July 18, 2018 • 36 mins
After author Danny Wallace received the world's worst customer service (and possibly the world's worst hotdog) from a hotdog vendor, he decided to search for the root cause of rudeness. Danny joins Will and Mango on this week's episode to talk about snarky celebrity judges, why surgeons are in dire need of a rudeness vaccine (it's for our own safety!), and how one politician effectively fought rudeness... with mimes!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I guess what will what's that man? Go? So? I
(00:02):
know Portlandia has kind of mocked Portland and the stereotypes mercilessly,
But can I just tell you about one thing that
made me fall in love with the city? Yeah, of course,
what's that? So the first time I was visiting, we
were staying at a friend's place in the city and
we decided to go downtown and Lizzie is big on
public transportation, so she made me take the bus. It
was the super rainy day and gray, but we got
(00:23):
on and we had this really long bus ride, so
we watched a lot of people get on and off
and here's what's amazing to me. Every single person who
got on the bus thanked the bus driver as they
got off. It like it was really amazing and so civil.
And that day was so gray and everyone could have
been miserable, but the fact that everyone, like this whole
(00:44):
group of people, one by one were each telling the
bus driver thank you for doing his job, I don't know,
it just made me so happy, and it made me
want to thank the bus driver too. But it also
made me wonder, like, why isn't every other place in
the US like this? Why isn't this just the expected
behavior across the US? And of course, as you and
I both know, as full as the world is of
(01:04):
good people were also played with horrible internet commenters and
surly reality show judges and politicians who are anything but decent,
and it makes you wonder is the world getting ruder?
Do scientists really believe that rudeness spreads like an affection?
And what can we do to change this tide? And
that's what we're talking about today. Let's dive in a
(01:46):
their podcast. Listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Mangues Ticketer and sitting on the soundproof booth sporting his
what's it say? I'm Bart Simpson. Who the heck are you? T? Shirt?
That's our pal and producer Ristin McNeil. That is one
rude T shirt. You know, when when the Simpsons first
came out on the air and that shirt came out
in fifth grade, kids in my school either had to
(02:09):
turn their shirts around or put duct tape over the
word heck and uh, and then the shirts got banned. Yeah,
I remember parents thinking like these kids today and shaking
their heads but you know, actually that's always been the case.
Kids have always been rude, and parents have always complained
about it. And in fact, we have the perfect person
to chat with about that and all things rude, the
(02:31):
author of a new book. F you very much understanding
the culture of rudeness and what we can do about it,
Danny Wallace. Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thank you very much,
pleased to be here. So, Danny, one of the most
amazing things to me about the book, and it is truly,
truly wonderful. I'm just amazed that it was inspired by
a hot dog. Would you mind telling us a little
(02:52):
bit about that story? Of course? Um, yes, it was.
It was inspired by by hot dog. I like hot dogs.
There's no crime in that, um, and there was. There
was one day where I really fancied the hot dog
and my son I wanted a hot dog as well,
and we found a place that sold hot dogs advertised,
you know, the hot dogs that it was selling. So
so really this should have been very, very easy, and
(03:14):
this is as long as the story should ever have been.
But I went inside to get the hot dog. Again,
I've done it before. I know what I'm doing. Um,
I go in and I asked for the hot dog.
But I don't know if you've ever walked in, it's
too I don't know, well anywhere really where it just
feels like the person behind the counter has already taken
in against you somehow. And that's really how it felt.
(03:36):
There was something in the air, some sort of vibe.
And she made me pay up front, which I thought
was unusual. But you know, it wasn't just like a
fast food thing. It was a proper kind of little
diner style restaurant down by the seaside Um. But you know,
I did everything that was required of me, and then
I was standing waiting for it, and she made us
kind of stand outside and kind of fifteen minutes passed,
(04:00):
and that seemed like the right amount of time to
pass for what should be a very quick meal to
make for me to go in and ask where it was.
She kept going, you don't understand how it works, and
I kept going, well, I do understand how it works.
You know, I had a hot dog, and you give
me the hot dog, and she keeps she keeps going,
they're cooked to order. And I was like, well, I
(04:20):
ordered one and you haven't cooked it. You know, I've
been to restaurants before that, that's how every restaurant works.
And at one point she ended up saying something very insulting,
or at least it sounded insulting. She she said, you're
probably the sort of people who'd que up for forty
minutes for fish and chips. Wow, I I still don't
(04:40):
they don't know what that means. It sounds mean though
it struck to the very core of me um and
maybe question who I would I use for forty minutes
efficient chips? I don't know. I don't know where I
am anymore. The reason I realized that I was kind
of going a bit mad with this and I was
obsessing over it because for a couple of days, like
when someone's been truly rude to you and they've broken
(05:01):
those rules, it's very confusing. You end up quite bewildered.
It's why people can't often come up with something witty
to say in the moment. And because they disrespected you
or made you feel kind of publicly disrespected, you are
trying to claw back some of that respect somehow, And
so it kept going over and over in my head.
And you know, I'll be driving around and they'll be
(05:23):
like a lull in the conversation between me and my
wife and me and my son, and then out of nowhere,
I would just immediately go that woman was unbelievable, and
just start talking about her again. And the next night
I drove past the dinner and it was completely dark
and it was empty, and I found myself, as a
grown man, flipping off a diner and with no one
(05:44):
in it. There was nothing to be gained by doing it,
apart from my own sort of sanity. And that's when
I realized, you know, these these rude things that happened
to us, they they send us temporarily insane, I think,
and I wanted to find out why I And I
think one of the amazing things about it is that
you actually write that rudeness is airborne and the passes
(06:06):
from person to person like a yarn. And I'd love
to hear you talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, well,
science has shown that that really rudeness does spread. It
is kind of contagious, and it kind of spreads throughout
an office or a school or a workplace or wherever
um in much the same way as the common cold.
So those people who were sitting there, shiny eyed gleeful
(06:29):
watching you know, an altercation between a hot dog less
man and the keeper of the hot dogs when they
saw people being rude to each other without realizing it.
They will now sort of be infected. It will be
much easier for them to be rude later on in
their day. And when someone's been directly rude to you,
and again those unwritten rules kind of have been broken. Um.
(06:53):
If they've been rude to you, you're going to feel
much worse in yourself. It can affect um how you
were acts after work. You won't be able to switch
off in quite the same way you might be snapp
here with your partner. Your downtime won't be as as
downtimey as as you'd like it. Your rest period won't
be as RESTful as you'd like it. If you snap
at your partner down now being infected, and they'll then
(07:15):
take that rudeness elsewhere. Um. But anyone who even just
witnesses the rudeness will become primed for more rudeness. So,
for example, if you've seen someone you know in the
line for coffee this morning, be rude to the barista
even though it had nothing to do with you. Later
on in the day because you've experienced that moment and
it may have dredged up some kind of memories of
(07:35):
rudeness for you and feelings of being slightly on edge.
You're much more likely to now see rudeness where none
was intended. So you might get an email which is
perfectly neutral in tone, and yet you will be more
likely to read sarcasm into it or maybe passive aggression. Um,
And that person is completely oblivious. They just they put
(07:56):
a smiley there just to be nice. But you're like,
what does this smiley really me? So it kind of
puts us all on edge even just seeing it. So
I was recently on a train and I paid extra
to be on a quiet car, and this person came
in with their cell phone and just chatted the whole time.
