(~2 minutes to read)
A Londoner of American extraction has launched an attempt to get London commuters talking to each other.
(Borrowed from the BBC’s website.)
If you’ve ever travelled on the London Underground, you’ll know the issue. Commuters studiously avoid making eye contact let alone conversation. Any communication (such as “that seat is reserved for disabled people”) that can be mimed is mimed. From my limited experience elsewhere in the world, commuters do tend to keep to themselves, but for some reason it seems worse in London.
It’s like the trains are tumbrels carrying the condemned to the guillotine. There’s the reluctant shuffle towards the doors; not a happy face on board; no sound of people laughing and joking. Then there’s the jostling and abuse as the victims exit the train and make their way through the crowds. Any conversation that does take place on board would probably be along the lines of, “What does your day look like today?” “Oh—9:30, get head chopped off; after that, I’m free.”
Enter Jonathan Dunne and his “Tube chat?” badges. The card accompanying the badge encourages people to wear the badge to indicate that they’re open to having a chat with their fellow passengers, and points out that “you’ll benefit from a daily chat.”
He might as well have suggested that commuters leap up and down and wave their knickers in the air. Some took to Twitter, using words like “misanthropy” in proud praise of London commuters. And a rival group launched its own campaign, handing out similarly-designed badges, but with the words “Don’t even think about talking to me!” and the accompanying card encouraging people to wear the badge to let others know that “you’d rather drink a pint of bleach than talk with them!”
Now that’s fightin’ talk! The situation requires a Mick “Crocodile” Dundee character to ride the Underground with a gallon of bleach, giving people a choice between a chinwag and a drop of the hard (to swallow) stuff.
The badges are threatening to become a bit of a meme: people are designing their own with phrases such as “Ask me about Article 50” and “Don’t you f*****g dare”. Gosh how I miss the non-stop flow of intellectual London wit!
I doubt that the “Tube chat?” campaign will succeed. Last time I travelled on the Underground (admittedly a while ago now), the noise inside the moving train (especially when the windows were open) was so loud that the only way to communicate was by exchanging written notes. Try that, and anti-chat campaigners would likely use the pins on their badges as weapons.
Either that or they’d do the tube train equivalent of crossing to the other side of the street. I’m not sure what that would be, but I am sure that London commuters being the misanthropes that some claim they are, and resourceful to boot, they’d come up with something.
Maybe it will take a 1940-style Blitz to get people talking on the Underground. What would the “anti” badges say then?