[philjw]

I noticed this when I studied abroad in the Netherlands — a highly educated, slightly more digitalized country than my own. Politics there splintered into micro-parties, each “hardly exchanging between bubbles,” as the study puts it. First impressions were warm, but dates always ended with splitting the bill. Friend groups felt just as closed off, except for Dutchies who had just as me lived abroad before, learned to bridge cultures and still are my closest friends today.

Digitalization and the pursuit of perfect information seemed to invite more binary thinking — and with it, more opportunities to disagree every single day. Meanwhile, other forces found easy consensus on simpler, more immediate issues: cheap gas, housing, grocery prices, job security, immigration. Complex, long-horizon topics like the climate crisis rarely stood a chance.

[bear141]

When I was in Amsterdam I was with a group of acquaintances of a friend who lived there. One of them offered me an extra piece of pizza they had when I showed up. When the bill came, they asked me for the exact percentage of the bill that that piece of pizza cost. First time experiencing something like that.

I also offered to buy several people a drink while I was there. This was received every time with suspicion and I was treated as if I was trying to gain something transactional besides a simple friendship in the moment. It was an interesting part of that society to experience.

[Der_Einzige]

Nordic social norms like this get made fun of all the time by westerners and southern Europeans. A lot of people will take the crappy socioeconomic situations of non Nordic countries just so that they can have warm relations with their families and a culture that doesn’t hate loud noises.