Behaving oddly in cities can elicit kindness rather than rejection

Evidence

Eccentrics, like hicks, appear to have no conception of how one is “supposed” to act in the city, but, unlike hicks, this ignorance may be more apparent than real. It may be, in fact, that they have discovered a great urban secret: in the city, he who behaves most oddly, is often treated most kindly. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1020

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Simmel/Lofland frame: the ‘blasé attitude’ as a screen that oddly enough rewards rather than punishes the observer’s anti-normative behavior. — connects to: Theft and criticism become gifts when living off visibility — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 154; Impersonality in urban modernity is a positive achievement, not a loss. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2196