Cities with their own psychological disorders
atlasobscura.com
atlasobscura.com
Having visited Tokyo (which I assume is the most Paris-like Japan gets?) and Paris (just got back from most recent trip), this rings true.
Average "mild annoyance" from a Parisian would equal "severe disrespect" from a Tokyo resident.
Plus add in the French propensity not to apologize for normal, everyday oops-type things, and I imagine it'd be very jarring.
That said, on my most recent trip to Paris, I actually found Parisians a lot nicer than the last time I was there (~1995ish?).
There's a lot of Gallic-isms, but even as an American with extremely bad and limited French, most people were very nice.
PS: Not sure why tacos are the new craze in Paris, but y'all should really import some Tejanos to get the full experience. Feta never belongs on a taco that's not shrimp.
This was around the Bastille, so maybe hipster culture?
Overall, a decent attempt, but the salsa was a miss (no cilantro? and not sure what they did to the tomatoes) and the seasonings were still very French.
The irony is afaict, France has all of the ingredients needed. In typically amazingly-fresh-and-delicious French fashion.
But hey, it was still a better take than the Italian Tex-Mex I had in New England -- cinnamon on tortilla chips?!
But that same light-skinned frenchman would turn up his gallic nose an authentic arabic shwarma, even stumbling from from le bar at 2am. That the only difference between a good shwarma and a good French taco is /maybe/ the choice of cheese makes no difference...
(Source: live in Toulouse, have snarky Lebanese friends)
It's kind of funny though, french tacos really took over France in the last decade, I guess because of fast food chain like o'taco. When I left France in 2015 it was unheard of where I was living, now it's everywhere.
The rest of the world? Yea you're screwed. I found one place in Berlin that did legit Mexican because it was run by Mexicans (Santa Maria in Kruezeberg) but that's literally the only decent Mexican I've found in the 50+ countries I've visited and trust me, I've looked in all of them.
Good news is you can find the ingredients for good Mexican in pretty much all of them and do it yourself. The hardest to source is proper jalapeños or any dried peppers, but there's usually a speciality shop somewhere that will be able to give you most of what you need. Cilantro can also be a bit of a pain, but it's way easier than it used to be even 10 years ago.
We actually cook a few dishes fairly regularly (the pork tinga recipe from America's Test Kitchen is actually amazing, if you're looking for something, and dead simple to boot), but there's something comforting knowing it's easy to get some of your favorite food done well on demand on short notice for those days you really aren't feeling like dealing with making dinner.
(Looking at you, Connecticut)
BTW I've tried French Tacos and I LOVE IT! I think it could be a huge success in the US, if tweaked for our meat and cheese tastes, like with brisket and cheddar.
They have a kind of connection beyond the name, even though neither is a linear descendant of the other. Tex-Mex tacos are a descendant of traditional central Mexican tacos, as also are tacos al pastor; but tacos al pastor are also descendants of schwarma, which French tacos derive from. So they're like cousins by marriage.
An apology for coming off so critical but the pretense that food is just as good in the US rarely pans out without breaking out the $$$. Mind you, there are good places, and good food but its the exception and here we are only talking generalities. Just like having good table service.
Unfortunately it is a cultural thing; the food culture that produced, accepts and consumes "I Can't Believe Its Not Butter" cannot have non-"I Can't Believe Its Not Tacos" tacos.
It's bad Tex-Mex, but at least it's recognizable.
There are cooks/chefs from one culture/place in the world living in other spots.
You talk about the possibility, that it could exist in Texas, and I'm telling you no, in my experience, not in Texas.
The trick to Paris, I’ve found, is to start with broken French and then suddenly everyone speaks fluent English. But if you start with English you’re screwed.
Even saying “Bonjour” with a decent accent (you can learn it like a song almost) will make them significantly nicer to you.
But yeah don’t expect a big city person to actually verbalize anything if they bump into you in a crowded place. That’s just expected and normal. Not worth aknowledging.
The kids and I joked about how pleasantly lyrical all French greetings are. You have to try to make "Bonjour" not sound nice.
I'm not saying that "all of Europe" is like that, but definitely the major cities of many Western European countries.
That said, we have SV / Seattle, so I guess we have our own hipster sociopaths in the USA.
