An ode to that “coffee friend”

Agreed. A related point: it is often hard for someone who’s not into some specific interest, to know which attributes make something better. Like most people don’t have the same standards of freshness for coffee beans as coffee needs (and wouldn’t know to care)

I run a wishlisting service, and I find creating my own wishlist for Christmas/birthday is the hardest thing about it, as I have to work pretty hard to actually figure out things to wish for.

Considering how hard I find this myself, how hard isn't it for someone else to know what I would like to receive if I didn't tell them? A close few manage this anyway, as they might keep notes of things I mention during the year, or know me well enough to know what I will appreciate, but for other family and friends, I honestly think it's too much to expect.

The solution for me is to wish for things I know I'll appreciate like "∞ of experiences with you", "∞ of home-made stuff", and specific items in various price-ranges that I want and can post-pone buying myself, like "Physical copy of this book", "This specific game (on GOG)", and "This somewhat expensive clothing item". The more things I can wish for, the more options friends and family have, the less it feels like I'm ordering stuff, and the less I know what exactly I can expect under the tree.

TL;DR: Giving good gifts is hard, and putting some thought into a wishlist can make it better for both parties. YMMV.

>I wish this was true but unfortunately, I must disagree with saying that it is different in Europe. In France, 10 years ago, high-school was a constant lookout for who's the 'popular' kids (literally called like that).

A lot of this is a recentish phenomenon with kids mimicking what they see in US made movies and tv series - and also a whole lot more toned down than in the US.

>And reversely, nerds kid would often be made fun of, or socially excluded from breaks / activities

As a nerd, this has always been going on everywhere, and it's basically by definition, as people describe as "nerds" not just people that are good at school and have scientific and brainy interests, but the subset of the above that are socially clumsy, not into sports and the popular social activities, etc part of being a nerd.

Kids with "nerd" interests that are also socially savvy and also like the stuff the majority does, are still popular.

So, nerds being excluded in this sense is almost a tautology, and in many areas, even happens by preference (e.g. not liking parties and drinking). Of course one could argue that we nerds would like them if those were more into our preferences, but, well, those are not the preferences of the wider school population. So this is not exactly active ostracizing, just the 90% not changing what they like to accomondate the 10%).

Would a nerd be targetted for bullying? Yes, but in the same sense that a non-nerdy "weird" kid, a kid with a disability, a fat kid, an "ugly" kid, etc. It's not particular about being a nerd, it's about being different - and it's not built into the wider structure of school life like some kind of appartheid between groups, the way it seems to be in the US. And the bullies are not groups, like the popular kids or the jocks vs the nerds, but individuals. The bullies are usually are not even popular (just the school's sadistic kids with troubled homes and no future).

There are also not explicit popularity contests built into the school life, like "the prom", cheerleading, or some jock sport being a "big thing" with official school teams and everything, which appears to be the case in the US. If anything, the equivalent of the "popular" kids in some European countries would be the "cool kids" and those are not into school sports or popularity contests at all (more like the opposite).

So, the forces at play here are not as strong as described (from accounts I've read) in the US in any European country that I know of.

It's a pointless effort to box the whole Europe into one stereotype, it's too diverse for that.

From my POV, the school social structure in USA seems very "schematic". Like there are popular kids and they look like this and have these attitudes, then there are geeks who are socially awkward and physically weak, then there are jocks etc.

My experience from growing up in Czechia was way more "random". There are kids who are more prominent than others, of course, but there aren't really many stereotypes to them. Some of them are dumb, but many of them are also pretty smart and have strong interests. All these people qualities are there, but they are not strongly categorized and appear in various permutations.

There's no good translation for "geek/nerd/jock" in Czech, like you would probably need to spend 2/3 sentences to explain each of them. You can translate "popular kid" literally, but it's not a concept being used. Kids of course still associate into various cliques, they just aren't "schematic".

Well that one got a physical cringe from me! Whew, what to even say to that.