To think the level of inconsideration around is staggering?

[CoralCrab]

It feels like people have become more self-absorbed and less aware of how their actions affect others. Whether it’s blasting music in public, not cleaning up after themselves, ignoring basic etiquette, or just a general lack of courtesy, I’m constantly noticing behaviour that seems thoughtless at best and outright rude at worst.

I don’t know if this has always been the case and I’m just more aware of it now or if people really have become more inconsiderate over time. AIBU to think that basic respect and awareness of others are disappearing? Or is this just normal and I need to stop expecting better?

When I visit family in central Europe I am always amazed at the quiet calm atmosphere on public transport. As a nation we tend to be afraid of confrontation and are tolerant of bad behaviour by the minority but in the cities I visit, people will address it directly. They are not as smiley and affable but I would happily swap cultures! Security needs upping too. I recently reported a man swigging beer from a can making a nuisance of himself only to be told by transport police it's a rare occurrence. Sadly not.

People are aware of how inconsiderate they are, and they simply don't care

I just don’t understand why there aren’t posters up everywhere on public transport pointing out that if you don’t use headphones then you’re a bit of a twat (or words similar). Also why don’t the guards/ticket conductors just hand out cheap disposable headphones as a subtle point. It’s so rude. One person thinking their journey trumps everyone else’s is the reason I hate people at the minute. I hate it and I hate the entitlement. And don’t get me started on bloody peppa pig on a plane. I endured a flight from Orlando next to this. I asked if it could be turned down and was told by the mum that the child needed it to relax on the plane, at that point others and me pointed out we needed it turned down for the same reason.

Or perhaps wear some bloody headphones!!!!!

All of this! Especially headphones and inconsiderate dog owners. We had a fairly long train journey on holiday recently, carriage was pretty empty and a woman started playing music videos with no headphones. And then went to sleep with it still playing. She was incredulous when we asked her if she could wear headphones or turn it off.

irresponsible dog owners who dont understand the concept of recall drive me potty, especially near us at the moment where there are sheep due to lamb in a popular outdoors spot. Apparently the ‘dogs must be on a lead’ signs don’t apply to them.

I worried that as a nation we won’t even be able to queue in a British fashion eventually… 😉

love the idea of posters ‘don’t be a dick’ might be my preferred option, but ‘peppa says put your headphones on’ might be more suitable in some areas!!

Agree!!!

And despite the "noise" the lack of human interaction in public places is also staggering.

I often sit with a friend on the tram and we chat. I hope our conversations don't cause anyone distress...

But most people are using their "phone" - scrolling, watching videos (loudly). Actual conversation (even one-sided) is quite rare. Even groups of kids - they are together but rarely talking to each other.

And the parents with young children... so few of them interacting. Give the child a tablet. Look at your own phone. Apparently children don't know how to socialise and it's all due to covid... take a look at your own actions!

I used to TALK to my kids! We would chat, look out of the widow, talk about what we could see, what we were going to do...
There is a mum and son who I see occasionally and she is ALWAYS chatting to her son and it is so sweet.

A few weeks ago there was a problem with the tram and a lovely lady helped me find alternative transport and we had a wonderful chat on the bus. It was really nice! And I'm usually quite introverted, certainly not one to strike up a conversation with a random.

Oh and I got a new phone and went to plug my headphones in... no socket!!! (I have now bought some adaptors).

How ironic that the "phone" - the very thing meant to connect us and bring us together - seems to be driving us further and further apart.

This is so timely for me as I was only complaining about this yesterday. I was sitting in a tiny medical waiting room, just me and two others, while one woman had a really loud speaker phone conversation the whole time. She was older than me as well, so not just a teenager making a faux pas. She was too self-absorbed to notice the looks me and the other lady were giving her. I can't understand why she thought this was acceptable, but it's just part of a much larger problem.

It's the internet, phones, SM, just me, me, me, all the time.

On our last holiday there were constant tinny children's videos everywhere, flights, restaurants, from the moment they got on the transfer coach.

Having older children, we still have to do "family friendly" but I've done the years of putting in the foundations. With an autistic child, that was harder than average. There's been many meals over the years where I've had to take my children out if they reached the point of unobtrusive entertainment at the table not working and it's time for a walk outside for everyone's wellbeing. It's so frustrating when we're out and about and the going is good and it's ruined by some idle arsehole opting out and letting their children run around, shriek, or play their tinny videos/ games.

