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‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

telegraph.co.uk

81–90 of 133 posts

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#81
post #58

For what it’s worth America is one of the easiest if not the easiest place to be an immigrant, all things considered. You’ll find a community of your fellow countrymen already thriving, you have well established rights that are maintained by the rule of law, and so long as you try to fit in and work hard nobody will pay much mind. Many if not most digital nomads are Americans traveling from an open minded heterogeneo…

You represent what the problem with Americans tend to be. You assume that your culture and philosophy is the best, and then start to hate how all the locals hate you and blame it on their culture. Southern Europe and much of Asia has had inter-ethnic/inter-racial immigration for thousands of years and have developed their own ways of how ethnic groups live side by side and integrate/merge together.

Where can I read about this, about other sorts modes of integration?

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indians are fairly culturally diverse if you only compare the major cities. You have much more ethnic differences in India than US as well. Immigration from the more "Middle Eastern" North-West India and the more "East Asian" North-East India is also widespread. And it is also important to point out that regional differences are much more stark in India than in the US. Most Americans have only ever met ethnic minorit…

> Most Americans have only ever met ethnic minorities who have assimilated into being Americans. That would not be considered an ethnic difference in many racial philosophies. America deserves it's fair share of criticism, but to criticize America as having no/limited experience with diverse cultures shows pretty gross ignorance.

It obvious you have limited interaction with people from around the world since you seem to have no knowledge about how diverse many other parts of the world are, with much better results too.

I actually meet a lot of Indians who critise the US over places like Europe and South East Asia because of the lack of mixing between races/ethnicities in the US. I often get Americans in East Asia who don't understand that ethnic minorities from other parts of the world frequently make friends across ethnic boundaries. In America you are divided by race, whereas in the rest of the old world people mix like a port market - people in America seem to forget that inter-race and inter-ethnic immigration has happened across the old world for millennia, and they have been mixing for thousands of years.

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're painting with very broad strokes. I would say perhaps Europeans as a whole have much more experience living in a foreign country than Americans do. But as an American with significant travel experience globally, I have yet to visit a country that is as culturally diverse as America.

This never makes any sense to me. Have you been to any country in Southern Europe? Parts of those are akin to the Mexican border with nationalities from all over the world - for example Portugal has a half-Indian prime minister and most of its immigrants are from Latin America, Middle East and Africa, with a number from China via Macau.

I've lived and worked in the US and Germany. I've travelled all over Europe at this point (except Italy, notably).

Most of Europe is not very diverse. It took me a while to overcome the culture shock of what is essentially a European monoculture. The most diverse country I encountered in Europe was probably Spain.

What do you mean by "mexican border"? I think you are talking about preconceptions based on the news cycle.

At work in Europe, you will get weird comments if you are not a white person. I never encountered anything like that in the US.

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are problems with tensions between locals and digital nomads in several places, especially Portugal I have never heard of this before, and I have a few portuguese friends. Also, in the context of Lisbon, I doubt that 16,000 salaried workers [0] could influence the market to that extent in a city of 500,000 people, especially given that digital nomads make, on average, $120,000 [1]. It seems to me that digital…

16,000 digital nomads that need individual housing, in a culture where multiple generations of families live together.

This is nonsense, and definitely not a thing in Portugal.

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#86

This looks like non news to me. People don't "hate" digital nomads (and the article itself does not even back up this claim from the headline). In fact, most people do not even notice them most of the time, as they don't make up for a significant percentage of the population anywhere. There will be always small and very vocal groups, complaining about effectively irrelevant things like this. That is not newsworthy. >…

There are problems with tensions between locals and digital nomads in several places, especially Portugal, but also in a lot of major cities where they are having a similar effect to Airbnb. A big issue is the strength of the US dollar simply makes it impossible for anyone else to compete and attracts so many Americans.

16k digital nomads will have a negligible effect on a country the size of Portugal.

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This never makes any sense to me. Have you been to any country in Southern Europe? Parts of those are akin to the Mexican border with nationalities from all over the world - for example Portugal has a half-Indian prime minister and most of its immigrants are from Latin America, Middle East and Africa, with a number from China via Macau.

I've lived and worked in the US and Germany. I've travelled all over Europe at this point (except Italy, notably). Most of Europe is not very diverse. It took me a while to overcome the culture shock of what is essentially a European monoculture. The most diverse country I encountered in Europe was probably Spain. What do you mean by "mexican border"? I think you are talking about preconceptions based on the news cyc…

Northern Europe is much less diverse and Southern Europe, but there are also parts of the US which are similarly less diverse (especially once you have taken out Hispanics from the equation who are often white or slightly non-white). American culture is also a monoculture - people forget that the "immigrants" in the US are actually highly assimilated into American culture, often moreso that the immigrants in Europe - black people are a good example; it says a lot that I, a Brit, get into far more arguments with Indian Americans than actual India Indians.

Most ethnic minorities in Europe tend to be more thinly spread out as compared to the US, and there is much more interaction between Whites and racial minorities. This is one of the biggest complaints that I get from Indians about the racial culture in the US, but it's also traditionally famous among Blacks as well. It's based on the traditional mixing of ethnic groups that has been going on for thousands of years - remember even during the Roman Empire and Ancient Greece, there were immigrants from Africa, Middle East and South Asia.

EDIT: This chart on the Non-Hispanic White distribution similarly has Northern America as being more white than Southern America: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Non-Hisp...

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#88

'Hated by locals' is a stretch. I don't think the number of digital nomads is enough to have any meaningful impact on rents or real estate prices in most countries. This is just xenophobia in another form.

Digital nomads are a major problem in several countries including most of South East Asia and Portugal, and major cities in these regions are having inflated prices due to digital nomads.

You are vastly overestimating how many digital nomads there are.

There aren't enough nomads anywhere except perhaps Chiang Mai to swing local real estate prices.

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#89

This looks like non news to me. People don't "hate" digital nomads (and the article itself does not even back up this claim from the headline). In fact, most people do not even notice them most of the time, as they don't make up for a significant percentage of the population anywhere. There will be always small and very vocal groups, complaining about effectively irrelevant things like this. That is not newsworthy. >…

There are problems with tensions between locals and digital nomads in several places, especially Portugal, but also in a lot of major cities where they are having a similar effect to Airbnb. A big issue is the strength of the US dollar simply makes it impossible for anyone else to compete and attracts so many Americans.

AirBnB disregards zoning laws to repurpose residential housing as hotels.

It's a completely different thing from new workers moving in to a city.

Re: ‘Tired’, ‘lonely’ and hated by locals: the reality for the digital nomad

#90
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You represent what the problem with Americans tend to be. You assume that your culture and philosophy is the best, and then start to hate how all the locals hate you and blame it on their culture. Southern Europe and much of Asia has had inter-ethnic/inter-racial immigration for thousands of years and have developed their own ways of how ethnic groups live side by side and integrate/merge together.

Where can I read about this, about other sorts modes of integration?

Read up on the history of immigration to Europe, Africa and Asia. You act as if the US is the only place where immigration has ever happened.
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