The individual is not the point. I tried to take the picture so you couldn’t identify him.
This scene represents modernity: a person consuming two pieces of sad, cheap pizza out of a disposable takeout box on a subway platform. It’s doof, not food, so I don’t say eating. It complements my other classic visualization of our times: someone carrying a takeout coffee while riding a Citibike through traffic.
If he were eating food, like a piece of fresh, local fruit or vegetable like carrots, consider why we eat food. A few reasons come to mind: to sustain life, to enjoy flavors, and to socialize. Beyond achieving none of these goals, he is anti-achieving them. He doesn’t need it to sustain life and could just wait until he arrived some place else where he could genuinely eat. I doubt he’s enjoying the flavor since doof isn’t designed to taste good but to generate wanting more. Even if the pizza contained delicious flavors, consuming in the subway adds grit to the slice plus distraction with noise, moving trains, moving people, and so on. He’s not socializing either.
Again, the point isn’t him. The point is how ordinary such behavior has become. People do it all the time.
It’s the opposite of what humans evolved doing: eating fresh plants or barbecued animals in the open air with friends and family around.
Some of you will suggest he’s saving time or money, but he didn’t need to buy the pizza at all. It isn’t nourishing him.