One of the coolest things about traveling is that you come face to face with so many different behaviors, values, and ways of living. However, once you spend some time abroad in any country, you begin to realize that no place on Earth is ‘perfect’ and no culture is the ‘best.’
Every culture has its quirks, nuances, pros, and cons. The members of the r/AskReddit online community recently opened up about some of the most annoying and questionable things that people from their cultures do. Scroll down for a dose of reality.
We reached out to redditor u/CanaryResearch, the author of the intriguing thread, for their thoughts on embracing travel and the importance of being open-minded about other people’s cultures. You’ll find Bored Panda’s full interview with the OP as you read on!
#1
Arab culture. Boy where do I start brace yourselves : -Get married.. but as a guy you need about 20-40000$ depending on the country. Your salary is 1000$/month , then proceed to shame you if you’re late to marriage. Because relationships are not allowed that sexual frustration is used to lure you into the traditional marriage trap.
-No childfree allowed . You must have children , the more the merrier and if you don’t they’ll shame the s**t out of you and assume your d**k doesn’t work -Divorced women are shamed beyond belief and a lot of virgin men seeking marriage seek Virgin women exclusively and will be shamed by their family if they marry a divorced woman.
-This causes women to spend their lives being miserable because they’re afraid of divorce and causes parents to see their daughters suffering but unable to divorce them due to the culture.
-Toxic masculinity like you would not believe to the point it’s just accepted that men are “this way”. Men have the most insane f*****g egos and nobody is allowed to say anything especially if they’re older. They have to know everything and proceed to pretend to even if they know they don’t , they cannot make mistakes and even if they do it’s not their fault.
-It’s absolutely a man’s world women are not empowered or free or anything like that don’t believe the media . I got called insane for bringing up that I wanted to marry a lady with a strong personality and independent and has her own career everyone kept telling me “you won’t be able to control her” Not to mention the b******t being taught to us through religion about the divinity of men and how women should obey them.
-Arab culture is probably the most racist culture in the world. Not only do we actively discriminate against people of other races but within our own we discriminate against different countries. NOT ONLY THAT within the same f*****g country we discriminate based on city. Someone from city A marrying someone from city B may be frowned upon because city B has a problem with city A and so on.
-A distinct memory i have is some doctor where we lived married a nurse from the Philippines and was actively shunted by their friends for doing so. Later i heard someone say “I can’t fathom how he can look at his children with their small eyes”.
-Moving on to religion . Everything is haram , that might not stop you from doing it but the sheer volume of trauma you being exposed to as a child about death and hell makes you feel guilty Everytime you do something “haram” even if you’ve left religion behind years ago. As a 6 year old I touched my w***y and was told I’d go to hell for it. I was 6 f*****g years old.
-Even now as an adult I’ve moved on to displaying more daring sides of my personality by wearing something akin to biker rings and those leather bracelets and I still get comments from people close to me about that. I bought a pair of magnetic black circle earrings and wore them once the amount of hate and shame i received made me throw them away. Not to mention I’ve had random old men telling me what I’m doing is haram and that I’m feminizing myself. And how nobody would want to marry me because I’m like this and my entire life is haram and I’m going to hell. As if god will turn a blind eye to being nice helping others not stealing not being a s**thead and send me to hell because I’m f*****g wearing rings.
So yeah it’s f*****g hard that’s why the more free minded of us are fighting tooth and nail to gtfo of this toxic racist extremist hellhole and it’s getting so much f*****g harder. Forgive us westerners but if we stay here not a single one of us will be able to resist commiting s***ide
Image source: DOCTORE2, Ketut Subiyanto / pexels
#2
Japanese ethnicity here. The dumbest thing in our culture is shame/guilt and “loosing face”. It’s generationally exponential too. Like if your great grandfather did something shameful, you’re supposed to still feel shame/guilt for it now. It’s the dumbest thing ever. This is partly why Japan has such a high suicide rate.
Image source: Grouchy-150, Ketut Subiyanto / pexels
#3
Indian here: Discriminate against menstruating women. Cannot participate in auspicious occasions / go to the temple / handle communal food / water plants considered holy. Sheesh.
