I blame Harry Potter. That awful book series which was practically a required reading instilled into a generation of kids this type of mindset, even more so than the Boomer TV of the previous gens. Everything about that universe, every actions and thought each poorly written character has, is centered around the life of the MC. Reading it with adult eyes (and even then) often gave a surreal almost kafkaesque feeling that should render suspension of disbelief impossible. Alas, HP is often the first book children of that were introduced to.
As for Westerners in (particularly Far-East) Asian countries, they display many Gamma & Gamma-adjacent traits in addition to MC syndrome. It's crazy to contrast the positive public opinion they have of us, with the type of people "we" send there (and I'm talking strictly Westerners themselves, to say nothing of the diversity that uses the West as an intermediary for their travels). Most of these Westerners "in Love with the Orient" we wouldn't want as neighbors.
"Young people who go abroad tend to disproportionately have the same “Main Character Syndrome” that so many Gammas exhibit in their native lands."
The "main character syndrome" that these people tend to have is in the same vein as the messianic complex that Gammas exhibit, right? Do the men who exhibit this pattern, when they go abroad, do it because they are entering a new social hierarchy?
For example, a young Delta man tries to move to Japan. He finds himself now as a situational Omega, someone that is essentially not a part of the local hierarchy. But his intention is to "integrate" or fit himself in somehow, so he becomes a situational Gamma by entering as someone at the bottom of the new hierarchy. By becoming a situational Gamma, he then exhibits Gamma behavior and it manifests itself as "main character syndrome".
Right, my bad. That makes sense. The Gamma behavior of the main character syndrome has to be accounted for in some way. So, putting that into the scenario:
Young Delta man moves to Japan. Finds himself as situational Omega. Wanting to "integrate", he enters the new hierarchy as situational Delta, but because he is a foreigner, he is not able to be readily mixed in with the others or others approach him mainly for the very fact that he is a foreigner. Young Delta man has feelings of social isolation or develops a habit of expecting to get special attention as a foreigner, which leads him to situational Gamma or feeds Gamma-like behavioral patterns, which then manifests as "main character syndrome".
Lately it seems when young people go abroad as exchange students, they act exactly like the groups of foreign students that Americans readily deride as awkward and strange. We've all seen the Chinese, Indian, etc. clicks at universities. We probably think they're too clannish and insular, but how many did we take the time to know, assuming they had any interest in knowing us? In my experience, some foreign students were interested in friendship, but most were not.
Similarly, when zoomer students spends a semester abroad (almost always in Western Europe), they immediately hang out with Americans they don't even know, never bother to learn a word of the host country language and spends every evening at an "Irish" bar full of the same group of semi-retarded main character syndrome Americans. This, while taking the least challenging courses which barely qualify as higher education. The entire experience mirrors the same "Chinese MIT math major" clicks, minus the brain cells required and career potential earned.
Alas, gen X parents still get to brag about "putting their kids through college" while the zoomer has an inebriated party in a different location before returning to Whatsamatta U in flyover country. The only thing bigger than the inevitable massive student loan debt is the opportunity cost.
It takes a heavy-duty ego to go to an exotic place because of what it is, and expect IT to care anything about you.
I did notice in Italy two years ago, that Americans stood out like sore thumbs. I ID'd them from 30 yards away, without hearing a single word stolen. Mostly because they were obese but I also found the skinny ones had something about them too. I don't think I guessed wrong once, confirmed by eventually hearing them talk. I found that very curious.
Ha! Growing up as a missionary son i had to learn this one at a young age. Worse, the reverse happens in clown world where western people will start telling people in their homeland how things in the third world were done and how much better it was there. Never mind all the poverty and crime and all that.
To take the sadism a step further we know who was the annoying kid in the village square. No one wanted to listen there, I sure ain't starting to listen to her on this side of the pond either!
I love the lost world. Happy suntanned children at play all day long. Mothers who loved them. The laughter, the smiles, and those raw precious friendships you thought would last forever, it was a beautiful world. I miss it.
The first exchange student that I remember was a German girl who ended up in my art class. She was well liked, but we ended up nicknaming her “Bitte” because that was the word that most frequently came out of her mouth. Forever after, calling each other “Bitte” (“Beat”, after a while) was just an in- group reference to art class.
On the other hand, there was an Australian family living below me for a little while, and I am always intensely interested to meet Australians because I see Australia as an illuminating mirror of the US.
Living in a small town now after a life in various large US cities - you notice this kind of behavior all the time from people moving in. Lectures about how they lived before. Or people from out of state that move and want to change the way things are done to satisfy either their previous way of life or what they THINK rural life should be like.
I get why - rural living in a small community is NOTHING like what most people think it is. So there's a vast difference between expectations and reality. So they either talk about what they did before or try to change it to make it feel 'safer' or more similar to previous experiences.
