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Comment by pault | Hacker News Reader

I was born in the US and lived abroad for 10 years before returning recently. It was a big and very demoralizing culture shock when I returned and, being in the habit of being friendly to strangers, saw how withdrawn and mistrusting people here have become. More so because I'm in Austin, TX, which is widely reported to be a friendly city. Everyone is so obsessed with work and virtue signalling. I didn't notice how competitive Americans are until I had a frame of reference to make the comparison. Living in South and Central America, my impression was that people are far more accepting regardless of whether you are a career professional or a not, or your hobbies or political alignment. In Belize I made a dozen good friends within six months of arriving, and I haven't made a single friend in three years here. I've been extremely depressed since I returned. I'm considering leaving again now that the lockdown has made remote work easier to come by (which was the primary reason I returned to the US in the first place). I'm not trying to slander Americans, and I understand that you can't make sweeping generalizations about any group of people, but the pressure and stress of our society is overwhelming.

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I spent some time in Central America radicalizi... err I mean traveling for fun, after college.

One of the things that always stood out to me was how patient everyone generally was with one another.

I remember riding around on chicken buses to get from town to town, and on more than one occasion, the bus would just pull over and the driver would get out, grab some lunch, talk to a friend. Nobody was in a rush.

My friend that I was traveling with and I would stare at each other and be like "what the hell is going on?" as we looked around at everyone else on the bus and nobody seems to care at all that their day has this arbitrary delay. I can only imagine if a driver did that here in Seattle with 30+ people all trying to get somewhere.

I like living in the US, I think it has some massive upsides, but I also think I'm a bit of a hostage to what I think my life is supposed to look like, versus simplification somewhere else.

Can you imagine coming to a client meeting 30 minutes late and telling him that the bus driver decided on a whim stop halfway through the route to chat up an old friend?

I mean, sure? How's that different from being 30 minutes late because someone dumped a load of frozen fish on the highway?

This mad rush to be everywhere at a specific time, usually when tens of thousands of other people are also trying to be at a similar spot at the same time, is a major cause of people being traffic. Heck, as the pandemic has shown, we don't even really need to always be in the same physical place to have a meeting; technology can relieve us of that burden.

My family gave up driving years ago, due to cost and stress, and it's been great largely for this reason. I don't worry about dealing with all of the people who have Very Important Places To Be. That's Metro's job, and they do it well.

It's all perspective. If there is an accident then that's kind of unavoidable. The bus driver however is just stealing half an hour from the dozen or more people under his care on a whim.

Exactly, the work ethic is definitely different in South America (grew up there)

Right, but from the perspective of the bus rider, it's still unavoidable, as the rider can't control the bus driver. So I'd say it's still an acceptable excuse to give at the client meeting, unless there are other, more timely methods of transportation that you could reasonably be expected to take.

In places where this is sort of thing is common, I wonder if people aren't bothered by it because they truly in their heart of hearts don't mind, or because they've just resigned themselves to the unpredictability of their transportation.

This reminds me (fondly) of the Caribbean.

GP commenters is missing out that this is usually a culture-wide expectation.

If you're 30 minutes late, you mention the bus, and your boss gives you a knowing smile. Because it happens to him too.

Efficient? Less so. More relaxed? God yes.

> Can you imagine

That's kinda the point. If it's culturally acceptable for this to be normal behavior, then yes, people _would_ accommodate such disruptions.

It is hard to imagine anything ever getting anything big done with this kind of attitude. If you have a project were one part being late holds up the rest of the project--which is most of them--an attitude like this is almost impossible to work with. It is ultimately a rather selfish lifestyle.

Why do big things need to be done?

Also, it's not like the US is doing a good job at getting big things done. 30 years for 50 miles of Seattle-area subway?

> Why do big things need to be done?

I dunno, maybe like improving the quality of life for everyone on this planet?

If you think things like this [0] will happen without "big things" getting done, you're mistaken.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...

Your comment is making me want to puke.

I mean...it's not really though. There are plenty of countries that don't have the rush/stress/demands of the US (aka what you're referring to as "this attitude") that are getting plenty "done".

> attitude like this is almost impossible to work with.

