Non-Western People, What Odd Things Do Americans Do?

to non-westerners what things about Western culture in general do you find odd kenyan checking-in iContact oh my god so much eye contact meeting people for the first time and having been peer into your freaking soul took some getting used to the low power distance between authority figures in the general population teachers politicians doctors parents et Cie command a lot more respect here and people are more reverential in their dealings with them the powerplay and divisions within schools especially high school I thought Hollywood had exaggerated this but reddit tells me otherwise more American than Western the fact that you can't spread peanut butter and jam on bread and call it a sandwich what he I have morbid I'm on my phone right now we'll update I dunno if this is just a Western thing they're having a mountain of purely decorative pillows on your bed that you take off before you go to sleep and put back on in the morning I don't understand the point your bed looks fine without them that's like putting a whole bunch of purely decorative cutlery on your table and then taking it all off when you go to eat your dinner how elementary school kiddos sit on the floor during an assembly or reading time in Eastern Europe you do not ever sit on the floor under any circumstances when you are in school ever how you interact with a much older person it's just so casual yep it's strange calling teachers and authority figures by their names too instead of by their profession like teacher or principal or boss that little girl's about to 6 year old and there abouts we're a female version of bikini when they go out in the Sun girls under 6 or 7 don't have boobs so the bikini top seems ridiculous to me but that's just me I was talking to an interpreter here in Afghanistan and he genuinely had a hard time believing that hitting your wife is frowned upon this is sort of culture shock in the other direction I guess but because we have such neat plumbing and most of Europe and North America we simply flush toilet paper once we are done with it having traveled around I found that this wasn't the case everywhere I found this in Greece and when I lived in Thailand for a little while they throw the toilet paper in have been next to the toilet I had a hard time reconciling myself with this practice because well you now have a freaking bin full of TP with crap on it just sitting there that was rough for me as an American living in an Arab culture I would say I get asked a lot about two things family relationships in dating in my part of the Arab world it is not at all common for a young man to live alone or even want to I wonder if they even could since most of them can't cook wash clothes or do most of those household chores it is unheard of for an unmarried woman to live alone unless you're in the biggest and most westernized lot cities and even then the neighbors will talk it's not just that there isn't the opportunity to do this jobs and money being tight but the desire is curtailed by close family connections and interdependence dating is a whole nother animal if and when it is done here it is done in secret especially outside of the big cities gossip is a key form of entertainment and reputations are very important especially for women sometimes couples agree to appear to be dating so each of them can date someone else who might not be socially acceptable or acceptable to their family and the dating game is undertaken with marriage in mind it is strange for most people here to hear that we date and just sort of see what happens it's too high-risk here to take that kind of approach just some observations based on questions I'm asked by a lot of the youth air that sounds suffocating its how easily that guys and girls just want to get along and have fun after reading all those posts where the guy-girl are thinking why don't you kiss me already I find it a little odd that people in the West are very straightforward in terms of their expectations but where I come from India guys and girls are so freaking shy about disclosing their intentions it's probable because of the irrational societal values that we have had for quite some time now if a girl goes out with a guy and people get to know about it then she's termed as the town W with the new generation being more expressive about their things are changing but it's still weird being a 27 year old guy I have to think a 100 times before telling a girl that I like her this despite me being in the capital and not some remote part of India most of the situations that I have witnessed where a guy girl comes and confesses his her feelings invariably makes them a nympho satiric I don't understand how can you go ahead suppressing the most basic human desires of peer group socializing and sex but it's the opposite in the West odd but rational I think most Asians can relate to the fact that shoes inside the house always felt a bit odd I don't really care but I find it uncleanly whoa I sound so Asian I have found in my life as an American that many if not most people in the States take off their shoes inside their homes a fume that come to mind one how kids yell at their parents in public and the parents just go oh what am I going to do - how the elderly are treated in the Middle East it's unthinkable to put away people in a retirement home 3 how family ties can be so weak I've heard of siblings who don't speak to each other or spend years without seeing each other etc the chilled-out nurse between strangers new friends so casual and I don't mean rude but like not super respectful and super etiquette like I actually find this really cool cause with the Asians you see with most Asian adults act really fake and crap with other adults and families and even with good family friends and stuff acting like they are super civilized and superior with Westerners you guys are chilled it's AIT's why as violence considered normal to show on television and such but boy are you in trouble if a woman dares to show as much as a nipple lawsuits ensue oh yeah also suing everybody for everything we Americans are as equally puzzled why weight and appearance is such a sensitive subject it's quite normal in the Orient to comment on how a person is fattened needs to lose weight or that they need to improve their appearance if there is no contempt behind the words either the person usually just tries to mean well compliments are quite common - for both men and women hearing how good-looking you are from random people in