Image source: silentconcher, Sora Shimazaki / pexels
#4
As an American… Gender reveal parties.
Like, it’s a boy/girl. Yea. I get inviting some friends over and maybe a special cake. But things have gotten utterly INSANE! I’m worried someone will launch an actual nuke at some point for one of these damned parties!
Image source: Snowtwo, Tima Miroshnichenko / pexels
#5
Westerner: Weddings cost an arm and a leg just to impress people you barely know.
Image source: dazzling_lover, Dimitri Kuliuk Dimitri Kuliuk / pexels
#6
In India – caste system.
Image source: Libracharya, Ishay Botbol / pexels
#7
UK: fox hunting. Rich a******s on horses using packs of dogs to hunt down and tear apart a defenceless fox. Then smear the fox blood on their children.
Image source: sweetprince686, Dmitry Demidov / pexels
#8
Arranged marriages.
(Which often are followed by a pressure by the families to have a kid)
And yes, more often than not, you are supposed to
*Make a completely shattered marriage work*.
Both of you and your kids are left traumatized.
Welcome to India.
P.S_ this is why arranged marriages have so less of a divorce rate.
Image source: adaischerry, Kumar Saurabh / pexels
#9
Nigeria. Try to force every young person to respect every old person even if they’re literal criminals
Image source: Dapper_Sail2771, Gül Işık / pexels
#10
Ethnically Chinese. We burn billions (in Hell dollars) of underworld banknotes to our deceased relatives. Now I’m no necroeconomist, but I can imagine King Yama having major headaches over inflation in the underworld.
Image source: AwkwrdPrtMskrt, Clemensmarabu / Wikipedia
#11
Not necessarily my culture, but my step-family is all Cuban. They refuse to arrive on time. You have to lie to them and say the event you are planning starts 2 hours early than it actually does. Two specific cases:
1) My step-brother’s wedding. Was posted to start at 2pm, but actually started at 4pm.
2) We had dinner reservations for 6:30 at a restaurant. My brother and I showed up at 6. We wait… Wait some more… Nobody else in the family has shown up. We call my stepmother who made the reservation in the first place and by this time we are both starving. Turns out they have yet to get dressed and leave the house. That was the breaking point and told them I would have to make alternate arrangements and that we had waited for 90 minutes and refused to wait a second more if they weren’t even ready to leave the house.
Image source: Skyler_Nightwing, Pixabay / pexels
#12
Venerate the monarchy, despite being fiercly proud of our percieved egalitarian and democratic society (Denmark)
Image source: Material_Ambition_95, Bill Ebbesen / Wikipedia
#13
While my parents don’t do this as we don’t live nor were we born and raised in the country, children are raised as investment policies and once you get them through school, parents would quit their jobs and expect that all their financial needs will be covered by the eldest who graduated…so, paying parents rent, school expenses of siblings etc. The worst part is that they would guilt you if you don’t give in to their demands….”I gave up everything for you….don’t you know what I needed to do to get you through school?!” *puke*
Image source: mr_anthonyramos, Stanley Morales / pexels
#14
Brazil. Fight each other for politicians that are clearly stealing from them.
Image source: PrudentPermission222, Jonathan Borba / pexels
#15
The Philippines. I wouldn’t call it dumb per se, but definitely unecessary torture. A mountain tribe in my country serves a chicken stew meal. Prior to cooking, the live chicken is hung by its feet, it is then beaten with a small stick throughout the whole body without breaking the skin or bones. This process bruises the chicken giving the skin a different texture and flavour. That’s what I find to be unecessary, since it just causes the chicken unneeded pain.
Image source: Young_Old_Grandma, Quang Nguyen Vinh / pexels
#16
We Filipinos have this thing called “utang na loob” or loosely translated to “debt of gratitude.” This is where enormous guilt is forced upon someone if they do not respond as expected to someone’s request, be it unreasonable, because “remember that time I lent my car to you? Now lend me $20k.”
