I was yelling at some clouds the other day when it occurred to me that somewhere along the line, people stopped acknowledging each other.
No eye contact. No nod. No smile. No “excuse me.” No little raised-eyebrow of recognition that says, hey, I see you there. Hi. Hello, we’re both trying to occupy the same space without making each other’s lives worse.
Today I was standing outside my car, about to open the door, when I saw a guy riding up the bike lane towards me. I realized that if I opened it, I could force him into traffic. So, I waited.
Not because I wanted credit. Not because I wanted thanks. Because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you notice another person and understand that your actions might affect them.
He passed. I smiled, nodded, gave him a little wave.
Nothing.
And that’s the thing that make it a thing.
I almost wanted to be angry at him specifically, but I don’t think this is about him. He’s just another symptom of something much bigger.
We’ve become a society of people moving through public space without acknowledging one another at all. Everyone is inside themselves. Inside their phones. Inside whatever private current they’re drifting through. Even when they’re not looking at a screen, they look absent. Glazed. Unavailable.
And yes, I know everybody is going through something.
Everybody is distracted. Life is complicated. Tragedy is everywhere, and people carry it with them because that is part of being alive. Grief, fear, stress, exhaustion, disappointment, anxiety, whatever it is—none of us walks around unburdened.
I know that.
But I don’t see why that should become an excuse to move blandly and blindly through the world without acknowledging that other people are carrying something too. If anything, that should be the reason we acknowledge each other. Not with a conversation. Not with forced cheerfulness. Not by pretending everything is fine.
And I’m definitely not saying everybody needs to walk around smiling. I don’t need you to perform happiness for me. You can be tired. You can be pissed off. You can be sad. You can be having the worst fucking day of your life.
I just need you to behave as though I exist.
A nod is enough. Eye contact for half a second is enough. An “excuse me” is enough. None of that requires happiness. It just requires recognition. Just some tiny signal that says: I see you. You’re here. I’m here. We are sharing this ragged and difficult experience for the next three seconds while we pass each other on the sidewalk.
And for the record, I also want to move through the world without talking to people. In fact, talking to strangers is always the last thing I want to do on a long list of things I don’t want to do. I am not campaigning for more small talk. I would just like safe passage and a little congeniality. The same thing everybody else wants.
Why make it awkward? Why move through somebody else’s space as though they aren’t there? Why irritate when an excuse me or a quick thanks cost absolutely nothing?
And then there are the tinted windows. Windshields too. Like, y’all are either Batman or just really, REALLY important. Or maybe—fuck—is this a drive-by? Are you ICE?
Listen. Look. I can’t fucking see you behind the wheel of your death machine, so now we’re in a standoff. I’m caught between ducking behind something or sprinting backward to safety. I’m stuck. Motionless. And you’re just sitting there in your murdered-out Tesla, fishbowling me from the comfort of your mobile observation deck. Nothing feels predatory about that. At all.
Nobody moves.
This is where we live now.
All because you’re what? Super shy? Hella light-sensitive? On a mission from God?
I’m not asking to see your entire face. I’m asking for the basic visual information required to determine whether the several-thousand-pound machine pointed directly at me is actually going to stop. There used to be a tiny social contract built into driving. You could see the person behind the wheel. They could see you. You made eye contact. You waved someone through. Someone nodded. Someone stopped. Someone went.
And maybe you’re perfectly nice in there. Maybe you’re listening to a podcast. Maybe you’re having a terrible day. Maybe you’re just trying to get home.
I don’t know.
That’s the fucking problem.
I can’t see you.
So now I have to guess.
And guessing is not a great foundation for sharing public space with a death machine.
But at least the tinted windows belong to a person. A person who, in theory, can see me. A person who, in theory, can make a decision. Now the city is filling up with the solution to a problem that didn’t exist. Fleets of job-stealing, traffic-causing surveillance taxis - that are predominantly empty – are prowling the streets - gliding around everywhere, taking up space, clogging intersections, and pretending to be the future while making the present more hostile.
There is no driver to make eye contact with. No human being to read. No tiny social negotiation. No wave, no nod, no moment of mutual recognition. The only eye contact I’m getting from these things is from some disinterested, slack-jawed fare who doesn’t quite know what to do with my bird flipping.
And honestly, neither do I.
Because what am I supposed to be communicating? That I’m angry at the passenger? The machine? The company that put it there? The city that decided this was progress? The invisible person monitoring the thing from somewhere else?
I’m flipping off a rolling surveillance pod and getting stared at by somebody who looks like they accidentally wandered into a vehicle while looking for a place to eat.
This is not a modern luxury. This is a hostile interface.
The machine doesn’t know me. It doesn’t acknowledge me. It doesn’t understand that I’m standing there, waiting to see whether it has seen me. It just sits there.
Or creeps forward.
Or stops in the middle of everything.
And I’m left trying to interpret the behavior of a several-thousand-pound autonomous object while a passenger inside watches me perform the only remaining human gesture available.
The bird.
That’s what feels so bizarre about all of this. These gestures are tiny. Almost meaningless on their own. But together they make public life function.
We don’t apologize when we get in someone’s way. We don’t say excuse me. We don’t thank people. We don’t nod. We don’t smile. We don’t perform even the smallest gestures that once told another person: I see you. And now we’re replacing the people with machines that can’t even pretend to see us. It seems to be happening more and more.
I’m not interested in being told that I’m old, cranky, sensitive, nostalgic, or expecting too much. I’m not asking strangers to become my friends. I’m asking for basic social recognition. I’m asking to be able to tell whether the person operating the machine that could kill me has actually seen me. And if there is no person operating it, I’m asking why the machine is here at all, taking up space, causing traffic, collecting data, and making the city feel less human by taking actual humans away.
So no, I don’t think I failed here. I noticed someone else. I adjusted my behavior. I kept him safe. I acknowledged him.
I fulfilled my contract to exacting, normative expectation.
Society failed. The machines failed. The people who keep putting them in our way failed.
I’m still doing my part.