[ SECRET POST #3636 ]

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⌈ Secret Post #3636 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 49 secrets from Secret Submission Post #520.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

For you Americans or people familiar with America, what are some culture differences you have noticed within the country? I don't just mean within ethnic/immigrant groups or anything class/socio-economic status related, but rather regional differences?

How about other countries? Does your country have a lot of "cultural differences" between different regions? What are they?

For example, I've heard in the US that Northern/Midwest people take off their shoes indoors, but Southern/Coast people leave shoes on. And Midwesterners are a lot more casual and address each other by first names even in professional settings, whereas Southerners even call their parents "sir" or "ma'am".

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know if you'd call it a cultural difference per se, but I'm from the midwest and am now living on the east coast in the US, and I am shocked that grocery stores, and even Target, just sell alcohol. Where I'm from, alcohol all has to be sold in separate stores. You'd never find it mixed in a supermarket or department store.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

I suppose forcing it to be in separate shops is state mandated job creation in the private sector. So there is that.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[shortysc22]

Except this is incredibly varied state to state on the east coast. Virgina requires all hard liquor to be sold at ABC stores. South Carolina has very specific hours that liquor can be sold and any building that sells liquor has to have 4 red dots on it. New Jersey require all alcohol to be sold separately. New York it's just hard liquor, beer/wine can be sold anywhere.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

Until about 20 years ago, you could only buy alcohol in West Virginia (in the Mid-Atlantic region) at the ABC store and I think it's still illegal to sell it on Sundays. I don't drink, and neither do any of my friends, so don't know if the bars can open on Sundays. But when I worked at Wal-Mart, Saturdays were huge buying days for alcohol because everyone had to have enough to get them through to Monday, and drinking is a past-time here.

For me, culture shock was finding out that some states still have Blue Laws. When we went on vacation to South Caroline back in 2002, nothing there was open before 1 pm (or maybe it was 2 pm?). And when we asked someone about it, she quite frankly told us, "Your asses should be in church, not out shopping!". I lol'd.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

I live in California now (came from the south) and I absolutely LOVE being able to go to the drug store on a Sunday and buy whatever alcohol I want. Fuck ABC sores and blue laws, tbqh!

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

really? cause here in Wisconsin every grocery store has a liquor department. some of 'em are pretty good, too, I can get decent sake and unique microbrews alongside the Pabst.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[mrs_don_draper]

I'm from Chicago, and all the Targets I've been to sell alcohol, including every grocery store I've ever been to. Hell, they even sell beer and wine at the Chuck E. Cheese near me!

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[diet_poison]

That's just variation in state laws. Any Target or Kroger or whatever that can sell alcohol, will. I live in Indiana and both of those places sell alcohol. They sell all kinds of alcohol, but they can't sell cold beer. Cold hard cider is okay though! You can buy alcohol during the week, but not on Sundays, or until 3AM on Monday morning. Alcohol laws are so stupid and arbitrary.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

I was actually going to say this too. I like in the MN/ND area and I'm used to alcohol only being in liquor stores even with stuff like beer. WhenI go visit my BF in Iowa I'm always weirded out by like alcohol in grocery stores. I thought it would just be like small things lie beer and wine in its own little section but nope strait up handles of vodka and JD scattered though out the store. still kinda shocking to me.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com]

I ran into that in New Zealand, which yes, I know, different country, but NZ and Australia are similar enough to be siblings.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

My god, let's see...

West Coast folk have a habit of cooking a lot fresher than east coast and southeast, where it's all fried and greasy and a lot of it tends to come from cans.

Some places call it "soda" while others call it "pop" and some places call it a "Coke" even if it's another brand like Pepsi. Hell, even my own state is split on calling it "pop" or "Coke".

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

this conversation will make perfect sense to an American southerner:
"want a Coke?"
"sure"
"what kind?"
"either Pepsi or orange"

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

When I go from Edinburgh to London, I leave an ordinary middle class girl and arrive an acceptable butt of a joke, have to suffer being called names based on my accent, and have more than once been told to go to the back of queues and am not expected to complain about that; but it is okay because "banta". The United Kingdom.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

Lol Londoners are huge assholes. It cracks me up that they are so obsessed with thinking of themselves as ~JUST TOO POLITE~. Yeah, no.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

There's the well known Australian north and south divide on the correct term for a potato scallop. Hint, southerners: it's potato scallop, not potato cake, you bloody heathens.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[belladonna_took]

They're potato scallops not potato cakes.
They made a map of some of the words people argue over most in Australia.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-05/what-do-you-call-battered-deep-fried-potato-snack-linguistic/7069684

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

I think in the US, there are different ingredients. That's unsurprising, but it's not something I really thought of until I moved across the country. Instead of pumpkin pie, people here always have sweet potato pie, for example. And I've learned of new vegetables that I had never even heard of before, lol.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[kaijinscendre]

I grew up in SC and have lived in OK (which is not quite Midwest, not quite the South) for five years. I visited CT a lot growing up (family there). Just going to touch on a couple things.

