A bunch of social retards.

You wouldn't think that a simple phrase, a greeting, a salutation, such as "Hey, how you going?" would be a suitable reason to incite any sort of physiological change in one's body, right? Apparently so, according to commuters on the 72 tram to Camberwell yesterday.. How is it that we, as a society, have turned into a complete bunch of unsociable gits that think the world and all the inhabitants therein are out to get us when one friendly question is asked? Why do we feel the need to avert our eyes when a stranger decides not to be a miserable twat and ask the person next to them how their day is? Why do our hearts beat a little quicker, palms get a little sweatier and we look at each uneasily? Or to the recipient of said question, why act as if nothing was said at all?

Possible answers:
a) We've evolved through the eras into communally disabled conversationalists
b) We're sick cynics
c) the lesson "don't talk to strangers" that we're taught as a child becomes innate as we get older hence the degeneration of simple conversation...

Oh, didn't anybody tell him it's not ok to make conversation with strangers? Oh wait, we can't tell him, we don't talk to strangers.. let's just treat him like a freak, general acquiescence please.. but no words because we don't know each other..

When did common conversation become too confronting? when did it start taking people out of their comfort zones to be polite??

Now I'm not trying to palm my guilt off out into inexistence or be all "holier than thou" because I am certainly guilty of participating in this disgrace which has become a public norm.. just saying, this is what I observed.

On a further note, I know chivalry is supposed to be dead but what happened to general humanity? Close to getting a bit arty-farty and "heal the world" here but nevertheless, when an old lady has to help a young mother and her pram onto a tram when there are plenty of young men standing around near the door, then you know, something is terribly, terribly amiss in the world