Passengers not allowing you off the train before boarding. The newspaper readers take over the space of your seat to accommodate their arms. The pregnant person with a please-offer-me-a-seat badge stands before an unbothered seated crowd. The unheated garlic bread coming out of that cling film. The music you’d love if only they were using headphones. The commuter closes the window of the gangway because, well, you know, they just got their hair done; the rest can find air at the next stop.
I could carry on with more of those commuting experiences to better feed the description of The Tube effect. A concept I just happened to create, and London helped me shape. This effect consists of people avoiding uncomfortable conversations with you by justifying their behaviour as a misunderstanding.
Any guesses on who’s the one misunderstanding? That’s right: it’s you, always you. The Tube effect can not only be translated into any other city; you can also sense it in your children, your couple, your father-in-law, your coworkers, and in any department of Customer Care.
Whenever you want to address a conflicting behaviour, no matter where or with whom, there’s a common tendency to attribute the behaviour to a misunderstanding. Lying, stealing, cheating, excluding, abusing, stepping over: it’s all just a minor misunderstanding.
As I click through multiple dictionaries, I can confidently say that the verb “misunderstanding” involves the action of not understanding something the way you should. That definition, however, fails to encompass the Tube Effect from beginning to end. There’s something else that I am missing, perhaps my understating.
Bringing back Londoners’ daily drama: think of that pregnant person standing before a bunch of seated passengers scrolling on TikTok. How can the definition of misunderstanding fit in there? Is the seated crowd misunderstanding the state of pregnancy of that person? Are they not understanding pregnancy correctly?
Take that and adapt it to your own frustration, whatever that is. A frustration fueled by what you get to hear as soon as you challenge behaviour that is hurting you or others in one way or another: it’s not what you think, you misunderstand it, and perhaps, it’s all in your head.
He’s not harassing her, and you don’t seem sure about what you saw.
The bank is not delaying the refund to gain interest. You probably didn’t read the full terms and conditions.
The candidate I voted for is not corrupt; you just don’t know how politics work.
Your partner didn’t forget to take the bins out. There are just more things that can top up the bin bag.
How easy my life is when the blame is all on you. And that’s why the proper conception of misunderstanding is not accountable for the Tube Effect. When someone has the intention to miss the understanding of something, it is best to say they didn’t know, and neither did they care to know. Sorry, but also not sorry.
That, my friends, is what the Tube Effect is about: people intentionally missing the understanding in the mess they make, while attributing it to the mind you fabricate. In a nutshell, it's the fine art of missing the understanding and calling it a misunderstanding. Any artists you can relate to?
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