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Comment by petercooper | Hacker News Reader

Generalizations but reasonably accurate ones in my experience. I find it far easier to socialize and interact with strangers in the US than in the UK. There's a certain "shock" and disbelief that can appear in the eyes of a Briton if you randomly talk to them in public. I can't blame them though, I act exactly the same way until I leave its borders! Perhaps this is why so many Brits travel and move overseas ;-)

An ancillary point that I've noticed over the years is the relative unpopularity of open social/discussion sites in the UK compared to the US. The UK is Facebook mad, of course, but doesn't really have a locally popular equivalent of Reddit, Hacker News, Digg, MetaFilter, etc. I wonder if the reduced desire to converse with random people has an effect in this scope too.

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I'm a Brit living in California and I've definitely noticed this - in myself and others. At first it's almost shocking, but after a while it seems so much healthier.

The odd part is that I've noticed myself feeling suddenly shy and self-conscious upon meeting other British people here.

Having lived in London for a year, it was a far cry from Greece. Over here, we almost never talk to strangers, although I think I've developed a self-confidence that does allow me to do that and not sound creepy, nowadays. I've found that, in the UK, you can talk to anyone at the pub and it's natural, and in California even more so, but it's not that big of a difference.

Of course, maybe it's just me talking to everyone regardless of the norms, but people respond very well.

You can randomly talk to a Briton in exactly one situation - at the pub. The rules are different there, and the booze helps too.

I find it varies with region of the US, too. Generally people in the South, Midwest or Southwest are more willing to engage in conversations with strangers, and people in New England are less so. I've had people in Massachusetts stare at me and not say anything when I've talked to them (not saying anything unusual, I swear!).

In New York City, though, talking on the street is far easier than in the Midwest.

Most people who live in NYC weren't born or raised there. I could see why conversation would appear to be easy for them (you?). I can tell you though, real New Yorkers don't like talking to strangers.

Are you from New York? Reason I ask is because I am and even born-and-raised New Yorkers don't mind talking to strangers (or are you just talking about parts of Brooklyn?).

...just don't be a creep or do it on the subway.

I'm from Brooklyn and based my comment on that. Could be that you Manhattan natives are different, quite honestly I haven't met too many people that were born and raised in Manhattan.

In my experience New Yorkers hate to make idle chat unless they've been given a reason. In general, we're happy to give directions, and we are happy to talk to people if we're in some constrained situation, like standing on line together, commiserating over transportation, that sort of thing. But if we're on the street or in the park and you approach us to talk, odds are good you're homeless, crazy, grifting, or you want us to sign some god-damned petition.

I'm a WASP land surveyor in the Mid-Atlantic region and recently I had to do an out-of-town job in Providence, RI. Our crew stayed in a not-that-busy hotel but the only people other than the staff who would talk to us were an Orthodox Jewish couple who were from Brooklyn. Maybe they just recognised a fellow traveller, but they were quite friendly and conversational on the elevator and in the common areas. People from RI wouldn't talk to us, though.

> The UK is Facebook mad, of course, but doesn't really have a locally popular equivalent of Reddit, Hacker News, Digg, MetaFilter, etc.

There are plenty of UK people who read these. I expect the reason there aren't any popular UK-specific equivalents is simply that most English-speaking people on the net aren't from the UK, so any English-language site is likely to be dominated by non-UK people (unless its content is UK-specific).

I don't buy your last paragraph. Britain has some seriously large open discussion forums such as Mumsnet and Money Saving Expert. Those are well known by the average person in the street and have some serious political weight.

Also: don't confuse London's relative hostility with the rest of the UK. The north is especially friendly and welcoming. Much more so, than say, New York.

I think it's not particular to Britain but to Europe in general (Austrian resident of 6 years currently in Atlanta, Georgia).

Americans are just incredibly friendly compared to Europeans (at least on aggregates).

"Europe" is very diverse from North to South. Your sentence is quite reasonable when you consider Central/Northern Europe, but doesn't quite make sense if you think of Southern Europe.

ido is also currently in Atlanta Georgia ("The Deep South"), which is much friendlier than some other parts of the US. I've lived all over the US and grew up in Georgia. There are regional differences here as well.

European countries have regional differences also...within the same country. In some cases these differences are very big also. Think of Spain where there is still a huge division between provinces and some don't even speak the same language. Think of the UK with Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland. Big regional differences.

It's a matter of scale. Country-level differences are far more significant. I don't think you can compare the cultural differences between someone of the "deep south" and NY, to those of, for instance, Sweden and Italy.

Yes, I lived in Germany for a time. However, many of the states of the US are the size of countries in Europe. And there are substantial differences in terms of mix and percentage of Ethnicities, religions, etc. I lived in Washington state, which is apparently Mormon country more than other places I have lived. I have lived in Columbus Georgia, where the population is nearly half white and half black. Very, very few Hispanics, Asians, etc. On the West Coast (where I lived in both Washington state and in California), there are a great many more Asians than there seem to generally be on the East Coast -- which makes logical sense since it is physically closer to Asia but was something of a shock to me when I first arrived on the West Coast. I didn't expect the West Coast to be as different from the East Coast as it was. I figured I was 'still in America' and it wouldn't be all that different. I was wrong.

I reckon that although Britons as a rule wouldn't normally strike up a conversation with a stranger, the culture of "politeness" means that if found unexpectedly in a conversation with a stranger, they will continue unless they really do actually have somewhere they need to be.

I would say a lot of Brits really do enjoy talking to people, not as an obligation of 'politeness'. The culture of politeness is more likely to be a cause than a symptom. (Speaking for myself) I find it hard to talk randomly to strangers because it's imposing on whatever they may be doing at the time.

Watch for Brits asking each other for directions, or for the time, even in plain view of a clock tower. It's sweet in a repressed kind of way.

Are you from the UK?

If not, are you from the US?

Do you have a particular accent?

First word of his comment gives it away, 'Generalizations' rather than 'Generalisations' make it obvious he's American.

Or instead of relying on (flawed) heuristics, you could just click on his username, check out the pages mentioned in his profile, and figure out Peter Cooper is a "UK author, entrepreneur [..] digital jack of all trades based in the north of England.:

He's also been known to appear on a podcast or two, thereby dispelling all doubt.

An astute observation but I'm English and living in England; sorry! I write (but don't speak) US English all of the time because 90%+ of my clients are American and I spend most of my time communicating and working with Americans :-)

That aside, I prefer written US English as a "standardized" form of English in any case. British English feels a little parochial nowadays with the Internet as it is. I shall put my flame-proof suit on now..

Oxford English is surely the most 'fun' because they differentiate between -ize and -ise suffixes based on the origin of the word (greek vs. latin/french IIRC). Though as far as I know, most British have standardised on the -ise suffix. In Australia we have definitely standardised on -ise, hence my own spelling. While Americans standardised on -ize.

None the less, I undertook one semester of commercial law at university a while ago and had to learn Oxford spelling for the exam as it is apparently used in our legal system. This is despite the fact that the government's own style guide standardises on -ise.

The Oxford English Dictionary disagrees: http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/77505?redirectedFrom=generaliz...

I don't know how big it is, but I believe b3ta.com is predominately UK.

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