Having grown up in Germany i was surprised how many people in the US would strike up a conversation randomly in the street with me - I thought it’s a normal thing and never really experienced it in Germany - there I would always be suspicious that people try to scam me or get money or something.
I do agree with GP that in Latin America it’s super common and normal to chat with everyone.
But there are many levels to this - it’s for example less common in Nordic countries at least in my experience but you can speak to people in every place on earth, it’s something universal.
Not as much as in some other places in the world, but it is not at all rare.
we push away chatty strangers in the United States
Seattle is the worst. They call it the "seattle freeze." The San Francisco Bay Area became almost as bad in covid.
The south is still friendly. Austin is incredibly friendly with strangers. Miami has strong stranger vibe. NYC is still alive, too.
If nothing else, the nerves and flashbulb memories overwrite old nerves and flashbulb memories.
On the guy side, they usually seem too preoccupied to talk, or are moving with friends/family where interjecting as a stranger would be weird (because you either need to address the group or else you seem like you're attempting to break them off into a conversation away from that group). Though I'll give that the "too preoccupied" is sometimes merely an affect hiding, "This loser has nothing to offer me."
This is regional within the US and obviously differs by person even then. Just remember that the people you are talking to may be the kind of people that need articles like the above to teach them how to talk to people. Their defenses go up when someone approaches them and while they are well practiced at appearing relaxed, they are not. Conversations are short because its emotionally difficult to stay in a heightened awareness state while someone is trying to pull you out of it. But you can certainly provide offramps
In other cultures, you signal respecting someone's time by making small-talk with them.
Advice about making small talk vs. not making small talk is not really useful unless it acknowledges this cultural divide and the percentage chance a stranger falls into one culture or another.
I do appreciate how direct people in the northeast tend to be, and sometimes miss that aspect of the culture.
I remember a random guy was chatting to me in the subway, then I got out, waiting at a crosswalk for the green, in those 15 seconds another guy starts another random conversation. In the first 2 hours of the trip I already had maybe 10 random circumstantial conversations. The whole trip I felt like if I wanted I could always be talking!
Everyone here should note that The Guardian (I'm old enough to remember when it was The Manchester Guardian) is a UK newspaper, and adjust your understanding of its advice, or its necessity, accordingly.
I'm an introvert and I'm always surprised when a stranger talks to me, no matter where I am. But I make a point of always being pleasant back, no matter how I feel about it at the moment.
Sometimes it's just a couple sentences, and sometimes it's more of a conversation. It'd probably be more if I was better at conversations.
The only exception is if I feel the other person wants something from me, or they seem crazy or dangerous. I don't engage with those types.
I live in tourist Prague, pretty much never talking with someone other than when I see someone clearly struggling with directions in public transport and I see they go out of the tourist city center I just confirm whether they know it, most of the time* it's not what they intend to do.
*Germans being the exemption, seems they like to do whole team line grim the end to end to see the city even when it's not touristy, for these I have recommendation of some rare above the ground subway sections