the street and et Cie but not so much in the West you seem to have this separation between animal and food which leads to a lot of vegetarians and vegans it seems like you don't want to think of them as the same thing and you're insane nonsensical language why the heck can't I spell elephant with an F what would that actually change other than some stupid grammatical snobbishness it's our attempt to get more points in Scrabble I am from Africa study in Asia one time well my friend was playing rugby one of the Asian players walked up to him and asked outloud do you have AIDS a large number of people driving around with dead deer bleeding out into the back of their pickups my most recent trip through Wyoming had me feeling like I was in a horror movie delicious venison is not a horror movie so I date a Canadian when I first went to visit her family I referred to her parents as mysteries they thought it was the weirdest thing I grew up always referring friends and girlfriends parents as mr. and Mees I'm from MA I am an American I always refer to my girlfriend's mother as mrs. and her father as sir after all I am banging their daughter I was raised in Canada but I'm still Korean I guess since I don't understand that all how some Westerners can keep their shoes on indoors my friend's mother who grew up in Taiwan never understood why bones and skulls are such a common motif she found it quite morbid when a Western child gets in trouble in school he gets suspended what is this a week without school Jean that should teach me also it seems like in u.s. as soon as it starts to snow schools stop in my years of going to elementary and high school only once have we not gone to school because of snow and it's still snowing a lot now but we must go to school just baffles me not eating rice and yet stays strong because for me and my Asian friends not eating rice could make us felt physically weak three seconds rule I think it's gross to pick up food from the floor and eat it I'm not sure if it's a culture thing or not but I seem to find it more common among white people then again most people around me are white the seconds are increased dramatically when you're a poor but student reading through this threat made me think about how polarized different cultures even ones that are in close relation are truly different what we eat where we work even where we crap can be completely different if you don t live in a country like America or the EU and can be min for kingly alien here we say gracious and everyone answers provecho before and after every meal which can be translated to thank you and enjoy we also ask if we are allowed to leave if we need to leave the table before everyone else is finished talking to each other this happens at every meal and we are like this even if we are drinking tea and eating bread with cheese I used to think that it was like this in the rest of the world but turns out we are extremely polite for no good reason I think it's just a politeness thing we do this in our family to people calling elders by their name I still don't do it and I've lived here nine years also public display of affection coming from the Middle East very weird at first but I've gotten used to it as a Korean guy growing up in the US I find the importance of receiving gifts kind of odd but maybe I'm just jealous same with birthdays how it's my special day and I can act like a brat because of it I feel like a lot of my friends have this entitlement of getting gifts as if it were a rite their parents also buy presents a month ahead just to make sure they get the right gifts sometimes they will get the gift returned so they can get the right thing my parents bought me one thing I wanted or gave me money it really doesn't have the personal touch to it but at the same time I don't stress out or throw tantrums about gifts it's just whatever now as an adult I don't care much about gifts or gifting however it's nice to get a thoughtful gift I hate gift cards but yet it's weird seeing people over the age of 12 acting like babies because of gifts or birthdays I even see people over 20 acting like babies about this stuff as a notion I find it slightly odd how Western parents seem to encourage push their children to move out around 18 I'm not sure if this is a true representation by movies and TV shows but it happens so much that I kinda believe it over here it's so common for people to live with their parents until they get married it doesn't mean you're not independent because once you have a career you take care of your parents by taking over the bill payments food expenses and sometimes even taking over the house mortgage a lot of people go away to school and have to live in dorms or apartments near that school once I did that I couldn't imagine going back home avoiding trouble I'm Peruvian I've been living in Montreal for eight years now something that still shocks me is how often Westerners let other people step over them in order to avoid conflicts my senior year a Korean foreign exchange student was on some of my group projects and we ended up being friends a few of the things she found odd huge yards and not living right up beside your neighbor I invited her over for dinner one day in the house I and my roommates who were renting had a small yard and she was so very excited about the yard when I showed her pictures of the 10 acres my parents live on I thought she just kept saying oh it's so much what do you do with a lot it I was going on a trip with some friends over a weekend and called my parents out of courtesy to let em know where I was going to be if she happened to be in the room at the time and my mom said she didn't want me going and I told her too bad I had it planned out and I was going and she can't tell me I can't go because I'm an adult she was absolutely shocked methyls you can't talk to your mother that way yes yes I can it took her a really long time to understand sarcasm and I'm still not totally sure she really got it in career eating or drinking in a university level class is apparently very rude well from my experiences in the u.s. nobody gives a damn the amount of money engineers in the u.s. make compared to in Korea she and I looked one day and they make about half of what we do for the same type of work parent-child relationship I didn't quite get the parent children relationship in the Western society you know how you guys found upon if the kid is living with his parents after 18 I don't get it most parents love their children unconditionally and undergo great