The people you see every day and have never spoken to

Pocket edition. This is a shorter version of a longer article; you can read the full edition when you have more time.

A familiar stranger is someone you recognise from running into them again and again in the same place, but with whom you've never interacted. The psychologist Stanley Milgram gave it a name in 1972, studying people who waited on the same platform every morning.

His data showed that almost everyone has several: around 89% of the people surveyed recognised at least one. And he found something counterintuitive: it isn't an empty relationship but a frozen relationship. There is mutual recognition and a tacit agreement not to greet each other, and both sides keep it up.

Any server with a stable crowd produces them on its own. The name that appears on the list every day at the same time, whose house you recognise, with whom you've never exchanged a word.

The interesting part is what Milgram observed next: when two familiar strangers meet outside their usual place, they talk far more than two complete strangers do. The connection was there, waiting for a context.