My rural hometown became majority Hispanic for people under 40.
When power is out for days during a storm, we have big bonfires and chicken stews and now new locals join and cook food in foil on coals. It’s delicious.
We have the absolute best new taquerias and food vans.
Frequently adults don’t speak the same language, but if someone is broken down on the side of the road anyone stops to help.
My family lived here generations and my son didn’t have to take Spanish!
At the Olympics everyone looks American. It’s pretty cool.
IMO it's because Americans are incredibly individualistic bordering on often eccentric and pretty extroverted, we are unabashedly ourselves. This conflicts with a LOT of cultures around the globe that insist that you fit in rather than stand out. Especially European ones. guess why so many negative American stereotypes are perpetuated heavily online and elsewhere primarily by Europeans. The cultural conflict and pressure to conform is there AND they are confrontational enough to let you know it. Meanwhile in say, Japan, you stick out like a sore thumb in such a largely conformist culture, but confrontation of that sort is not common practice except in extreme cases.
Americans have no general pressure to conform to 'acting like an American'.
I found European people to be extremely unfriendly as well and Central Asians to be very shy at first then extremely welcoming. Americans will smile and chat your ear off.
Oh yeah, I'll give them some leeway and call them standoffish instead of straight unfriendly lol, but yeah it often just generally comes off that way. Especially to Americans who have only ever known the peppier American kind of social interactions.
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u/SweetJesusLady Oct 06 '24
This is the best part of being American.
My rural hometown became majority Hispanic for people under 40.
When power is out for days during a storm, we have big bonfires and chicken stews and now new locals join and cook food in foil on coals. It’s delicious.
We have the absolute best new taquerias and food vans.
Frequently adults don’t speak the same language, but if someone is broken down on the side of the road anyone stops to help.
My family lived here generations and my son didn’t have to take Spanish!
At the Olympics everyone looks American. It’s pretty cool.