And I just could not ignore the person, and uh,
(08:16):
personally because they were bragging about themselves continuously, but also
just because I couldn't avoid listening in. And you actually
have a section about half of ARDSCA. Can you talk
a little bit about cell phones and why they're so annoying? Yeah,
of course, Well, on one level, when we got onto
a train and we're in public space, UM, certainly I understand. Uh,
(08:37):
you know my part my rules. If I got a table,
I'm not going to spread my stuff all over the table.
I understand I've got a little bit of the table.
I'm not gonna, you know, shove my legs out right
in front of me, because I understand that person's got
their space. We all have these little instinctive moments of
respect that we pay to one another so that we
can all, you know, get along. And and someone stands
(09:01):
up and starts chatting away loudly on their phone and
knows that everyone else must be able to hear it.
They're sort of removing themselves from the group that they're saying,
you're a group, you lock, you're all the group, but
I'm special. I'm having my phone call and they have
their phone call. And why it's so annoying for other
people If you have, you know, two old ladies sitting,
(09:23):
you know, in the row behind you and they're just
chatting away and laughing, it's sort of fine because they're
they're chatting and you can hear the whole conversation. It
might be annoying, but it's not necessarily rude. Why someone
chatting on their phone is impossible to ignore um, and
is is rude? Is because you can only hear that
(09:45):
half of the conversation that you're talking about, the half
a log um. And the human brain, no matter what
you're trying to do, it's always hungry for a story.
It's always trying to solve, you know, problems, It is
trying to work stuff out. So even if you're trying
your best to ignore this person having their chat, your
brain is trying to fill in the blanks. And and
(10:06):
there's also the kind of the staccato nature of a conversation.
You're trying to get into your flow, your rhythm wherever
you do. When you're driving and someone cuts you up,
they disturb your flow. If you're on a train and
you're reading a book and you have to read the
same sentence nineteen times because of the person having the chat,
your flow has been interrupted, and we feel that on
(10:26):
some level that is always quite a rude thing. But
the random nature of replies on a one sided conversation,
because you don't know how long the other guy's gonna
talk for. You know, you might do a one word answer,
you might you might you talk for ten minutes and
you'll just here a man going hard the whole time.
So because it's completely unpredictable, it's another reason that we
find it impossible to ignore and hugely annoying. But the
(10:49):
rudeness certainly comes from removing yourself from the group and
going no one here matters. I'm talking to Nigel. He's
had a hair transplant. Stay right there, more with Danny
Wallace right after this break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
(11:17):
We're talking to Danny Wallace. You know, one of the
most amazing stories in your book is about a politician
in Colombia who decided to fight rudeness, and to fight
rudeness with mimes of all things, and I was hoping
you could talk a little bit about that. Yeah, this
is a guy stumbled across named Anthonys Marcus who is
either the craziest politician in the world or some kind
(11:39):
of genius. And I think he's some kind of genius
because he takes problems and he's sort of he comes
up with what seem on paper to be insane ideas,
insane solutions, and yet they seem to work. And this
is a guy who had been kind of in charge,
like the trance clothing or the director of university at
(12:01):
Bogutar University UM and there was like there was kind
of some student unrest one day and there were hundreds
and hund of the students all shouting, and he was
on the stage and he was trying to calm them down,
and they would not be calmed him. They would not listen,
they would not give him the time of day, and
no matter what he did on that microphone, they wouldn't
shut up. And so he very calmly walked to the
(12:21):
front of the stage, underd his belt, turned around, pulled
down his trousers and showed the world his ass, at
which point every student was kind of silent and slack George.
No one knew why he was doing this. Had he
gone mad, you know? Was he protesting their rudeness or
was he being rude himself? And it was a massive scandal,
(12:44):
and every sort of newspaper was talking about it. Everyone
who was discussed that at his behavior, how could he
act that way? It was so rude um And he
ended up having to leave his job. But because he
had done this current crazy thing, he was now in
the public kind of consciousness. So when he then ran
for there at a time when Bogutar was seen as
(13:05):
pretty much the most um chaotic, let's stay city in
the world, and there was corruption left right and center.
They felt that this was a guy they could trust.
So he was, you know, put into power. But crucially,
because he didn't owe anyone any favors, he could get
rid of everyone that he felt was potentially corrupt and
(13:26):
instead bring in a bunch of his friends, all of
whom had crazy ideas like him. And they looked at
the city and they saw what was going on, and
they saw that people were driving in considerately, They were
mounting the sidewalks, they were jaywalking left right and center,
they were being incredibly loud when when they shouldn't have been,
(13:46):
you know, um, And he just thought, right, what do
we do here? And just as you say, he did
something a bit crazy, which was that he got rid
of the vast majority of the notoriously corrupt traffic police
and he replaced them with minds, so actual minds. So
people dressed in black, the traditional white gloves, their faces
(14:10):
painted white, and he just unleashed this army of minds
onto the streets and said, find rude behavior, find bad behavior,
and call it out. So if you were someone who
was saying jaywalking and there was traffic. You know, you're
putting people in danger, and you're doing what you shouldn't
be doing. You might look behind you and find five
or six mimes who are copying you and mocking your walk,
(14:31):
completely in front of the whole world, and it would
make you think twice about doing that again. Or if
you'd part your car somewhere where you weren't allowed to
park your car, you might suddenly find loads and loads
of minds surrounding your car, just pointing at you and
shaking their heads. And what it did was it made
people accountable for their actions, but it also showed everybody
(14:54):
else that, look, there's people on your side. So these
rude people they're not being because you know, we're we're
just letting them anymore. They're breaking the rules, and we
are sort of shaming them, but in a playful but
powerful way. And the public started to join in, and
he had more and more schemes that didn't just involve minds.
(15:15):
I mentioned people being loud. You know, there might be
playing there. I guess back then their boom boxes and
their disco music or whatever it was about. Then, you know,
loudly on the train, and suddenly a bunch of fellows
dressed up as benedictating monks would get on um, you
know and just put their fingers to their lips just
to sort of highlights you know, their their their vow
(15:37):
of silence and how you were impinging upon it. So
there's all these kind of It was almost like almost
like kind of weird hidden camera moments, except no one
was really filming it. It was just there to show
the public. Look, we understand there's a way to behave
and we're going to help you, and we're gonna puncture
the kind of the aggression underneath it that it normally
(15:57):
goes to, and and we're going to show that you've
got people on your side. And it worked to an
astounding degree. You know, even homicides went down, um, just
thanks to a series of kind of quite playful things.
And and and crucially um people offered to pay more
tax just because the mayor said, listen, it would be
(16:18):
really lovely if you would offer to pay more tax.
So it just showed that people were hungry for a
non rude world. But it felt like that chance had
been lost at a time when Bogita had gone crazy
and it just took one crazy guy to turn this around.
That's really such an incredible story. So I do want
to get back to a little bit of how rudeness
(16:40):
affects us. And I know in one part you talk
about how, um, rudeness can sort of curb people's creativity,
But I was also curious how rudeness can actually be
dangerous in a medical context. When you talk a little
bit about that. Yeah, of course, UM, well, when someone
has been unnecessarily rude to you, UM, it really does
(17:01):
affect your brain. It affects the frontal lobes, which is
RESPONSI was responsible for kind of working memory and whatever
the task at hand is UM, and studies were done
that showed that, yes, absolutely, it doesn't make people less creative.
