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The Blast Radius of Inconsideracy

Two well-known facts:

The unholy combination of these things yields some of the most effortful douchebaggery you’ll find anywhere in the world. Take, for instance, my Halloween 2022: literally hundreds of children and their parents milling around combined with a partial street closure created some bad traffic on the block, which some jackass in a minivan decided to keep everyone within earshot informed about by leaning on his horn for ten straight minutes uninterrupted. Un. In. Terr. UPTED. TENFULLMINUTES.

While unnecessarily excessive honking is one of the more archetypical New York examples, the city provides triggers for any pet peeve imaginable:

…you get the point. If it’s obnoxious and in public, New York has it in spades.

Moving along from the venting, I present you another true fact:

This is some kind of reptile-brain survival instinct we’re stuck with. What it means is that the only way to tolerate life in New York is to at least become inured to it – “it” being New York and everything in it, to be clear, in case you’re still uncertain of my stance on this matter. Most likely, you’ll participate passively since some amount of assholery just inadvertently happens in the course of trying to get where you’re going. For a chosen few, like our minivan driver, you’ll make it a point to participate actively.

It does not take many people doing this, passive or active, to make life miserable in what I call the

~ ~ ~ Blast Radius of Inconsideracy ~ ~ ~

(Hey, it’s the title of the post!)

For an explanatory example, I return to honking (for which I have already developed a solution, by the way, and you’re welcome): if someone cuts you off, you become angry. If you honk at them, you reflect some of that anger back at them, which is fine, but also at everyone within earshot. Venting does help, but not much, so all-in it’s actually you that has contributed far more shittiness to the environment than the person who cut you off. Congratulations, you’re the villain now. It escalates from there.

These interactions happen everywhere. What’s unique about New York in my experience is the frequency of them observed by any one person. If you saw the correct half of Barbenheimer, you may have learned a thing or two about self-sustaining nuclear reactions: it’s not enough to have high-energy matter flying about, you also need enough matter crammed into a small enough space that collisions are frequent enough to keep the whole thing going, and in fact, you can start such a self-sustaining reaction simply by piling enough matter in one place without any explicit ignition.

I think you get the analogy,1 but I want to put a finer point on that last part: the culture of the schmuck emerges not necessarily from something inherent about New Yorkers, even ones who voluntarily move or stay there presumably knowing what they’re signing up for, but from both the sheer quantity of people and their density, compounded over the years. It arises from the blast radius of inconsideracy, from inevitable negative interactions that irradiate everyone nearby with their negativity. It’s not good.

And that’s it, really. I don’t have any bright ideas on how to improve it. Do you?

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  1. But if you don’t, I did the work for you: “it’s not enough to have angry people spreading negativity, you also need enough people crammed into a small enough space that bad interactions are frequent enough to keep the whole thing going, and in fact, you can start such a self-sustaining culture simply by piling enough people into one place without any explicit inciting event.” ↩

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