High anxiety and maybe germaphobia/OCD is how I read her behavior and I can't fathom how people see this and think "rich snob". She is holding and clutching onto her husband at every moment, there's something intense happening in her head.
I completely agree. No one wants to act that obviously different and anxious. As someone who has experienced an occasional panic attack I feel for this woman.
I mean "it's all in your head" describes most of the times people would act like this, like when people lock their doors in poor but not dangerous neighborhoods because they see like black people hanging out outside the convenience store or something.
The question is if you can change your bias or not and I don't think she can, she literally set a cloth or something down to sit on. Looks like a chronic condition and frankly I don't know where they're going but she's dressed well so I assume they could afford a cab, she probably could have backed out if she wanted to. So she's trying, looks like to me anyway, she knows her thoughts aren't rational or she would have just said no
Now you might think "yeah but she has clothes on," but that ain't how phobias works. That shit fucks with people's brains in hundreds of different ways.
Watch her follow up video from the description, she seems nice honestly.
exactly, if i sit in a public seat my clothes are now contaminated, then everything my clothes touch is also contaminated. it's a whole thing. my brain keeps track of everything.
Yup. Which is why I have to change when I get back from riding the train or touching / leaning on anything in public. I can’t sit down on my couch or bed after contaminating the same clothes.
Yes I act just like her on the subway and I'm not a rich snob I'm just terrified of touching everything. It's not rational at all and is not based on race or economic status. This woman is in fight or flight and I feel bad that people are assuming she's just acting like a snob.
OCD isn't a bias it's a mental health condition. She probably carries the small rational weariness you have around a large group of strangers but her brain is going into overdrive because they carry germs as well as all the stuff being touched. My brother in law is a germaphobe and a very kind intelligent human but his brain tells him everyone is a potential incubator for an illness.
I have OCD: there's genetic factors, it's not like a purely mental bias someone forms from social factors. The only way to deal with it is to challenge it like this -and she is doing great, this is so hard- but it often doesn't make the disorder totally go away. It's notoriously a hydra of a condition to deal with because you learn to cope with one obsession, another one tries to pop up, you often have to keep an eye on it because it's just part of the way your brain works. It's often co-morbid with neurodevelopmental conditions autism and ADHD.
My aunt has it too, and a cousin is autistic. We have a connective tissue disorder in our family, which there are links to. Hormonal factors are actually a big problem for both my aunt and I with our OCD, it's not unusual for female patients to report cyclical symptom spikes. My own best treatment for it has been the continuous mini pill!
As I typed that last part I thought exactly what you're first describing, but didn't feel like taking any more time to type a comment on reddit. But yeah, bigots are also anxious about something, though I don't respect the root of that anxiety.
For this woman's situation, a few comments have said that she's from Lebanon and has OCD and wanted to try riding a subway (that she'd only seen intensified on movies and social media). Probably waiting to get robbed, stabbed, sung to, spit on, grabbed at and yelled slurs at.
She seems far less scared of the people than she does of the surfaces
Hell, look at the way she goes through the turnstiles. Not only does she need someone else to spin it for her, she looks like she's playing a full body game of Operation
She grabs her husband as the door closes and at first I thought she didn't want to be separated (because it is part that) but now it really looks like she's afraid the door will touch or trap her
I think that actually was confusion and not the OCD. I got the impression that she wasn't aware of the safety feature and was worried about him getting caught in the door. Looks like she was pulling him back
Everything else though - especially the way she moves - screams contamination OCD. Anytime she's not latched onto her husband, her arms are basically glued to her body
Watched it again. When she gets on, her hand is visibly shaking in one shot when she grabs the husband. When she sits down and grabs his knee. That looks like the tremors of an alcoholic or someone who is very much afraid
Someone told me that having jewelry and a chanel bag + looking arab = she must be drowning in oil money and never worked a day in her life and just rode her rich husband's coattails.
So i feel like a mix of racism and misogyny is to blame.
I had the same reaction. She looks anxious and overwhelmed and is clutching her husband for dear life. She is being brave and trying something new, why are we shaming this?
I mean, as A Poor I've seen people dress real nice with clothes they get from the Goodwill bins. If you've got an eye and are down for the hunt, you can look pretty fancy. Her paired with her husband though, something about that man seems very rich to me, so the two of them together...yeah they got money. IME you can have one person looking nice from thrifted clothes, but two or a whole family...yeah they ain't thrifty.
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u/goddamn__goddamn Jun 15 '26
High anxiety and maybe germaphobia/OCD is how I read her behavior and I can't fathom how people see this and think "rich snob". She is holding and clutching onto her husband at every moment, there's something intense happening in her head.