We went to one place a couple of months ago and I thought the speakers of the pub were playing something odd. It wasn't. It was the table of families a couple of tables away. We ended up leaving the moment the last of us finished eating. They were still nicely bedded in with another fresh round of drinks.

The trouble is that if they're enough of an arsehole not to notice or care about disturbing everyone else. The chances of challenging them and them responding with an appology and compliance is low.

And don't start me on the 10% of oblivious dog owners who couldn't care less about their responsibilities...

I was on the Eurostar the other day and a couple started watching a film on their phone. I told them to turn it off, they did for a bit, another passenger told them again after they turned it up again, and when a staff member told them for the third time they finally got the hint.

Most of the bad behaviour I see these days is from older people - the ones who aren't permanently glued to their phones.

Yes, younger people are often unaware of their surroundings because they're looking at the phone, but they're usually apologetic when they finally look up and realise they've been a pillock.

Older people just don't seem to care and are generally oblivious - often very self-centred with an air of entitlement. Really don't know where it's come from as I don't recall seeing it the same a decade or two.

I'm 60, so seen a lot, and on the cusp of being an OAP myself, so it's not a young versus old thing.

See it a lot with dog walkers and ramblers on my daily walks on a canal footpath - the dog walkers don't give a toss what their dog is doing - causing chaos off lead with no recall - or those stupid extendable leads tripping people up, and ramblers barging through 2 or 3 abreast without going into single file to pass other people on the narrow path.

Took DS down to the seafront this week. Had to leave the beach after ten steps – absolutely littered with dog poo in all directions, and because it’s a shingle shore he had no chance of avoiding it. Loads of paragliding wankers overhead with their noisy engines drowning out the sound of the sea. Pedestrian boardwalk littered with discarded vapes and other crap; benches and shelters covered in graffiti. The volunteer gardening team were out in force working hard to do the flowerbeds, and the physical geography is stunning – between a UNESCO biosphere reserve and an AONB – but it’s just ruined and made impossible to enjoy by the plethora of twats. How hard is it to not litter, not graffiti, not leave dog poo?!

This is why I spend most of my free time at home...
I hate being around people as I find them so inconsiderate and selfish.I know there are many that aren't and once in a while someone restores my faith in humanity a little but they are quite few and far between.
It seems nowadays with the internet thrown in the mix as well,people have more opportunities to be vile to others just for fun,look at that Becky Jones for example,the amount of hate and trolling she gets is off the scale!,yet she's just a young girl living her life.Shes not harming anybody but people have been absolutely vile to the poor girl 'just for fun'.It's sickening.

I notice though that loads of headphones "leak out" sound to the point a tinny/muffled version of whatever the person is listening to can be heard several rows away on a train, to the point the headphones are almost useless. I often change seats or sometimes stand on my journey than listen to someone else's choice of media or their phone conversation. (But I've been told on here that it's my problem that I find them annoying and I should move to a quiet carriage or wear headphones myself)

When my DC were little I was always telling them to move aside/going single file if people were approaching us on a pavement so both parties could pass. If I thought they might trip someone over or bump into them I would grab them and steer them to the side.

Now I notice loads of people (of all ages) seemingly unable or unwilling to move from eg 3 or 4 abreast on a pavement, so that I either have to wait or walk in the road to pass. A few months ago I saw a couple of kids zooming around the supermarket on scooters. I feel like a grumpy old woman when whinging about it, but even teen DD commented how annoying it was!

I did a race at the weekend that used a small section of path in a park. A very small child was using their balance bike on the race route, with their parents looking on from a few metres away. I saw them and adjusted my path around them but had it been busier, or faster runners they might have caused a collision, resulting in injury for the runners, or more crucially, the small child. There was literally acres of space not being used for a race that would have been safer.

I treated myself to lunch in a cafe yesterday and ended up walking out as soon as I’d eaten because some girl decided to do Teams calls right next to me - what the hell gives her the right to work in a public place and spoil other people’s enjoyment? It annoys me that the cafe just let it go but it’s the kind of place where dogs get more consideration than humans 🙄

I also hate how there’s litter literally everywhere - the whole country just looks so unloved and nobody seems to give a damn.

@JuiceinacupYou sound wonderful. We need more people like you in the world.