My wife and I had the exact same experience. We had been to Paris in the late 90s and when we were there a couple of years ago, we found people to be much nicer than they had been previously. Our theory is that it is / was a generational thing.
Now, it seems like American, Japanese, et al. cultures have penetrated a bit, and there's more awareness that there are other-than-French ways of doing things.
Which they'll still do it the French way, because god bless them they defend the hell out their culture, but at least they're more aware of alternatives.
Personally I found Paris extremely underwhelming - it felt just like New York but slightly more French. I had a much better experience visiting small towns in the south of France. But to be fair to France, I don't think this is an issue unique to their country - it's an issue with tourism to cities. As a tourist I've come to realize that most cities are largely the same across every meaningful dimension. The best travel experiences come from smaller towns and generally anywhere "off the beaten path." As they would say in Thailand, every city is "same same but different."
They all have their unique story to them. Even cities as close as say Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Antwerp are totally different.
Firstly, much cleaner. Just in terms of trash/litter on your average street.
Secondly, the integration of metro into the regional train network. Amtrak tries, but it's a sad cousin to European rail systems.
Thirdly, weekend markets and general ingredient quality. Paris feels like it cares about ingredients a lot more than the US. Even canned meals from Franprix were pretty good. And don't get me started on the ridiculousness that is Picard.
Small French towns will always have a dear place in my heart though. If I had my choice, I'd still pick them every time over Paris.
But they were also exceedingly polite, especially when in close physical proximity and with verbal volume.
I can absolutely see standard French expectations rubbing them wrong.
Which I guess is the point of the article -- no story you read about the wonders of Paris talks about the little nuances of being there. So people are informed about history/art, but little of the day-to-day.
Most people in Japan get very little Paid time off compared to the rest of the world. And the work culture is so toxic that people get shamed for actually taking their time off. Now, taking that into account, can you imagine that a Japanese person, actually fighting against that, and doing that big trip to a foreign city on the other side of the world, at great expense. They chose Paris for it's reputation. Now imagine their disappointment when Paris is significantly worse than Tokyo.[0] After all the money, time, and precious time off spent to get there, I too would have a mental breakdown under those conditions.
[0] Can confirm. I have been to both. Paris is nice as long as you don't look at the floor. (It is the only major city I've been to that had human shit on the side-walk in the middle of a major tourist area) Tokyo is better in all regards. It's cheaper, cleaner, has more things to do, is better run, etc.
My understanding is that the response to the hostage taking was so incompetent that the hostages trusted the kidnappers more than the police. One of them was expected to "die at her post" by a bank executive. She refused to testify against them for these reasons rather than any sympathy to their cause.
Was that also because of distrusting the police?
So yes, she became engaged to someone who tried to save her life from the police.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome#Stockholm_b...
Uhm, after that "someone" joined a gang and took her hostage in order to steal money? If that's logical that sounds like a problem, whether theory is shoddy science or not the thing is real if even you, not victim, fall into that delusion.
People can be thankful to someone who improves things even if that someone creates the horrible situation in the first place. It's a problem and in politics too. Give people more comfortable life and they praise you even if your bad policies are the reason they famished previously. We remember good stuff and forget stuff that bums us out. Your comment exemplified that mistake.
If you justify her marrying the guy because he saved her from police, and you completely sideline that he needed to save her from police because he took her hostage during robbery and police came for that criminal, sorry that's just idiotic.
You can justify marrying the person who put you in direct danger of death for whatever irrational things like emotion, sexual attraction whatever, but you must acknowledge that it's highly illogical and quite worthy of a close look, if the original stockholm syndrome study is complete bullshit then someone else should do a better job at describing this bias.
Edit: thankfully, it turns out all that about marrying the hostage taker is false. (The logic in comment I replied to remains stupid though)
Wikipedia states:
"He later got engaged to a woman who was not, despite what some state, one of the former hostages."
I think the whole article can be viewed with a healthy scepticism.
> He (Olsson) later got engaged to a woman who was not, despite what some state, one of the former hostages
that being said the other hostage taker, Olofsson:
> He went on to meet the hostage Kristin Enmark several times, and their families became friends.
https://www.stadafa.com/2020/12/stockholm-syndrome-discredit...
Reportedly the syndrome "occurs in 8% of kidnap victims", by FBI stats. Not sure how they measure that, but seems plausible. Of course when forced to act against your will, you're defiant. Fight or flight. That's what happens most of the time. Except it's not so simple.
