And put my hands up gestured in like “what the fuck are you doing”?

Where I live we don’t have a hand gesture for that. I am curious what it entails?

So this guy was sitting there watching a video or whatever, probably not attending to his surroundings, when out of nowhere some other person is suddenly right in front of his face confronting him, waving his hands around. Since your description of the hand gesture is “what the fuck”— a pretty hostile thing to communicate to a stranger by any method— wouldn’t you say there is a possibility that it was interpreted as menacing?

Even if you do know better than to start a fight on public transit, this guy doesn’t know you. People start fights for less. He’s not reading your mind, to know you are thinking like sun tzu, and would therefor not attack from a position of weakness like the seat in front. People get stabbed on busses and trains for minor insults. Don’t you think he could have just been cautious?

Or conversely, he knew himself to be potentially violent. Maybe he was trying to hold himself back from starting a fight and thought backing down was just the best strategy to exit the situation. I’ve known people who have control to a point and they sometimes do weird things to keep themselves from that point.

I literally watched a game today and one of the players made that gesture to his own teammates when he made a mistake. I doubt he was expected to get punched by them either.

Ah. I see.

So did the team mate then respond in a manner such as

Look cunt you obviously seem to know it’s not right if you acting like that so why you being a knobhead? Just because no one will call you out?

And then carry such a grudge as to later recount it and their dissatisfaction with the person even having made the error? Or the team mates acknowledged it and everyone moved on? Even if there was more teasing afterwards, you have to understand the context is that everyone who was playing a video game made a choice to do that with each other specifically, whereas this guy did not make a choice to be in a confrontation with you. You were just happening at him. And by your telling of the story, you were so mad thinking about “the old days” BS by the time you said something there basically was nothing he could have done to make you feel better. Don’t you think there is a possibility your body language was communicating more than you are even able to describe here? Even exactly as described it sounds menacing. But don’t you think he could have somehow gotten the feeling that you were mad at him as an avatar for all the problems and degeneration of the modern times?

You were a stranger of unknown intention and capacities. This man likely wanted you to leave him alone and go away. Even if you are correct and he did feel shame at being noticed for his rudeness, felt bad for interrupting your thoughts, and intended to concede to you a moral victory, he was probably also aware at the potential threat. Which, in a video game, is a non issue. That’s one of the things about video games: they are fake.

I don’t think it’s wrong to make requests of people around you. You wanna ask people to be quiet, that’s fine. But you need to learn how to do it in a peaceable way. Think of it as modeling the behavior you want to see. You want others to be quiet, unobtrusive and considerate, then you should be quiet, unobtrusive and considerate. You can still assert your needs and desires. Sometimes you will be accommodated and other times you won’t be. If, as you say, the guy was completely apologetic because he knew what he had done was wrong, then you could have been really pleasant about it, no “wtf” hand gestures, and you would still have gotten what you wanted. You could have even said “thank you, I appreciate your consideration” and smiled and been happy about it. Would have been a totally different story to tell here in the thread. All under your control.

A chill person who is motivated to get along with others so we can all live in peace. :) Yup a real scourge over here.

By “Stay on their phone” you mean keep doing as they were (ignoring your request) right?

I don’t know why everyone here is so grumpy about other people enjoying their phones but if you are grumpy about it, I think politely asking someone to turn the volume down or whatever is the best way to deal with it. If it’s really so unpopular they’ll be getting always asked to turn their phones down and eventually get earbuds or subtitles or whatever.

I’d be interested if you phrased it as a question somehow, maybe it might be more fruitful. Less dramatic/tense for you. Like maybe “excuse me I was just wondering if there is a reason you are playing that so loud? It’s bothering me.” Would need to workshop the phrasing to be less dickish than that. But maybe you’d get some kind of interaction you’d learn about other perspectives. There must be a reason right? Like idk I only ever play things out loud by mistake when Bluetooth or the AUX fails and I find it humiliating for anyone to know what dumb podcasts I have on. Sometimes I take the earbuds out and hold them away from my head to make sure nobody can hear even by accident the stupid shit I am listening to. I would love to know more about how people are just doing everything with no worries in public. Maybe they have a useful philosophical contribution I hadn’t thought of. Or maybe they can explain to you why you shouldn’t be bothered.

How about this: “Hi, I was just wondering how you find it when other people are playing things really loud on their phones?”

Honestly, it’s a bit passive aggressive but that would probably be more likely to make them turn it off immediately as they might not want to engage in a conversation like that. However every so often someone might take you up on the conversation and you could share a few minutes together as humans.

No. The person responded by trying to diffuse things:

he was like “sorry sorry sorry. Okay” and he put his hands up.

That doesn’t convey any sense of guilt, it conveys that he was trying to avoid a fight. he put his hands up. That’s how you show someone, “look, I’m not a threat, I’m not going to hurt you. you win.” It’s a strategic decision, not an admission of culpability.

He backed down and surrendered in the situation because it wasn’t worth getting into a confrontation about it. Unlike the commenter, he was able to keep this interaction in perspective.

And it’s this part that makes me think wanderer was probably threatening and rude. If wanderer made a normal, calm, polite comment/request, this is an unlikely reaction. It is likely occurring because the person on the phone thought they were in some danger.

how does it go?

You got what you wanted and you’re angry about it. YOU are the problem.

I can only imagine what a dick you probably are all the time. Even by your own telling in this story you sound like you were probably rude or even threatening to a stranger because they made you so mildly uncomfortable.

Not even really because you were uncomfortable, but because you are roiling mad about cell phone etiquette having declined since “back in the day”. Whatever that means.

What a bunch of misanthropes. If you want silence wear earplugs.

I like to live in the world with people and people loooove music. And they love their family going on with gossip. And animal videos. And cartoons and soap operas. And people talking about the love of god. They love watching baseball. Etc.

The one time I can ever recall being annoyed was some guy watching video about covid conspiracies. I thought about arguing with him but I just got up and moved to another part of the train stop.

People’s speakers aren’t that good, you can easily escape the sound by moving if it is so bothersome. Or, learn to enjoy the company of people who differ from you rather than pretending there is some virtue in being a narrow minded jerk. Life is better.

yes that time russia waged war on ukraine in defense of trans rights. we all literally remember that well.

if that happened it wouldn’t demonstrate anything