rjay259
rjay259, the original question was "why does the SLF (or at least, a good portion of it) not watch the safety briefing". I, as an average SLF, am trying to explain here why I don't watch it. What my personal considerations are for not watching it, or not watching it as attentively as you perhaps think I should. I'm trying to explain that, under the assumption that my opinion might be true for a lot of fellow passengers.
I do this voluntarily, not to criticise here or just make an ass out of myself, but to have an open and honest discussion which might help you to improve the briefing to a point where it might be interesting enough for more passengers to pay attention to it. (Perhaps too ambitious, I know, but oh well...)
If you think I'm just being self centered and stupid then you need to consider that your opinion might be applicable to 90% of your passengers. Not a good basis for an open discussion, I'd say. In fact, if you apparently consider 90% of the people you work with daily "stupid" perhaps I should suggest a different line of work...?
And as for caring for everybody around you goes... Yes, if there is a true emergency I will try and take care of the bloke next to me if he appears to be completely helpless and I can help him without endangering my own life anymore than it already is. And if I need to hand him his cup of coffee during the meal service I'd be glad to oblige as well. But as long as we're just sort of preparing for an emergency which will almost 100.00% sure will never happen, during the safety brief, I fully consider it his own responsibility to watch or not to watch. That means that I'm not going to take deliberate action to encourage (or discourage) him to watch.
Exception: If the bloke next to me happens to be a kid, or a nervous first-time flyer or otherwise very inexperienced in flying, and happens to be looking outside instead of inside when the brief starts, I might just nudge him to point out that they're starting the brief. But the scheduled flights I'm typically on, 90% (or more) is frequent flyer and really doesn't need my help in deciding whether to watch the brief or not.
So the short version. If you want a discussion here about what apparently a lot of people (including myself) find an important subject, you're welcome to do so. If all you want is to whine about me and my fellow passengers being stupid, well, then there are a lot of other fora I can go to.