‘I hate being touched by random strangers’ — Netizen asks for advice on how to keep personal space on MRT

A Singaporean Reddit user asked for advice on preventing strangers from touching him to get him out of the way, especially in public areas such as on the MRT.

“How do you deal with strangers touching/prodding you to get you to move along? Shouldn’t the first move be using their voices to ask/tell, then touching only as a last resort?” wrote mapleleaf404 on r/singapore on Sunday (Dec 4).

“I notice in MRT that older folks would touch me to get me to move out of the way, so that they can stand in front of the mrt doors ready to jump out once the doors open,” the netizen wrote, adding that they do this in spite of the MRT being full and there is no way to stand near the doors until they open and people leave.

Expressing frustration with those who have a lot of impatience to leave the train, the netizen added that the worst case of this was when a young man “almost double the size of the petite lady in front of him literally shoving her against the open mrt doors so that he can push his way into the MRT.”

The woman in front of the man had been waiting for those on the train to exit first.

“I hate being touched by random strangers (not to mention hello covid!),” the netizen wrote, asking commenters to share their “ideas on how to react and discourage these random touches! 

Some ideas I thought of: shriek like I’ve been electrocuted, turn around to chop their hands, give a death glare.”

“I stick out my arm and block them from squeezing past. Then ignore their tsk tsk. Out of pure spite,” a commenter wrote. 

“I had a karen shove me on an MRT as she was rushing to get in before I could even get out. I nudged her back. She shoved even harder and I called her out,” wrote another.

“Lol maybe the best way to react to random touching is to start hugging them back and enjoy the touch?” the netizen said in a comment.

“What you can do is turn around and say Hellooo in a pissed off tone,” suggested one Reddit user.

The netizen could always say “Excuse me?” In their best British Auntie voice, one said.

Another told the netizen to “Ignore and don’t move.”

/TISG

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