So people were kind of surprised by rudeness um, and
then set simple tasks. They didn't realize that the rudeness
(17:22):
was kind of part of it, so it would happen
on the way into the experiment. But the people who
had experienced rudeness found themselves, um far less able too.
For an example, come up with very simple anagrams or
creative uses for a brick. That was my favorite um,
so they just couldn't come up with as many ideas
(17:45):
as other people could, the people who hadn't experienced any
rudeness whatsoever. And it's been sort of shown time and
time again just how much this affects us. I mean,
there were studies done, I think in the seventies that
showed that even just a loud noise changes who we
are and how much empathy we have. So if you
had an old woman at the top of some stairs
(18:05):
and to her shopping bag is broken and all her
shopping is tumbling down the stairs and oranges and tin cans,
but our instinct is to run to her and to
help her. But the science has shown that if someone nearby,
and this is the crazy bit, if someone nearby is
doing some gardening and has quite a lowed lawnmower, it
affects us in such a way that we are much
(18:27):
less likely to go and run to that woman's aid,
because part of our brain is dealing with what's going
on over here. So it's much the same when it
comes to rudeness. Part of your brain is coping with that.
And where it becomes very dangerous, isn't when you're like
a rioter who hasn't been served the hot dog. It's
much more when you have a position of you know,
(18:48):
real authority or responsibility over other people's lives. So there
were studies done in Tel Aviv with a bunch of surgeons,
three groups of surgeons, and one of the groups in
particular was told that while they were doing their simulated
surgery on a on a on an infant um, they
were going to be observed by a medical professional from America.
(19:11):
And when that medical professional came over on Skype to
say hello to them, he was just very rude. He
was very dismissive. He said he had no real respect
for the medicinal community in the in Tel Aviv, and
that you know, he wishes them well. Nonetheless, and when
they went and did their surgery um, it was shown
(19:32):
afterwards by an independent group that that team, in particular,
those bunch of surgeons who had experienced rudeness, became less
effective at the surgery they were doing. They didn't communicate well,
they picked up the wrong instruments. They would become fixated
on the original diagnosis, so that if something changed that
was really obvious, they would kind of ignore it because
(19:55):
they couldn't deal with it. At that time, they didn't
resacitate properly, and essentially the infant in the simulation would
have died had it been an actual of surgery. So
that's when you start to see that, you know, rudeness
which cuts to the very core of who we are
and makes us feel disrespected and confuses us and bewilders
(20:16):
us in those situations, and that's where big accidents can happen,
medical errors can happen. It's been shown that truck drivers
with rude dispatchers miss more stop science. Um, so anyone,
you know, if you have an airline pilot, you know,
at least when they've had a drink, you know, you
can you can sort of see their glassy eyes or
(20:37):
see them sway around. But there's there are no clues
when it comes to rudeness and what someone may have
just experienced. And and that's when when I was writing
the book, I start to realize just how dark this
can kind of get. Because we've always found rudeness to
be quite amusing and we love, you know, rude people
in sitcoms, whether it's Basil Faulty or the Supernancy or whatever,
(21:00):
and we love changing stories, you know about rudeness, but
we don't really appreciate that it is genuinely a silent killer.
If if someone's been rude to a doctor in the morning,
it can affect the next five patients. So suddenly you
start to see how it can affect all of us.
And when you've got the world's rudist man in the
in the world's most powerful position, um, then you start
(21:21):
to have problems. Yeah, it's a well, those are all
scary situations. Though I don't think you should minimize the
hot dog thing. I still can't get over that you
didn't get a hot dog for an hour in a minute,
but it will stay with you for quite some time.
Grategy of that day. You know. There there is a
great story in the beginning of the book about someone
who joins ISIS and is put off by the rudeness
of that movement. And now, obviously ISIS isn't something that
(21:44):
we laugh about, but but honestly, that story was so funny.
Can can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely,
This was This was a fellow who who decided to
flee Britain Omar's saying, and he left his job as
a I think he was a security Gardener's supermarket, and
he fled for the for the deserts where he could
(22:06):
train with with Isis and and really I put the
story in to show that, you know, we all have
different standards, were all quite different people, um, and yet
there are some things that unite almost everyone. Because he
had gone he'd fled to the desert in order to
essentially help bring down the very sort of tenants of
Western civilization, um and do kind of unspeakable things and
(22:30):
train for atrocities. But when he got there, he just
found himself constantly annoyed because this this great brotherhood that
he'd expected of people that thought like him and wanted
to attack the West. Sometimes would just unplug his phone
and steal his phone charger for a while, which he
(22:50):
thought was one step too far even for Ices. Or
sometimes they'd sort of he'd take his shoes off to
have a prey and then he'd be like, where are
my shoes? And he'd look up and there'd be another
this member who just taking his shoes, and he was like,
this is this is not what I joined ices for.
You know, we've got to have standards here. And he
(23:12):
would make dinner for them sometimes and he'd just be like,
can you all just pipe down because all like grabbing
at the food, and he's like, we're gonna have a
system here, and he was just basically he was very
disappointed at how immature, um, and how badly brought up
a lot of terrorists seemed to be these days. Um.
And it just made me think that, you know, even
(23:32):
a man in this situation who has turned his back
on all sorts of Western conventions and all sorts of
standards of treating each other, even he can find himself
annoyed at the kind of the minor injustices and sort
of everyday monsters of polite society. Yeah, you gotta, you
(23:53):
gotta to other lines somewhere, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
I wouldn't last five minutes. And iis I'll tell you
you do talk a little bit about a rudeness vaccine
that they were testing on doctors and what exactly would
that involved. Well, it was great because this was just
like a passing comment that one of the scientists that
I've talked to said, And his name is a mere Errors,
(24:16):
and I think he's great. And there's a bunch of them.
There's a bunch of these sort of like me rudeness
nerds kind of like sculpting them out in the shadows,
sort of stemp in their little feet and going why
can't everything be better? Um? And Amir entered into sort
of rudeness studies, if you like, um by thinking that
it was nonsense. He just thought, you know, rudeness doesn't
(24:37):
have an effect on anybody. It's just just a thing.
It's just a thing that happens in your day. And
he started to look into it, almost like just as
a bet with one of his colleagues. And he told me,
he said, every time I look into it, I find
something else, and what I usually find is shocking. Um.
And we were talking about the doctor's thing and the
idea that you know, like I say, someone being rude
(24:59):
to a doctor doesn't just affect you know, the next
person the doctor sees, but five people, um, you know,
in in a in a in a road can be affected,
according to the studies, by a moment of rudeness. And
I said to him, you know, it's a silent killer.
It's a sort of you know, we we we need
to be taking this a bit more seriously. Uh. And
(25:19):
and he just sort of threw it away, this this
idea that he said, you know, we're sort of working
in a vaccine, and I was like, what were you
talking about? A vaccine? And it's kind of a video
game that doctors can play at the very start of
their day before anyone has even thought about being rude
to them. So it's almost like an inoculation and they
(25:40):
play this game and they're still working on it. But however,
it works and whatever it does helps to sort of
free up those frontal lobes that often, like I say,
get bogged down in the rudeness of things. So I
suppose it just protects them, and whatever mental exercises it
puts these doctors through just how them too, I suppose
(26:01):
take a breath or perhaps take a step back from
the situation. Um. So I can't wait to find out
more about it. That they're going to be starting more studies.
