New York Citiers

New York Citiers are neither rude nor friendly until they notice you; until they are forced to treat you as an individual. Before that, you are just a physical obstacle, with no more person or character than a ball of tumbleweed has to a cowboy in Arizona.  That's not inherently a bad thing; in fact it is the only way to keep your sanity in a crowd of n million people. It permits them to brush past you brusquely on the subway, but still be helpful if you ask for directions. It's not ideal (I'm always afraid I'll be rude to someone I know), but it's just not possible here to know all your sheep by name. The problem (an insidious one) is not with how you treat others, but how you treat yourself. By treating others impersonally, you treat yourself that way as well. If a cowboy indifferently bumped into enough tumbleweed, he'd be acting like a ball of tumbleweed himself. So by failing to allow others their individuality, the New York Citier denies it of himself.