I was on a flight not too long ago where the two people sitting next to me had apparently just met. They were from different countries travelling for different reasons. They had a friendly chat for a while about where they were from, why they were on that plane, and some things they enjoyed to do. The whole interaction lasted maybe twenty minutes, from sitting to take off. Then they said “cheers”, one of them went to sleep and the other began watching something on the phone. They didn’t speak again until we landed and from the outside it didn’t feel any of them felt awkward for even a second.
I’m not suggestion you strike up a conversation with your seat partner on a plane, but if you do you don’t have to feel beholden to them.
So what I get out of this is that while they were nice and friendly and had a good chat, they also tuned each other out for basically the entire flight. Sounds like an example in favor of dagmx's argument, which is not to be unfriendly, but that friendliness is rarely a way to pass multiple hours in a plane.
They didn’t “tune each other out” nor did they tune out the world entirely. Any of them could have resumed the conversation if they wanted to. Heck, I could have easily started up a conversation with them if I felt like it. That’s not tuning out, it’s simply not interacting.
Have you never sat in someone’s company, be it a pet or another person, each doing your own thing yet the presence of another made it more pleasant? That doesn’t mean tuning out the other person, quite the contrary.
The intangible benefit of "I could have talked to them, but didn't, and it was nice to be nearby" is going to be a minuscule part of the plane experience.
It doesn't support the idea above of "it would be nice if people were bored enough to be friendly" as a way to handle entire plane trips, it just suggests a slightly different way of focusing on your own activities.
And what you described versus a vision pro is like, a difference between being 75% tuned out and 85% tuned out. It's not all that impactful.
And with a headset on, they could have still resumed the conversation.
Or is it also rude if one tries to sleep? Or if they decided to listen to music or watch a movie on the screens?
Really the fact is that all those things are normalized and this isn’t. The arguments against it would equally apply to all of the rest of the things people do on planes to occupy their time.
Your story just says what my comment does though. They ignored each other the rest of the time.
Nobody is saying you tune out the entirety of the world the second you sit down. But there is an awful amount of people acting like the environment around you on a plane is worth paying attention to the entire time
It’s a multi hour flight. I don’t know anyone around me, most are asleep.
Many people already tune out the noise with their noise cancelling audio products.
Why would it be weird to tune out the visuals too?
The Vision Pro lets me also see people while wearing it and they can see my eyes. If I’m tuned out and someone approaches me they fade through.
Meanwhile someone with the headset can watch movies on a larger screen and feel less claustrophobic.