But it does show that a rudeness is being taken
seriously and be steps are being made to to help
us all deal with it. Um. Because you know when
(26:22):
every time you get in a car, you know you're
a dangerous a situation escalating. Well, we've got several more
questions for you, Danny, but we'll be right back with
Part Time Genius after the break. Welcome back to Part
(26:46):
Time Genius. We're talking to Danny Wallace, the author of
f you very much understanding the culture of rudeness and
what we can do about it. So I wanted to
ask you about Internet rolls because we started a blog
very early, uh at our former jobs and and it
was sort of this warm and welcoming culture of people
who read the posts and stuff, and it slowly grew
(27:07):
into more of an aggressive community and more people who
are more liberated to be trolley. And so our explanation
was always it really is the anonymity of this that
that people are just you know, at home behind their screens.
But you have a bit of a tweaked reason for it.
Could you explain that? Yeah, I think we've always traditionally said,
(27:29):
you know, it's it's the anonymity of the Internet that
is there is the problem. And certainly, um it is
quite free, UM it allows um. You know, the anonymity
in a sense is a beautiful thing because in the
early days it meant that people who, for example, UM,
felt uncomfortable coming out could could find other people like them,
(27:51):
but didn't feel that they were risking anything at that
at that point, and they could they could find other
people like them who were at the same point in
time and encourage to each other. And it was seen
as quite you know, it was a great thing. And
then of course the rise of the of the trolls,
it just made his immediately think, well, actually, anonymity is
a terrible thing. What studies have shown is really it's
(28:14):
a lack of eye contact that is the huge problem. Um.
I was talking earlier about how difficult it is to have,
you know, the looking glass held up to you if
you're a rude person, because you you see yourself through
the eyes of others. That's why it's also very difficult
for people to be certainly as rude to each other faces,
(28:34):
because you're there's something called the looking glass self, which
is we are always looking into the eyes of others
for how we are coming across. Does this person like me?
Have I offended them? How am I doing? You know
in life? In their eyes? Um And a lack of
eye contact with with the internet means that people can
be free to be as rude as they want. Again,
(28:55):
tests were done in hyper I think in Israel, where
they had an office full of people and some of
them were made to just sit opposite the person they
had to kind of work with, and some had to
use like instant messenger or something to where to to
work together with people. And they found far and away
that the people who would be much more aggressive with
(29:17):
each other were the ones who simply couldn't see each other.
So you know, it's it's there is a certain freedom
in in the annymity, but I would say there's much
more freedom and in knowing that person just can't see you.
I know that you referred to a certain politician and
(29:37):
some celebrity judges and Basil Faulty. And why do you
think it is that we are so attracted to rudeness. Well,
I think we're at a point where rudeness, it's sort
of helping people achieve strange ambitions. Rudeness more than ever,
is everywhere, and it's getting worse, and it tumbles from
our phones. And every time we switch on the TV, um,
(30:01):
two people who are pretending to be journalists having a fight, um, uh,
you know about whatever has just happened on cable news,
and then they bring in another person, uh, and and
it just feels angrier and narrower and coarser, and everyone's
got to have an opinion on everything all the time,
even if they know nothing about the thing they're trying
to say, They've got the opinion on and the opinion
(30:23):
has to be put in in a very short and
forthright way to cut through the noise of everyone else's
opinions and must then be broadcast to everybody else because
we're all so important. Um, the people on reality TV shows,
it's just taught us that meanness should be rewarded because
they are the people who make the edit. Um, the
highest paid talent judges are always the mean ones. Um.
(30:46):
So everywhere we turn, we're being kind of taught that
to be rude, to be to lack empathy in a
in a sense, um, it is a good thing. You know,
Journalists find they get more clicks if if if they
if they write the horrible thing in a horrible way. Um.
So so it I sort of felt this kind of
(31:07):
this ground swell, and it came at a time where
you know, like Trump, for example, Um yeah, a lot
of what he ran on was this this kind of
mavericks sort of. I tell it like it is. I'm
only being honest. I'm just saying what everyone else is
thinking and and those are all things that came from
reality TV as well. You know, all these people are going,
(31:28):
I just tell it like it is. I'm a truth teller.
You know, it's refreshing. You can't argue with it. And really,
when these people say they're being honest, they're not being
honest at all. They're just putting forward an opinion but
saying it's just honest. It's like, let's get out clause,
because we're suddenly not allowed to argue with you if
you're being honest, and in fact, we've got to all
(31:48):
stand around and applaud you for being so brave as
to be honest. And so, for whatever reason, reality TV
online personas the rise of powerful rude people. Um, we're
kind of being taught again and again that rudeness works
and politeness is weak. I think that's the thing now
(32:08):
thinking about it, I think that's what I'm getting at,
is that we see manners as weakness, and we see
empathy as weakness, and we see rudeness of strength. Well, actually,
along those lines, you talk about the possibility of empathy
training in schools and how it could help teenagers at
that stage in their lives. I mean what would that
look like. Do you think, well, yeah, it's a strange one.
(32:31):
I mean, you know, part of me kind of books
at phrases like that kind of empathy training because it
just sounds so wishy washy and sort of a bit nonsensical.
It's like, how can you train for empathy? Um? And
yet people have sort of shown in in in in
studies that it sort of can be taught and it
(32:54):
can be exercised like a muscle, you know, it can
be grown in people. And I suppose it's just highlighting
um you know here basically it boils down to this
rudeness is just kind of ignoring how another person feels
and just doing what you feel no matter who gets hurt.
(33:16):
And politeness tends to be a system. I've sort of
shared empathy, you know, I think etiquette is so outdated,
but politeness is really the main thing. And that just means,
you know, you're slightly happier when someone says please you,
You feel seen when someone says thank you. If you
hold a door open just for a couple of secments
(33:37):
for someone who's you know, struggling with some bags, you
both feel better for it. Um And and these are
things that we learn instinctively and we have used for
millennia and it's a system that works. Um. And you know,
I think that that turning our back on that empathy
is is a bad thing. I'm not sure I would,
(33:58):
you know, I we would need empathy raining in schools.
But but for the kids. But perhaps, um, I don't know.
Perhaps perhaps just highlighting how people are seen through the
eyes of others as a good thing, which essentially is
what the guy in Columbia was doing. You know, he
was holding a looking glass up to those people like
(34:18):
almost sort of you know it sort of isn't the
looking glass of mime, isn't it? Because the mind was
mimicking them and showing them what they were doing, So
it was kind of a mobile mirror. And when you
see your own actions through the eyes of others and
how you're coming across, that's when you tend to change
your behavior. But it's such a strange but but an
(34:40):
interesting idea. And honestly, even the idea that a mime
or god forbid, multiple mimes might show up if I
do something rude, would probably influence my behavior anyway. Yeah, well,
we all know what we're getting. You for your birthday. Well, Danny,
this has been a ton of fun, not u it all.
I'm so happy about how polite we've all been to
(35:02):
one another today. You've you've been, You've been absolutely wonderfully.
Should be very proud. Thank you very much, and I
hope all of our listeners will check out the book.
