(no subject)

[mangosteen]

So the amount of vitriol that has been spewed in this thread is quite remarkable. Since I really don't feel like throwing more wood on the fire over there, I'm just going to speak my piece over here, and I can get flamed on my own merits.

Observation: New England standoffishness is a survival trait.

It's not rudeness, though it may be viewed as such. It's not paranoia, although that's a likely explanation to someone who doesn't know better. And ferchrissakes, it's not racism. It's just a completely different alignment of social priorities than what you see outside of the northern states, and New England in particular.

Why? Simple.

Observation: It gets cold in New England during the winter (and spring, and late fall.)

...which of course leads to the following.

Realization: If myself or others don't take care of me, it's going to get cold, and I'm going to die.

This, among many other things, tends to make you divide up the world into two groups:
1. People that will help me when the winter comes.
2. People that won't.
This makes New Englanders have pretty stringent criteria for friend-building, as well as the perception of familiarity. To wit: "Don't be my friend if you're not going to be my friend."

Example: A more down-to-earth example is the following. A friend's car breaks down at 3am on a major highway about 25 miles from where you live. They call AAA. AAA says that they'll take about 3 hours to get there (New England AAA sucks, but we knew that). Your friend then calls you, and asks if you can wait with them, or at least get them to someplace warm, while they wait for AAA to get there.

Let's say it's 8 degrees Farenheit outside. What do you do?
How about 72 degrees? What do you do then?
What if the region of the country you live in has the potential to go below freezing for 6 months out of the year? How will this carry over in what you would do (and who you would do it for) during the rest of the year?

This is not to say that "all friendships in other parts of the country are superficial". That's ridiculous. Rather, the bar is higher for the point at which someone in New England will call someone a friend, relative to the rest of the US, because of all the little things being a friend entails.

There's a lot more, but I'll leave it at that for now.

Comments

[lothie.livejournal.com]

I don't necessarily agree with you but I have no scientific evidence to back me up. I did grow up in New England and I think I have a better handle on it than someone who didn't, but that's all.

However, I'd be interested to know if your theory extends to places where it gets MUCH COLDER AND SNOWIER than it does in most of New England? I'm thinking of MN for instance.

[mangosteen]

I do mention the northern states, to wit:

It's just a completely different alignment of social priorities than what you see outside of the northern states, and New England in particular.

I do believe that the theory would likely extend to the northern midwest (MN was specifically the one I was thinking of).

Granted, I didn't grow up in New England. I grew up someplace that's almost as cold, and almost as snowy (i.e. Long Island), and you see the same thing, although then you mix in the whole "next to NYC" thing, which works out roughly the same, with the addition of "...and don't waste my time".

[lothie.livejournal.com]

True that, but you did seem to be targetting New England in particular, though when I went back to read the comment I could see why.

I guess my point is that I am not sure that it is the snow SPECIFICALLY that makes the difference. For instance, Boston's flavor of reticence is much different from that of Western MA, Vermont, Maine, etc. If I had to guess I would say that it's the snow plus other cultural factors. I grew up in Western MA and the people there are NOTHING like the people you'll encounter in Boston, as far as standoffishness goes. They are standoffish but the "flavor" is different. I've also got a lot of experience with Maine and Vermont and they are different from Boston/Eastern MA too.

Which is what I meant by "you didn't grow up there so you don't know", same as I didn't grow up in New York.

[xeger.livejournal.com]

That's actually kinda funny. Part of my judgement for 'reliable' is "Would this person come and help me (and actually show up) if I called and asked".

I'd have to agree that there's a difference between cold and warm climates - the most notable for me have been the tendancy to treat time and commitments as optional. Friendships in cold climates have been known to die horrible deaths after being forced to stand around outside in the cold for extended periods of time, waiting. Down here, where it's warm, a person failing to show up is shrugged off, and fussing about it (even if the person has something critical like the tickets) is generally considered to be bad manners.

Of course this is talking as much about the east coast vs west coast thing in the US as anything else. From what I've seen, the southwest, and the 'deep south' are quite different.

Beyond that, I didn't find the cartoon that set this whole thread off either offensive or amusing - it seemed to be aimed at a different demographics' sense of humour.

