Comment by aleph_minus_one | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aleph_minus_one | Hacker News Reader

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aleph_minus_one

> I can only speculate, but usually when such phrases come up, it's about things like not being part of the in-group - people they know throwing parties and not inviting them, etc.

Concerning "part of the in-group": It is very usual that in Germany, you don't become a "friend" fast (the German translation of "friend", [der] Freund, has a much deeper meaning than the US-American understanding of the English word). Friendship is much deeper and takes much longer to establish, but is also there to stay.

The same is said about Nordic countries.

If you come from a country where you become a friend much faster, but in a much more shallow sense, you will indeed likely be disappointed.

My advice based on my feelings/observations:

- If you do shallow smalltalk (as it is very common in the USA), you signal that you only want a shallow relationship. If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.

- In particular referring to the point "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them": I would really say that life in Germany is much more "live your own life" (which is also what I wrote in my post above: "Otherwise, she should live her life."), i.e. you do much more things on your own. For me, for example, a very common evening is filled with learning (which I do on my own).

I would really say that a lot of life in Germany is organized around "if you don't have anybody to do something specific together (and be it because of different interests), you simply do things alone on your own". There is simply not a feeling of urgency/necessity to socialize if not both sides profit from it.

With this in mind, I think that "people they know throwing parties and not inviting them" is not something that you will commonly experience (and people likely would consider this to be unfair), it's rather "people not throwing parties, so you are not invited to a (non-existing :-) ) party".

> If you do shallow smalltalk (as it is very common in the USA), you signal that you only want a shallow relationship.

That sounds like an extremely obnoxious judgement.

> If you want a deep friendship, better bring something deep to the table.

At some point sure. Are you suggesting launching into deep conversation when you meet someone?

> Are you suggesting launching into deep conversation when you meet someone?

I am strongly suggesting not to start with shallow smalltalk, as it is common in the USA.

I would start with serious conversations when I meet someone to get a feeling. But if the "vibe" is right, you can indeed get deep rather soon.

It's very strange to see you simultaneously say that that friendships take longer to develop but also that I'm supposed to avoid shallow talk the entire time even when my friendship is very shallow.

Especially since it's usually Americans that have the reputation for treating strangers overly familiar in conversation.

> It's very strange to see you simultaneously say that that friendships take longer to develop but also that I'm supposed to avoid shallow talk the entire time even when my friendship is very shallow.

I don't get your point:

- Avoiding shallow talking means not wasting the other person's time - this is politeness.

- You can also talk about deep topics with people who are outside of your friendzone.

> That sounds like an extremely obnoxious judgement.

Or just a cultural difference.

Hypothesis - I wonder if this is about places with lot of movement vs places that don't. Internal movement within US, even within rural communities, might be more than in Germany? and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?

From my observations about Germany and what I read about the USA, there was historically much less internal movement in Germany than in the USA. But over the last decades, shifts occured: internal movement increased in Germany and decreased in the USA.

> and so, society tends to be more accepting of new incoming people?

I would say the topic is more multilayered:

Traditionally, Germany was not an immigration country (yes, there exist exceptions in history: migrations of big groups from other countries, but let's ignore them for the sake of the argument), so there barely exist any traditionally grown structures for immigrants from other countries or cultures; they are much more on their own.

I wouldn't say that this bare existence of immigration structures is a bad thing per se, or that such people are unwelcome etc. It's just that there exist no really structured way for immigrants from other countries or cultures to set foot in Germany's society.

On the other hand, the increased internal movement over the last decades in Germany has not lead to the situation that incoming (German) people have an easier way to get into the existing structures, but I would rather say that this lead to a more tolerance of new incoming people doing their own thing separately.

In other words: it lead to the situation that people living next to each other often having few common things in their ways of living.

So, the increased internal movement rather lead to a loss of "common grounding" of people living in some place, without anything new appearing that replaces this loss of common grounding.

Knowing Germans, I'm not disagreeing with you - merely pointing out the perception.

(I have heard bad stories from Germany, but that was decades ago).

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