If you want to avoid conversations with random strangers, wear headphones or ear bids in public.
If you are in public and see someone wearing headphones or ear buds, do not attempt to talk to them.
Those are the new social rules.
This movement has been apparently picking up steam over time. A couple years back the International Research Institute put out a report documenting what they had found. Frederick Hertz was the lead researcher. “Millions of headphone or earphone wearers the world over often does so to avoid the dreadful possibility of having to talk to a fellow human being.”
And the millennials have turned to You Tube to post video exhorting the new social convention, one in particular that goes by the name “Ren Rants.” Laced with profanity she extolls the virtues of ignoring people wearing headphones, “Especially if they are a woman or feminine-presenting person.”
The IRI study found the more introverted an individual is, the larger the headphones they are likely to sport.