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Kinda think you're right. I worked in an office, in a state, where people were so beyond unfriendly. Almost like everyone had a diagnosable condition! Maybe a bunch of borderlines, hehe. I never understood that level of unfriendliness, sarcasm, insults. And, at work.
I think people are confusing pleasant with "fake friendly". Two different things. The South loves fake friendly.
Fake friendly is nauseating. It's put on thick with an over the top theatrical like performance.
It makes you feel uncomfortable & gives them the upper hand (how can you argue with such "niceness"). The quintessential passive aggressive move.
No actually, the West Coast is fake friendly. The south is just welcoming. Saying hello is just being nice.
On the West Coast you get a lot of stupid things like fake smiles and all that crap. It's far more annoying than anything I've seen in the south. I still can't get use to it, it's just that irritating. I've never seen fake smiles down south.
No actually, the West Coast is fake friendly. The south is just welcoming. Saying hello is just being nice.
On the West Coast you get a lot of stupid things like fake smiles and all that crap. It's far more annoying than anything I've seen in the south. I still can't get use to it, it's just that irritating. I've never seen fake smiles down south.
Right. The West coast has a superficiality that is above anything I've seen anywhere. Kinda like a robot talking or a mannequin programmed. Hehe. No emotion behind it at all. I can remember telling someone something sad that had happened and the person just told a joke. Had that happen quite a few times--a disconnect going on.
I think people are confusing pleasant with "fake friendly". Two different things. The South loves fake friendly.
Fake friendly is nauseating. It's put on thick with an over the top theatrical like performance.
It makes you feel uncomfortable & gives them the upper hand (how can you argue with such "niceness"). The quintessential passive aggressive move.
I think people really need to work on their vocabularies so that they understand the nuances of the words polite, civil, and friendly. I realize that there are some places where it is perfectly acceptable to behave like the Huns sacking a village, but in the South the default is to be polite. I guess that's just way too much for some people to comprehend.
Here's the primer for those of you with the social skills of the aforementioned Huns:
1) A Southerner will almost always, without exception, choose to be polite when first encountering someone. Even gracious. Because Southerners tend to be nicer than people in large portions of the country, others will misinterpret that for being friendly from the outset.
2) It is up to the other person then to decide how they will conduct themselves. For example, I've found that a large number of people from the Northeast don't seem to have a filter between what forms in their brains and what comes sluicing out their mouths. To heck with decorum. To heck with mutual respect. Let's just blurt out the first -- and often, stupid -- thing that crosses one's mind. This is why Southerners typically don't care for many Northeasterners.
3) So, based on what you say and how you conduct yourself, the Southerner will then either remain polite (Neutral and reserving judgment), become friendly (They like you), or become civil (they don't like you and wish you would go away). In the rare situation, they will be outright unfriendly. This is typically reserved for people too stupid to understand how bad their faux pas are and just keep at it.
4) As a result, those people with the manners of goats can't understand why they are being frozen out by Southerners, who have a very finely-calibrated set of social skills, depending on whom they're meeting. Those people then call Southerners 'Fake Friendly' because they were generally raised by wolves and don't know how to behave due to undeveloped social antennae. Look, I realize that people in your home town talk to each other as if you're about to order a hit on Jimmy The Weasel, but that's generally not how we behave down here.
I'll give you a perfect example. A family moved down the street in our well-to-do neighborhood from Connecticut a few summers back. So half the neighbors bake casseroles, brownies, and the whatnot, and show up to introduce ourselves and generally do our level best to make them feel welcome. Why? Because it was the polite thing to do. The husband was a nice guy. The wife, however, was a piece of work. The first thing she said was, "Oh. Look. I've read that people like you exist." And she didn't say in a way that was meant to be funny.
From there, things went downhill. The moving van wasn't even halfway unloaded when she started bitching about the a) weather, b) how she already was missing Connecticut and c) how she was worried that her kids wouldn't get the kind of education they had received up North and d) the shopping.
Now, the weather we can't do anything about. But Item B basically said that she hated it here before the engine had even cooled in the driveway and Item C basically made the claim that we were a bunch of knuckle-dragging simpletons. Never mind that our school system is one of the top 50 school systems in the country and the town where they moved from didn't even crack the top 1000. And, as it turns out, our neighborhood is a scant 1.5 miles from all the shopping she had up north, from Lord and Taylor to Saks to whatever else her shriveled little heart desired. Here she was standing among a group of women who were better appointed she ever was, and yet the woman was essentially resigned to wearing burlap bags and calico because her only possible option would be the equivalent of Sam Drucker's General Store on Petticoat Junction. She had already unpacked her prejudices along with their china.
However, we gamely chalked this up to fatigue and stress from the long drive. So she would get invitations to lunch (which she uniformly turned down) and parties (Which her husband would come to alone). So finally, people like my wife just give up. Later we hear through the grapevine how this woman felt as if we all gave her the cold shoulder. Great.
Hope that helps.
Last edited by cpg35223; 09-13-2013 at 03:36 PM..
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The West coast has a superficiality that is above anything I've seen anywhere. Kinda like a robot talking or a mannequin programmed. Hehe. No emotion behind it at all. I can remember telling someone something sad that had happened and the person just told a joke. Had that happen quite a few times--a disconnect going on.