[curly-chick.livejournal.com]

I read the plethora of posts in the entry to which you referred:

Interesting debate. One of my closest friends is Southern borne and bred and I visited the deep south with him a couple of years ago. Made me rethink a lot of things. Some thoughts on northern versus deep southern styles:

Southerns tend to be more initially welcoming. Sometimes it felt wonderful, sometimes it felt fake. Northerns tend to be ruder until they get to know you. Southerners are more likely to offer you a bed based merely on the fact you are someone's friend. Northerners, I believe, tend to be a little more hesitant.

Conversations are different. Somehow southern chats feel more intimate; like you know the person better. More colloquialisms are said in the south, which I find charming. In the north, conversations feel less personal but more "real". To further that point, after a while, I found the same people saying the same things over and over, and I wondered what people were really thinking a hell of a lot more than I do here in Boston.

Things are much more intense here and I think we have a more "flight or fight" mentality. It may be due to the weather or it may be due to the different cultures which have dominated each area.

And to say southerners are stupid; I met some of the brightest people in the world down south. And the people I met voted correctly (i.e. not Bush) and that's more than I can say for some northernesque states.



Just my .02

Re: it's different

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I concur that a lot of it is population density. I think when people are harder pressed for physical privacy, they tend to enforce a sort of mental privacy through tacit social conventions: treating other people as invisible, insofar as possible, and expecting them to do the same to you. (Though this still doesn't quite explain people getting so rude about having doors held for them... I don't really understand that either.)

When I visit home (northwest Indiana, or the Greater Chicagoland Area), I am astounded at the amount of small talk people want to make. Dude, that's great, but just let me pay for my gas and get out of here to somewhere I'd personally rather be, okay? Obviously I have acclimated to the New England social climate :-)

[lillilah]

Ahh, the door opening thing. I lived in NYC for a while and got used to no one opening the door for me. Then, when I moved to Oregon, everyone, especially men, holds the door open. So much politeness that it is almost funny.

Re: it's different

[skreeky]

I'm with you in that I think I relate it more to population density than the weather. To wit:

I cannot say howdy to all 8543 people I will see today.
If I don't know you, you are no different to me than the other 8542.

I am not your television. I am not here to entertain you. I am certainly not here to entertain the other 80 people on the subway car by spilling my life to you.

I am always surrounded by people. My only sense of privacy and personal space comes from not acknowledging or being acknowledged by them. If you are acknowledging me, you are invading my psychological personal space. It's like walking into a complete stranger's house anyway after they don't answer the bell.

Who's rude, the one who didn't answer the bell, or the one who walked in anyway and then got huffy he wasn't welcomed?

Re: it's different

[owdbetts.livejournal.com]

You can always tell the transplants here in Boston, they're the ones who will smile at you if you smile at them.

It's interesting to read that; I'd completely forgotten it but I remember noticing that people seemed to avoid making eye contact with strangers (well, with me, at least :) when I was over in the Boston area on business a few years ago.

Not really sure how it compares with the (few) other places in the US I've visited. On most of my trips to the US I've spent the bulk of my time with friends or collegues so I've probably been less aware of my interactions with strangers. But on this occaision I was by myself (and had a daily commute).

Of course, maybe I just look scary to an American eye... :)

-roy

No doubt in my mind...

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

Though I think it's difficult to generalize, I think the car situation isn't a very good one. Odds are good that's when you'll find out who your true friends are. Before then, they might not be standoffish at all.

A friend from Minnesota perceived Boston folks as having a thin, hard shell of standoffishness, after which you were given everything underneath in a huge rush, no more barriers, no more reservations. For her (and this jibes with my limited experience) people in the midwest and south are standoffish, after which you're given limited access. You're inside, you can start to learn about them, but you're going to have a long, long, long association before they let you near the core of themselves, if they ever do. They'll come and pick you up in the ice storm because it's the right thing to do, but you may never meet their secret selves or learn about their childhood traumas.

New England standoffishness I perceive more as "We're mobile, we came from somewhere else, and might not stay and neither might you. Give me a reason to put in the effort."

Re: No doubt in my mind...

[lachesis.livejournal.com]

"They'll come and pick you up in the ice storm because it's the right thing to do, but you may never meet their secret selves or learn about their childhood traumas."

