Why Russians do not smile (2002) • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#51

Post by neurostimulant » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

squarefoot wrote: post #48

My personal take on smiles is that they're welcome if genuine, but can have adverse effects when forced. Many people think that displaying a fake smile for example at the workplace would help with interactions, especially professional ones, but rest assured that when I see someone faking a smile, particularly those working hard to look warm and sincere, I immediately feel I could be manipulated and get on the defensi…

I live in a culture where being nice and smiling to people is the norm. It's really nice interacting with strangers because they'll always nice and smiles at you (even road rage is particularly rare), but this also makes backstabbing office politics particularly painful, especially when you're still expected to display nice and smiling behaviour even after such backstabbing.

I guess you can't have the best of both world for this stuff.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#52

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #43

rjsw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teeth in skeletons from the Middle Ages seem fine. It is later ones, after bringing sugar back from the Americas, that have lots of cavities and missing teeth.

Both beets and sugar cane are old world plants, and maize-based corn syrup wasn't used as a sweetener until the 20th century. It's true that refined sugar is terrible for dental health, but it didn't come from the americas.

It wasn’t known that beets could be exploited for sugar until the 16th century. Sugar cane was not known in Europe (outside Muslim-ruled areas of Spain) until post-Colombian times. In antiquity, the sole common means of sweetening food in Europe was honey, and later dulce de leche.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#53

Post by solids » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

Leaving aside cultural differences, isn't it a fact that smiles (genuine smiles) have health benefits?

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#54

Post by rafaelero » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

I had the same impression traveling to Bolivia. I am Brazilian and we generally smile when speaking with someone. But in La Paz people usually had this serious look on their faces and a kind of difficult to approach semblance. I imagined poverty could explain that, but Brazil is a bit poorer than Russia. Maybe instead of poverty, we could think about hardship in a more general sense? I find very hard to believe that considering someone smiling insulting is a healthy outcome of a culture.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#55

Post by userbinator » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

With masks being socially acceptable in most if not all the world now, I wonder if the lack of visible smile that causes will change the perception of a smile in places where people usually smile by default.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#56

Post by Florin_Andrei » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

b0rsuk wrote: post #3

Mona Lisa was special in part because it was uncommon for people to smile. In Middle Ages, someone smiling a lot would be perceived as stupid. That's why facial expressions in medieval imagery are so serious. Today, being surprised a lot is often taken as a sign of stupidity, whereas in ancient Greece an owl was the bird of Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Because, obviously, an owl is always surprised, and surprise is…

Athena Glaukopis

Well, it's complicated. Glaukopis could also be translated as "blue eyed", or "grey eyed", not just "owl eyed".

Being the goddess of wisdom and handicraft (among other things), perception was a crucial attribute. Having big eyes (like the owl) could be interpreted as having good visual perception.

But it's not just about the size. She's also described as having "bright eyes", or "flashing eyes", or "darting eyes". It's more about the acuity of perception, than about some emotional aspect.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#57

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

dosman33 wrote: post #10

zero_deg_kevin wrote: post #4

The thing that struck me most about this article was the frequent east/west framing. Is that common outside of the US?

Yes. Once while touring a space museum in Switzerland I was reading the placards about the Russian and US space programs. Yuri Gagarin was consistently referred to as "the communist" which seemed perfectly normal to me as an American. Then I saw one that referred to John Glenn as "the capitalist" which was a novel concept to my brain. It wasn't until that moment that I realized just how ridiculous it was for us to re…

With regard to people of a third country seeing one astronaut as the capitalist and the other as the communist, that goes way back. Consider these lines from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou (shot in summer 1965). As a man and woman look up at the moon, the man says about the Man in the Moon:

"He's fed up. He was glad to see Leonov land. Someone to talk to after an eternity alone! But Leonov tried to stuff his head full of Lenin. So when the American landed, the guy fled to his camp. But the American right away crammed a Coke down his throat, after making him say thank you first."

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#58

Post by fallingfrog » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

The other part of this is that smiling when you don’t really want to, at people you don’t really like, as part of your job, is really exhausting. In the United States labor and especially service sector labor is very disempowered so they don’t really have the option to refuse to smile. In places where labor has a bit more leverage they might be able to. There’s also a special voice you put on, the customer service voice. Culture is often downstream from material conditions.

https://youtu.be/A47SSXdUdvw

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#59

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #38

In the US smiling wasn't as prevalent, at least in photographs. Look at any Civil War era picture and nobody is smiling in their portraits. I'm not sure when that started. I read somewhere that back then people thought people who smiled all the time were "simple minded." Now I can't help thinking that every time I see some marketing copy with some model smiling while playing with soap or something.

The reason for the severe facial expressions and the lack of smiles in 19th-century photographs was the extremely long exposure times that the technology required back then. It was hard to hold a smile still enough that the film could capture it without blur. You can't assume from those portraits that people rarely smiled compared to now.

Re: Why Russians do not smile (2002)

#60

Post by zeroc8 » Fri, May 28, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

Austrian here, we are somewhat in between Russians and Americans, when it comes to smiling. But what I can tell you is that life is just so much better when people smile at you, even if it might not be a hundred percent genuine. My comparison stems from having worked with both Russians and Americans. Being around grumpy Russians all day long makes live really miserable.