Again, in reality, it is not impossible and works well enough all over the world.

> It is ultimately a rather selfish lifestyle.

In response to a post about US workers being among the most stressed in the world, you're suggesting that alternative strategies are "selfish"?

Disclaimer: not OP and I'm neither American nor South American.

I think that yes really it is. I agree with the many people in this thread that say Americans are way over the top with rushing and stressing out over things and putting unreasonable demands on themselves and others.

That said I completely agree that no its not fine for a regular bus driver to just stop and take his lunch and chat with friends just because he feels like it. That's would be what I agree is "this attitude" and selfish.

However, in this particular case we might be talking Greyhound style long distance service and it might just be how this service route is planned out and everyone knows. Then it's fine.

Context matters I would say.

Made up example: your company has a rule to end all meetings 5 minutes before the scheduled end (for real, not just a fake rule to 'make people feel less stressed'). In this company, if you are late to your next meeting you better have a good explanation.

Next company over no such rule exists and higher up regularly end their meetings late. Don't even expect me to make up an excuse when I come 5 minutes late to the next meeting.

Given how late most projects, especially infrastructure projects, are in the US, I’m not sure we can give folks a lesson on that.

A route like that presumably doesn't run on a tight arrival time. The departure time will be set, but arrival time varies according to weather, traffic, road conditions and so on.

You certainly wouldn't book any kind of meeting based on the expected arrival time, a healthy amount of buffer time would need to be calculated in, and that just gives you time to go to a local cafe before your meeting.

> My friend that I was traveling with and I would stare at each other and be like "what the hell is going on?" as we looked around at everyone else on the bus and nobody seems to care at all that their day has this arbitrary delay. I can only imagine if a driver did that here in Seattle with 30+ people all trying to get somewhere.

This does happen on Seattle-area transit, but definitely not on every route. Routes on the south end, both of Seattle and in south King County, are far more likely to have a couple of drivers who will pass each other and briefly pop open the door or slide open the window for a minute of chat. I've seen drivers taking their layover or lunch at Burien TC or TIBS who gab like old friends with any other drivers they encounter. But at Northgate or Aurora Village? Almost never happens.

Back before the big restructure in advance of Capitol Hill and UW stations opening, I rode the 72 virtually every day. If I got a particular driver, I mentally built in a roughly 6-minute wait somewhere in Ravenna because he'd pass a friend out walking or also driving a bus and they'd chat. Same for the 4 through the Central District with a different driver.

I like that transit has improved so much around here that it's easier and faster to get almost everywhere I'm going. But I also remember the quirks of transit past with that fondness of memory.

Far from the norm but in Boston during the morning rush hour, I once had a driver pull over suddenly, exclaim "back in a minute folks!", and rush off the running bus into a restaurant. I think we all figured he had to hit the bathroom and most of us got a good chuckle out of it. When ya gotta go, right?

> I can only imagine if a driver did that here in Seattle with 30+ people all trying to get somewhere.

I live on the East Coast and had a transit reverse commute for many years. I frequently rode an express bus in the evening on its last return journey from a suburb to the city, and was often the only rider. One day, the driver asked if I'd mind if he made a brief stop for a lotto ticket. I had no problem, so I said "sure". He was able return the favor one night when I was in a hurry but had to stop for groceries. He waited 15 minutes for me to grab some essentials. We got to know each other pretty well over the 18 months I rode the bus and made more than a few other stops as needed along the way.

I personally LOVE LOVE LOVE USA, Miami in particular. I don't know why. Maybe is the weather, the beach, etc. I would love to live there and work one day.

That said, three things worry me:

1) How complicated the health industry is there. Being from Argentina where health is universal, or living now in Germany where is also universal, that is crazy for me.

2) How easy you are fired and that you basically don't get any protection if you are. Again, here in Germany we have insurance that covers for many months, etc.

3) How bad employees are treated there by (most but not all?) companies.

Personal story. My sister, she had to travel in the middle of the pandemic to my home country as my father was sick. She asked for permission to work remotely for 3 weeks. She had to stay 2 more because my father's health was not the best. When she returned, the company told her that that is not what they expected of her and fired her on the spot. Now, I was in my home country so I know my sister worked all the normal hours and more, she was connected all the time, and giving her 120% (if such a thing exists). And still, they said, good by. Crazy.