I agree with the majority of your post, up to there.
I've lived in the South (and the West Coast, and East Coast; now New England), as well as lived with someone who was from the South, and I've heard this person say on numerous occasions of something being "the right thing to do" - and more often than not, overextending themselves just so they'd 'do the right thing'. People from New England (in this person's perception) seemed to be more of the "do what's best for me" mentality. (which makes me wonder why they cant get along with West Coasters as much! must be all that tanning. :))

As for the 'mobility' part of your statement, I'd disagree; as this area of the country seems (to me, and a few friends I'd mentioned to) to be populated by people from here who may move away - but they always come back.

(and fwiw, I didnt see the strip - I dont think it loaded propoerly on my machine)

Re: No doubt in my mind...

[laurens10.livejournal.com]

I agree with this assessment.

I am from the South, and I constantly measure my actions by what I feel is the "right thing to do". And I've grown very conscious of the fact I am doing it, because all of my native Boston born or else-where born friends behave differently. If they come across a situation, they see it in the light of mutual interests. I look at it and weigh it on a completely different balance... trying to figure out what the most "respectible" thing to do is. Not like my landlord or employer would ever care. I don't see it is better than what my friends do, but I insist that it isn't foolish.

It is like when I went down to south Georgia for my grandmother's funeral some years back. Although the city is kinda small, it is still the fifth largest city at the time in Georgia. As the funeral procession of cars snaked its way through the city, it went on one of the major highways, and I was shocked -- in the lane going the other direction, people actually pulled over onto the grassy curb, got out of their cars, and stood their solemnly. They didn't know my grandmother, and I am certain they did it with sincerity. I've never seen anything like that up here.

[tb]

I also don't think it's just a climate thing. I've found Canadians, for example, to be generally friendlier than Bostonians and New Yorkers. I've found Mainers to be pretty nice too (again, in general; you can find rude assholes wherever you go).

I had a different experience in Iceland (speaking of harsh northern climates). The people there tend to be quiet and self-contained; they don't make small talk in supermarkets (even between themselves), for example. But I never got a "rude" vibe from them; in fact, I found it refreshing to be left alone (and it wasn't just that they could tell I was a foreigner; the sales clerks would often start speaking to me in Icelandic when I got to the counter). I also got the impression that they'd help you if you needed help, and I also felt the safest there that I've felt just about anywhere.

I think it's the combination of bad weather and high population density that is more likely to make people go from standoffish to rude. I'm guessing that in more sparsely populated northern areas folks are more likely to be polite to each other (compared to around here) because you don't have as big a pool of people to choose from when you do need help (and eventually you will). The random joe you snub on the street in a rural town in summer may be the only person available to help you survive a blizzard come winter.

It's also partly a matter of finding what you're looking for. If you go looking for stupid racist people, you'll find them. If you go looking for nasty cold people, you'll find them too. Another part is that regional cultural differences do exist and many people are likely to see stuff that's different from what they're used to as being rude.

Back to the comic, I think it's also a comment on Davan's father deciding that all Bostonians are assholes based on one woman being an asshole herself. He found what he was looking for.

My point of view

[mizarchivist]

I agree with the population density being the primary factor, followed by weather and cultural (puritanical, particularly) causing Boston/NE to be the way it is... I spend 2 hours every work day crammed into a tube that's filled with people who may or may not be interesting to talk to. I almost never look up from my book. It's not only one of the few times in the day I have un-interruped read time, but having to process that many people would be a nightmare.
A related anecdote: I was reading on the T as usual, when an older guy prodded my arm to get my attention, then started talking about the Lotto. I was polite, but didn't encourage him. He stopped talking, and a few minutes later, started again, but this time, pointing to the picture of Hussein's dead sons, which I'd spent most of the day *not* looking at. It was at that point that I held the book up to that side of my face, said "NO, I don't want to look at that" very vehamently and looked away til he backed off.
My pondering is what he made of that interaction.
Truth/reality are frequently in the eye of the beholder: I was horrified that this stranger chose THAT as casual conversation, he was probably dismayed to have someone be that abrupt-rude at his attempts to make conversation.
But back to the very original point about Something Positive, CEO's frustration with people jumping down his throat... well, I read that thread (quickly, mind you)- but I sensed way too many chips (no pun intended) on the shoulder :)

Cosmopolitan parochialism

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

This is the term I've coined for the townie attitudes in New York City and Boston. Each has different flavors of it, and as a result they come up equal. These people are cosmopolitan in that they know how to function in a massive urban environment, but they rarely leave this environment and thus have no idea how little they've seen.

