Increasingly hate sitting next to people

Whatever about strangers, it's really not normal to not want to sit next to your friends and family.

Yes but now there aren’t really any bad smells to disguise, that’s the point. We have easy access to hot water, soap and detergents which really don’t need to be as highly scented as they are.

Am I the only one who, when on a bus sits praying no one will sit next to them, then when the bus is full and the only seat is next to me people would rather stand wonder what is wrong with me?

Do I have a 'fuck off' face? Do I smell? Do I look like I smell?

Contrary? Moi? 😂😂

Thats not a new problem, the victorians were crazy about perfumes, as a means of disguising bad smells

I don't think any of that is new apart from the gadgets. Foods have a smell. They always have done. If you can cope with being in a restaurant full of food smells, sitting next to a companion who is eating, why is it so hard to be somewhere else where there are food smells? Food doesn't automatically become yucky and smelly just because it's in a different space. Imo people have become much more hygiene-conscious, not less.

Not to mention hideously over scented laundry detergents, fabric conditioners and and stuff on top of that to make it smell even stronger.

Or at all

I don't think people have got smellier. I think people have just become massively over-sensitive to the point that they are physically repulsed by normal smells. Hence the (unhealthy) use of air fresheners, highly-scented disinfectants etc. When you have come to expect places and people to smell actively 'fresh' (i.e. artificially scented), the normal, neutral-ish human smell starts to seem offensive. Yes, I know some people do actually smell bad, but that's not a new thing at all, and it won't actually harm you. It's not that long ago, relatively speaking, that people only used to bathe once a week!

So everyone was immpeccably mannered in ye olden days, which era specifically? Victorian? Medieval? These times are probably the most civilised we've ever lived through.

Oh FFS. You are all such precious flowers. Cancel everything and stay at home then.

Ah,I wondered how long it would be before a comment like this appeared! What is this Mumsnet obsession with driving?!

Completely agree with this. Spent a flight recently sitting next to someone who spent the whole 2.5 hours sniffing and sneezing, wiping her nose on her sleeve (I did give tissues), and giggling to herself looking at hundreds of photos of her selfies.

People have also become much more aggressive/entitled over the last few years, especially since Covid e.g someone got attacked for asking another passenger to move their bag off a tube seat in London recently.

I think CrazyGoatLady has summed it up perfectly.

I thought that we had reached the peak of MN misanthropy, but apparently not.

Maybe the people haters should learn to drive then?

I'm the same. Whenever I sit on a bus with an empty seat next to me,I spend the entire journey hoping no one sits next to me. With good reason,I might add. Inevitably they start elbowing me,looking interminably for something in their pocket. Or watching something on their phone with the volume on full. Or having a conversation on their phone with it on speaker mode. Or they keep sniffing, coughing,constantly clearing their throat, breathing too loudly,humming,chewing gum with their mouth open,or start eating a bag of smelly crisps. Or it's a man who insists on man-spreading. Christ almighty,I find the human race so fucking annoying sometimes.

I’ve been reminded of a short story by the dystopian writer J G Ballard called The Intensive Care Unit, about a future where physical contact has become taboo and everything is done online, remotely or via VR. An article about it here. Sometimes I feel we are already halfway there!

interestingliterature.com/2023/04/jg-ballard-intensive-care-unit-summary-analysis/#:~:text='The%20Intensive%20Care%20Unit'%20is,story%20in%20the%20late%201970s).

There have been cities for as long as there has been civilisation.

I agree @CrazyGoatLady but I don't come across the number of smelly people that so many mumsnetters do.

It's the 21st century. We have more access to washing, washing clothes, deodorants etc, so I don't understand the increasing numbers of the great unwashed talked about on here.

To be fair I don't use public transport to commute and tend to use the train for longer distances or for leisure purposes only.

That's why a lot of people put their bags on the seat next to them on the train and then look outraged if you ask to sit there. I don't ask people to move their bags unless there are no other seats. I pay £6200 a year for the train and so have learned to put up with most things. I put my loops in and crochet or write or daydream that I am somewhere else. On occasions I chat, usually to older people who want to engage and are day trippers or tourists. Commuters never chat unless they are travelling together. It's not my favourite thing but I put up with it as a necessity.