Yeah, the health care system here is bonkers. It wasn't so bad back around 2008 or so, I had private health insurance for my wife and I, and it was only around $400 or so a month with almost no deductible. Then the government decided to make it "affordable" so it's almost triple that now, plus you'd have an insane deductible.

Say what you want about the ACA, but it was the trajectory of US health expenditure (vs GDP per capita) that was the problem: increasing year by year.

So doing nothing / business as usual wasn't a fiscally sustainable choice.

Yeah, before, insurers could throw out people who have preconditions or have “maximum lifetime benefit”, obviously you were going to pay less in premiums. The bureaucracy / cost of new technologies have not made this any cheaper either, especially as cost-benefit analysis for new procedures and drugs is, somehow, not a thing in the US unlike everywhere else in the world.

The US hates cutting costs via market intervention too (also see our crazy college costs problem), so until we decide to finally tackle it, they’ll keep on rising.

Isn't the college cost problem a prime example of a market intervention? Special case undischargable debt that only applies to student loans.

That's one of the weirdest things you figure out traveling. There are really no rules to what life is. It can have a drastically different texture based on things about your environment that don't feel that meaningful when you just think "that's the way things always are" with no alternative to compare it to.

I encourage everyone to take an extended trip to a country with a different culture if they can afford it by any means. The greatest effect it has on you is making it obvious which aspects of your personality and values are just picked up from your surroundings. Every time I moved to a different region it stripped away a little bit of the parts of me that weren't really me, and left me feeling much more confident in my goals and desires, and generally more comfortable with who I am. You really can't put a price on this.

Hm. I never heard anyone explain it so well before, or why, one would "find oneself" (sorry for using this awkward phrase..) in travelling. Thanks. :)

It's very much a cliché but I did it as well. Cheers

Yeah completely agree. Also forces you to admit to some of your personal faults.

Spain. France. Switzerland. Japan.

- Sit in a cafe in the morning and watch people go to work.

- Sit in a cafe in the afternoon and watch people go to lunch.

- Sit in a cafe at night and watch people eat dinner.

Really made me see and reflect on my own ways of going about them.

I always find it interesting how people travel and sit in cafes to people watch, but they never do that in their own home towns.

I would be willing to bet if you took a week off work and just went around relaxing at cafes in your home city, you would discover all sorts of interesting things and people without even having to leave the country.

People are people, and you can find stressed out people everywhere. You can also find relaxed, easy going, loving people everywhere too, if you look hard enough.

Being older now (Gen X) I've noticed a change as well. I've wondered if the US culture has grown an unhealthy level of competition. Young people internalize lessons that the people around them (classmates, neighbors) are competitors for spots in prestigious programs and later, jobs. You're taught that you should be friendly, but not "too friendly" as you are going to need to be better than them to get what you want. I don't think this explicit, but something that is incentivized through grades, tests, and gamification of everyday life. That and the deepening divide between classes. If you don't get good grades, get into a good school, get a good job, etc. you may fall off the cliff into the lower classes. If that means you need to be ruthless in your social interactions, that's just the price.

It's like we've decided to let psychopaths dictate how society operates.

I feel like it's just been a shortage of everything going on - the shortage of housing, traffic throughput, the shortage of physical space in the national parks, the shortage of good schools, good jobs. There are many more people, but no more infrastructure than before. And this naturally breeds competitiveness on the already fertile soil of American individualism.

Well said. And unsustainability / past benchmarking too.

Everyone can't live in a single family home with 3 acres, if we have the priorities we say we want (liveable cities, etc).

Your comments are spot on.

I wouldn't say either one is good or bad, I've learnt to appreciate the differences.

Having lived in latin America and the US, US feels more concerned about individualism, achievements and efficiency and it shows in friendships. Outings are organized days in advance, people are expected to show up on time, calendar invites are not unheard of.

In latin America, life is more about family and being happy. You can call a friend the same day and enjoy a cold beer after work (some time after work, punctuality not required). I think people would laugh in my face if I tell them I'll send them a calendar invite.