I learned about this when I was in college in upstate New York. I'd grown up in a fairly surly city in a different part of upstate New York, but I'd also grown up with the idea of customer service (something I'd thought was an American trait until then). Customer Service is an emotional state -- be congenial and polite, stay a little hungry, upsell but be fair, kibitz but mind time, assume that any situation may teach you something, everyone is different but no one is irreplaceable.

Then I started dealing with downstaters on a daily basis. Any upstate New Yorker can tell you how traumatizing this is. I don't want to be rude and smear the group with "they exude rudeness"; that would be bigoted of me. I'd rather give explicit evidence:

• I'd get mocked for not knowing where some suburb was nor its ranking in the Giant Tri-State Social Order;
• I'd be told no one outside New York City knows how to make a slice of pizza since no one outside of New York City could possibly be Italian (this I file under "Keeping China British");
• One time a bunch of people I was trying to be friends with were playing Taboo, where you have to get your team mate to guess a word while not using other words. These folks would simply say the words to each other in Hebrew because using a foreign language wasn't explicitly excluded.

These are the most blatant examples of the trend. It came down to a vibe: that New York City was somehow the center of the universe, that all cultural activity came from it, that not being there was a form of punishment or exile, that anyone not accepting this mindset was a rube.

New York City is large. Duh. Eight million people, five counties, one mayor. Any resident of New York City can tell you how invasive the city's government is -- they run a lot of stuff. In the bureaucratic heyday of 1975, there was 1 City employee for every 23 people. It's not as bad now, but it does give one a sense that city government can be larger than state or Federal. Thus, I had a roommate that didn't know the difference between a mayor and a governor because both ruled a huge chunk of land with the same name.

The Boston version of this is more literally linked to parochial schools. You get people in their thirties that ask you which grade school you attended. You get a look for not knowing where something was twenty years ago. You also get the invisible racial lines when talking about various places, some of which involve an intricate knowledge of the layout of the city.

Boston is definitely more racially divided than other places I've lived. The accents don't mingle. When it comes to the hostility, I know it has nothing to do with the cold. Upstate New York is colder but people pull over to help. Surliness is a trait of major cities with heavy cruft -- centuries of buildup. The people that have been around longer distrust new people, the new people distrust each other, and everyone is jowl to jowl. Cities with a more car-centric culture tend to be friendlier because everyone gets their isolation time in the car.

I have no idea if that helped. I just had to post.

-new kid in town, Ps/d

Boston vs. NYC

[frotz.livejournal.com]

How odd; I never would have put Boston and New York City into the same behavioral pigeonhole. I found people in the neighborhoods I lived in in New York City to be, if brusque, also unassuming and willing to take you as you were. The vibe I've always gotten in Boston is not rude so much as grumpy and unhappy, and very class- and skin-color-conscious, with a lot more intolerance for anything different, and with commensurate segregation and social boundaries. (I like visiting NYC because it feels more than anything like a city where eight million people have learned to get along with each other.) In neither place do I see a lot of people who are intentionally trying to be offensive, which is what I think of as "rudeness". (Granted, a lot of people seem to be working on different definitions; if "people don't act like I think they should" is one's definition of "rude", then the best advice I can think of for 'em is "don't leave home".)

Of course, there are assholes everywhere.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i'm surprised nobody has thought of japan and culture there with respect to inner privacy due to population pressures.

boston has that puritanical bent too. even if you aren't xtian or born to it, it can infect you.

generaly, the new england rule seems to be kinda like the lesbian sheep joke. someone has to make the first move. when that happens, things happen.

the southern rule seems to be "you're here right now, we're going to interact, it's part of the entertainment: you are new and shiny and can provide some amusement, distraction, information, and wonder". strangers from especially far away places are most wonderful as they can bring insights and something to gab about for days after they are gone ("this one is going in the christmas letter!")...

it's really tough to understand and judge different cultural values from the viewpoint of your own. as history has shown to great effect.