Transcript
00:00:00You're in a quiet train car, and the guy across from you takes a call on speakerphone,
00:00:04so now everyone gets both sides of the argument he's having with his wife.
00:00:07You're riding the escalator up, and the person in front of you reaches the top and stops dead
00:00:12to look at their phone, while the stairs keep delivering human beings directly into their back.
00:00:18You're on a plane, mid-meal, and the seat in front of you comes down like a drawbridge,
00:00:22full speed, full recline, zero warning.
00:00:25You've been in line for 10 minutes behind someone who, upon finally reaching the register,
00:00:29looks up at the menu for the very first time and starts planning their order.
00:00:34In every one of those moments, the same question hangs in the air.
00:00:37What's the right thing to do? Is there even a right thing to do?
00:00:40The answer is an unqualified yes. There is.
00:00:43Sociologists and economists have spent decades studying exactly these situations,
00:00:47and if I were made dictator tomorrow, the six rules in this video would be law by Friday.
00:00:53Now, since that dictator appointment is still pending, I'll settle for trying to convince you.
00:00:57I've spent 20 years writing about the science of human behavior, which means I come to you today
00:01:02with peer-reviewed citations and personal grievances, and I will be presenting both.
00:01:07Six rules of public life. Each one comes with the science of why it exists and what to do instead.
00:01:12Keep score as we go, because at the end, I want your number.
00:01:16How many of these six do you agree with?
00:01:18And stick around for rule six, because it's the one people break constantly,
00:01:22while feeling like good people the entire time.
00:01:25Before we get going, if you're not subscribed to this channel, hey, can you do me a favor and just click and subscribe?
00:01:30Then we can get moving.
00:01:31Rule number one, keep your backstage behavior backstage.
00:01:35The sociologist Irving Goffman had a famous idea.
00:01:38All of us are performers.
00:01:40In public, we're on the front stage, composed, presentable, holding it together.
00:01:44And then there's the backstage, home, bathroom, where we're alone, where the costume comes off and the grooming happens.
00:01:50Clipping your nails on the train is dragging the backstage onto the front stage.
00:01:53That's why it doesn't just annoy people, it revolts them.
00:01:56Every stranger in that car is quietly doing you the courtesy of maintaining public composure.
00:02:01And the Clippers announced that you've just decided to opt out.
00:02:04You've turned a shared car into your bathroom and everyone else into unwilling guests in that bathroom.
00:02:09Instead, what you should be doing is clipping your nails at home over a trash can like a person with a secret to keep.
00:02:15Because grooming is supposed to be secret.
00:02:17That's the whole deal.
00:02:18Same rule, different sense.
00:02:19On an airplane, in a train, in a car, don't eat something we all can smell.
00:02:24Here's the thing about smell.
00:02:25It's a comment.
00:02:26I can look away from your behavior.
00:02:28I can put in ear buds, but I can't opt out of air.
00:02:31When you crack open something pungent in a sealed space, you've made a unilateral decision on behalf of 40 strangers for the next 20 minutes.
00:02:39Instead, save it.
00:02:41It'll taste better in somewhere that isn't a hostage situation.
00:02:45Rule number two.
00:02:46The sound belongs to everyone.
00:02:49This one comes with my favorite piece of science in this whole video.
00:02:52Researchers at Cornell studied something they called a half-a-log, hearing one half of a phone conversation.
00:02:58And they found that a half-a-log drains bystanders' attention more measurably than hearing a full conversation between two people.
00:03:06Why?
00:03:07Because your brain is a prediction machine.
00:03:09A complete conversation has a rhythm.
00:03:10It can follow and tune out.
00:03:12Half a conversation is unpredictable.
00:03:14Every silence might end, and your brain can't stop trying to fill in the missing side.
00:03:19You are literally unable to ignore it.
00:03:21Which means the guy on speakerphone isn't just being rude.
00:03:24He's conducting a small, involuntary cognitive experiment on everyone in range.
00:03:30Instead, phone to your ear or step away.
00:03:33Your ear was designed for this, folks.
