Why are people afraid to be out in public by themselves?

There are pet peeves, and then there are totally inexplicable quirks of human nature that make me think I must be the crazy one. I'm remembering a conversation with an ex just now..

a: “Just watched [some movie], it was pretty good, you should go see it.”

c: “That's cool, who did you go with?”

a: “Me.”

c: “You went by yourself?”

a: “Certainly, I don't find sitting in a dark room staring straight ahead to be a multi-person activity.”

c: “But you stick out like a sore them when you go to the movies by yourself!”

Why are people so insecure? Are they afraid that if they go somewhere without a cushion of other people that everyone will automatically assume that they have no friends and no one likes them and they must be a pretty awful person? Is that what they think of people who are out by themselves?

There was a game they used to play in my residence called 'assassins' which actually rewarded this little pathology, in fact it nearly required it. You were always protected from the person who was assigned to kill you if you were travelling with someone else who was also playing. This required that portion of one's brain that could have gone to curing cancer or writing a great novel to be filled with the names and locations and movement patterns of all the people in their social group, and to map out how to avoid having to do anything independently. ‘Be a good member of the herd,’ was the message.

The other fate worse than death for a fair few residence kids was to be seen going down to the meal hall by themselves. Despite the fact that you would certainly find tables full of your housemates already there, it was that minute-and-a-half walk down that made all the difference.

I sometimes think what people are really afraid of is that if they stop chattering for 2 minutes they might actually get the beginnings of a thought in their heads, and the resulting shock would throw their entire world out of order.

One last observation.. the conversations I've had with random people sitting at the bar when I go out tend to be orders of magnitude more interesting than the ones I overhear between groups of people sitting at tables, who universally seem to be gossipping or just complaining. Last night I had conversations about US politics, the international currency market, British history and the battle of Waterloo, art and painting and organic farming and veterinary medicine. Why? Becuase I said hello and talked to the people who weren't wrapped up in their little cliques.

Now, why am I complaining? By my description it actually sounds like a win-win situation.