101–110 of 235 posts
Relevant: The grumpy Russian traveler http://imgur.com/a/4ix4I
There is some backstory to these pictures. At least there was on Reddit when it was first posted, can't prove that it's true or not. Anyway, his wife died and he is visiting all the places she/they went and making pictures to close himself of her.
As a Russian-American this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!". For one, Americans don't just smile to be polite. For the most part it's genuinely conveying positive emotions. Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.…
That said, the Russian humor page for Wikipedia is can be a real treat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_jokes . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_jokes#The_Golden_Fish may be one of my favorites on there. A Russian friend of mine explained that it's sort of inappropriate to go around smiling, esp for males. There's also kind of a cultural thing going on where Russians perceive themselves as being able to scre…
This is very true. If a male is smiling, it means he is showing his submission and in turn is subconsciously treated by other males as a lower level male. The exact system of hierarchy signs exists in chimps. For me it seems like russians together with some other cultures managed to save this body language component as meaningful way of interaction, in contrast with western way of smiling meaning level zero relationship. Because if you truly can not tell fake smile from real one, the meaning of a smile is lost. That's why I also am not going to ever accept "always smiling" thing, even if I would go to live in western country. A smile should be a sign of affection, not a sign of neutral stance. We have neutral face impression for that. And if you interpret neutral face impression as "something wrong", what are you using "worried" face impression? It just seems wrong to always smile, even considering "brain hacking" thing.
I worked with some Russians a few years ago. Great guys. One wasn't very well adapted to American culture. He came to my cube one day. He's like "Let's go get a smoke", but his face and tone was flat, so it came across as "You've pissed me off in some way and I'm probably going to kick your ass now". I demurred. A couple more offers over the next few days and I finally relented (I don't smoke, but went to hang out).…
I always tell my Russian colleagues that it's the natural outcome of not having a 3,000 year history of being pillaged by Cossacks and Mongols, and that they should try it some time.
I served a Mormon mission in eastern Ukraine (not Russia, but very Soviet), which meant I went from one day being surrounded by Americans to walking around the streets of eastern Ukraine trying to talk with everyone I met on the street (a decidedly non-Ukrainian thing to do). One day while we were walking the sun came out for just a minute - a fairly rare occurrence during a Ukrainian winter, and I walked around the…
> I could give a $100 bill to a cashier at the grocery store without getting in trouble.
You mean you literally handed her a 100 dollar bill? That's not her fault, you should exchange your money. Imagine someone trying to pay with hrivnas in 7-11.
As a Russian-American this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!". For one, Americans don't just smile to be polite. For the most part it's genuinely conveying positive emotions. Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.…
I'm from Prague and I was always baffled by this. How does the smiling thing work? In what situations do you smile? For example, if you're walking on street, do you eye-contact people going in the opposite direction and smile at them?
I think there's a difference between a polite smile of acknowledgement and a smile give to someone that you already know well, however.
My parents, who live in Trinidad, have this problem every time they visit me in America. After a couple of days of everyone fake-smiling at them the whole time they get pissed off. To them, everyone's smiles come off as insincere and even slightly condescending. (They hate it even more when people tell them to "have a nice day".)
I understand it's just the way store keepers, cashiers, waiters and other customer-facing staff have to behave in North America, but, well, it's difficult not to see it as insincere or hypocritical when you're not used to it.
As a Russian-American this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!". For one, Americans don't just smile to be polite. For the most part it's genuinely conveying positive emotions. Now I know this is going to be unpopular, but I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural.…
> this comes off as complete BS. I've seen this written before and it's always in the form of "It's not us that smile too little, it's you Americans that are fake and smile too much!" Which is pretty much what the article quotes Russians as saying. Without agreeing with them, of course. >I think the real reason Russians don't smile is cultural. Again, you're agreeing with the article - and contradicting your subseque…
The poster to whom you're responding is actually saying that the no smile in Russia is because of an actual underlying difference in the emotions being felt.
Hi, i'm Russian sociologist of culture. The conclusion about different culture code and semantic is right. But there is more some interesting things. Russians have really poor toothcare, and this is joined with non-smiling bidirectionally. There is nothing abnormal for Russian to have couple of missing teeth. I've seen a really rich people (for example owner of Rolls Royce fleet) with just a couple of yellow teeth le…