00:03:36And a cousin rule.
00:03:37Don't play music or videos out loud.
00:03:38When you skip the headphones, you've appointed yourself a DJ of a captive audience.
00:03:42Here's the rule.
00:03:43Headphones.
00:03:44Headphones.
00:03:44Every time.
00:03:46They cost a lot less than all the goodwill you're burning.
00:03:49Rule number three.
00:03:50Don't be the bottleneck.
00:03:52Public space is a flow system.
00:03:54Thousands of strangers coordinating without a word.
00:03:58And it only works if nobody becomes the clog.
00:04:01The classic.
00:04:02Blocking the train doors.
00:04:03The system runs on one sacred sequence.
00:04:06People off first, then people on.
00:04:09Off, then on.
00:04:10Stand in the doorway and you've single-handedly jammed the whole exchange and undermine human
00:04:15civilization.
00:04:16Instead, step onto the platform, let them off, re-board.
00:04:20You lose four seconds and gain hours of silent approval.
00:04:24A related rule.
00:04:26Don't stop at the top of the escalator.
00:04:29Everyone behind you is still moving.
00:04:31That's how escalators work.
00:04:34Clear the landing before consulting your phone, your family, or your spiritual compass.
00:04:38And while we're on escalators, stand right, walk left.
00:04:41It's a coordination norm.
00:04:43Nobody decreed it, but everyone depends on it.
00:04:45And my personal favorite in this family, don't reach the front of the line and then begin
00:04:51deciding what you want.
00:04:52You've had the entire line to prepare.
00:04:55The menu has been visible.
00:04:57In some cases, for the duration of a short film, reaching the counter undecided makes you
00:05:02the system's single point of failure.
00:05:04Instead, decide while you wait.
00:05:07Ladies and gentlemen, that's what waiting is for.
00:05:10Rule number four.
00:05:12Respect the contested inches.
00:05:14Public space is full of invisible property lines and the strangers around you are all honoring
00:05:18them.
00:05:19A subway seat is a defined parcel.
00:05:21Your knees do not get an easement onto the seat beside you and your bag doesn't get its
00:05:26own ticket.
00:05:27Bag on your lap, knees in your zone.
00:05:29This one is so contested that MTA, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, literally ran an advertising
00:05:34campaign about it.
00:05:35The airplane is where this rule gets genuinely philosophical.
00:05:40Economists use the reclining seat to teach something called the Coase Theorem.
00:05:44The puzzle of who actually owns those four inches behind your seat.
00:05:49The button says you.
00:05:50The knees pressed against your chair say something else.
00:05:53The honest answer is it's contested territory, which means reclining at full speed, at full
00:05:58recline, mid-meal service isn't claiming your property.
00:06:01It's an invasion with a headrest.
00:06:03Glance back.
00:06:04Recline slowly.
00:06:05Partial credit for partial recline.
00:06:07And then there are the armrests.
00:06:09A three-seat airplane row runs on a quiet treaty.
00:06:12The middle seat, punished on both sides, denied a wall, denied an exit, gets both armrests.
00:06:19That's the compensation package.
00:06:21Aisle and window, you already won.
00:06:23Surrender the elbow room.
00:06:25It's a tiny tax on your incredible fortune.
00:06:27Then there's the buffer zone.
00:06:29First, leave a gap at the urinals.
00:06:32Take the ends first.
00:06:34Also, don't loom at the ATM.
00:06:36This spacing instinct is so real that scientists have actually measured it.
00:06:39In one case, with a study so ethically dubious, it's now taught as a cautionary tale.
00:06:45Researchers in the 70s hit a periscope in a men's room to prove that crowding a stranger
00:06:49measurably disrupts the proceedings.
00:06:53Science confirmed what you already knew.
00:06:55Space out, back up.
00:06:56Rule number five.
00:06:57The line is a moral institution.
00:07:00Not a suggestion.
00:07:01An institution.
00:07:02First come, first serve might be the most
00:07:05fiercely defended fairness norm we have.
00:07:08And here's the tell.
