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Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

I spent half my adult life in Ireland, had kids there, built a house there, etc and like to think that during said time I learned a few things and noticed changes. I do think part of it related to POS systems normalizing it. But it is certainly possible that our experiences differed. It was more common in Dublin 2 than in Offaly I'd say...

Honestly something that was a bit galling was that the Irish would moan about Ireland morning day and night but the instant a foreigner made _any_ observation that wasn't rainbows and sunshine we were out of our lane and needed to shut up. And I spent much more of my time extolling Ireland's virtues than complaining about it! It was surreal to be chatting with taxi drivers and trying to make the point that Ireland wasn't an utter kip.

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Very off-topic: but the RSS icon on your website still(?) points to feedly and doesn't give your latest blogpost but some feedly crap.

Thanks, I should take it down, really…

> Honestly something that was a bit galling was that the Irish would moan about Ireland morning day and night but the instant a foreigner made _any_ observation that wasn't rainbows and sunshine we were out of our lane and needed to shut up.

In Spain we tend to have a similar attitude. Not really telling people to shut up, but if foreigners criticize our country we tend to get defensive, even if they are saying things we would agree with or say in a conversation between locals.

For me it's like common sense, just like you don't acknowledge family problems when you talk to people outside close family and friends, but it's probably just the culture I've been raised in.

Yeah, but when immigrants to my home country complained we generally agreed. I mean, why wouldn’t people experiencing the same system have similar complaints?

Oh, OK. I was thinking about foreigners that are here just for a visit. Immigrants get treated like one of us in this respect. In fact immigrants soon experience the horrors of our bureaucracy when they need to obtain their papers, and this typically creates opportunities to bond with the locals by venting about it :)

Haha nail on head here. On behalf of my fellow Irish people - sorry!

America has spent the last century proclaiming itself the greatest country on earth, whilst simultaneously causing untold political and social problems in "lesser countries" to its own benefit.

Some deep rooted resentment when an American criticises a place is natural.

Fair! I left America in part due to disgust with the place so I likely share many sentiments.

Not to be rude, but have you considered this may have been an issue with you and your attitude, rather than everyone you met, if even people who you seemed to think liked you couldn't stand you.

No, not really. My experience there was generally positive and I met lots of great people. That being said it’s fair to observe that different cultures have different traits. I have a friend here in the Netherlands from Roscommon and he gives out about Ireland -much- more than me, and when I mentioned we’d lived in Offaly he described it as “the beating heart of Irish begrudgery”, which checks out.

Anyway this conversation is a net negative to my day and I’m bowing out.

"Not to be rude" my hole. What @CalRobert said is 100% accurate - only we are allowed to criticise Ireland, and criticism is especially unwelcome from Brits and Yanks

I disagree. Irish are _much more_ receptive to criticism of the country from immigrants than most countries.

In my experience, the United States and England (not the entire UK) have the thinnest skin and some people will straight-up tell you to f-off home on the slightest criticism, especially on the subject of human rights or the expeditionary wars.

There are of course the usual suspects, the racists and "Pro-Irish" crowd, who will blame everything on immigrants and accept no criticism of their imagined Ireland, but this isn't true in general.

However, if you make grand pronouncements from a position of profound ignorance and overtly judge the life choices of your new compatriots - a speciality of the GP - you will find yourself alienated at best. This is true everywhere, not just Ireland.

> I disagree. Irish are _much more_ receptive to criticism of the country from immigrants than most countries.

Unless, of course, the criticism is someone making a personal observation about how they saw tipping culture expand during their time in Ireland, right? Then the appropriate response is to generalize that Americans love making ignorant comments about other cultures.

> Unless, of course, the criticism is someone making a personal observation about how they saw tipping culture expand during their time in Ireland, right? Then the appropriate response is to generalize that Americans love making ignorant comments about other cultures.

Unless they're factually incorrect, which is the case here.

The original poster's subjective, personal experience with tipping culture in Ireland is "factually incorrect"?

Perhaps they just had a different experience than you.

Yes, it's factually incorrect. As in, it's both not true and they didn't experience it.

Well, they say they did experience it. You cannot possibly know otherwise.

There’s also another commenter in this thread who says they’ve lived in Ireland for their entire life and says they’ve experienced the same thing.

Then, there’s you.

There are two likely explanations I can think of for your behavior here. 1, you are arguing in bad faith. 2, you are unable, for whatever reason, to understand that others might have a different experience in the world than you.

In either case, I don’t see any point in continuing this conversation. Have a nice day.

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