Even passing strangers briefly become personally known to each other in the encounter.

Evidence

The line between stranger and personally-known other is a fluid one, and social life teems with transformations from one to another. In fact, if looked at too closely, the distinction breaks down altogether. … Let us assume that neither h~s ever seen or at least has no recollection of having seen the other before. They catch sight of one another as each is at either end of the block. And, since there is nothing else especially to attend to, they attend to one another (if this is contemporary America, they do so surreptitiously, of course). Each notes, at minimum, the other’s age and sex, and each places the other accordingly. They come closer, they each glance, for a brief second, at the other’s face. They pass, each going his separate way, each out of the other’s thoughts, never again to be remembered. … For a very brief period of time, each possessed a small piece of biographical information which could be added to the information picked up visually. That is, one knew, for as long as the other remained in consciousness, that this other, whom one saw, did, at this particular time, on this particular day, in this particular street, walk along the block and pass oneself in the middle. For a brief second, each perceived the other as a concrete individual, a historical event. For a brief second, each was personally known to the other. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 113

Categorization

• XREF: Undermines the clean stranger/known binary that civil inattention presupposes — bears on the reader’s question of whether detachment is truly possible, echoing Simmel on the mutual glance.