As someone who has emigrated from Eastern Europe (search for "Eastern Europe smile") to the US I can most definitely say that having strangers around smile/try

As someone who has emigrated from Eastern Europe (search for "Eastern Europe smile") to the US I can most definitely say that having strangers around smile/try to be nice (even just on appearance) is most definitely helpful as a stranger in a strange land. I would argue that in most social interactions with people we don't know there's going to be some kind of imbalance in knowledge/power and it's much more helpful when everyone tries to be nice in such a situation. To take a very simple example: you are trying to go to a new place in a city. Maybe you just moved in the city or maybe you've been living here a while but you just never been to that place. So you try to find out how to get there using public transit. Naturally you'd need to ask strangers or the lady selling tickets. You do that in Eastern Europe (at least in my experience growing up there) and people will be at best annoyed, at worst they make comments about why you even ask, you are expected to know everything and generally they just act to make themselves feel superior and make you feel dumb. And while all of this is happening they look upset and mad which is not helping at all in an already stressful situation. In the US I had the opposite experience, worst case they cannot answer but they are making an effort to be nice to me and not just make fun of me. I'm also pretty confident this isn't just "one" example, I grew up in an Eastern European country so plenty of experiences there and I've been in the US for 10+ years and it's been consistently a better experience day to day with strangers. Now it might seem like that is just one silly interaction, shouldn't affect one much. But multiply this by thousands as you spend years in such a place and the difference becomes huge, I would argue it even forms your psychology. So yes, US-type niceness is freaky and weird for those of us not used to it and it's most definitely "fake" in most cases, if you define "fake" as anything that is just skin deep, but that "skin deep" fake smile/niceness is ALL you need in day to day interactions with strangers, I'm not trying to make friends with everyone I meet and develop deep meaningful relationships, I'm just trying to take the right bus to my destination and you'll never see me again. So yes, please be nice and kind and smile. On the other hand, I have found it hard to develop meaningful relationships in the US. It could be because the superficial niceness means it's hard to find someone that you can genuinely click with and/or many other reasons (immigrant, different culture, older age, etc).