Not as bad as when a small woman crosses the road to end up walking right in front of me and then proceeds to be visibly uncomfortable at the fact that a large man is walking right behind her.
Even better, when I cross the road too as courtesy so that I’m not behind her, and she simultaneously crosses back across the road because she was uncomfortable, then notices I’m behind her again and thinks I’m following her.
I moved from a huge city to a smaller city, and sometimes I miss the huge city because nobody really gave a fuck who was near them on the sidewalk because there were always other people on the sidewalk. People perceive others so much harder here and while the social discomfort it causes me isn’t nearly as bad as the fear of assault that small woman might have, it still gets exhausting.
You just need to reassure them that your intentions are pure. Whisper “I ain’t gonna kill you.” When you get nice and close
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Video game escort quests.
Or follow. But don’t follow too closely! But don’t get too far away! Oh suddenly he jumped into a fucking speedboat. He got away. Restart?
What about when that person slowly gets into your lane against the wall/road instead of walking straight.
What I do is tailgate them until the last second then suddenly press Nox to pass them on the best side, and bye bye.
Ah yes, the slipstream method.
I feel this more when I am on the highway at the speed limit and a car ahead of me is going 5 under it.
My cars cruise control will match speed to keep spacing with the car ahead, so the guy going 5 under makes my car slow down while the guy in the lifted pavement princess speeds up to get an inch off my bumper at 65 mph trying to make me go faster.
Tailgaters like that are the worst, especially if they have a clear path to pass you but just don’t for some strange reason.
To deal with folks like that, I like to do what I call the reverse pass. I’ll go into the left lane, slow down, and then drop back behind the tailgater. Then I’ll happily let them be the pace car, letting them be the radar shield, matching whatever speed they choose to gun it to.
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It somehow feels physically exhausting to intentionally slow down below my normal walking speed, because then I notice what my feet are doing instead of it being automatic.
I can’t be fucked to find the graph but it’s true. The relationship between speed and exhaustion is highly asymmetric, going 20 % slower than your default walk is much more tiring than going 20 % faster.
It actually makes intuitive sense to anyone who hikes. Walking slow is like hiking downhill. You’re fighting your body’s natural cadence which requires extra energy that doesn’t go anywhere useful. Going faster also uses extra energy but it’s largely “useful” energy that spares steps. The extreme version of that line of thought is that I can run 10 km but not crawl 10 km.
Also fast walkers tend to… walk a lot, it’s a virtuous circle. It’s fine if grandma does a lap around the mall at 2 km/h, but I’ve been walking all day and I have more places to walk to afterwards and I ain’t doing all that at crawling pace.
Fuck that. I find a reason to stop dead for about thirty seconds and then proceed again at my desired pace once the gap has increased. Repeat as needed.
Both of those options are still better than walking slightly slower.
Imagine giving a fuck about walking next to strangers
If you’re close enough to be in each other’s personal space, then the sidewalk is narrow and you’ll be blocking traffic going in the other direction if you try to overtake.
Worse, the slow walker that takes up the whole sidewalk (weaving back and forth) while wearing earbuds and then act upset they didn’t hear “Excuse me” 3x when you push past them
Toss a banana peel in front of them
I was in this situation once, I went for the pass, it was taking too long to pass and I noticed they were also speeding up, so I pick up the pace and start the jog and they did the same we started to get into a full sprint. It went on for a while until we got to the corner, he went left and I waited for the light. Never saw him again. To this day I’m not quite sure what happened.
Turn and look them in the eyes “oh, you wanna make a race of it”…
Not as annoying when you’re a fast walker, but they guy behind you is only 90% as fast, but decides to take your walking as a challenge and just follows you across campus for no apparent reason and you’re just wondering why someone is clearly following you.
That’s when you stop and let them pass you.
Try having short legs. I think I’m walking fast and a short woman waddles by me at twice my speed…
Just yell “Holy shit, what the hell is this?” and quickly pass while they turn around. Works at least 85% of the time.
