A man shared his way to keep strangers from sitting next to him on the bus and it’s hilarious.
Redditor @esberat shared the funny clip of a young man sitting in a window seat of a bus. Each time a passenger approaches he makes eye contact and pats the seat next to him with a big smile on his face.
The “life hack” immediately went viral on reddit garnering thousands of comments in two days. Many people initially thought that the “technique” might work, but upon reflection give it a “thumbs down.”
Flagyl400 wrote, “Yeah this seems like the kind of thing that will work really well, right up until it suddenly doesn’t.”
Geoper63 said, “Genius but so dangerous. Risking a trip next to a weirdo.”
FilthyMcnasty90210 agreed, “Yeah somebody will sit down eventually and they’ll be questionable for sure.”
“Oh hell. You’d be GIVING them an excuse to talk to you, SlyGallant commented. “They wouldn’t even need to contrive one in order to approach you. Yeah, I don’t think the payoff is worth the risk anymore…”
Some figured the man signalling for someone to sit down could be seen as the weirdo. But redpenquin shared his experience and it wasn’t weird.
“I actually did sit next to someone who patted the seat once,” they wrote. “There were only like 3 or 4 other seats available on the Greyhound, so I just sat next to him. Could’ve been a pervert or weirdo at heart, but hell, you’ve got a 50/50 chance of sitting next to a lunatic on a Greyhound anyway. Turned out he was a German tourist seeing the states and seemed to be one of the genuinely nicest dudes I’ve ever met – absolute chatterbox, but not the kind you got sick of easily. Had a good few hour ride talking to him, and he wished me well when I departed at my stop.”
PoorlyLitKiwi2 also wondered if it would be all right to take the guy up on his offer to sit down, wondering out loud, “Am I a weirdo if my instant reaction to this would be to sit down out of awkwardness to spare the poor guy’s feelings? Rejection is hard, even small scale, and this dude is getting rejected a ton. Honestly, I wouldn’t be able to handle doing this, even if I actively didn’t want people to sit with me. lol.”
Doctor_Kataigida said he’d sit down. “My reaction was kind of ‘oh, he looks like he wants some friendly conversation or something’ and I love talking to strangers so I’d be all over this.”
mw9676 says the “life hack” can work, but they would refine the method a bit and do away with patting the seat. They wrote, “I did some thinking on this during a recent flight and determined the optimal strategy is being an active recruiter of the first normal looking person you see. Just a brief smile at the first “normy” and if they pass up repeat the process. OPs method is playing with fire.”
Which way would you fall in the debate? It’s interesting that something so simple can have so many social implications.
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