@CrazyGoatLady

Very well put, especially the stimulation. On trains in particular, there’s never ending announcements, particularly bad where there are many stops as they’re constantly announcing a long list of stations, in between general safety announcements etc. Then when there’s an actual important announcement by the guard, it’s usually garbled and quiet and only said once so easy to miss yet far more important than all the other announcements you’ve heard several times.

And people are so loud. Whether talking to travel companions, or on the phone, they can’t talk quietly, it’s all shouting, laughing, at full volume. Just no consideration at all- it’s all me me me.

YANBU OP I feel the same. It’s all the noise they make especially the bodily noises. The smells too 🤢
It’s not a fear for me as such more of an extreme dislike and annoyance.
Similarly, I don’t like visiting other peoples homes. I just feel uncomfortable and over-stimulated by being there in someone else’s very personal space and so I avoid it whenever possible.

I think the pandemic has had a lot to do with it. I'm autistic and have never liked sitting very close to people, even as a child. I dislike unexpected touch. Social distancing was great (although lots of other things about that time were not) but that has meant for many people it was harder to go back to being packed in like sardines in places.

I'm actually on a train right now and people SMELL. Like BO, sweaty, wet dog kind of smell. It's vile.

If we're going to talk about previous generations, let's think about all the overstimulating things they DIDN'T have to put up with. All the things my late Nanny used to moan about "not in my day"! The population is bigger, for a start. There's just more of us. Everywhere.

People eat CONSTANTLY. Everyone on this goddamn train seems to be eating something. Packets rattling, competing smells everywhere. Snacking was not part of the culture until probably the 1970s. My Polish grandparents especially considered it unforgivably rude to eat on public transport and people don't do it there now unless they're tourists. Nowadays, people are constantly stuffing their faces, because they can. Which also means that people are bigger, and the size of seats hasn't kept up with the size of people. It's not in companies' interests to make seats larger, so you get "spilled on" if someone much bigger does sit next to you. Severe obesity was extremely rare back then.

People wouldn't have drunk alcohol on public transport or got very drunk in restaurants, cinemas, etc - again, would have been considered rude/unacceptable and they'd have got chucked out. But you get groups of loud, lairy, drunk people (men in particular) in all kinds of places now, they're no longer confined to the pub or social club.

Previous generations didn't have smartphones. People play their music, videos, phone calls on loudspeaker all the time, which I think is rude and intrusive. I don't go to the cinema any more because people don't turn their damn phones off, screens are lighting up the whole time, and they're sat there chomping the whole way through the film. Just on this train journey there are at least three people in one carriage doing it. The competing, clashing noises - ugh. Even NC headphones don't totally block it.

A young man on the Tube the other day was so absorbed in scrolling he didn't notice an older lady with a walking stick had got on. He had to be told by another passenger that she needed the priority seat he was sat in, and he looked absolutely outraged at the interruption to his scrolling. More so than having to give up his seat. He didn't acknowledge the older lady at all, got up with his head still buried in his phone.

Shops and restaurants now play loud music, punctuated by lots of different announcements, which they didn't do in my grandparents' day.

Everyone is chronically overstimulated, and at the same time chronically bored, hence why we can't cope without a screen, a snack, etc.

My grandparents' generation had to deal with a tiny fraction of the inputsvand cognitive load we now do in modern society. It's simply not comparable and I would argue many of the behaviours people display now are not "normal" and many people have lost all sense of consideration for those around them. And because of some of those behaviours, and the level of environmental stimulation we are all subject to, we have probably become less tolerant of the normal ones.

Isn’t that because the RAH and many UK theatres were built when the average person was smaller?

Yep.

They're historical buildings.

40 UKs could fit in the US.

California is bigger than the UK.

Lss Vegas can have giant complexes because it's in a desert, with fuck all squared for miles. Its' hotels were also built generally no earlier than the 1950s and are redeveloped all the time.
The RAH was built in Victorian London, the then most populated city on the planet.

Maybe move to the US, if that's what's a priority.
(But just try not to get randomly shot due to the gun control situation).