The degree to which Torontonians are social and sociable

This topic tends to occasionally come up in my social circles, whereby especially new-comers feel a definite temperature difference between Torontonians and residents of whatever locale they happen to be coming from.

I thought I'd put the question to you guys. Based on your personal observations, which will of course be subjective, do you find Torontonians to be social and sociable in general?

This topic is going to generate the ordinary kinds of talking points.

Let me get ahead of this by asking two questions:

What kind of social character is ideal?

What kind of social character is ideal at what age?

If we generalize I think there is something to say about a cities cultural character. People do behave differently in general in Toronto, and New York, and Tokyo, and Shanghai. But how one person feels about this is not how another does.

I was born in Zurich and returning as a young adult I found it utterly boring, uptight, and conservative. On the other hand young Swiss people probably see it as a breath of fresh air locally due to it's comparably liberal attitude. For old people for instance Switzerland in general offers unparalleled quality of life and the boring, uptight, and conservative aspects I dismissed as a young man represent some kind of heaven on earth.

The discussion may ask is Toronto cold and unfriendly? Maybe it is and maybe it isn't but I have found that there can be a correlation between warmth of character and hatred. Love and hate are not opposites, they are partners. Friendly people are often the least tolerant and harbor the strongest negative feelings towards others.

TrickyRicky said:

The discussion may ask is Toronto cold and unfriendly? Maybe it is and maybe it isn't but I have found that there can be a correlation between warmth of character and hatred. Love and hate are not opposites, they are partners. Friendly people are often the least tolerant and harbor the strongest negative feelings towards others.

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Quite right, though a better way to put it might be social friendliness to strangers is a poor indicator/determinant of acceptance as strangers as part of society. Think Southern hospitality.

AoD

Having moved from Toronto to Fredericton for a few years and then returned to Toronto, I observed that Maritimers are superficially friendly ( everyone says hello) but otherwise not very welcoming of newcomers, while Torontonians are overtly not friendly ( no one says hello to strangers, except for the beggars and crazies), but much more welcoming of newcomers. Here in Cabbagetown we know nearly everyone on the surrounding blocks, while in Fredericton we were forever considered as being from away.

No need to quote the above for comment or analysis, it was just one man's observation.

TickyRicky, if I'm reading you correctly, are you saying that sociability, warmth and friendliness are in a way manifestations of aggressive impulses? I find this line of thought very interesting.

I find people in Toronto to be very polite but not very friendly. A door will be held open for you but the one holding it probably isn't smiling or offering much interaction. Service is pretty deplorable though across the board, put a Torontonian behind a counter and politeness and friendliness go out the window (caveat: gross generalization and personal anecdotal impression only).

Friendliness varies by neighbourhood, too. When I lived in a teeny tiny house in Oakridge (SW Scarborough) I knew all of my neighbours and people on the street said "hi". Downtown people always seem to be rushing, or tourists, and people don't even seem to nod at one another. I walk High Park a few times a week and people are always friendly.

Admiral Beez said:

I observed that Maritimers are superficially friendly ( everyone says hello) but otherwise not very welcoming of newcomers, while Torontonians are overtly not friendly ( no one says hello to strangers, except for the beggars and crazies), but much more welcoming of newcomers. Here in Cabbagetown we know nearly everyone on the surrounding blocks, while in Fredericton we were forever considered as being from away.

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As a Maritimer, I'll vouch for that. But giving the cold shoulder to "come-from-aways" was never my style. (I never felt a strong sense of self-identification with Maritimer culture, which is probably why I left. )

It is still strange for us to walk the streets of our neighbourhood here in Toronto and have no one nod or smile or offer a quick hello when you pass by. Of course, I understand, but it is definitely not the easygoing politeness we experienced all our lives back East. What does throw me is when a nod or courtesy smile is offered (sometimes eye contact happens as you pass), and the person looks away like they are spooked or you are a lowly peasant not worthy of the effort.

By the same token, back home, if I just wanted to sit in a coffee shop and read or stare out the window and daydream, someone sitting next to you might assume you are lonely and up for a convo, and will start talking about anything at all. I'm not one for chatting with strangers, so I'm happy to not have that problem here in Toronto.

I would say Toronto people prefer their anonymity. It is NOT a particularly friendly place, though at the microcosm it's not that different from anywhere else. But you'd never say hello to a random person walking by as you would in, say, Wolfville NS. I do think TO is friendlier than some other larger Canadian cities (*ahem* Vancouver).

Admiral Beez said:

Having moved from Toronto to Fredericton for a few years and then returned to Toronto, I observed that Maritimers are superficially friendly ( everyone says hello) but otherwise not very welcoming of newcomers, while Torontonians are overtly not friendly ( no one says hello to strangers, except for the beggars and crazies), but much more welcoming of newcomers. Here in Cabbagetown we know nearly everyone on the surrounding blocks, while in Fredericton we were forever considered as being from away.

No need to quote the above for comment or analysis, it was just one man's observation.

