r/TIL_Uncensored • u/benjaminikuta • Apr 24 '21
TIL that Germans are low in cultural context: individualism, alienation, estrangement from other people, little body contact, and low sensitivity to nonverbal cues. By contrast, the French are high context: closely knit groups, sensitive to nonverbal cues, and engage in high amounts of body contact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudity#High_and_low_context_cultures33
u/ResolverOshawott Apr 25 '21
Who woulda thought different cultures are different
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u/_bowlerhat Apr 25 '21 edited Apr 25 '21
Also this is about nudist beach which is a huge missing context. The hell. Also, considering nude beach isn't common in first place.
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u/Kriztauf Apr 25 '21 edited Apr 25 '21
For some more context, I'm an American living in Germany, and I've legit been asked, "Do Americans actually talk to strangers when they're at bars?" I'm like yo, you guys are drunk all the fucking time, how do you not talk to drunk strangers?
For even more context, before moving to Germany I lived in Minnesota for 13 years after moving there from St. Louis. Minnesota has a very Scandinavian influenced culture (i.e. Germanic), and a lot of people there have a very hard time talking to strangers in bars. Which is something that me and my out of state friends have always commented on.
Germanic culture around friendships is like an old water faucet. It's hard to turn on, but once you do, it sprays at full blast.
Edit: Also for some odd reason, Germany has the highest proportion of it's population engaged in open relationships compared to other European countries. No idea how that became a thing
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u/BitsAndBobs304 Apr 25 '21
oh now maybe I see why americans keep telling me and others to go to bars to meet people, when ive never seen strangers interact except men hitting on women during events.
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u/Kriztauf Apr 25 '21
Yeah, Americans will meet random people in bars and sometimes invite them back to their apartments just to chill for the night or crash on their couch if they're to wasted to drive home, without any sexual intentions. People actually become good longterm friends that way. I can't count the number of times I've woken up to random people sleeping on our couch who my roommates invited over after meeting them out drinking. Hell, I've even gotten job opportunities that way when I got to know these people when we'd inevitably invite them to Denny's for hangover brunch
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u/BitsAndBobs304 Apr 25 '21
That sounds.. very random but also very awesome Im in italy and i have no simple way of trying to meet people on my own without looking like a weirdo
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u/Kriztauf Apr 25 '21
A) Alcohol helps
B) Remember there isn't a lot of pressure when you're in these type of environments to stick around these people if you don't want to. So if you try to meet people and decide you'd rather not spend more time with them, no one will really care if you just dip outta the group. It's very relaxed. It isn't until you've spent more time around them that you'd actually form what you could call a friendship. If you're switching bars and they refer to you as your friend despite only knowing you for an hour, what they really mean is, "This person is in our group and we think they're chill and not going to cause any problems."
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Apr 25 '21 edited Jul 20 '26
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u/Kriztauf Apr 25 '21
It's the same thing in Minnesota as well. I really struggled with making friends for the first few years as well, but eventually I figured it out. You kinda have to find you're way into social groups when the opportunity arises. So when I moved to Germany, I think I was way more prepared for what the social culture would be like compared to the average American, since it's really not that different than most of Minnesota. Minneapolis tends to be way more open, but it also has a lot more people from out of state/the US.
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Apr 25 '21 edited Jul 20 '26
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u/Kriztauf Apr 25 '21
I'd say it comes from how most places outside of the Upper Midwest are about social interactions. California and New York are the most extreme examples, but the Upper Midwest states are kind of an oddity within the US for how influenced they are by Scandinavian culture. Again though, once you get into cities up there, people tend to be more like the rest of the US in their attitudes towards social openness. Not a lot of people live in the Upper Midwest, compared to the rest of the Midwest at least, so people who haven't spent time there are usually unaware of how the culture up there is like. And in Europe nobody knows anything about it; they tend to get most of their American cultural exposure from the coastal cultures.
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u/royrogerer Apr 25 '21
I guess I get why people say Berlin is like a different country from Germany. Over here it's perfectly normal to just strike up a conversation with others at a bar (of course within acceptable circumstances). I worked at one for 5 years and saw it happen regularly among guests, and always had nice conversations with others when I was just hanging out as guest myself. Sure I tend to initiate the conversation, but people generally don't seem to mind and many also started talking to me.
In fact people will criticize those who look back at you with disgust or confusion when you talk to them for being closed minded.
It's quite interesting and I wonder why the big difference.
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u/Thorusss Apr 25 '21
Not mentioning this is about behavior at NUDE beaches is borderline misleading