These are also gross generalizations and seem to revolve around American big city life which is selective (but to be fair is where the majority of our population lives).

But in smaller cities I've been able to find a great balance of both. Work on ambitious ideas but spend evenings and free time with friends and family.

Do you have any recommendations? :) I've been trying to find a big town or small city with lots of natural beauty and nice weather. I grew up in Seattle and refuse to live anywhere with more than 90 days of cloudy weather per year. One heuristic I've come up with is small towns that are sustained by natural tourism. They tend to be much more laid back, and people are happier and more social because of it. Whitefish, MO is one example, but unfortunately it's too cold for me. :)

Hi, Hope you're doing well.

Wanna grab a drink?

I think it just depends, though you may be right that this "regimented life" is more common in the US. For myself, I'm happy to jump out in the middle of the day if a friend wants to go on an impromptu walk. But if I am planning a get-together at my house with more than a couple people, I probably will send out a calendar invitation. Not because I think the other people need it, but I do like to put things on my calendar so I don't forget when things are going on, and it's only a couple extra seconds to add the guests to it, so I might as well.

As another data point, I know people who are introverted and need a little mental preparation before seeing people, even good friends, so impromptu meetings can cause social anxiety.

> You can call a friend the same day and enjoy a cold beer after work (some time after work, punctuality not required)

I've definitely been trying to get better at the last part of this. People finish work at different times some days, sure. So it's fine to just head to the bar whenever you're done, and whoever gets there first will grab a table and just chill alone with a drink until the other person shows up, and that's the norm, not the exception. But I feel like most of the time (where I live) you try to figure out when both people will be done with work and then only meet when you can arrive at about the same time, creating unnecessary anxiety around punctuality.

I always wonder how much the explosion of "true crime" media has contributed to American paranoia and fear

True crime is pretty popular around the world.

Can't hold a candle to the american news stations when it comes to paranoia and fear

If you live/can meet in the northern part of town I’d be happy to have lunch with you some time so you can at least have one friend in town… email is my username @ gmail.com.

When "silence is violence" and "the personal is political", what can you expect? Everything is polarized and people want it to stay that way.

As a non-American who has visited for a total of four months, east and west coast, the political differences between America and other countries are way broader and deeper than just a few superficial memes. Especially those from young activist personalities, personalities which are present and busy in many other countries, each of which has its own zeitgeist.

Your roads are scarily broad while your sidewalks are narrow and sometimes just stop suddenly; everyone seems to have a car even if they shouldn’t; the rules of the road seem to be treated as suggestions (at least for cars — jaywalking is verboten), while also being a source of arbitrary revenue precisely because everyone treats them as suggestions; “family” is a much stronger trope in America than in the U.K. or Germany, yet “I love you daddy” is a real Valentines’ day card I’ve actually seen, in a supermarket with many others like it in different variations of phrase and relative; guns feel like a trivial hobby or possession barely worth mentioning, and suggesting even the slightest of limits to the right to bear arms is one of the quickest ways to be compared to a 20th century dictator and some of the critics insisting “a well armed society is a polite society”; your billboards are covered in adverts for loans to cover bail costs, yet sex is hidden away; you’re as loud about Christianity as a minaret is about Islam, far more so than the churches and cathedrals I’ve seen around Europe; there is a constant bombardment of adverts for insurance and health products I don’t see elsewhere (everything from magic drugs to teeth so straight and white they could be a metaphor); there are regional things like the Californian everything-causes-cancer warnings matched only by one British tabloid newspaper; and yes, race related issues are so much louder and in-your-face that even I couldn’t miss them.

(I know the U.K. seems weird to visiting Americans, because they’ve explicitly told me. But the U.K.’s weirdness is different to yours, just as the cultural pain-points are).

Thorough and accurate! I'd hazard the sharper edges of American culture stem from less constrained (and better funded) capitalism than other parts of the world.

If someone can make a buck on it, it exists.

"Silence is violence" is such BS, the right to stay silent is literally enshrined in the Constitution. Let's not fall for that kind of extremist rhetoric.

OTOH, I very much agree that the personal is political. Indeed, in an increasingly divisive and politicized society, simply tending to one's garden can be a powerful political statement.

