From raising feet on seats at the cinema and the plane to concert-goers throwing drinks at  performers, it’s been a rough ride for manners and etiquette these past few months. People have been ruder since the pandemic and it looks like it’s here to stay, unless we reverse this, of course. 
 

Civility is now a disappearing art in the age of smartphones, social media, and instant communication. While I’m all for “main character” energy where everyone becomes more confident and starts romanticizing their own life, it shouldn’t be at the expense of others’ comfort, especially in a public place.
 

On a plane, I once asked someone seated next to me to start using earphones as she watched a TikTok video prior to take off. “It bothers the people around you,” I said in the calmest tone despite my visible annoyance. The woman was visibly shocked that it could be an issue. It’s the same for children given smartphones with YouTube shows for kids playing out loud so that their parents can eat at a restaurant and phone calls taken on speaker while people are out and about. It makes me wonder why people don’t seem to care that they are letting us in on their personal business and the fact that they may be disturbing others conveniently goes over their heads.

My friends have a term for my compulsion to—calmly—remind people when they are being rude. They say it’s me channeling my inner “Ms. Minchin,” a character in Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess who became widely infamous in the ’90s due to the Japanese animé that recreated the novel (Princess Sarah), which was later turned into a film by our local actors. 
 

These experiences are not just anecdotal. Since 2021, articles have been appearing in reputable media outlets talking about the pandemic and post-pandemic stress making people ruder than before. From Time magazine to Axios and Yahoo News, you get experts commenting on the situation. Yale School of Public Health Megan Ranney even referred to the situation as a “breakdown of social norms” during an interview with Axios. The Harvard Business Review also published an article in 2022 talking about the alarming increase in rude behavior becoming the norm.

And it can be worse than mobile phones on speaker mode or plans that are cancelled at the very last minute (extremely rude, by the way, as it shows one’s lack of care for other people’s time).

Customers berating service staff have become a common occurrence. Incidents of road rage have also become more prevalent. I loved how New York-based neuropsychologist Sanam Hafeez described the cause in one of the articles: How people need society to keep defining us and hold us accountable. When the pandemic put society on hold, however, we started giving ourselves the silent permission to “drop pretenses.”

Pretenses. Is that what manners have been reduced to? Let’s be honest. Most of the time, people don’t want to be rude so as not to be perceived uneducated by those around them. Maybe it’s my anxiety or maybe it’s my husband rubbing off on me after almost a decade of marriage but I genuinely developed a crippling fear of bothering people unnecessarily.

 “Ugh, you care too much about what other people think,” a former friend would roll her eyes at me when I said I did not want to push and invite another friend who just gave birth to a boating trip that I knew would be uncomfortable for her and her baby.

All these make me wonder—when did caring about other people’s comfort become such a bad thing? Why does calmly standing up for my right to be comfortable in a public space become such an issue? Should I just grin and bear another round of hearing the same children’s program from the next table at a restaurant? Should I just happily treat myself to someone’s personal conversations or accept the fact that some people prefer to put their feet up at the cinema?

Or is it finally time that we stopped using the pandemic as an excuse to be so arrogant and uncaring for the people who also exist in the same space? 
A little empathy sure goes a long way.

YOYA opens in Greenbelt 5
Designer Yoya Gueco-Verdier’s chic, functional, and always flattering pieces have found a home at Greenbelt 5 for the next six months. The YOYA pop-up is on the second floor where the mall usually puts Filipino talent in focus. 
Her pieces are never boring and are now my go-tos for days when I want to look fashionable without really thinking about styling what I’ll be wearing as the clothes themselves are enough. While I do love my blacks in my wardrobe, YOYA also does pastels very well. Every detail is well-thought of, from comfort to adding a little bit of interest without baring too much skin.

Louis Poulsen launches Pale Rose Collection in Manila
Fans of Danish design are in for a treat as Louis Poulsen’s Pale Rose collection is now in Manila. Only the Philippines and Singapore get access to this collection and Focus Global decided to celebrate that in style with a launch event at 24-7 McKinley. 

During a sundowner on the 28th floor, guests were treated to cocktails at The Louis, a pop-up event reminiscent of a hotel bar straight out of a Wes Anderson film. The lamps were on display, showcasing their transformation from pale pink design pieces during the day to soft and warm sources of no-glare light at night.