Funerals: I've experienced several in all three regions. OK and SC funerals have police escorts from the funeral home to the cemetery. The ones in CT were a free for all to the cemetery so people will arrive at all kinds of different times. Also, the wake's food in the South is provided by neighbors/friends bringing food to eat. The ones I went to in CT were catered, which was really odd to me.

Soda: In OK they call it pop. In SC everything was "Coke". You'd ask for a coke and then specify what kind (sprite, root beer, etc). CT just called them soda.

Sir/Madam: Yeah. In SC and OK, I refer to basically any man or woman in an authority position as Sir or Ma'am. Even if they are younger than me!

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[analise]

I don't know about the shoe thing. I'm from Mississippi and everybody in my family (at least for big gatherings and I guess this was more for the 'country' side of the family than the more 'town' side...) would take their shoes off at the door. Because like hell were you going to track dirt into the house. :)

They do that in Hawaii too which I think is a combo of all the Japanese influence and also the presence of so much sand (so like hell are you going to track sand in the house...). Even when I was looking at places to live, we'd take our shoes off (me and the realtor both) before looking around. I was kind of surprised the first time he did it but then I got the idea. (and really it's not just sand. there's a lot of red dirt around that will leave a stain.)

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

pain au chocolat vs chocolatine
mayo vs ketchup on fries
apple galette vs frangipane galette vs brioche from Kings Cakes

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

Minnesotan here, and the only time I ever used the terms sir or ma'am was when I worked in customer service, and that was only ever to get the customer's attention, it wasn't embedded in my speech. The only people I've called Mr. or Mrs/Ms. have been gradeschool teachers.

I guess in Minnesota, there's the sense that everyone should be friendly and not too direct. Friendly meaning personable. It was really normal for me to chat with strangers on the street, make eye contact and smile at every stranger I came across, etc. Of course, that may be non-big-cities in general, but still.

It was a little bit of a learning experience when I worked in different regions. I never quite know how to be polite, since polite and friendly aren't essentially interchangeable elsewhere.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

I grew up in the southeast USA, in the 70s and 80s. I remember the food being wonderful but not especially healthy: fried okra, fried catfish, sweetened iced tea, collard greens and black eyed peas made with bacon fat, decadent mac and cheese, sugar pie which is essentially butter and brown sugar in a pie crust. Also they shoot off fireworks in December for Christmas/New Years. And if a person dies it's very common to see temporary street signs that say "SLOW: DEATH IN FAMILY" in front of the house where the person lived, and it's considered respectful to drive slower. And yes, sir and ma'am are very much a southern thing, to the point where I was asked about it during a job interview once (I kept saying yes or no ma'am to the interviewer, I got the job, lol).

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[soldatsasha]

OH BOY, the bane of my existence! The only region of the US I haven't lived in is the Midwest. It's all really different.

-Hamburger sauces vary wildly. In the west it's ketchup+mustard+mayo. In the south-central it's mustard OR mayo, never together, and not with ketchup. In the southeast it's mustard OR mayo OR ketchup. In the northeast idr, but it's different.

-"small town" size varies. East of the Rockies a small town might be 1k people, an hour from the next small town, 3-6 hours from the nearest "city" (which might be 50k people). West of the Rockies a "small town" seems to be anything from 5 people to 50k people, ten minutes from the next small town, no more than an hour from a major city.

-People in the West are cold, emotionally reserved, and abrupt. They don't make small talk with strangers. People in the South are over-familiar, nosy, and overbearing. They'll overwhelm you with small-talk and personal questions. People in the East are loud, abrasive, and talk over you and interrupt you. BUT this is because they're being polite according to the standards of where they're from. Flip it on it's head and people in the West are being professional and respecting your space, Southerners are being warm and welcoming, and Easterners are actively engaging you in the conversation.

-The shoe thing varies by family, not by region. Some families think it's rude to wear shoes into someone's home, others think it would be rude to expect a guest to remove their shoes.

-The sir/ma'am thing. In the South that's the polite way to address anyone older than you, and the further away you go the less polite it becomes. West and East coast some people will take it as borderline offensive, like you're calling them "ancient old lady" or something.

In Russia there's a pretty huge class/culture divide between people who live in western cities like Moscow and people who live in the country or further east, but I don't have much examples of that. I guess I could describe it by saying, the culture in the cities is that Russian Weirdness that you see online a lot? Wacky dashcam vids, Gopniki in tracksuits posing with bottles of Vodka and their prized gaming computer from 1998, amazingly wealthy modern-day aristocracy, etc. And then the more rural you get the more it becomes a combination of that but also maybe your parents sold your sister into an arranged marriage to get some more goats, and your other sister was basically kidnapped by a Japanese modelling agency.

Re: Culture shock in a single country

[(Anonymous)]

I live in northern California and we do seafood, specifically Dungeness crab, for Thanksgiving and Christmas, because crab season opens around that time. Many folks do tamales at Christmas, ordering them by the dozens from local taquerias. The seafood thing at Christmas was completely new to me but I love crab cakes and crab Louis salads, so I learned very quickly to love that tradition.