There's a thing in the Midwest known as minding your own business. There's also a whole cultural phenomena in large cities where people crammed together respect space by avoiding eye contact with one another. (Which, oddly, many Midwesterners tend to see as cold and aloof, but it's a built-in mechanism of cities).
Boyle traversed to needless gossip when he probably would have been better served to mind his own business, which is particularly annoying from him because he works with journalists as a "newsroom web developer" and presumably could be considered a journalist himself. He works at the Globe, and removed this fact from his twitter profile as people started questioning the ethics of the ordeal. I assume he was distancing his personal twitter from his professional life, but journalists don't normally get that kind of work/life balance from their employers.
I think the point of the Bourdain reference is that Bourdain's in the public eye as a celebrity, while this couple was not. One type of gossip is almost acceptable while the other type is decidedly not acceptable.
Speaking only from experience in cities like Minneapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, etc., people are likely to "ignore" their surroundings but will wake from that state when, say, I look them in the eye. I might get a smile, I may only get acknowledgement, but I'll likely get some reaction.
In Boston or New York or D.C., where the density is so much greater, to the point where you're literally touching several strangers on the subway, it takes much more to illicit a response. I'm not arguing for one of the other. It's just what I've observed.
I think it comes down to density. Imagine riding an elevator with 2 or 3 strangers. Sometimes they'll chat. Imagine riding an elevator with 15 strangers. Most likely it'll be a quiet ride. Now imagine riding those elevators every day for years, almost always with strangers. You get desensitized to strangers in the latter more than the former.
The other point with the Midwest is that gossip is actively frowned upon in many subcultures there. It's something you may do with your friends at your house while playing cards, but you'd never, ever, gossip with them in public. The lines are more clearly drawn. It's funny. I've family members who will gossip about their colleagues, miles away in their own homes, but will do so in hushed tones. It's all very Lake Wobegon.
It's been quite a while since I lived in a Midwestern town, but after this comment, I intend to go on my way and forget this ever happened. So long as no crazy laws get proposed or passed, I'll probably never think about it again, one way or the other.
I read the word "disintegrates" too literally, thinking it was some kind of explosion.
Having lived in various areas from the rural to the suburban to the urban (albeit not downtown SF or NY-style urban) on the west coast, I've never come across a culture in which fighting about your marriage in a restaurant was acceptable behavior.
And the more rural the area, the more likely it would have been for someone to walk up and tell them they needed to take their BS elsewhere.
Two wrongs don't make a right. Just because fighting in public is poor form, it doesn't make it acceptable to broadcast the fight to the world as a bystander.
Boyle traversed to needless gossip when he probably would have been better served to mind his own business, which is particularly annoying from him because he works with journalists as a "newsroom web developer" and presumably could be considered a journalist himself. He works at the Globe, and removed this fact from his twitter profile as people started questioning the ethics of the ordeal. I assume he was distancing his personal twitter from his professional life, but journalists don't normally get that kind of work/life balance from their employers.
I think the point of the Bourdain reference is that Bourdain's in the public eye as a celebrity, while this couple was not. One type of gossip is almost acceptable while the other type is decidedly not acceptable.