hardships to raise their children to a point where they can earn and live independently after all this the guy girl goes off to college gets a job and lives independently and finds the idea of living with their parents absurd I mean isn't it the responsibility of the kid to ensure that he can pay back their parents by living together supporting them emotionally and financially Korean hair blowing nose in public I nearly puked in high school once because of this fat white girl blowing her nose multiple times in class no slurping even Asian noodles I have made a few white people almost puke at a restaurant once while mad slurping my pho I was too hungry to remember Western eating manners I guess it's just considered disgusting here specifically slurping hot Asian noodles that come with hot soup wiping what said doesn't work and always leaves crap residue dot you haven't pooped in life if you haven't washed your butt with warm water this is kinda in Reverse but it's gotten me spoiled when I visited Italy the shopping carts had four swivel wheels instead of just two made it where you could move the cart sideways and navigate much easier not sure why it never caught on over here I'm Australian so technically I'm part of Western culture though there are clear influences from Eastern cultures like I've never been in another person's house we're taking your shoes off wasn't expected that kind of thing so with that in mind when I was in the US I was genuinely surprised when I got a strange look while I took off my shoes also tipping in Australia you never tip you would go to a restaurant you'll buy your food you eat your food and the waiter does his job then you leave when I was visiting the US I got horrible looks from everyone in my group when I left a restaurant without tipping I was genuinely surprised when I learned that it is expected and extremely rude to not tip about the shoes thing why does everyone agree it makes no sense when someone walks through my house I prefer the dust from the ground rather than the sweat from their feet at least it's dry also taking your shoes off is like settling and if I have a stranger in my house or someone unfamiliar or who is about to leave again keep your foot gloves on Mercker when my seven year old sister adopted from China first came into our home in America she was very surprised by the ice machine built into our fridge in China they don't put ice in their drinks if I recall correctly they don't even have cold drinks actually I think that might be true of Europe too I'm sure that people out in the middle of Africa would find it odd that we take large quantities of water to them a scarce and much-needed life-giving essential resource then just pee and crap in and flush away with even more water they may not be Andhra did so posting on their behalf well to be honest a system is one of the great innovations that allowed urban development one of the biggest issues with dense populations is disease and one of the biggest sources is human waste so it was pretty essential to deal with this problem the relative freedom regarding drugs and sex I've never really understood why it was normal to smoke various drugs or drink like a whale then proceeded to participate in having intercourse with various partners especially from high school to college no ketchup on pizza or Wurst no mayonnaise with fries you guys have extra large combo burgers pizzas but no mayonnaise like WTF I have odd looks on me whenever I ask ketchup with my pizza South Asian living in Canada few things one the food there is an obsession in North America with a type of food available you got your varieties of candy cereal snacks junk fast food etc and you are constantly bombarded with ads about which brand is the best when you finally feel guilty enough to start eating healthy you're subjected to a whole slew of healthy or organic options which honestly seemed exists solely to burn a hole in your wallet a to parent children interaction I have seen so many kids throw tantrums over minute crap that I'm really surprised parents don't snap in South Asia that annoying kid would have had some sense smacked into him in about five seconds some can't control their kids and the kids are plain buttholes which really boggles my mind there's no sense of respect for your elders and all that jazz three retirement homes this concept was completely new to me I don't know what it is but the very fact that you would ship off your parents to live in a fricking home speaks volumes about the culture's insistence on viewing the elderly as a burden this is funny because when the children were younger and dependent most parents don't dump their asses in a group home okay maybe they care Tamiya just seems like if you send your parents to a home you have frickin failed in your duty as their child to take care of them when they are old the whole idea that they'll be in a place with medical help supervision is bulls and it's rationalizing your own laziness refusal to take care of the people who gave birth to you for careers everyone here is focused all on their jobs I mean it's similar back home but people still find time to indulge in fun things social gatherings hanging out et Cie here I find folks are so focused on their jobs that their home lives take a backseat and they are exclusively defining success achievement with their work other areas of self-improvement and enrichment take a back seat I'm actually guilty of the last one I've been trying to fight it now but it's a work in progress Western culture is just too vague it's difficult to lump them together French Brits Dutch polish Americans e.t.c e.t.c I find eating a big Bo Turkey odd having to put your marital status in your resume odd licking off your finger after eating to clean it odd I've never seen a resume 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Channel: Updoot Everything

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Keywords: culture shock, culture shock in america, western culture, western culture shock, shock, #updootst, updoot, reddit, r/askreddit, askreddit, ask reddit, r/, \r, r\, best of reddit, reddit stories, reddit story, top posts, funniest posts, funny, funny posts, funny reddit stories, funny askreddit, reddit funny, askreddit funny, askreddit stories, reddit stories 2019, people of reddit, sub, reddit cringe, memes, toadfilms, updoot everything, updoot reddit, story, stories, rslash, comedy, fresh

Id: bRSd6KAEUyM

Length: 20min 20sec (1220 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 09 2020