It's Good To Talk

Today I was very pleasant to a shopkeeper, and she looked at me as if I was insane.

I always try to make a concerted effort wherever possible to be nice to people. However, this does not always have the desired effect, and can often provoke a reaction nothing short of suspicious. I believe the reason for this mistrust in based around two factors:

1. We now live in a society where people have more access to free information than ever before, without ever having to speak (and therefore be courteous to) an actual living person. We communicate with work colleagues by msn, friends by facebook, family by text message, we buy our groceries online and reach out to complete strangers via myspace. We are becoming less and less interested in using the art of speech, which is resulting in a genuine mistrust of simple honest genial face-to-face pleasantness.

2. People think that you’re taking the p*ss.