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Yes, but then why would anyone want to live in Fredericton. I think you're right to a certain extent, but Maritimers (and Newfoundlanders) are certainly much more outgoing and friendly to strangers - regardless of where they're from - as a matter of course than people elsewhere in the country. If it can be harder to break in socially, it's more because people can often identify where you're from based on your last name and/or particular accent. I think (probably, anyway) it's also very different if you moved to Halifax or St John's as a young person as opposed to, say, someone over 35 or 40. But many people do, and I think the CFA thing is a bit overstated.

I think Newfoundland is getting less friendly though (well, "town" anyway... thanks to the plethora of sprawling suburbs, along with all that extra money providing for more crime and, worse, IV drug use).

I'm also making sweeping generalizations but I just wanted to take away the easy answer that friendly = good, Toronto = not good. We are all unique individuals but I do believe that there are real underlying mechanics to socialization that govern how we act.

One such mechanic that we are discussing here is how we manage our psychological energy. The amount of psychological effort we allocate towards socialization is I believe unique to each of us as an individual but I believe we all do the same kind of subconscious arithmetic when deciding how much and who to allocate our psychological attention to. Even Crocodile Dundee would at some point stop saying "Good Day" to every person he sees on the streets if he had to pass thousands per day.

It probably follows that: the less people you meet in a day, the higher your personal psychological allocation to socializing with others, and the less other things you are doing and other things you have to pre-occupy your mind, the more friendly you will be to people outside your family and peer group.

The more people you meet in a day, the lower your personal psychological allocation to socializing with others, and the more things you do and have pre-occupying your mind, the less friendly you will be to people outside your family and peer group.

Some big city folks may be cold introverts but they are probably mostly just people who meet too many people and have too many things occupying their mind to have reserve psychological energy to lavish an outside observer with attention. This would change if the situation jarred everyone suddenly out of their daily automation, such as what happened when I was in New York recently and someone I was with required medical attention. In the moment, suddenly cold, unfriendly, snarling Manhattanites, who would not think twice about elbowing you out of the way for a sandwich proved themselves very helpful, kind, and considerate.

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear discussions about city people (any city) being unfriendly is a book I read about a woman who moved from small town South Carolina to New York City. After her first few days in the city she noticed that her face and neck were hurting. She didn't think much of it until a new acquaintance finally asked her, "why are you smiling and nodding at every single person on the sidewalk?" She had in fact been doing exactly that, instinctively, as she would have back home, except that on her walk to work she was passing hundreds of people. So the lesson becomes that city people aren't necessarily unfriendly, it's just that treating every encounter as the start of a new friendship simply doesn't scale when you're in a big city.

The second thing that comes to mind is my memories of Union Station at rush hour, just as the GO trains are getting ready to depart for the burbs. It's been over a decade since I found myself there but I still remember the harsh Survivor Island reality of that rush for trains and seats. The swarm of rushing humanity starts blocks away and builds in intensity as you near the red-hot core of the station concourse. The slightest mistep, stumble or hesitation and you are swept away beneath a sea of clippity-clopping heels and swinging briefcases. The irony, of course, is that the thousands of people rushing, elbowing, pushing, swearing, snarling, slamming doors in each others' faces and fighting over the last seat on the train are almost entirely suburbanites, eager to flee the cold mean city and get back to the suburbs where people are nicer. The lesson here is that some of the biggest jerks you meet in Toronto proper aren't from here at all, and sometimes I suspect that those visiting big cities feel it's a license to be a bigger jerk than they would be in their own neighbourhoods.

Totally agree with what's been said before. Most big cities are like this just by nature of the sheer number of other people within them.

That being said, oftentimes Toronto doesn't actually offer as much anonymity as we think. If, like most people, you spend most of your life in the same neighbourhood or workplace and traveling between the two around the same time each day, you're likely traveling with mostly the same people. In my case, for example, there are several people who I know have the exact same commute (at the same time) that I do, and I see them all the time. I don't talk to them of course, but I recognize them.

If you act like a jerk on the subway other people will notice and remember you.

DarnDirtyApe said:

That being said, oftentimes Toronto doesn't actually offer as much anonymity as we think.

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Actually that's a really great observation, I consider myself quite unremarkable and have a pretty small social circle but it's amazing how many times people will remember or recognize me from previous interactions in the city. I've had bartenders and baristas recognize me at random places in the city from having been an occasional customer when they worked elsewhere months or years before. And the frequency that I run into people I know is surprising. It's a big city, but it's not that big. "Don't be a jerk" is always a good policy!

TrickyRicky said:

Some big city folks may be cold introverts but they are probably mostly just people who meet too many people and have too many things occupying their mind to have reserve psychological energy to lavish an outside observer with attention. This would change if the situation jarred everyone suddenly out of their daily automation, such as what happened when I was in New York recently and someone I was with required medical attention. In the moment, suddenly cold, unfriendly, snarling Manhattanites, who would not think twice about elbowing you out of the way for a sandwich proved themselves very helpful, kind, and considerate.

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I think it's worth pointing out that although they may seem that way, introverts are not necessarily 'cold' by definition.