I think as a society we have drifted into a toxic combination of people making a virtue of the importance of centring themselves and their own wellbeing alongside expecting to society to support them while they do this. It is a 'me' focussed approach that sees society as something that should support them, not something they should contribute to. Just look at the massive rise in people claiming benefits, who get arsey if you point out that the money will run out if everyone takes and no one contributes.

On the train yesterday two teen boys were playing Tik Tok videos for hours on full volume. Tik Toks are incredibly annoying because the sound keeps looping. They also threw all of their rubbish on the floor.

The worst was when I had to spend a week in hospital in a ward, and other patients decided to loudly play videos starting at 5 in the morning! The nurses didn't say a thing.

It’s been exacerbated by our constant and chronic exposure to the culture of the USA imo. As a PP said, levels of entitlement, self-interest and rudeness are off the scale there. It’s another example of a silent American import.

watch videos of any American - old young black white rich poor male female - being arrested for trespass or DUI and you’ll see how utterly convinced they are that their words, their beliefs and opinions, should carry as much weight as the police officers. That their knowledge of their “rights” is superior to the police.

I’ve noticed more and more people are cutting in in the roads causing others to brake sharply. Add to that farting backfiring cars .

I had this exact same conversation with my 16yo DS a couple of days ago, we were on a train and the main sat opposite us had a very loud work call whilst sat there working on his laptop. Felt really inappropriate on a train and was really loud disturbing everyone. A few weeks ago I had to ask a man to turn down the film he was watching on his tablet as I could hear it so loudly above what I was listening to on my earphones. I couldn't actually believe he thought it was acceptable. Many times I have had to listen to Peppa Pig at full blast on trains etc as parents are so self involved and think only them and their kids matter.

DS just said that basically there are not many nice considerate people around any more. He is autistic and just kind of sees that its what life is like and accepts it. I actually think its sad that kids will grow up thinking its normal.

It has got far, far worse. The Millennial generation were brought up by parents who mollycoddled them, didn’t teach them any resilience, told them they were wonderful at everything, never criticised their little darlings and taught them to always put themselves first. This was the same era when schools started awarding medals to everyone at sports day, so that there were no winners or losers.

And now those Millennials are becoming parents themselves and bringing up another generation of spoilt, selfish brats. It’s depressing.

I think it’s much worse in big cities. In more rural areas, where you have a sense of community, traditional values of consideration and neighbourliness are much more prevalent. Makes me want to move to the Outer Hebrides and live amongst a civilised community.

I'd love to hear from people who do this on trains, in restaurants etc. Anyone brave enough?

My bugbear is people parking on zig zags. I live in a nice village and have done for ten years. Over the last couple of years I've noticed that no one seems so know you're not supposed to park on zig zags. There's a Tesco express in front of the zig zag in question and I see people parking on it at all times. I swear this is a post covid thing, I never noticed it before.
Traffic wardens will happily give you a ticket for parking a millimetre outside of a parking space but do fuck all about zig zag parkers who are actually putting pedestrians at risk. Makes me fume.

YANBU. People are behaving like feral creatures in public post Covid. It was like lockdown wiped some people's brains of acceptable behaviour and they used it as an excuse to set the bar really low after.

It’s the almost incessant use of expletives that makes me depressed these days. We went to sit in a pub garden (family friendly with a play area) when the weather was nice a couple of weeks ago but found we were surrounded by groups of people talking loudly and littering every sentence with flagrant profanity. A lot of them had children themselves. The school children that walk through town liberally punctuate their conversations with the F and C word. It’s like they are so used to saying it that it no longer means anything. It sounds so toxic and vulgar. So inconsiderate to anyone else who has no desire to expose their children to needless bad language.

Now I notice loads of people (of all ages) seemingly unable or unwilling to move from eg 3 or 4 abreast on a pavement, so that I either have to wait or walk in the road to pass. A few months ago I saw a couple of kids zooming around the supermarket on scooters. I feel like a grumpy old woman when whinging about it, but even teen DD commented how annoying it was!

You are literally me. I walked to the co op this morning and passed multiple groups of grown adults taking up the whole pavement and making no attempt to move. I had to step into the road. Then when I was leaving the co op, a woman was entering it on her electric bike! The only group I passed who actually seems to have awareness that other people exist and made room to pass me, was a group of teenagers in hoodies walking a dog, make of that what you will.