has a lot to do with people not
wanting to be "picked up" by any random person.
The reason this issue is so predominant in the thoughts of various
people at MIT is that we get little snippetslike Mark's comment that
"it's much harder when you get out of college." Great. Overall
success rates couldn't get much worse. What get's worse and could it possibly
be worth trying anymore?
~?
(pardon the typos)
