Casual Conversation

Fun fact that you probably know: the background ‘ticking’ in the chorus of Bad Guy by Billie Eilish is the sound made by traffic lights in Sydney

Nppe

Exactly my thought, Cant people be without their phones for one second 😅

Are you just raw dogging walking in public no phone nothing??

I don't know where you live, but here in Seoul nobody takes out their phone out at the traffic light because most of the people have it already in the hand while walking.

See this random video I just googled of a crosswalk in Gangnam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeadHl7ugmk

In my city, some intersections you would wait maybe more than 5 minutes for the light to change if you're not downtown. Then again, I wasn't on my phone for this wait. Annoyingly, these pedestrian signals didn't have any sound when they changed, where downtown did.

Downtown wasn't so bad, though. You might still wait longer than a minute, but usually not.

Dude people are fucked. When people die in round based online games they instantly go on their phones now until the next round. Even in games that require post death teamwork and comms. I have seen the stop light thing too, even for a 20s stop. Absolutely zero ability to just do nothing for a couple seconds and look up at the real world.

Tokyo is full of meanderthals walking and biking while looking down at their phones. Standing still while waiting for the lights to change is tame.

There's even a word for it here: aruki-sumaho

Notable sightings so far in 2025:

• A pack of middle school boys all playing a mobile game while walking with their faces in their phones and blocking the sidewalk. Three abreast in marching band formation, maybe 15 of them.

• Salaryman holding a laptop and on a conference call while rushing towards a train station.

• A few face-in-tablet while walking, that always gets a smirk out of me.

• Lady in heels, approaching the upward stairs while watching a video on her phone in landscape mode, arm fully extended and airpods in. Misses a step and eats it, goes full scorpion. I was impressed she managed to hold onto her phone and keep all her teeth, she just missed chomping on a concrete step by a few cm.

Its extremely common here. Enough that I usually have to stop walking on the sidewalk and just wait for them to notice me to look up and move out of the way, you can't always side step them because they're frequently not walking straight and they'll wander across the path anyway, hence the term meanderthals.

(Edited for grammar/spelling/links)

In huge cities there are crossings where it definitely could take longer. But for 99% of crossings otherwise, yeah, not that long that you'd need to check your phone. Its the tines we are in I guess.

Yeah, bringing more accessibility is very good even if it is quite annoying if you live nearby I guess.

Those are just as much of your surroundings as regular lights though

You don't even need to pay special attention, peripheral vision and the changing sound of cars is more than enough of a hint that the light might have changed.

Sadly no. Actually there is a button sometimes, but I couldn't figure what it is for. It's not for blind people because it doesn't make a sound.

what else is there to do? be bored for a couple minutes?

Literally nothing works everywhere.