It's f you very much understanding the culture of rudeness
and what we can do about it. But Danny, thanks
so much for being on the program. Thanks thanks again
(35:33):
for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how
stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people
who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the
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Rowland does the exact producer thing. Gave Louesier is our
lead researcher, with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson,
(35:53):
Nolan Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve Jeff Cook gets
the show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you
like what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if
you really really like what you've heard. Maybe you could
leave a good review for us. Did we? Did we
forget Jason? Jason who
I guess what will what's that man? Go? So? I
(00:02):
know Portlandia has kind of mocked Portland and the stereotypes mercilessly,
But can I just tell you about one thing that
made me fall in love with the city? Yeah, of course,
what's that? So the first time I was visiting, we
were staying at a friend's place in the city and
we decided to go downtown and Lizzie is big on
public transportation, so she made me take the bus. It
was the super rainy day and gray, but we got
(00:23):
on and we had this really long bus ride, so
we watched a lot of people get on and off
and here's what's amazing to me. Every single person who
got on the bus thanked the bus driver as they
got off. It like it was really amazing and so civil.
And that day was so gray and everyone could have
been miserable, but the fact that everyone, like this whole
(00:44):
group of people, one by one were each telling the
bus driver thank you for doing his job, I don't know,
it just made me so happy, and it made me
want to thank the bus driver too. But it also
made me wonder, like, why isn't every other place in
the US like this? Why isn't this just the expected
behavior across the US? And of course, as you and
I both know, as full as the world is of
(01:04):
good people were also played with horrible internet commenters and
surly reality show judges and politicians who are anything but decent,
and it makes you wonder is the world getting ruder?
Do scientists really believe that rudeness spreads like an affection?
And what can we do to change this tide? And
that's what we're talking about today. Let's dive in a
(01:46):
their podcast. Listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Mangues Ticketer and sitting on the soundproof booth sporting his
what's it say? I'm Bart Simpson. Who the heck are you? T? Shirt?
That's our pal and producer Ristin McNeil. That is one
rude T shirt. You know, when when the Simpsons first
came out on the air and that shirt came out
in fifth grade, kids in my school either had to
(02:09):
turn their shirts around or put duct tape over the
word heck and uh, and then the shirts got banned. Yeah,
I remember parents thinking like these kids today and shaking
their heads but you know, actually that's always been the case.
Kids have always been rude, and parents have always complained
about it. And in fact, we have the perfect person
to chat with about that and all things rude, the
(02:31):
author of a new book. F you very much understanding
the culture of rudeness and what we can do about it,
Danny Wallace. Welcome to Part Time Genius. Thank you very much,
pleased to be here. So, Danny, one of the most
amazing things to me about the book, and it is truly,
truly wonderful. I'm just amazed that it was inspired by
a hot dog. Would you mind telling us a little
(02:52):
bit about that story? Of course? Um, yes, it was.
It was inspired by by hot dog. I like hot dogs.
There's no crime in that, um, and there was. There
was one day where I really fancied the hot dog
and my son I wanted a hot dog as well,
and we found a place that sold hot dogs advertised,
you know, the hot dogs that it was selling. So
so really this should have been very, very easy, and
(03:14):
this is as long as the story should ever have been.
But I went inside to get the hot dog. Again,
I've done it before. I know what I'm doing. Um,
I go in and I asked for the hot dog.
But I don't know if you've ever walked in, it's
too I don't know, well anywhere really where it just
feels like the person behind the counter has already taken
in against you somehow. And that's really how it felt.
(03:36):
There was something in the air, some sort of vibe.
And she made me pay up front, which I thought
was unusual. But you know, it wasn't just like a
fast food thing. It was a proper kind of little
diner style restaurant down by the seaside Um. But you know,
I did everything that was required of me, and then
I was standing waiting for it, and she made us
kind of stand outside and kind of fifteen minutes passed,
(04:00):
and that seemed like the right amount of time to
pass for what should be a very quick meal to
make for me to go in and ask where it was.
She kept going, you don't understand how it works, and
I kept going, well, I do understand how it works.
You know, I had a hot dog, and you give
me the hot dog, and she keeps she keeps going,
they're cooked to order. And I was like, well, I
(04:20):
ordered one and you haven't cooked it. You know, I've
been to restaurants before that, that's how every restaurant works.
And at one point she ended up saying something very insulting,
or at least it sounded insulting. She she said, you're
probably the sort of people who'd que up for forty
minutes for fish and chips. Wow, I I still don't
(04:40):
they don't know what that means. It sounds mean though
it struck to the very core of me um and
maybe question who I would I use for forty minutes
efficient chips? I don't know. I don't know where I
am anymore. The reason I realized that I was kind
of going a bit mad with this and I was
obsessing over it because for a couple of days, like
when someone's been truly rude to you and they've broken
(05:01):
those rules, it's very confusing. You end up quite bewildered.
It's why people can't often come up with something witty
to say in the moment. And because they disrespected you
or made you feel kind of publicly disrespected, you are
trying to claw back some of that respect somehow, And
so it kept going over and over in my head.
And you know, I'll be driving around and they'll be
(05:23):
like a lull in the conversation between me and my
wife and me and my son, and then out of nowhere,
I would just immediately go that woman was unbelievable, and
just start talking about her again. And the next night
I drove past the dinner and it was completely dark
and it was empty, and I found myself, as a
grown man, flipping off a diner and with no one
(05:44):
in it. There was nothing to be gained by doing it,
apart from my own sort of sanity. And that's when
I realized, you know, these these rude things that happened
to us, they they send us temporarily insane, I think,
and I wanted to find out why I And I
think one of the amazing things about it is that
you actually write that rudeness is airborne and the passes
(06:06):
from person to person like a yarn. And I'd love
to hear you talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, well,
science has shown that that really rudeness does spread. It
is kind of contagious, and it kind of spreads throughout
an office or a school or a workplace or wherever
um in much the same way as the common cold.
So those people who were sitting there, shiny eyed gleeful
(06:29):
watching you know, an altercation between a hot dog less
man and the keeper of the hot dogs when they
saw people being rude to each other without realizing it.
They will now sort of be infected. It will be
much easier for them to be rude later on in
their day. And when someone's been directly rude to you,
and again those unwritten rules kind of have been broken. Um.
(06:53):
If they've been rude to you, you're going to feel
much worse in yourself. It can affect um how you
were acts after work. You won't be able to switch
off in quite the same way you might be snapp
here with your partner. Your downtime won't be as as
downtimey as as you'd like it. Your rest period won't
be as RESTful as you'd like it. If you snap
at your partner down now being infected, and they'll then
(07:15):
take that rudeness elsewhere. Um. But anyone who even just
witnesses the rudeness will become primed for more rudeness. So,
for example, if you've seen someone you know in the
line for coffee this morning, be rude to the barista
even though it had nothing to do with you. Later
on in the day because you've experienced that moment and
it may have dredged up some kind of memories of
(07:35):
rudeness for you and feelings of being slightly on edge.
You're much more likely to now see rudeness where none
was intended. So you might get an email which is
perfectly neutral in tone, and yet you will be more
likely to read sarcasm into it or maybe passive aggression. Um,
And that person is completely oblivious. They just they put
(07:56):
a smiley there just to be nice. But you're like,
what does this smiley really me? So it kind of
puts us all on edge even just seeing it. So
I was recently on a train and I paid extra
to be on a quiet car, and this person came
in with their cell phone and just chatted the whole time.
