my favorite thing in the whole wide world is when white people try to give interesting facts about themselves and try to make themselves sound worldly
and the best they can come up with is "I studied Japanese in college" or "I lived in China...for two months."
@guerrillarain L. Ron Hubbard lived for 2 weeks in China and it became a thinnnnnnnnnnnng
@ruth I saw the same thing with this girl on Masterchef!!
who was suddenly an expert on Szechuan cuisine because she spent two weeks in Shanghai like if you don't GIT
maybe this is a super privileged take because I move from city to city (I get uncomfortable if I stay somewhere too long) so basically every city is the same to me but like
the way they exotify something like it's a personal achievement is what bothers me
in the same way that they think wanting to retire in South Carolina is a personality trait.
@guerrillarain I knew a woman who went to college 40 minutes away from where she grew up, then stuck around and lives there full time now.
my hometown buddies from when I was a teen might have gone somewhere a few times (college and maybe Mexico), but they live within 20 minutes of parents.
not gonna lie, that's probably half the people I've met in general in my life. To some of them, visiting the Big City 6 hours away is the trip of the decade.
@pnathan I understand that, but it is always the ~exotification~ of somewhere else.
i.e. I grew up never traveling anywhere and then one day I took a trip to Atlanta.
but I didn't go back bragging about how foreign it was and talking about how I survived.
like living in china for two weeks isn't a personal achievement because Chinese people do it all the time
is what I was trying to get at but idk how to vocalize that
@guerrillarain I think you are missing the boundaries of people's heads?
When certain people from other states in the US visited us in Seattle, it was *visiting an exotic city*, because it is exotic in their head; their local place is normal, where this other place is fancy! foreign! weird! strange! and they come back gushing about the strange behaviors and the Amazing Weird Experience of those Exotic people!
@pnathan But I'm not talking about Seattle or Atlanta or Pittsburgh, I'm talking about non-white majority places like China and Egypt that are regularly exotified in media and then white people wearing the "I ventured into this place and survived" as a badge. It's the racial aspect of it that isn't incorporated into traveling within the US.
Calling Seattle exotic because a poor person hasn't had the exposure isn't the same to me as a white lady bragging about "surviving" China or becoming an expert on Egypt because they went to see pyramids on a guided tour.
@guerrillarain Hmmm. I'll have to chew on that.
But, what do you think about...
Surviving Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta?
@pnathan .....................................touché
I dunno how I'd process that. Our country is so segregated that white people venturing into places where they have to "survive" seems to rare.
Hmm.
@guerrillarain so I recently moved into the old "black" neighborhood of Tacoma. bought a "inexpensive" house, what can I say.
it's..... bad. almost no stores. The Safeway has half the SKUs a typical Safeway does, bad roads. a lot of semi-abandoned houses. there's NO ONE on the sidewalks/roads almost 100% of the time. I've been around a few towns by now and this neighborhood, after living there for a while, pegs my weird-o-meter.
gotta find an old timer and talk a bit.
@pnathan If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were describing my grandma's old neighborhood.
@pnathan I wonder if there is some reason for the development of these ghost towns
They are entirely different from ~the hood~ which is run down but still... you know, alive. In my grandma's old neighborhood like that, everyone died off and moved away and no one ever filled their places, leaving entire blocks of abandoned houses...
@guerrillarain this feels like it must be a fairly american thing. like, there's definitely annoying clueless white guys who do this here too, but most people have the good sense to realize it's not a huge deal. but I get the impression most people in the US don't even have a passport?
@nergdron Maybe. For the people who can afford it, we are indoctrinated with the logic that "so many people want to come here so clearly nowhere on this planet is as good as here".
Also, since the country is so big, any and all climates can be experienced in-house. :/
But my major thing is nobody brags about exotic Paris or exotic Toronto lmao
@guerrillarain hahahahaha yeah the "exotic" tag tends to be extended only to really gross asian fetishization, for sure. been a long time since I heard someone use it IRL though, at least around here.
@nergdron @guerrillarain I'm nearly 30, and I've never had a passport.
@ajroach42 @guerrillarain this makes me sad. if only because canada is right here and we'd love to have you visit. 😄
Yeah... I've only been north of MD twice.
I would love to travel, but I've never been able to afford to.
Hopefully, that'll change soon.
@ajroach42 @guerrillarain awwww MD is so close to the border! you could def drive up for cheap. Take a week, go to Montreal in the summer, it'll be loads of fun, I promise. ❤
@nergdron @ajroach42 *grandpa voice* I remember back in my youth when you only needed a drivers license to cross into Canada
@guerrillarain @ajroach42 fuck. me too. I remember travelling as a kid to Montana, and all we needed was a health card to prove we had health insurance. not even ID.
our two countries used to brag about having the largest undefended border in the world. and then Bush happened, and it's been an increasing nightmare ever since.
@ajroach42 @guerrillarain it was funny, you didn't used to need a passport to go to any of the Commonwealth Countries from Canada either, so while lots of Canadians travelled internationally, most of them didn't have passports until the US changed their rules. there was a massive backlog for a few years at the passport office when that went through in the states.
@nergdron @guerrillarain we’re moving to GA soon. No where near the border.
But it’s on my list. I want to see Canada and parts of South American soon. I have friends and family to visit.
@ajroach42 @guerrillarain nice! I hope you get the chance!
@ajroach42 @nergdron @guerrillarain Blimey!
I've had one since I was 14, and that's considered quite late compared to my peers! (Package holidays in the Mediterranean are all the rage in Britain)
@bobstechsite @ajroach42 @guerrillarain yeah. europeans outdo us all because it's so easy to travel around there for cheap. very envious, ngl.
@bobstechsite @ajroach42 @nergdron Not sure about cost in other places, but the passports here are also absurdly expensive. I think I spent about $160 to I get mine when I was a college student who also had to miss work for the appointment. (and I only got it bc I needed it to finish undergrad and the travel was via scholarship 😫)
@guerrillarain @ajroach42 @nergdron For us it's £72.50 for adults and £46 for kids under 16.
@guerrillarain @ajroach42 @bobstechsite That does seem very high. It costs $160 Canadian here (roughly $125 USD), but that's for one good for 10 years. so $12.50 a year isn't too onerous. certainly if you can afford to travel you can afford that.
@nergdron @guerrillarain I'm 34 and I still never had a passport because I never needed one. Now I want to go around the world and meet so many cuties.
@maritroniuity @guerrillarain this is good motivation! 😄
@nergdron @guerrillarain Sure, if I can afford one.
like IDK I lived in Japan for a year on my own where I had to work and pay rent and get healthcare but it doesn't feel like something to brag about so much as a fact of life that usually gets dragged out of me unless it's relevant to the conversation
like you want a cookie for venturing outside the US to some ~exotic foreign land~?