The Deceptive, Seductive Appeal of Paid Silence
I was ordering an Uber or a Lyft the other day when I noticed a new feature: I could now request a quiet ride. All I had to do was push a button and drivers would not be allowed to talk to me. I now had a choice as to whether or not I wanted to make awkward small talk with a stranger.
My first response was that this feature was absolutely brilliant and long overdue. This will shock and surprise none of you, but I am a painfully self-conscious, self-aware neurotic who finds the prospect of talking to people borderline terrifying.
I’m shy. I’m socially awkward. I suffer from debilitating social anxiety. I was one of those people who kind of dug the early days of the pandemic because it gave me and introverts like me an unbeatable excuse to refrain from pretty much any and all social interactions, including arbitrary chit chat with Lyft or Uber drivers.
If given a choice between being more social or less social, I am almost invariably going to choose being less social, because it’s a great way to avoid unstructured conversations with strangers and loved ones alike.
So of COURSE I was going to take advantage of the opportunity to ban banter in my rides, to choose blissful, glorious silence over strained conversation.
The more I thought about this new option, however, the creepier and crueler it seemed. For starters, most of the Lyft and Uber drivers I have encountered have been POC. It would consequently feel more than a little racist to specifically request via an app that a driver of color not be allowed to talk to a white customer.
Choosing the silent driver option feels unmistakably classist as well. I’m not Prince or Ellen Degeneres, just a guy who doesn’t know how to drive.
If nothing else, forcing Lyft or Uber drivers not to talk to you feels arrogant and mean. Besides, while social interaction generally terrifies me, there’s something about the exceedingly casual, low-pressure nature of talking to Lyft drivers that I find not only non-terrifying but borderline pleasant.
As someone with an insatiable curiosity about humanity and human nature, there’s something fascinating to me about entering the vehicle of a Lyft or Uber driver and living in their world for the duration of the ride.
Sometimes that means listening to Gospel music even though I am Jewish and would never listen to Christian music in any other context.
The only time I have ever asked a driver to change the channel was when it was on a right wing talk radio channel. I don’t mind briefly being a part of someone else’s world as long as that doesn’t entail having to hear Donald Trump’s voice or listen to cultists gush about his greatness.
Sometimes you meet interesting people via Lyft or Uber. One particularly colorful fellow, for example, has a sideline as the archivist of eccentric and prolific author Philip José Farmer, who wrote a book called Venus on the Half Shell that was credited to Kilgore Trout, a fictional character Kurt Vonnegut created.
My first response to being offered silent rides was, “Oh god yes!” followed shortly by “Hell no.” It turns out I’m not quite as painfully self-conscious as I think I am. It turns out I can talk to strangers, and want to talk to strangers in the right context, particularly if the only other option involves implicitly insulting every Lyft or Uber driver nice enough to give me a ride.
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