And I just could not ignore the person, and uh,
(08:16):
personally because they were bragging about themselves continuously, but also
just because I couldn't avoid listening in. And you actually
have a section about half of ARDSCA. Can you talk
a little bit about cell phones and why they're so annoying? Yeah,
of course, Well, on one level, when we got onto
a train and we're in public space, UM, certainly I understand. Uh,
(08:37):
you know my part my rules. If I got a table,
I'm not going to spread my stuff all over the table.
I understand I've got a little bit of the table.
I'm not gonna, you know, shove my legs out right
in front of me, because I understand that person's got
their space. We all have these little instinctive moments of
respect that we pay to one another so that we
can all, you know, get along. And and someone stands
(09:01):
up and starts chatting away loudly on their phone and
knows that everyone else must be able to hear it.
They're sort of removing themselves from the group that they're saying,
you're a group, you lock, you're all the group, but
I'm special. I'm having my phone call and they have
their phone call. And why it's so annoying for other
people If you have, you know, two old ladies sitting,
(09:23):
you know, in the row behind you and they're just
chatting away and laughing, it's sort of fine because they're
they're chatting and you can hear the whole conversation. It
might be annoying, but it's not necessarily rude. Why someone
chatting on their phone is impossible to ignore um, and
is is rude? Is because you can only hear that
(09:45):
half of the conversation that you're talking about, the half
a log um. And the human brain, no matter what
you're trying to do, it's always hungry for a story.
It's always trying to solve, you know, problems, It is
trying to work stuff out. So even if you're trying
your best to ignore this person having their chat, your
brain is trying to fill in the blanks. And and
(10:06):
there's also the kind of the staccato nature of a conversation.
You're trying to get into your flow, your rhythm wherever
you do. When you're driving and someone cuts you up,
they disturb your flow. If you're on a train and
you're reading a book and you have to read the
same sentence nineteen times because of the person having the chat,
your flow has been interrupted, and we feel that on
(10:26):
some level that is always quite a rude thing. But
the random nature of replies on a one sided conversation,
because you don't know how long the other guy's gonna
talk for. You know, you might do a one word answer,
you might you might you talk for ten minutes and
you'll just here a man going hard the whole time.
So because it's completely unpredictable, it's another reason that we
find it impossible to ignore and hugely annoying. But the
(10:49):
rudeness certainly comes from removing yourself from the group and
going no one here matters. I'm talking to Nigel. He's
had a hair transplant. Stay right there, more with Danny
Wallace right after this break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
(11:17):
We're talking to Danny Wallace. You know, one of the
most amazing stories in your book is about a politician
in Colombia who decided to fight rudeness, and to fight
rudeness with mimes of all things, and I was hoping
you could talk a little bit about that. Yeah, this
is a guy stumbled across named Anthonys Marcus who is
either the craziest politician in the world or some kind
(11:39):
of genius. And I think he's some kind of genius
because he takes problems and he's sort of he comes
up with what seem on paper to be insane ideas,
insane solutions, and yet they seem to work. And this
is a guy who had been kind of in charge,
like the trance clothing or the director of university at
(12:01):
Bogutar University UM and there was like there was kind
of some student unrest one day and there were hundreds
and hund of the students all shouting, and he was
on the stage and he was trying to calm them down,
and they would not be calmed him. They would not listen,
they would not give him the time of day, and
no matter what he did on that microphone, they wouldn't
shut up. And so he very calmly walked to the
(12:21):
front of the stage, underd his belt, turned around, pulled
down his trousers and showed the world his ass, at
which point every student was kind of silent and slack George.
No one knew why he was doing this. Had he
gone mad, you know? Was he protesting their rudeness or
was he being rude himself? And it was a massive scandal,
(12:44):
and every sort of newspaper was talking about it. Everyone
who was discussed that at his behavior, how could he
act that way? It was so rude um And he
ended up having to leave his job. But because he
had done this current crazy thing, he was now in
the public kind of consciousness. So when he then ran
for there at a time when Bogutar was seen as
(13:05):
pretty much the most um chaotic, let's stay city in
the world, and there was corruption left right and center.
They felt that this was a guy they could trust.
So he was, you know, put into power. But crucially,
because he didn't owe anyone any favors, he could get
rid of everyone that he felt was potentially corrupt and
(13:26):
instead bring in a bunch of his friends, all of
whom had crazy ideas like him. And they looked at
the city and they saw what was going on, and
they saw that people were driving in considerately, They were
mounting the sidewalks, they were jaywalking left right and center,
they were being incredibly loud when when they shouldn't have been,
(13:46):
you know, um, And he just thought, right, what do
we do here? And just as you say, he did
something a bit crazy, which was that he got rid
of the vast majority of the notoriously corrupt traffic police
and he replaced them with minds, so actual minds. So
people dressed in black, the traditional white gloves, their faces
(14:10):
painted white, and he just unleashed this army of minds
onto the streets and said, find rude behavior, find bad behavior,
and call it out. So if you were someone who
was saying jaywalking and there was traffic. You know, you're
putting people in danger, and you're doing what you shouldn't
be doing. You might look behind you and find five
or six mimes who are copying you and mocking your walk,
(14:31):
completely in front of the whole world, and it would
make you think twice about doing that again. Or if
you'd part your car somewhere where you weren't allowed to
park your car, you might suddenly find loads and loads
of minds surrounding your car, just pointing at you and
shaking their heads. And what it did was it made
people accountable for their actions, but it also showed everybody
(14:54):
else that, look, there's people on your side. So these
rude people they're not being because you know, we're we're
just letting them anymore. They're breaking the rules, and we
are sort of shaming them, but in a playful but
powerful way. And the public started to join in, and
he had more and more schemes that didn't just involve minds.
(15:15):
I mentioned people being loud. You know, there might be
playing there. I guess back then their boom boxes and
their disco music or whatever it was about. Then, you know,
loudly on the train, and suddenly a bunch of fellows
dressed up as benedictating monks would get on um, you
know and just put their fingers to their lips just
to sort of highlights you know, their their their vow
(15:37):
of silence and how you were impinging upon it. So
there's all these kind of It was almost like almost
like kind of weird hidden camera moments, except no one
was really filming it. It was just there to show
the public. Look, we understand there's a way to behave
and we're going to help you, and we're gonna puncture
the kind of the aggression underneath it that it normally
(15:57):
goes to, and and we're going to show that you've
got people on your side. And it worked to an
astounding degree. You know, even homicides went down, um, just
thanks to a series of kind of quite playful things.
And and and crucially um people offered to pay more
tax just because the mayor said, listen, it would be
(16:18):
really lovely if you would offer to pay more tax.
So it just showed that people were hungry for a
non rude world. But it felt like that chance had
been lost at a time when Bogita had gone crazy
and it just took one crazy guy to turn this around.
That's really such an incredible story. So I do want
to get back to a little bit of how rudeness
(16:40):
affects us. And I know in one part you talk
about how, um, rudeness can sort of curb people's creativity,
But I was also curious how rudeness can actually be
dangerous in a medical context. When you talk a little
bit about that. Yeah, of course, UM, well, when someone
has been unnecessarily rude to you, UM, it really does
(17:01):
affect your brain. It affects the frontal lobes, which is
RESPONSI was responsible for kind of working memory and whatever
the task at hand is UM, and studies were done
that showed that, yes, absolutely, it doesn't make people less creative.