00:07:09The outrage at a line cutter is wildly out of proportion to the seconds actually lost.
00:07:15Nobody's mad about the time.
00:07:16They're mad about the principle.
00:07:18You declared your time more valuable than anyone else's.
00:07:21Out loud with your body.
00:07:23Stanley Milgram, yep, the famous obedience researcher,
00:07:26once sent students to cut into more than 100 New York City lines
00:07:30just to document what happens.
00:07:32People objected, sometimes physically, over spots in line.
00:07:36That's how deep this one runs.
00:07:38So instead, just remember, the back is right there.
00:07:41It's not far.
00:07:43That's the point of being in a line.
00:07:45The line also has an internal physics.
00:07:46Don't tailgate the person ahead
00:07:48and don't drift so far back that strangers have to guard the gap for you.
00:07:52One comfortable car length, that's the norm.
00:07:54Also, let's talk about boarding planes.
00:07:56Don't be gate lice.
00:07:58That's the name that airline crews give to the crowd
00:07:59that swarms the boarding gate before its group is called.
00:08:03Standing up sooner does not move the plane.
00:08:05It has never once moved the plane.
00:08:07Stay seated until they call your group.
00:08:10Rule number six.
00:08:11Strangers are people, not scenery.
00:08:13This is the one people break while feeling like good people.
00:08:17So watch closely.
00:08:18Goffin found that strangers passing on the street
00:08:20perform a tiny ritual he called civil inattention.
00:08:23A half-second glance, then away.
00:08:25That glance is a complete message.
00:08:27I see you're a person, and I'm no threat.
00:08:29And the look away is the second half of the message.
00:08:31Hold the stare, and you've broken the contract.
00:08:34It stops reading as attention and starts reading as a challenge.
00:08:37Glance, release, that's the whole move.
00:08:40The modern version, don't photograph identifiable strangers
00:08:45without asking, especially kids.
00:08:47Being in public doesn't erase a person's claim on their own image.
00:08:50Legality isn't the bar, agency is.
00:08:53If someone is doing something wonderful, ask.
00:08:55Or compose a shot without recognizable faces.
00:08:58The photo you take of a stranger without asking
00:09:01turns a person into content scenery with a pulse.
00:09:04And the version everyone excuses in themselves.
00:09:07Don't argue with an employee who cannot change the rule.
00:09:09When the flight cancels or the return gets refused,
00:09:11we displace our frustration onto whoever's available
00:09:15instead of whoever is responsible.
00:09:17The gate agent did not invent thunderstorms.
00:09:19The barista did not set corporate policy on oat milk.
00:09:22Aim your complaint at people with actual power over the outcome.
00:09:25There's usually a form for that.
00:09:27And hand the human in front of you a little grace instead.
00:09:30Nothing reveals character faster than how you treat someone
00:09:33who can't fight back and can't fix it.
00:09:36So, that's the rule book.
00:09:38Six rules, but really one rule wearing six outfits.
00:09:41Public life is a cooperative game strangers play together
00:09:44all day with no referee.
00:09:47It works only because each of us assumes everyone else
00:09:50will hold up their end.
00:09:51The glance away.
00:09:53The surrendered armrest.
00:09:54The space left in the doorway.
00:09:56The patience shown to an employee who didn't cause a problem
00:09:59and can't fix it.
00:10:00Each one is a tiny vote for the kind of shared world you want to live in.
00:10:05Break these rules and nothing happens to you exactly.
00:10:08Everyone just quietly knows.
00:10:09And honestly, being good at this stuff is now a competitive advantage.
00:10:14The bar is on the floor.
00:10:16You can clear it by deciding what sandwich you want
00:10:18before reaching the counter
00:10:20and by keeping your nail clippers at home.
00:10:24I'll see you next time.
00:10:26Headphones in.
00:10:27If you like this video, you'll probably enjoy this one
00:10:29where I share 16 things that everybody should know how to do,
00:10:33some of which you probably don't know how to do.
00:10:35Thanks for watching.
00:10:37Make sure to subscribe.
00:10:41Bye.