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.
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.