So people were kind of surprised by rudeness um, and
then set simple tasks. They didn't realize that the rudeness
(17:22):
was kind of part of it, so it would happen
on the way into the experiment. But the people who
had experienced rudeness found themselves, um far less able too.
For an example, come up with very simple anagrams or
creative uses for a brick. That was my favorite um,
so they just couldn't come up with as many ideas
(17:45):
as other people could, the people who hadn't experienced any
rudeness whatsoever. And it's been sort of shown time and
time again just how much this affects us. I mean,
there were studies done, I think in the seventies that
showed that even just a loud noise changes who we
are and how much empathy we have. So if you
had an old woman at the top of some stairs
(18:05):
and to her shopping bag is broken and all her
shopping is tumbling down the stairs and oranges and tin cans,
but our instinct is to run to her and to
help her. But the science has shown that if someone nearby,
and this is the crazy bit, if someone nearby is
doing some gardening and has quite a lowed lawnmower, it
affects us in such a way that we are much
(18:27):
less likely to go and run to that woman's aid,
because part of our brain is dealing with what's going
on over here. So it's much the same when it
comes to rudeness. Part of your brain is coping with that.
And where it becomes very dangerous, isn't when you're like
a rioter who hasn't been served the hot dog. It's
much more when you have a position of you know,
(18:48):
real authority or responsibility over other people's lives. So there
were studies done in Tel Aviv with a bunch of surgeons,
three groups of surgeons, and one of the groups in
particular was told that while they were doing their simulated
surgery on a on a on an infant um, they
were going to be observed by a medical professional from America.
(19:11):
And when that medical professional came over on Skype to
say hello to them, he was just very rude. He
was very dismissive. He said he had no real respect
for the medicinal community in the in Tel Aviv, and
that you know, he wishes them well. Nonetheless, and when
they went and did their surgery um, it was shown
(19:32):
afterwards by an independent group that that team, in particular,
those bunch of surgeons who had experienced rudeness, became less
effective at the surgery they were doing. They didn't communicate well,
they picked up the wrong instruments. They would become fixated
on the original diagnosis, so that if something changed that
was really obvious, they would kind of ignore it because
(19:55):
they couldn't deal with it. At that time, they didn't
resacitate properly, and essentially the infant in the simulation would
have died had it been an actual of surgery. So
that's when you start to see that, you know, rudeness
which cuts to the very core of who we are
and makes us feel disrespected and confuses us and bewilders
(20:16):
us in those situations, and that's where big accidents can happen,
medical errors can happen. It's been shown that truck drivers
with rude dispatchers miss more stop science. Um, so anyone,
you know, if you have an airline pilot, you know,
at least when they've had a drink, you know, you
can you can sort of see their glassy eyes or
(20:37):
see them sway around. But there's there are no clues
when it comes to rudeness and what someone may have
just experienced. And and that's when when I was writing
the book, I start to realize just how dark this
can kind of get. Because we've always found rudeness to
be quite amusing and we love, you know, rude people
in sitcoms, whether it's Basil Faulty or the Supernancy or whatever,
(21:00):
and we love changing stories, you know about rudeness, but
we don't really appreciate that it is genuinely a silent killer.
If if someone's been rude to a doctor in the morning,
it can affect the next five patients. So suddenly you
start to see how it can affect all of us.
And when you've got the world's rudist man in the
in the world's most powerful position, um, then you start
(21:21):
to have problems. Yeah, it's a well, those are all
scary situations. Though I don't think you should minimize the
hot dog thing. I still can't get over that you
didn't get a hot dog for an hour in a minute,
but it will stay with you for quite some time.
Grategy of that day. You know. There there is a
great story in the beginning of the book about someone
who joins ISIS and is put off by the rudeness
of that movement. And now, obviously ISIS isn't something that
(21:44):
we laugh about, but but honestly, that story was so funny.
Can can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah? Yeah, absolutely,
This was This was a fellow who who decided to
flee Britain Omar's saying, and he left his job as
a I think he was a security Gardener's supermarket, and
he fled for the for the deserts where he could
(22:06):
train with with Isis and and really I put the
story in to show that, you know, we all have
different standards, were all quite different people, um, and yet
there are some things that unite almost everyone. Because he
had gone he'd fled to the desert in order to
essentially help bring down the very sort of tenants of
Western civilization, um and do kind of unspeakable things and
(22:30):
train for atrocities. But when he got there, he just
found himself constantly annoyed because this this great brotherhood that
he'd expected of people that thought like him and wanted
to attack the West. Sometimes would just unplug his phone
and steal his phone charger for a while, which he
(22:50):
thought was one step too far even for Ices. Or
sometimes they'd sort of he'd take his shoes off to
have a prey and then he'd be like, where are
my shoes? And he'd look up and there'd be another
this member who just taking his shoes, and he was like,
this is this is not what I joined ices for.
You know, we've got to have standards here. And he
(23:12):
would make dinner for them sometimes and he'd just be like,
can you all just pipe down because all like grabbing
at the food, and he's like, we're gonna have a
system here, and he was just basically he was very
disappointed at how immature, um, and how badly brought up
a lot of terrorists seemed to be these days. Um.
And it just made me think that, you know, even
(23:32):
a man in this situation who has turned his back
on all sorts of Western conventions and all sorts of
standards of treating each other, even he can find himself
annoyed at the kind of the minor injustices and sort
of everyday monsters of polite society. Yeah, you gotta, you
(23:53):
gotta to other lines somewhere, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly,
I wouldn't last five minutes. And iis I'll tell you
you do talk a little bit about a rudeness vaccine
that they were testing on doctors and what exactly would
that involved. Well, it was great because this was just
like a passing comment that one of the scientists that
I've talked to said, And his name is a mere Errors,
(24:16):
and I think he's great. And there's a bunch of them.
There's a bunch of these sort of like me rudeness
nerds kind of like sculpting them out in the shadows,
sort of stemp in their little feet and going why
can't everything be better? Um? And Amir entered into sort
of rudeness studies, if you like, um by thinking that
it was nonsense. He just thought, you know, rudeness doesn't
(24:37):
have an effect on anybody. It's just just a thing.
It's just a thing that happens in your day. And
he started to look into it, almost like just as
a bet with one of his colleagues. And he told me,
he said, every time I look into it, I find
something else, and what I usually find is shocking. Um.
And we were talking about the doctor's thing and the
idea that you know, like I say, someone being rude
(24:59):
to a doctor doesn't just affect you know, the next
person the doctor sees, but five people, um, you know,
in in a in a in a road can be affected,
according to the studies, by a moment of rudeness. And
I said to him, you know, it's a silent killer.
It's a sort of you know, we we we need
to be taking this a bit more seriously. Uh. And
(25:19):
and he just sort of threw it away, this this
idea that he said, you know, we're sort of working
in a vaccine, and I was like, what were you
talking about? A vaccine? And it's kind of a video
game that doctors can play at the very start of
their day before anyone has even thought about being rude
to them. So it's almost like an inoculation and they
(25:40):
play this game and they're still working on it. But however,
it works and whatever it does helps to sort of
free up those frontal lobes that often, like I say,
get bogged down in the rudeness of things. So I
suppose it just protects them, and whatever mental exercises it
puts these doctors through just how them too, I suppose
(26:01):
take a breath or perhaps take a step back from
the situation. Um. So I can't wait to find out
more about it. That they're going to be starting more studies.
