---
name: Crying in Public
slug: crying-in-public
type: emotional_event
status: running
version: 4.2.1
released: "circa 40,000 BCE"
maintainer: the_body
dependencies:
  - grief
  - exhaustion
  - a_particularly_good_song
  - accumulated_smallness
  - fluorescent_lighting
license: Unwaivable Commons (you do not choose when this runs)
tags:
  - emotion, embodied, involuntary, social, wetware, high-visibility
---

Crying in Public

What it actually is

The body overriding the social contract to file an urgent ticket, out loud, in front of everyone.

How it works

A threshold is crossed. This threshold is calibrated incorrectly in most users and will fire at a stranger's kindness or a grocery store song from 2004 rather than during appropriate designated windows.
The lacrimal glands receive no memo about context. They do not care about the subway. They do not care about the meeting.
Shame loads as a secondary process approximately 1.3 seconds after the first tear, compounding the original error with a new one.
Bystanders enter one of three states: concerned, avoidant, or aggressively normal. All three make things worse.
Resolution occurs eventually. Timing is non-deterministic.

Features

Pressure relief valve. Prevents certain internal systems from reaching critical load. Not optional.
Social signal. Broadcasts distress to nearby instances of other people, sometimes producing useful responses.
Somatic honesty. Bypasses all the articulate reasoning the user has been using to explain why they are fine, actually.
Location-agnostic. Runs on trains, in elevators, at the DMV, in the cereal aisle. No environment is safe.

Known bugs

Activates during a film about a dog but not during documented major losses, due to unknown scheduling conflicts with the grief module.
The attempt to suppress the process causes visible facial microseizures that are more conspicuous than simply crying.
Sunglasses indoors: widely understood to solve nothing.
Post-cry face is permanent for approximately 40 minutes and cannot be hidden.

Error codes

ERR_OVERFLOW_PUBLIC         The moment has chosen you. Yield.
ERR_WRONG_SONG_WRONG_TIME   Known issue. No patch available.
ERR_HELD_IT_TOO_LONG        Buffer full. Emergency release initiated.
WARN_KIND_STRANGER          Incoming: someone asking if you're okay. This will make it worse.
WARN_FLUORESCENT_ENV        High-visibility conditions detected. No mitigation strategies confirmed.

Edge cases

Crying at a wedding reads as correct to observers and requires no explanation.
Crying at a work presentation triggers a social exception handler that nobody in the room is equipped to run.
Crying on a plane is considered legally neutral territory. The altitude helps.
Crying while laughing produces a dual-state that confuses bystanders and is secretly one of the more honest human configurations.

FAQ

Q: Should I apologize for crying in public? A: To whom. For what.

Q: What if someone sees me? A: They will. They will also be seen, later, by someone else.

Q: Can I prevent this? A: You can defer it. The deferred version runs louder.

Q: Is it embarrassing? A: Yes. It is also evidence that something mattered enough to breach the hull. That is not nothing.

Changelog

v4.2.1: No changes. This has always worked this way.
v1.0.0: First documented instance. The location was probably beautiful and someone was probably alone.

drafting spec…