From the other chair

The second method is memory, and it's done at home. It answers chapter 7, the belief that you're a watcher and so is everyone else, by checking what you, the watcher, actually kept.

Tonight, recall the strangers you saw today. Not friends or colleagues. The people on the bus, in the shop, in the café, on the pavement. Try to picture three of them clearly enough to describe. Face, clothes, what they were doing. Most people get one, vaguely, and often it's the one who did something unusual, and even then the face is thin and the clothes are a guess. You spent the day in rooms full of people and you have almost none of them. That's what they have of you.

Then recall a stumble. The last stranger you saw trip on a kerb, or drop something, or say a wrong thing in a shop. Recall what you thought, and for how long. If you're honest, it was a half-second of something, a small flinch of sympathy or a small flicker of amusement, and then your own day came back. Recall whether you'd know them again. You wouldn't. You're the onlooker Savitsky's actors were afraid of, and this is what the onlooker does.

And catch yourself watching. For a day, notice each time your eyes rest on a stranger. Notice how long. Notice what you conclude. The answer, I'd expect, is a second or two and nothing much, and the point of noticing is that the room does exactly this to you. Boothby's finding was that everyone thinks they're the exception, the one who sees more than they're seen. Once you've watched yourself watching, that's hard to keep believing. You see about as much as you're seen, and both are close to nothing.

This method is quieter than the count and does a different job. The count corrects the headcount. This corrects the idea that there's a room full of people like you, with your attention, pointed at you. There's a room full of people like you, with their attention pointed at themselves, which is a different room altogether.