Still, people needs to learn to shut up, observe, and try to understand the world they find themselves in before they talk too much or try to change things. Otherwise, they literally are subverting the very situation they wanted to enter into.
"valiant lone wolf battling against a closed society"
you are everything wrong with the West. your insane entitlement and disregard for the Japanese people will one day come back to you. you outright admit that your presence there is adversarial, a conquest.
Japan doesn't "belong to the world" nor is it just an economic zone. yes, they are avoiding you because you are a foreigner and a total shithead who pretends to "assimilate" but in the end defaults to calling Japan a "multiculture" so that you don't actually have to (not that you can ever become another race anyway. they will never be your kin).
90% of foreigners are also straight weirdos, autistic women, obese men, spergs, and browns.
the only legitimate foreigner is an attractive white male that wants the foreign population to stay at 2% or less and mixes in with the population and actually follows Japanese social rules.
brainlets like you "love Japan" then instantly set out to turn it into New York City- an international economic zone.
It doesn't help that annoying people like the office transexual who loves the worst anime think that they are going to find acceptance in Japan. Sorry Japanese friends, we are not sending our best.
If I had a dollar for every time I've said to my probably-soon-to-be-ex, "This isn't F'ing Brazil...this is America," I'd take myself out to dinner.
Doesn't help I'm an immigration lawyer exposed to plenty of people who are fleeing serious danger and are more than willing to conform to their new environment, before coming home to "I'm in America, but I'm still a Brasileria."
Sure, but you're also an unbelievably entitled, self-centered, delusional, obstinate pain in the ass, and I'm done paying your rent.
Our family moved around a lot internationally when I was young, so I grew up never thinking I was special. It’s just life with different looking people around you. But in Africa, as an Asian kid with straight hair, there were always a small mob of snot nosed and fly infested kids milling around and grabbing at me. I don’t think these people fully understand what it’s like to be the center of attention.
Wherever you go there you are, is how I’ve always thought.
I blame Harry Potter. That awful book series which was practically a required reading instilled into a generation of kids this type of mindset, even more so than the Boomer TV of the previous gens. Everything about that universe, every actions and thought each poorly written character has, is centered around the life of the MC. Reading it with adult eyes (and even then) often gave a surreal almost kafkaesque feeling that should render suspension of disbelief impossible. Alas, HP is often the first book children of that were introduced to.
As for Westerners in (particularly Far-East) Asian countries, they display many Gamma & Gamma-adjacent traits in addition to MC syndrome. It's crazy to contrast the positive public opinion they have of us, with the type of people "we" send there (and I'm talking strictly Westerners themselves, to say nothing of the diversity that uses the West as an intermediary for their travels). Most of these Westerners "in Love with the Orient" we wouldn't want as neighbors.
"Young people who go abroad tend to disproportionately have the same “Main Character Syndrome” that so many Gammas exhibit in their native lands."
The "main character syndrome" that these people tend to have is in the same vein as the messianic complex that Gammas exhibit, right? Do the men who exhibit this pattern, when they go abroad, do it because they are entering a new social hierarchy?
For example, a young Delta man tries to move to Japan. He finds himself now as a situational Omega, someone that is essentially not a part of the local hierarchy. But his intention is to "integrate" or fit himself in somehow, so he becomes a situational Gamma by entering as someone at the bottom of the new hierarchy. By becoming a situational Gamma, he then exhibits Gamma behavior and it manifests itself as "main character syndrome".
You don't start off as a gamma just because you enter a new hierarchy. You start off as Delta, until something happens.
Right, my bad. That makes sense. The Gamma behavior of the main character syndrome has to be accounted for in some way. So, putting that into the scenario:
Young Delta man moves to Japan. Finds himself as situational Omega. Wanting to "integrate", he enters the new hierarchy as situational Delta, but because he is a foreigner, he is not able to be readily mixed in with the others or others approach him mainly for the very fact that he is a foreigner. Young Delta man has feelings of social isolation or develops a habit of expecting to get special attention as a foreigner, which leads him to situational Gamma or feeds Gamma-like behavioral patterns, which then manifests as "main character syndrome".
Maybe this is a better example.
Lately it seems when young people go abroad as exchange students, they act exactly like the groups of foreign students that Americans readily deride as awkward and strange. We've all seen the Chinese, Indian, etc. clicks at universities. We probably think they're too clannish and insular, but how many did we take the time to know, assuming they had any interest in knowing us? In my experience, some foreign students were interested in friendship, but most were not.
Similarly, when zoomer students spends a semester abroad (almost always in Western Europe), they immediately hang out with Americans they don't even know, never bother to learn a word of the host country language and spends every evening at an "Irish" bar full of the same group of semi-retarded main character syndrome Americans. This, while taking the least challenging courses which barely qualify as higher education. The entire experience mirrors the same "Chinese MIT math major" clicks, minus the brain cells required and career potential earned.
