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I only engage in conversations when it is expected and necessary of me to do so, but rarely beyond that. I will only have conversations with people that I already know most of the time. Idle chatter that continues constantly from people that only revolve around themselves and their family get so tiresome as it is usually non-stop for some people. I have no interest in knowing every little detail about your personal life and everything that goes on. Those discussions should be reserved for other family, relatives, and close friends, not people that they are not as friendly with. No, I am certainly not friends with many highly extroverted people, good reasons exist for that in terms of what I prefer.
I would be a perfect New Englander but cannot afford to live there.
Ha, ha, I know what you mean. I too have the brains, mentality, temperament, and like minded interests to be a great New Englander, but not the funds! I suffer here in the South because I need things like a roof over my head and food, but it's really difficult sometimes.
Ha, ha, I know what you mean. I too have the brains, mentality, temperament, and like minded interests to be a great New Englander, but not the funds! I suffer here in the South because I need things like a roof over my head and food, but it's really difficult sometimes.
Try areas of the Upper Midwest, culturally more similar to New England or the Pacific Northwest.
Ha, ha, I know what you mean. I too have the brains, mentality, temperament, and like minded interests to be a great New Englander, but not the funds! I suffer here in the South because I need things like a roof over my head and food, but it's really difficult sometimes.
Suffer? I'd almost trade you to live where you do from here in SD. NE would be the LAST place I'd want to live. I'd take the South over NE any day.
I am a New Hampshire Yankee and the last time I butted into someone else's business was just a couple of days ago when I pointed to someone that I had noticed the wall on his barn was bowing out due to rotted foundation posts. He was not upset because he had not noticed.
That is what we mean by butting into your neighbors business around here.
What the OP may be complaining about is people insisting on butting into your life because they have failed at theirs.
I talked to the OP some when I first moved to Indianapolis, and I do agree with some of his views regarding this city itself.
However, I don't see his complaints at all about the lower Midwest in general, and I've traveled a good bit of it. In the small towns, people are more likely to make a little small talk, but it's nothing like where I'm from in Tennessee. People aren't nearly as friendly, they don't talk as much or as long. I have had people offered unsolicited opinions/advice and say politically incorrect things, but I think you're going to get that everywhere.
I am not sure what people and behavior TS considers to be "normal" since his life preferences seem highly abnormal from my stanpoint. Living in vacuum is abnormal, but that is what middle westerners practice in my experience - human desert devoid of life and joy, one man/family compounds, peculiar reclusive people, if not for property taxes and unpaid electric bills, or burglars, a single transplant has a good chance to die and not be discovered for years (locals have superficial, dysfunctional but nevertherless a circle of family and friends so their corpses are discovered within days or weeks). I am really perplexed why TS didnt fit in. What people in New England are even more messed up and reclusive? And I thought I hit the bottom here in Midwest.
In New England it is a different type of private as far as I can tell. For example, to compare to what people mention in threads about things that happen in the South and Midwest, I have never been asked what church I go to or if I go to church, no one will just start talking to me if I am standing in line at a grocery store unless we bump into each other and say sorry. For me personally at least the idea of having a stranger trying to have a conversation in a line at the grocery store is uncomfortable. I don't mind talking to strangers currently I work at a store cashiering and at the customer service desk I talk to strangers for my job, but by the end of the day I am ready to stab my ears if I hear another person talk about how the weather is, make some inane comment about how I have the same name as a relation of theirs, make a joke about how they just printed that money this morning, or any other subject of small talk that is commonly heard in a store. The connection here is that I never want to have to deal with that while out shopping and I definitely would not say hi, make eye contact, or nod to everyone I see while I am out. In fact to me doing those things to strangers unless it is accidental or you both make eye contact and end up doing it seems weird and invasive because I am not used to it and I was to some extent trained by my surroundings to see doing that as rude. On the other hand if I know you I will always acknowledge I saw you by waving or saying hi and if I have time talking for a bit.
The difference in privacy in some ways may come from the fact that in New England especially more populated areas people live in very close physical proximity so they try to maintain more distance in the social sphere. But that is all conjecture and can't be proven in any way so who knows.
In New England it is a different type of private as far as I can tell. For example, to compare to what people mention in threads about things that happen in the South and Midwest, I have never been asked what church I go to or if I go to church, no one will just start talking to me if I am standing in line at a grocery store unless we bump into each other and say sorry. For me personally at least the idea of having a stranger trying to have a conversation in a line at the grocery store is uncomfortable. I don't mind talking to strangers currently I work at a store cashiering and at the customer service desk I talk to strangers for my job, but by the end of the day I am ready to stab my ears if I hear another person talk about how the weather is, make some inane comment about how I have the same name as a relation of theirs, make a joke about how they just printed that money this morning, or any other subject of small talk that is commonly heard in a store. The connection here is that I never want to have to deal with that while out shopping and I definitely would not say hi, make eye contact, or nod to everyone I see while I am out. In fact to me doing those things to strangers unless it is accidental or you both make eye contact and end up doing it seems weird and invasive because I am not used to it and I was to some extent trained by my surroundings to see doing that as rude. On the other hand if I know you I will always acknowledge I saw you by waving or saying hi and if I have time talking for a bit.
The difference in privacy in some ways may come from the fact that in New England especially more populated areas people live in very close physical proximity so they try to maintain more distance in the social sphere. But that is all conjecture and can't be proven in any way so who knows.
I am from the West Coast, and this seems to be my experience too.
Now I don't always mind some chit-chat, sometimes while waiting in a long line it can pass the time, but if I am left to my own devices, I rarely start random chit-chat with strangers and I certainly don't miss it if it's not there. I don't seek out chit-chat. I find it awkward to start and sometimes it's painful to see someone try to keep a conversation going when there's nothing to talk about and I don't want the bother.
You might be onto something, that in areas where the population is more crammed together, we learn to keep our distance.
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