TaggartRE: https://hachyderm.io/@skinnylatte/116325795881403391
This is a specific poverty of American-brand ultraprocessed white culture that has always bothered me. I have never known community like this. It was basically Church or GTFO.
I dunno, I just have felt culturally impoverished for a long time. If you're a certain flavor of white, it's literally religion and work and...that's it. Sports I guess? What a non-nourishing culture.
And planting roots is pretty tough when you are forced to fling yourself across the country for school and work, which is the situation for many of my contemporaries. To leave home is to give up many of those built-in connections and support systems.
One of the biggest revelations of moving to Los Angeles and outside the veeeeery monochrome Philly exurbs was the utter lack of joy in gathering my upbringing contained.
Like for real, white supremacists are fighting to preserve the lamest possible way to live.
Judgment DaveAccurate. They just want to be white, miserable, hateful, and blame everyone else for their problems.
❣️u.s. pause federal tax remittances@mttaggart rereading/listening to robin wall kimmerer narrate her book "braiding sweetgrass"... is soothing my frayed soul. becoming indigenous to place, some radical culture making. getting dirty growing where one is. radical reframing. 💚
A wizard did it 
🇨🇦@mttaggart I know this is going to sound pithy af and not helpful at all, but if you want community and culture, then make friends with people who aren't white. Surrounding yourself with an echo chamber of people who look like you, act like you, and had an upbringing similar to your own is not how you expand your horizons.
Epic Null@Mustardfacial @mttaggart Honestly... part of growing up woth such a poor culture is you get to adulthood not really having a good grasp on the whole "make friends" thing. More so if you get hit with both parental paranoia leading towards learning to be too cautious and an awareness of what social media has done, frying any judgement you had about what is acceptable. Add a few other challenges like autism, face blindness, or picky eater and it quickly becomes a question of "How the fuck am I supposed to manage that?!"
@Epic_Null @mttaggart So I'm going to push back on this a bit because I faced the same neurodivergent issues growing up (and this is not to diminish your experiences at all), but here's the difference: I'm a PoC who grew up in a predominantly white town. I was already getting targeted and picked on for being an "other" so making friends and being generally pleasant to be around became a survival tactic.
Having said that, most of my friend groups were with other PoC's or people from other cultures because we were already outcasts so it was easier. But growing up in an environment where everyone is different from you made it far easier to both connect with people later on in life, share a sense of community across all of our cultures, and just generally be more sociable. Most other cultures are quite welcoming and the sense of family and community can be quite strong. It's really only the white people that I know who look at everyone else as a potential threat (and even then, it's especially true of white Americans.)
@Mustardfacial @Epic_Null So I don't think there's any threat concern here. For me, it's just a lack of discovery skills and also a deep wariness of butting in to spaces that are not really for me.
@Mustardfacial @mttaggart I am gonna have to push back on your push back.
One thing to highlight: being pleasant and friendly is not enough to make friends. No ammount of nice or polite or willing to give anything a try can get me past acquaintance. So clearly there is more to it.
You say the difference in outcomes seems to be that you are a POC. That might point to a few things that roughly translate to "Your culture gave you and your family many tools we did not and still do not have". Maybe it's how you prioritize things or something in how you think of people. Maybe some way of doing things that makes it clear when to talk or what to talk about.
You are welcome to speculate.
What I do know is this: Being neurodivergent did not make learning essential social skills easier.
@Epic_Null @mttaggart No ammount of nice or polite or willing to give anything a try can get me past acquaintance.
Ok this one is on me for not delineating. I made no difference between "acquaintance" and "friend". In this respect I completely agree with you. I have (and had) lots of acquaintances, but maybe only a handful of friends. Even now.
@Mustardfacial @mttaggart If we're dropping the friend requirement down to friendly acquaintance, I can make plenty of those.
I still don't have much of a sense of community though.
Dave Wilburn The breakdown of a sense of community is an intentional feature rather than a bug in our society. A working class that enjoys the stability and safety of a local community has bargaining power. Can't have that. Better to force the working class to move around constantly for their livelihoods, and conveniently break their social support network with each new move.
FWIW, I've formed a lot of close relationships through activities like sailing. That's hard for parents, but they'll often form friendships around their kids' activities and playdates. But it requires greater intentionality than growing up in a town or church community where your family has lived for generations.
@DaveMWilburn Yep, once the kiddo is old enough to Do Things, I'm looking forward to that.
And sailing is something I very much want to make time for, specifically. It's crazy how close I am to the water and how little I actually am out on it.
@mttaggart local sailing clubs are a great and affordable way to get into it. They often offer classes and tutoring, let you take club boats out once they're satisfied you know what you're doing, and have lots of social events.
Eric McCorkleI seem to have the most social harmony and shared experiences with expats, and I do often describe myself that way ("southern expat").
The experience of rejecting the culture I grew up in, moving a long distance, erasing an accent, the lack of a fear on loneliness, the almost fear of having "roots", the phase where I dreaded being associated with where I came from and mortally terrified of being pulled back there... All very, very familiar.
Huubje@mttaggart It's also a very middle class issue. For some reason luxury usually comes with not needing to depend on others, or the other way around. Being able to do both is a blessing, not a curse.
Glyph@mttaggart I have pages and pages of thoughts here given my very specific combination of cultural backgrounds, but, what gave me this sense of cosmopolitan belonging-out-of-place was for many years “nerd” culture. Every city had some weird tech meetup, we had shared experiences, etc. Despite retaining an archipelago of connections based on that culture—I do still have an international community of friends—nothing feels safe and welcoming like that any more
@mttaggart drop by a random tech meetup and all the people working on custom lisp interpreters have been replaced by glassy-eyed “founders” microdosing some bespoke combination of MDMA, psilocybin and ritalin to try and maximize their metrics before they go broke. MAGA elon musk worshippers who can’t distinguish between reality and science fiction, rather than fans enjoying fiction for what it is. It was always a paper-thin culture I guess, but now it’s just trash
@glyph Closest I came was by walking backwards into a subset of Chinese culture by way of traditional Chinese martial arts. That was probably the most "belonging" I have ever felt anywhere, but there are some other parts of that dynamic that are not so great.
I guess I did have strong neighbor connections as a kid, but hoo boy does modern life work extra hard to prevent those from taking root anymore.
Ted Lemon@glyph @mttaggart Man, the random lisper bit. I had to give up on that a long time ago, but I wish I could still do it. :)
Tindra@mttaggart @skinnylatte this explains why I’ve always loved @hacks4pancakes being “Auntie Lesley”, and I’ve really tried to emulate them in my own relationships (at least, that part).
Agnes@mttaggart If it makes you feel any better, this only happens to extroverted immigrants who have the stability and time to devote to all the “community” things 😂 (My parents were too busy working and raising 3 children, moving us back and forth cross-country, so we were a very isolated family.)