Second anecdata: I manage a fairly large team of millenials, and to the person they generally describe themselves as highly introverted, to the point that it seems radical that when I'm in meetings with customers simple things like asking customers questions for clarification seem crazy to them.

I noticed their Blue Jays jersey and asked if they had a game and we chatted about baseball, the sights in New York they’d visited, and Toronto.

I really enjoy my little conversations with strangers and find it hard to imagine a world where immediately upon stepping outside I’ve got headphones in and am totally insulated from the world around me.

No judgement, I get it, not everyone is gregarious, or in the mood for a chat with a stranger at every given moment.

But it sure is a more pleasant and fulfilling world for me when I’m interacting with other people even if it’s just for a few small moments here and there.

Hell, I spent a train ride talking to a man from Newark about all the clothes he stole from JC Penny’s that day. I don’t condone that behavior and I wouldn’t have struck up the conversation with him. But when he talked to me I listened and learned he got some of those clothes for his nephew. Even people you might judge as bad are trying to bring joy to others a lot of time and it’s certainly interesting to hear people’s perspectives. He showed me his food stamp card and told me how he was excited to help his friends have groceries, of course he was really hoping they’d make him a meal with them too!

So we're waiting to catch a train back to Prague and she ends up chatting with this other American who was there with her daughter. They continued talking the whole way back on the train and we ended up having dinner and romping around together for the rest of the night.

Well yeah why would you bother someone else with a question you could easily answer yourself?

However I will say I have had to develop the skill of knowing when to stop searching my own and just ask someone

This comment, for example.

Humans are a social species. These "interruptions" are close to the only thing we exist to do.

In the subway, people are rushing to leave and get where they're going, lots of people have headphones on and those who don't are wary of scammers and muggers. There have been jokes about strangers not talking in the subway system for decades.

I don't think this is a Millennial quirk, I'm at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation, and I do the same, I just got back from a trip to Europe and used my phone the whole time to navigate the London underground and Paris Metro.

My phone will tell me which train to take (and which destination sign to look for), how many stops to travel, the names of the stops, as well as how long until the next train.

That's still not ok. When you get directions it tells you the end of the line it's going towards. If you aren't sure, you have to ask someone.

I am curious as to about when this word started to be used in favor against "anecdotal data".

On a related but side note: must every phrase be shortened?

YMMV, but IMHO yes.

One time I got seated on the Coast Starlight observation between two model train enthusiasts.

One had sold his business manufacturing extremely authentic model train cars and had gone to work for Dell, but when I met him had just left Dell to go work for the person he sold his train business to.

The other was a day laborer who saved up money to take train rides as vacations. I still remember what he said as he was disembarking: "People ask me why don't you ever get married, and I tell them, 'I am married! I'm married to the trains.'"

I don't want to meet friends while I'm eating. I've taken sleeper trains in the US with my wife, and we both didn't like the communal seating.

Nothing against them personally, but particularly with airports or Amtrak stations, all the things that happen before the point I'm in my seat are often a little stressful and draining. As an introvert that means I need alone time to recharge.

Further, there's guidelines or social norms that may make one feel "trapped" in a conversation they don't want to be in. On an airline if it's bad enough to ask an attendant for a new seat because other ways of getting someone to stop have failed, that's an incredibly embarrassing and stressful situation to be in.

This isn't a scenario I encounter often, but I imagine there's also instances where someone is uncomfortably being hit on that would likewise upset them. And particularly traveling alone on an Amtrak at night, depending on circumstances, that could be a pretty scary situation for some.

So ultimately there's quite a few reasons I barely scratched the surface of why some may not enjoy it. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to engage in conversation. As much as you may long for days when people would chat more openly, many may long for a day when that is no longer the default expectation.

I don't think the privacy narrative makes sense. You're already traveling with some stranger in the next seat. You don't get significantly less privacy in a dining car. It probably fits within other cultural norms like smaller counter-service-only restaurants. If they're feeling tension in a dining car, they're going to have a full on panic attack in the coach!

What it does mean is that the value proposition for eating on board went down significantly. All you had to do to get the sale was offer reasonable food at fair prices. I don't need Michelin-star dining, but if you can match a basic chain diner (Applebee's or the like) with the convenience of "eat when you're hungry instead of waiting for your arrival and to find a place, and enjoy the scenery while doing so", you're a compelling value proposition.

I was livid about this when I rode the UK Great Western services recently; for 20 GBP extra between Swindon and Plymouth, first class was supposed to include a meal. Instead, you got a snack-box that looked suspiciously like the one you'd spend 7.99 USD for on Frontier Airlines. Needless to say, I packed my own meals for the rest of the trip.

(I'm sure there is correct terminology for those types, I just don't know the terms).

Long distance bus are much cheaper, but also much less comfortable and less reliable. DB gets a lot of flak for one hour delays on the first snow, my bus was delayed 3 hours at the start of winter. In general delays seem much more frequent with the bus. The concept of connecting to a different bus also doesn't exist (probably because of unreliable travel times), meanwhile with the train I can travel from anywhere to anywhere.

I would love cheaper trains, but they are already cheaper than traveling long distance by car and much more enjoyable and reliable than long distance bus. They lose badly to cheap flights though.

Flixbus will offer you connections with multiple legs, but the transfer time will always be 3-4 hours minimum. They're well aware that usage of public highway leads to random delays due to congestion.

I must also say that the service, friendliness and humor of the staff on the ICE was almost always exceptional!