Am I getting old or is the world becoming more inconsiderate?

There is a lovely, hand-written notice outside a small winebar in Mainz, Germany. It translates as "We have no wifi, you should just talk to one another."

I think you're getting old and have some rose tinted glasses.
Memories from my childhood include feeling sick when people started smoking on the bus or in cafes.
Walking through town on a Saturday afternoon and there being drunk and rowdy people, I did see a few fights on the street. Once seen a couple sprawled on a car bonnet doing god knows what.
People regularly putting their feet up on busses and trains. Standing when people had put their bags on seats.
People walking round with loud portable boom boxes.

I thought it was 6ft too! Was it a clever ploy to make us believe all the police were burly giants!

I would love this SO much! A firm rule that all you needing to watch TikTok without headphones have to sit together! 🥂👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻🥂

I am really hoping the police don’t charge those men in the tube. We really need there to be a whiff of at least some potential repercussion for anti social crap on tube trains. It would be beneficial if the chancers thought they might get beaten up, so best leave innocent people alone.

Yes, I think it’s since Brexit and the Pandemic. People are more siloed.

There may, just may be a pandemic hangover from this, but Brexit? 😂I've heard Brexit blamed for plenty of mad things, including the Ukraine war, but people talking too loudly on their phones and putting their dogs and their feet on train seats? Don't be so daft.

People as individuals may be more siloed, but as a nation we are not remotely isolated or 'siloed' in any way whatsoever. The world has never seemed smaller or more accessible to us, and we have never been more accessible to the rest of the world, that is certainly very clear indeed. We have never been more inhabited by foreigners from every corner of the globe than we are now. The abject failure of rapid onset multiculturalism and the obvious lack of a proper integration and assimilation may well have siloed some people, though. There's a word for that. It's ghettoisation. But that's hardly the fault of Brexit either.

I think people are just ruder, more selfish and more entitled than they used to be, for a multitude of very complex reasons.

But I went through Brexit and the pandemic too and I dont behave like that!

TBF I don't think every dog needs to be trained by a professional. We trained our dog using social media (Doggy Dan on Youtube , New Zealand fella, great hair) and it worked! We couldn't afford professional classes. This was way back in 2016 before the pandemic. Our pup is very well behaved and listens to every command.

Just back from the garden centre.

Dad with two kids (or was it three? Doesn't matter) shrieking and shout-talking at each other all the way around the store. I couldn't get away, if I wanted to browse I had to put up with it as they were also browsing through the pre-defined store flow/layout too. Kids talk at volume 90000 cause they have zero concept of inside voice, but it was the shrieks that grated especially.

I already had a headache because it was honestly so bloody hot in there but these kids were doing my ^},€ing head in.

Never been so grateful to come back to my calm peaceful kid-free home 🤣

You've made this up. It was about 5ft 8in in the 70s.

The height restriction was removed because it prevented good candidates from serving.

I'd be up for quiet housing zones, where residents would be banned from playing music in their gardens or blasting it out of open windows in the summer. I imagine the property prices would be astronomical though.

Apparently the police are looking to possibly charge the men who tackled the verbally aggressive, deranged flasher on the tube the other day. That pretty much sums up everything wrong in the country.

I've taken to wearing headphones and listening to audiobooks purely to drown out the noise of everyone else on public transport. Some people are so loud it doesn't always work. There was one woman switching her water bill to a new property on the bus a few weeks ago and the entire bus heard everything a fraudster or burglar would need to know about her, including all her bank details.

Nobody queues for a bus anymore. It's a scrum and a free-for-all. The concept of leaving the seats at the front for the elderly or disabled isn't upheld. Young, fit blokes are totally unembarrassed about taking up an entire seat at the front as a pensioner with a Zimmer frame struggles past them.

The thing that is really bothering me at the moment is walking. E-scooters, bikes, e-bikes, motorbikes; you might as well be walking on the road, not the pavement. You can't just walk along lost in your own thoughts, you have to be permanently vigilant and it's very annoying. I have never once seen the police do anything about this.

Dogs in restaurants doesn't bother me. In fact, I'd take my chances on a red setter serving up my food over a disgruntled waiter who hates humanity.

I agree there is difficult and annoying behaviour, but police officers were NOT all over 6ft tall!

Back then people smoked everywhere, fighting between men was much more accepted, physical violence towards women and children was accepted, plus racism and homophobia. The past wasn't a utopian paradise.

We need to tackle this era's annoying behaviour without escaping into a fantasy past.

It was happening before either event, we can't use those excuses forever. I recall being on a packed bus and some young woman was having a conversation on speakerphone with someone, a few of the passengers joined in, offering their opinions about 'him'. She got very huffy and closed down the chat!

I’m not actually sure things have changed much. But people are rude in different ways.

I certainly remember people on public transport with big boom boxes blasting music back in the 80s. It wasn’t people watching YouTube or having a Teams meeting, but it was pretty bloody annoying. But do you remember back when rude people could and would light up a cigarette right next to you in the office or on an airplane or in the pub while you were dining with your family? Certainly in that sense people are (forced to be) much more considerate.

And it’s not that people are busting on in to restaurants and pubs with their dogs when not allowed. If it’s dog friendly, that’s because the business is probably desperate for customers. They probably were less so 20, 30, 40 years ago when costs were lower and people drank more and for longer. I don’t particularly like dogs in restaurants either (I have a dog), but I wouldn’t go to one that allowed dogs if I didn’t want to be around them.

I mostly grew up in the 80s and your rough parenting example probably pales to how we were parenting growing up. 😂 I was definitely of the pick which spoon you get smacked with generation. In contrast, my generation of parents is much kinder and less reactive.

People do seem to have become more self entitled and less considerate. It saddens me that society consists of individuals who think that they are all that matters and everyone else should just “suck it up “

Fear of God too i suppose

I thought YABU for first ones but then YANBU for the last 2. People should put their headphones on!

But i also think you get more sensitive to noise as you get older?!? Could this be an issue? Or is there just too much noise these days we’re more sensitive to it… i don’t know

Definitely there were height requirements, same as there used to be eyesight requirements, i.e. you were immediately rejected if you wore glasses, and a much more robust fitness check. I was in the force in the 80s, and knew loads of people who were rejected due to wearing glasses, being too short, or not being able to run the specified distance in the specified timescale or failed the "beep" tests. It all seemed to change mid-late 80s depending on the force. Before then, police constables needed to have a "presence" part of which was height and build, as they had to command respect on the streets, likewise the rules on appearance such as no tattoos, no facial hair, hair style, make up, etc.

I can't cope with how noisy the world is.

When I was young you couldn't play sodding music outside - you had a record player and LPs and there were no mobile phones so people couldn't just blast music out as you sat enjoying the peace and quiet.

Also, people did have consideration for others, and didn't let their children run about shrieking in public. You were expected to sit quietly, bored stiff if you were out with adults, which wasn't a bad thing. It taught you manners and decent behaviour in public.

It started long before those events. It's just that the "trend" is continuing to grow so only being noticed more now as more and more people have become inconsiderate arseholes after observing other people being inconsiderate arseholes! It's a kind of exponential growth where more and more people just don't give a shit about other people anymore.