Alas, gen X parents still get to brag about "putting their kids through college" while the zoomer has an inebriated party in a different location before returning to Whatsamatta U in flyover country. The only thing bigger than the inevitable massive student loan debt is the opportunity cost.
It takes a heavy-duty ego to go to an exotic place because of what it is, and expect IT to care anything about you.
I did notice in Italy two years ago, that Americans stood out like sore thumbs. I ID'd them from 30 yards away, without hearing a single word stolen. Mostly because they were obese but I also found the skinny ones had something about them too. I don't think I guessed wrong once, confirmed by eventually hearing them talk. I found that very curious.
Shorts, baseball hats, slides/sandals? If there were large numbers of those, maybe the cruise ship just docked.
The "Westerners" causing problems in Japan are primarily only "Westerners" because they immigrated to the West. Like Johnny Somali.
Ha! Growing up as a missionary son i had to learn this one at a young age. Worse, the reverse happens in clown world where western people will start telling people in their homeland how things in the third world were done and how much better it was there. Never mind all the poverty and crime and all that.
To take the sadism a step further we know who was the annoying kid in the village square. No one wanted to listen there, I sure ain't starting to listen to her on this side of the pond either!
I love the lost world. Happy suntanned children at play all day long. Mothers who loved them. The laughter, the smiles, and those raw precious friendships you thought would last forever, it was a beautiful world. I miss it.
The first exchange student that I remember was a German girl who ended up in my art class. She was well liked, but we ended up nicknaming her “Bitte” because that was the word that most frequently came out of her mouth. Forever after, calling each other “Bitte” (“Beat”, after a while) was just an in- group reference to art class.
On the other hand, there was an Australian family living below me for a little while, and I am always intensely interested to meet Australians because I see Australia as an illuminating mirror of the US.
Living in a small town now after a life in various large US cities - you notice this kind of behavior all the time from people moving in. Lectures about how they lived before. Or people from out of state that move and want to change the way things are done to satisfy either their previous way of life or what they THINK rural life should be like.
I get why - rural living in a small community is NOTHING like what most people think it is. So there's a vast difference between expectations and reality. So they either talk about what they did before or try to change it to make it feel 'safer' or more similar to previous experiences.
Still, people needs to learn to shut up, observe, and try to understand the world they find themselves in before they talk too much or try to change things. Otherwise, they literally are subverting the very situation they wanted to enter into.
"they probably aren’t even aware you are there"
they are hyper aware you are there.
"valiant lone wolf battling against a closed society"
you are everything wrong with the West. your insane entitlement and disregard for the Japanese people will one day come back to you. you outright admit that your presence there is adversarial, a conquest.
Japan doesn't "belong to the world" nor is it just an economic zone. yes, they are avoiding you because you are a foreigner and a total shithead who pretends to "assimilate" but in the end defaults to calling Japan a "multiculture" so that you don't actually have to (not that you can ever become another race anyway. they will never be your kin).
90% of foreigners are also straight weirdos, autistic women, obese men, spergs, and browns.
the only legitimate foreigner is an attractive white male that wants the foreign population to stay at 2% or less and mixes in with the population and actually follows Japanese social rules.
brainlets like you "love Japan" then instantly set out to turn it into New York City- an international economic zone.
Tikkun Olam can't help itself.
dOwNrigHt rAciSm
you should adopt black kids. after all they're exact copies of you.
It doesn't help that annoying people like the office transexual who loves the worst anime think that they are going to find acceptance in Japan. Sorry Japanese friends, we are not sending our best.
"So stop “helping”. Stop “informing”. Stop “in case anyone wanted to know”. Stop “explaining”."
Flipping that desire and doing the opposite is a lot more helpful.
Assuming someone else wants to talk about themselves on this topic like me, what question should I ask to let them answer that question?
"Where are you from? What was your hometown like? What's special about it?"
Notice where the answers are detailed or energetic. Ask more questions about that, weighted by your own interest.
If I had a dollar for every time I've said to my probably-soon-to-be-ex, "This isn't F'ing Brazil...this is America," I'd take myself out to dinner.
Doesn't help I'm an immigration lawyer exposed to plenty of people who are fleeing serious danger and are more than willing to conform to their new environment, before coming home to "I'm in America, but I'm still a Brasileria."
Sure, but you're also an unbelievably entitled, self-centered, delusional, obstinate pain in the ass, and I'm done paying your rent.
Our family moved around a lot internationally when I was young, so I grew up never thinking I was special. It’s just life with different looking people around you. But in Africa, as an Asian kid with straight hair, there were always a small mob of snot nosed and fly infested kids milling around and grabbing at me. I don’t think these people fully understand what it’s like to be the center of attention.
Wherever you go there you are, is how I’ve always thought.