It's the Brian Lairn Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

I'm Bridget Bergen, sitting in for Brian today.

Think back to a time you saw someone being rude.

Were they smoking on the train, maybe taking a phone call on speaker in an otherwise quiet public place, maybe chewing with their mouth open, or did they, God forbid, snap their fingers to get a server's attention in a restaurant? Whatever you thought of, because of social norms are so shaped by culture and context, odds are you were immediately in your bones aware that something

was rude. But over the last generation, maybe even the last five years, thanks to COVID smartphones

or social media, depending on who you ask, it seems at least to some people

that we've all become ruder than ever before. Well, have we? Allie Volpe, correspondent at Vox,

went on a quest to answer that question, and she joins me now to discuss what she found.

Allie, welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you so much for having me.

You know, the headline of your article is, are we in a crisis of rudeness?

I know it's tough to measure, but what's the case for yes?

Yeah, the case for yes is something that etiquette expert Lizzie Post pointed out to me.

She wasn't sure whether the answer was definitively yes or no, but she pointed out something interesting

that we have more ways than ever to be annoying to one another, and we seem to not really be

paying attention to how our behavior impacts other people.

And because of technology, because of this focus on individualism

and our own self-comfort, we sort of are prioritizing

what might be best for ourselves and not really paying attention

to how that impacts other people.

So I think that really points to the yes.

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