I am mistrustful as hell. I'm guilty of this as an ohioan. To devils advocate my position, a higher stressed group is more desperate and more likely to screw me over?

IDK but there is definitely an atmosphere of us vs them watch your back.

This is a good, somewhat related read:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k78wpz/covid-changed-our-rel...

I feel you brother. Even trust needs evidence in the age of social media :)

Reaplying to my own comment - if I were you I would relocate to a VERY cold states in US if I had options (and I don't) Good luck either way

I travel around the US working from different states/cities. The difference in behavior is astounding between the big and small cities. I have the absolute best experiences in small to mid sized towns, and in big cities everyone on the road and in person behaves sociopathically.

It’s often beyond even simple competition / selfishness. You routinely see people going out of their way to be mean even when it doesn’t benefit them. But switch towns and the whole situation is flipped.

I grew-up in San Jose, went to Davis, and came back to the Valley and commuted to Chico until 2019. Most Californians seemed bitter, angry, resentful, humorless, and ready to explode.

I live in ATX now in overpriced, poorly-maintained apartments full of "stock-broker"-types, salespeople, managers, and software dev couples, and people who think they're hot sh%t either because of inheritance or university pedigree. $3k/month isn't like Valley prices; this is a 1400 sq ft cost-saver efficiency for me. I'd happily trade for a 3000 sq ft / $6k/month place if the people were more decent over there, if that's within the realm of reasonable expectations.

There's no apparent stress of amongst the people with more money than sense, but there is stress amongst the hundreds of people living under I-35 when they've been told that their existence is illegal when they have nowhere else to go.

The people you are describing are more a function of where you live, those people tend to congregate in what I calm “yuppie slums”, shitty made multi family units with names like “aloft” and “elevate” with art and random shit in the lobby. There’s a ton in every US city. And they are all the same.

They attract people who don’t know the city very well and have a check list of amenities. When your lease is up I would encourage you to look at different neighborhoods, ideally a little away from the “revitalized former industrial/meatpacking district” which is probably bougie breweries and wine lounges now.

Sounds like a result of poor urban planning. My travels have taught me that these generally aren't all stuffy people desiring "yuppie slums"—it just happens that these are the only types of housing available near where the jobs are.

Unfortunately, I may have mistakenly signed a lease in a yuppie slum in ATX because it was the only large apartment available.

It's an "expensive" (for the area), boring, mixed-use development that gentrified an east side area, abutted right next to I-35 and neglected homeless (who's existence are now illegal thanks to hateful bandaid policies).

And, it appears to be populated mostly by Millenial kidults who live to party hard, act like they're still in high school, got their jobs by lying on their resumes, let their dogs pee and poop in the common hallways, and live like their hedonism is more important than anything or anyone else. I dislike most of them because they resemble Seinfeldian, Kafkaesque caricatures and many offer nothing more than shallow, vapid, shitty, ignorant, infantile %sshole, consumerist, ephemerality manufactured by a steady diet of mass media and screen time.

One woman walks around with one hand in the air like Peg Bundy from Married... with Children but seems like a WASP who works-out and dresses to climb up the next richest pole. She won't even acknowledge my presence with a friendly "hello."

This is what most of the apartments on the bay area peninsula are like.

My wife and I realized very quickly that because we didnt fit into the corporate hierarchy of ivy league grad, VP at FANG corporation that we were not worth the time.

Explored more of the bay area and found lovely people in other areas. Every now and then we get a peninsula type here but they move pretty quickly as they cant handle the unbridled good mornings and nobody starting a conversation with their resume credentials.

Used to live in ATX as a software engineer and I had to move away from ATX precisely of the tech bro types moving in.

Haven't been to Austin lately, but this was my experience in Denver.

It felt... like everyone from the Midwest in their 20s had moved to a city, to live what they took from their childhood TV to be a "hip" life, which developers therefore supplied in the most cost-effective way.

Not to say that it isn't a hoot, or the food is bad... but it just had a "paint hasn't dried yet" weird new feeling to me.

Suburban Denver felt like stable, family-friendly Americana but odd compared to big cities. I noticed the majority of couples were short, plain-looking dudes with above-average attractive women.

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