There's a fuller description of the strategies known as "Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn" (I guess it was super important to to keep the F-s, hehe).
We see the Freeze response in nature, deer stuck in headlights, animals pretending to be dead when attacked, and so on. We can see this response in children with violent parents. They can't run and hide, nor fight. They freeze.
Fawn is basically the "Stockholm syndrome":
- Over-agreement
- Trying to be overly helpful
- Primary concern with making the abuser happy
This 8% figure with kidnapping seems to be low because the "Fawn" adaptation takes time to develop. A kidnapping is sudden and unexpected. No time to adapt. But there are abusive situations when there is plenty of time to adapt.
We can see this in cults, in abusive families, autocratic companies, it's pervasive in fascist regimes, i.e. Jews policing, hating and attacking Jews, etc.
Fawn is the default adaptation when an abuser is abusive over a long period of time, gradually going from non-abusive to abusive, like in an abusive marriage, from honeymoon to everyday scandals. The victims seek to align to an increasingly lopsided point of balance by changing themselves. And over time, it can become absurd.
To wit, the second most prominent supposed case of Stockholm Syndrome was the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, who was supposedly held captive by the SLA terrorists and abused for a protracted period of time before she started helping them rob banks.
Kapos, collaborators or hostages joining the cause of their captors are not a "syndrome" of people "falling in love" or "bonding" with their captors. Patty Hearst was just convinced of the cause of the SLA - and she tried to get out of jail by using that card. She was just neither bright not honest - a spoiled brat jumping on an adventure that turned bad.
I wasn't a bank executive, it was the the social democratic prime minister Olof Palme.
During a phone call he asked one of the hostages: "wouldn′t it be nice to die at your post?"
https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/591659
(https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2021/03/the-murder-of-swedish-prim...)
"The psychiatrist who invented it, Nils Bejerot, never spoke to the woman he based it on, never bothered to ask her why she trusted her captors more than the authorities. More to the point, during the Swedish bank heist that inspired the syndrome, Bejerot was the psychiatrist leading the police response. He was the authority that Kristin Enmark – the first woman diagnosed with Stockholm syndrome – distrusted."
"On the radio, Enmark criticized the police, and singled out Bejerot. In response, and without once speaking to her, Bejerot dismissed her comments as the product of a syndrome he made up: ‘Norrmalmstorg syndrome’ (later renamed Stockholm syndrome). The fear Enmark felt towards the police was irrational, Bejerot explained, caused by the emotional or sexual attachment she had with her captors. Bejerot’s snap diagnosis suited the Swedish media; they were suspicious of Enmark, who ‘did not appear as traumatized as she ought to be.’ "
At best,this syndrome was described based on one situation, not scientific research.
This is where an “expert” impugns the intellect or morality of the people who disagree with them instead of trying to understand the very real reasons why.
Knowing that the person who came up with Stockholm Syndrome was the very same person who the hostages sided with the bank robbers against makes it look a lot like drapetomania (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania).
Oh well, Stockholm Syndrome is catchier.
Also combine with perhaps a little change in their stomach biome from drinking different water and/or eating different dairy products, making them more easily dehydrated.
With the twist that the bank robbing that gave name to the phrase was made by someone psychotic and the friendly bank robber got called in by the prime minister to negotiate.
The main source I found on Brooklyn Syndrome is from the Names journal [0], which has a nearly identical description.
I wonder if this article is a direct copy of that journal article with lazy paraphrasing from the Atlas Obscura writers to avoid plagiarism. If so, this makes me wonder how much of Atlas Obscura was created this way.
[0]: (PDF) https://ans-names.pitt.edu/ans/article/download/2019/2018/40...
Maybe nobody added it.
Diet - Seems like Glaswegians have forgotten Fee-fi-fo-fum In certain parts of the country, the NHS will prescribe some things to elderly people which increases life span, that would normally be found in high levels elsewhere in the country. I doubt Evian or San Pelligrino is high on the shopping list up there either.
> London Syndrome is when hostages become argumentative toward their captors—often with deadly results.
I think I must be suffering from London syndrome, in much the same way the population of voters feel at general election time, or a congregation feels towards a vicar.