Image source: gogobridgefour, John Escudero / pexels
#17
Malta. We have show kitchens (marble benches, the best appliances money can buy, hardwood cabinets etc) – but actually cook in the little butlers pantry that is off the main kitchen.
Image source: Rd28T, Curtis Adams / pexels
#18
German here:
I’m stuck between “giving bombastic side eye if you just mention not having beer in your house because you dislike it overall” and “Screeching like a banshee whenever car drivers are faced with a minimum of discomfort”
Image source: AlcoholicCocoa, Airam Dato-on / pexels
#19
In my country, theres a group of native people where women gain ranks in the comunity based on how many children they bring to the world, so they live in poverty but have like 7 or 8 babies, then they try to sell the kids because their land is also very close to another country border. They also tend to be heavy drinkers, is a s**t show tbh.
I wont say which specific native group is as I dont want to talk bad about them in that way.
But yes it is Panama.
Image source: dimensionsanalyst, Khaled Akacha / pexels
#20
India : Dowry. The effing dowry and expensive wedding.
Image source: Tottochan, 🇮🇳Amol Nandiwadekar / pexels
#21
As a semi slav I can tell you that Slavic superstitions are the strangest.
Here are a few examples:
Don’t whistle in the house because the money will disappear.
Don’t shake hands at the entrance to somewhere because there are corpses underneath.
If you need to look for something turn a glass upside down.
If you are about to leave your house for a couple of days, before leaving make sure to sit down in silence for a minute or so so that the spirit that lives in the house would think you are not leaving and will not mess up the house.
Image source: dark_raider2004, Mizuno K / pexels
#22
Work yourself to death. If you don’t, you’re lazy. Sometimes I can’t believe how crazy work culture gets in Germany. Bragging about going to work no matter how sick you are, infecting coworkers. You get called lazy for working less than a 40 hour week.
Image source: ThinkBug3947, Vlada Karpovich / pexels
#23
“I haven’t taken a vacation in 3 years!” – US
Image source: jjb1718, Mizuno K / pexels
#24
Taking photos of the deceased at funerals, including posing with them
Edit: some people even decide social media is a good place for these photos. So weird.
Edit#2: It’s one thing to take photos and keep private for memories – which is still weird to me – I prefer to remember what they looked like while living – not in their casket, blood drawn out, discoloured, barely looking like themselves – but each to their own. And then another thing to post to social media.. gives me heebie jeebies when my family does this. I will not allow this when my parents pass away (in fact makes me angry thinking of someone putting a pic of my dead dad on social media – just NO!)
Image source: peachapplejuice, Pavel Danilyuk / pexels
#25
There is this thing in Iranian culture which is called Tarof. The definition goes something like this: Tarof is the act of offering something in a manner sufficient to demonstrate sincerity, but is simply a facade to appear more genuine than one actually is. It can be shown by conduct, an offer, or by any means in which there appears to be an intent to tender to another.
You see it pretty much everywhere and it’s just annoying to deal with.
Image source: Background-Grab-5682, Gustavo Fring / pexels
#26
Anything and everything that proves that you are, “dominant”, including but not limited to; breaking laws, disrespecting others, taking advantage of others, being disagreeable in general, violating others rights but demanding yours are respected, and trying to make people feel useless because they don’t care about or value your ideas of work and/or productivity. – Southern US
Image source: SommePooreChumb, Pixabay / pexels
#27
In the orthodox community, men and women are made to sit apart. Fyi; I’m not orthodox , but I am Jewish
Image source: Thatspuggedup, cottonbro studio / pexels
#28
Argue over the origin of Pavlova. Australia
Image source: disappointed_shrew_, Blake Johnson / flickr
#29
Canada – cheat in relationships and brag about it, especially the whole ‘side piece’ bs – meaning any gender here.
Image source: obediantserf, cottonbro studio / pexels
#30
The Philippines: Obsess over any western celebrity with even a h i n t of local blood. Also obsess over and worship (usually white or east asian) foreigners who are barely or semi-fluent in our language.
Image source: fortmeines, 1D19 / youtube
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