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A few lessons for social mobility I learned while joining the SF techie class, coming here from a relatively poor country in Europe. 1. If Americans can’t read
by Swizec 5y ago
A few lessons for social mobility I learned while joining the SF techie class, coming here from a relatively poor country in Europe.
1. If Americans can’t read your emotes they put you in a “Uh this feels weird, that person is an emotionless robot” camp. You have to practice
2. It is not okay to ask “What’s that?” when someone proudly mentions which college they went to (because as a European you only recognize 4 or 5)
3. Talking about money with upper middle class people is impolite. They have never had money problems and do not understand why anyone would ever talk about money
4. You should instead talk about your investments
5. Saying “Charity? That’s what taxes is for” is considered trolling
6. Rent and real estate are the only times it’s socially acceptable to say “Damn, life is expensive”
7. You have to talk about helping the less fortunate
8. It is not okay to directly help the less fortunate on your street, wouldn’t want to make them feel like it’s okay to be there
9. You can only say positive things about your boss (because you aim to become them)
10. It is okay to say negative things about your boss’s boss’s boss
11. Every acquaintance is “a friend”
12. Real friends are “best/close friend”
13. Everyone hires cleaners and similar help, this is not considered a luxury
14. Everything is always awesome
15. You don’t fail, you are given an opportunity to grow
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jollybean 5y agoTo be fair, #5 is kind of trolling. Taxes are not 'charity'. Also, the 'money talk' thing - that's Anglo, not American, and it's nothing to do with not understanding low income, it's basically avoidance of blunt status bragging, it's considered a bit crude. Which is why you'd have to talk about your investments in order to humble brag.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago> To be fair, #5 is kind of trolling. Taxes are not 'charity'. The point of #5 is that in a number of other countries, people believe that taxes should pay for the social services required by the unfortunate, the sick, the indigent, and so forth. Charity plays a minor role, because it is the job of the state to take care of its citizens.
- jollybean 5y agoThere are always needs that go far beyond what the government will and should pay for. Social justice, animal shelters, basic needs for foreign citizens etc..
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoSure, and that's all that charity covers in countries that believe that taxation should cover the rest.
- Jensson 5y agoGovernments do all of those though. USA doesn't send a lot, true, but other governments send as up to 1% of their GDP as foreign aid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...
- naniwaduni 5y agoAre you ... familiar with the "regional gothic" genre?
- WalterBright 5y ago> Talking about money with upper middle class people is impolite. They have never had money problems and do not understand why anyone would ever talk about money That isn't the reason at all. My parents struggled in the Depression, but they never ever talked about their money. The Depression taught them to be very, very frugal, a lifelong habit. (My family tended to keep cars for 30 years, for example.) I had no idea what my Dad had until after he passed away. > You don’t fail, you are given an opportunity to grow This is an attitude common to successful people at all levels. There's a reason it correlates with success.
- Swizec 5y agoMoney talk might be an american thing then, not a class thing? Where I’m from everyone is safely broke together so complaining about lack of money is almost used as small talk like weather. But once you climb out of that, suddenly you stop talking about money. Figured US was the same
- WalterBright 5y agoTalking about money just makes you a target for every charity, scam, people wanting loans, people wanting you to invest in their startup, groupies, and on and on. I bet it would be really, really hard to become an actual friend of Bill Gates, for an extreme example. I once was at a conference, where he was a speaker, and sat at the lunch table he sat at, along with 7 other people. It was sickening how they fawned all over him. He pretended not to notice, but can you imagine going through life with that happening all the time?