No idea what "fee-fi-fo-fum" is supposed to refer to, but it seems you're suggesting that Glaswegians simply choose to have a poor diet and therefore suffer poor life expectancies as a result. In reality there are myriad social and health problems that come from having a shitload of deprived areas - can be seen in the link Arethuza posted - and all of these contribute in some way to a lower life expectancy.
If you're going for cheap "Scottish people like alcohol and deep fried food" laughs then, ok fair have your fun. But know that there isn't that much difference north and south of the border on that, so if you're searching for a serious answer you would need to dig deeper.
Calcium.
I dont think being on the bread line is useful when watching harrys farm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juXXt4ZHS-8&t=467s
or being in damp conditions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladosporium#Health_effects
I can smell the mould in some brand new sliced bread and baps when its not out of date or anything visibly wrong with it.
e.g. Select the most deprived 5% from the key - they are mostly in Glasgow :-(
Silicon Valley Disruption Delusion - This peculiar state of mind is characterized by an individual's inclination to perceive every life aspect as a sector ripe for modernization. Symptoms include an increased use of entrepreneurial vernacular, spontaneous pitching to unsuspecting venture capitalists, and a tendency to self-identify as a "founder." In extreme cases, one might even start praising the virtues of blockchain for everyday activities.
Amsterdam Cycle Confusion - In this unusual psychological state, the individual develops a belief that they should travel exclusively by bicycle. This can lead to fervent cycling even in non-bike-friendly areas and a distinct reluctance to use pedestrian pathways or motorized transport.
Munich Brewmaster Belief - Individuals affected by this syndrome are consumed by the idea that they are master brewers. The condition manifests in an incessant discussion about hops and yeast, an urge to experiment with brewing in unconventional locations, and the staging of impromptu beer tasting competitions.
Palo Alto Unicorn Unreality - Those affected by this syndrome exhibit an uncanny tendency to transform every idea into a potential billion-dollar startup or 'unicorn.' They might display irregular sleep patterns, subsist mainly on energy drinks and quick meals, and their conversations are often peppered with phrases like "the next big thing," and "exit strategy."
Seattle Server Overload Syndrome - This cognitive anomaly leads a person to believe they're akin to a server, required to handle multiple requests concurrently. They may develop an unhealthy penchant for multitasking and often describe their mental state using terms such as "processing," "bandwidth," and "buffering."
Does a certain 20yo junior writer for a Web site resent the senior writers?
The syndrome, reported in 2011, gets its name from Detroit, and more specifically from its reputation as a manufacturing hub for automobiles, in which newer models would replace the older ones on a regular basis.
I.e., "replaced by a newer/younger model".
As in, "oh - that's not how they do it in Australia, did you know I lived in (or visited) Australia for 'x' amount of time?"
My bet is that in the future somebody will eventually find a direct relationship between the symptoms and the chemicals used to clean the museums or preserve antique valuable pieces from the attack of insects and molds.
As long as the ventilation systems (and insurance?) improve should be more and more rare.
The name was given with reference to a passage in Stendhal's writing about a visit to Santa Croce in 1817, by the psychiatrist that "invented" it and wrote a book about it (Dr. Graziella Magherini).
Personally I always found it improper, as the original experience as described by Stendhal was a temporary and very "light" mental confusion, that could have well been due to heat or low pressure or a similar physical reason coincidentally happening at the same time he was in awe for the art before his eyes, while the stories in the book are about patients that had severe symptoms and that took days, weeks or even months to recover.
There is an interview to the doctor, mentioned on the Wikipedia page, archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110714081259/http://www.metrop...
that is worth reading.
The "chemicals" theory is improbable because at the time the book was published it considered around 100 cases she attributed to the syndrome over a 10 years period, so 10 cases per year to be compared with the millions of tourists per year in Florence (even in the '70's), and it is not like in Florence museums different substances are used than in the rest of Italy.
Whether this syndrome actually exists or not, is up to debate, but surely the doctor found a very catchy name for it.
Can I suggest that feeling bored and lonely despite idyllic surroundings defines "Vancouver Syndrome" ?
/s but kinda not
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Danbury_shakes&re...
It should involve an otherwise emotional, feeling, social and empathic creature dissociating into a cold, atomized, post-social entity with the uncanny ability to tune out the world and everything in it as it buzzes towards its goal.