Not Rude Anymore

When did it get to be fine to eat in front of other people? Wasn't that a thing?

You used to not be able to eat in front of other people because it was rude. Apparently it's no longer rude.

One reason why it used to be rude was that if you ate in front of someone else, and they were not eating, it was effectively denying them food. 'I'm not going to let you have any of this, I'm just going to eat it in front of you.' Remember old lady schoolteachers saying "Did you bring enough for everybody?" That could only have been because it would have been rude to eat food and not share. After all, we're all humans, we all need to eat. No matter how different our social rank, our backgrounds, or our waistlines, anyone with food, in front of someone without, was supposed to offer to share.

But another reason is that eating food is...indelicate. There's chomping and gurgling and wheezing and burbling. Even in the most refined person of manners, if you really listen to them eat, it sounds like a sewer backing up. Now, paradoxically, if both people eat, no one person can really hear the other over the noise, and it's a pleasant time for both.

But, now, all that's swept away. It's gone. It's no longer rude. Now people eat on their own in front of other people without the slightest embarassment at all. And they sound just as sewery and bildgey and bloppy as ever. Grunt and wheeze and salivary glands shooting gushing sprays of spit left and right. It's all good.

Apparently. I say 'apparently' because that's what I see all the time now. Maybe I just spend too much time on a college campus. A college campus particularly populated with self-absorbed, solipsistic, utterly indulged their entire lives, college students.

Who sound like sewers backing up.

Very pretty.