But it does show that a rudeness is being taken
seriously and be steps are being made to to help
us all deal with it. Um. Because you know when
(26:22):
every time you get in a car, you know you're
a dangerous a situation escalating. Well, we've got several more
questions for you, Danny, but we'll be right back with
Part Time Genius after the break. Welcome back to Part
(26:46):
Time Genius. We're talking to Danny Wallace, the author of
f you very much understanding the culture of rudeness and
what we can do about it. So I wanted to
ask you about Internet rolls because we started a blog
very early, uh at our former jobs and and it
was sort of this warm and welcoming culture of people
who read the posts and stuff, and it slowly grew
(27:07):
into more of an aggressive community and more people who
are more liberated to be trolley. And so our explanation
was always it really is the anonymity of this that
that people are just you know, at home behind their screens.
But you have a bit of a tweaked reason for it.
Could you explain that? Yeah, I think we've always traditionally said,
(27:29):
you know, it's it's the anonymity of the Internet that
is there is the problem. And certainly, um it is
quite free, UM it allows um. You know, the anonymity
in a sense is a beautiful thing because in the
early days it meant that people who, for example, UM,
felt uncomfortable coming out could could find other people like them,
(27:51):
but didn't feel that they were risking anything at that
at that point, and they could they could find other
people like them who were at the same point in
time and encourage to each other. And it was seen
as quite you know, it was a great thing. And
then of course the rise of the of the trolls,
it just made his immediately think, well, actually, anonymity is
a terrible thing. What studies have shown is really it's
(28:14):
a lack of eye contact that is the huge problem. Um.
I was talking earlier about how difficult it is to have,
you know, the looking glass held up to you if
you're a rude person, because you you see yourself through
the eyes of others. That's why it's also very difficult
for people to be certainly as rude to each other faces,
(28:34):
because you're there's something called the looking glass self, which
is we are always looking into the eyes of others
for how we are coming across. Does this person like me?
Have I offended them? How am I doing? You know
in life? In their eyes? Um And a lack of
eye contact with with the internet means that people can
be free to be as rude as they want. Again,
(28:55):
tests were done in hyper I think in Israel, where
they had an office full of people and some of
them were made to just sit opposite the person they
had to kind of work with, and some had to
use like instant messenger or something to where to to
work together with people. And they found far and away
that the people who would be much more aggressive with
(29:17):
each other were the ones who simply couldn't see each other.
So you know, it's it's there is a certain freedom
in in the annymity, but I would say there's much
more freedom and in knowing that person just can't see you.
I know that you referred to a certain politician and
(29:37):
some celebrity judges and Basil Faulty. And why do you
think it is that we are so attracted to rudeness. Well,
I think we're at a point where rudeness, it's sort
of helping people achieve strange ambitions. Rudeness more than ever,
is everywhere, and it's getting worse, and it tumbles from
our phones. And every time we switch on the TV, um,
(30:01):
two people who are pretending to be journalists having a fight, um, uh,
you know about whatever has just happened on cable news,
and then they bring in another person, uh, and and
it just feels angrier and narrower and coarser, and everyone's
got to have an opinion on everything all the time,
even if they know nothing about the thing they're trying
to say, They've got the opinion on and the opinion
(30:23):
has to be put in in a very short and
forthright way to cut through the noise of everyone else's
opinions and must then be broadcast to everybody else because
we're all so important. Um, the people on reality TV shows,
it's just taught us that meanness should be rewarded because
they are the people who make the edit. Um, the
highest paid talent judges are always the mean ones. Um.
(30:46):
So everywhere we turn, we're being kind of taught that
to be rude, to be to lack empathy in a
in a sense, um, it is a good thing. You know,
Journalists find they get more clicks if if if they
if they write the horrible thing in a horrible way. Um.
So so it I sort of felt this kind of
(31:07):
this ground swell, and it came at a time where
you know, like Trump, for example, Um yeah, a lot
of what he ran on was this this kind of
mavericks sort of. I tell it like it is. I'm
only being honest. I'm just saying what everyone else is
thinking and and those are all things that came from
reality TV as well. You know, all these people are going,
(31:28):
I just tell it like it is. I'm a truth teller.
You know, it's refreshing. You can't argue with it. And really,
when these people say they're being honest, they're not being
honest at all. They're just putting forward an opinion but
saying it's just honest. It's like, let's get out clause,
because we're suddenly not allowed to argue with you if
you're being honest, and in fact, we've got to all
(31:48):
stand around and applaud you for being so brave as
to be honest. And so, for whatever reason, reality TV
online personas the rise of powerful rude people. Um, we're
kind of being taught again and again that rudeness works
and politeness is weak. I think that's the thing now
(32:08):
thinking about it, I think that's what I'm getting at,
is that we see manners as weakness, and we see
empathy as weakness, and we see rudeness of strength. Well, actually,
along those lines, you talk about the possibility of empathy
training in schools and how it could help teenagers at
that stage in their lives. I mean what would that
look like. Do you think, well, yeah, it's a strange one.
(32:31):
I mean, you know, part of me kind of books
at phrases like that kind of empathy training because it
just sounds so wishy washy and sort of a bit nonsensical.
It's like, how can you train for empathy? Um? And
yet people have sort of shown in in in in
studies that it sort of can be taught and it
(32:54):
can be exercised like a muscle, you know, it can
be grown in people. And I suppose it's just highlighting
um you know here basically it boils down to this
rudeness is just kind of ignoring how another person feels
and just doing what you feel no matter who gets hurt.
(33:16):
And politeness tends to be a system. I've sort of
shared empathy, you know, I think etiquette is so outdated,
but politeness is really the main thing. And that just means,
you know, you're slightly happier when someone says please you,
You feel seen when someone says thank you. If you
hold a door open just for a couple of secments
(33:37):
for someone who's you know, struggling with some bags, you
both feel better for it. Um And and these are
things that we learn instinctively and we have used for
millennia and it's a system that works. Um. And you know,
I think that that turning our back on that empathy
is is a bad thing. I'm not sure I would,
(33:58):
you know, I we would need empathy raining in schools.
But but for the kids. But perhaps, um, I don't know.
Perhaps perhaps just highlighting how people are seen through the
eyes of others as a good thing, which essentially is
what the guy in Columbia was doing. You know, he
was holding a looking glass up to those people like
(34:18):
almost sort of you know it sort of isn't the
looking glass of mime, isn't it? Because the mind was
mimicking them and showing them what they were doing, So
it was kind of a mobile mirror. And when you
see your own actions through the eyes of others and
how you're coming across, that's when you tend to change
your behavior. But it's such a strange but but an
(34:40):
interesting idea. And honestly, even the idea that a mime
or god forbid, multiple mimes might show up if I
do something rude, would probably influence my behavior anyway. Yeah, well,
we all know what we're getting. You for your birthday. Well, Danny,
this has been a ton of fun, not u it all.
I'm so happy about how polite we've all been to
(35:02):
one another today. You've you've been, You've been absolutely wonderfully.
Should be very proud. Thank you very much, and I
hope all of our listeners will check out the book.
It's f you very much understanding the culture of rudeness
and what we can do about it. But Danny, thanks
so much for being on the program. Thanks thanks again
(35:33):
for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how
stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people
who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand.
Tristan McNeil does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the
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(35:53):
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