Talking to Strangers

Melissa Kirsch asks: ‘How often do you talk to strangers? What’s stopping you?’ I never talk to strangers. What stops me is that I don’t want to.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/briefing/public-offering.html

Talking to strangers is hard work. It is stressful and, when I have been forced into talking to strangers, I have found it completely ungratifying.

I do not see why I should do something that is unpleasant which does not benefit me or anyone else. I don’t want to talk to strangers and I don’t see any reason to believe that they want to talk to me. I’m as much a stranger to them as they are to me and this is some reason to believe that they would find talking to me as stressful, unpleasant, and ungratifying as I would find talking to them. Even on the off chance that they might want to talk to me I see no reason why I should sacrifice to satisfy their desires.

Talking to strangers is viewed as virtuous. ‘Engagement with strangers, Kirsch writes, ‘is at the core of our social contract.’ The socialization obligation for women is especially stringent and training for sociability and social acceptability is one of the more oppressive features of girls’ training. Women’s work has always been people work. Men make their living by doing and producing; women make their living by pleasing men who do and produce. So girls are trained from early childhood in the social skills they need for their adult job—not only or primarily pleasing men but pleasing women, affiliating, and forming circles of female friends for mutual aid and support.

For girls, success is measured by the size of their social circle and the number of female friends, party invitations, and likes on social media they accumulate. For girls, no skills, achievements, or virtues compensate for social incompetence so social failure is devastating. And mean girls who boost their social credentials by demeaning competitors are everywhere. Boys can escape the schoolyard bully by exiting the schoolyard but girls cannot escape the social competition on the ground and in social media which is pervasive and from which there is no exit.

As adults, some of the pressure is off but sociability is still promoted. Journalists write cheerful puff pieces commending it, like Kirsch’s essay. And one reflexively feels shame, and even guilt, reading Kirsch’s advocacy of talking to strangers.

[W]hen not interacting becomes the default, our social muscles atrophy. Far from random human inconveniences, strangers are actually one of the richest and most important resources we have…They connect us to the community, teach us empathy, build civility and are full of surprise and potentially wonder.

I don’t find this case for talking to strangers convincing. I’m public spirited and polite—I say the right sentence or two in transactions with strangers, but I do not want any further engagement. I have never found surprise or wonder when I have been forced into conversations with strangers

Engaging strangers in conversation is coercive. Most of us are polite and when someone starts a conversation with us, we are compelled to respond—forced to work for them. I do not want to do the work of conversation with strangers, and I see no reason why I should force others to work for me.