The last part, especially. Why do so many people have to interfere with really harmless aspects of how other people live?
Who the hell goes to the grocery store to socialize?
I guess it would be great grand parents of Gen Z. My grandparents know/knew half the people in the grocery store. They went there to talk to people they knew. They would strike up conversations with people they’d seen in there around the same time as them more than once a week.
An now my parents, boomers, in their 60′s are starting to do it to. Especially now that my mom is disabled and due to her issues drops friend groups constantly and doesn’t talk to many people daily outside of my sister and nephews.
So the answer to “Who the hell goes to the grocery store to socialize” is people who grew up with out the internet. People who don’t see the internet as social interaction. People who are older and have grown up with the idea that talking to strangers in public like that is totally normal. Where as Gen X/Gen Y/ Millennials have grown up being told we should never talk to strangers. We must be cautious. We have to watch who we befriend because the bad people are everywhere. And then we’re berated for appearing anti-social.
Gen X will start doing this next. I suspect I’ll see it in my sister in the next 15 years.
My partner (Millenial) and I (maybe gen X, probably millenial) had a nice, brief chat with the owner of our favourite cafe when we ran into her in Target the other night.
So, you get to be social with people who aren’t actually friends in grocery stores. We don’t go there to socialise, but that does not mean that they aren’t social spaces. And they are definitely public spaces.
The issue is not the social/asocial nature of public space but the fact that people acting not-how-you-want in public space DO NOT NEED TO BE CORRECTED. One should basically trust that anyone not harming themselves or others is doing their best to meet social expectations in public. (Also, public social expectations are cultural and therefore different in different times/places.)
Give everyone space and the benefit of the doubt.