I fit the internet SJW stereotype to an uncomfortable degree, but I don’t really identify with it (which makes sense, given that it’s a shallow idea of a person designed by people who dislike them).
At the same time, I absolutely do not fulfill the stereotype of the American in Germany, and people are often very surprised when they hear that I am.
Do you fit or break a lot of stereotypes?
If I do, then it’s in ways I’m totally blind to.
I’m gay but I have to remind even close friends of that fact from time to time lol.
I’m a huge Star Trek nerd, but I can’t quote plot points and episode numbers like bible verses.
I work in IT but I’m far from the as-seen-on-TV geek / graybeard. (thankfully that stereotype is fading away for the most part).
I’m sure there are some stereotypes I fit into that I’m just not aware of, but the ones I am aware of I tend to buck.
I’d say working in IT as a Star Trek nerd counts as fulfilling one stereotype at least.
I think the word “nerd” got rehabilitated, and was replaced by incel or neckbeard for those even more useless, gross, and uncool than a nerd was ever portrayed to be.
I’m definitely a nerd, but thoughtfulness, optimism and such take me out of the incel or neckbeard category. I just don’t have the blame everyone but myself nihilism outlook.
Good point. I guess I’m a “nerd” in that I like to learn, like to understand the “why” of things, and prefer a good book to a movie, but I was mostly basing “nerd” off of the Hollywood nerd / dork character I grew up watching.
To elaborate: I’m a queer leftist vegan with a bisexual partner and I’m not sure of my gender. I’ve got autism, ADHD, and anxiety, and I work part time as a barista in my thirties while very slowly getting a master’s degree in a niche liberal arts field after being unable to find work related to my bachelor’s degree in a related niche liberal arts field. When I was younger, I frequently had blue and/or pink hair, but now I donate my hair, so I don’t dye it anymore; similarly, I’ve had over 15 piercings, but could currently only wear a ring in my septum and maybe my earlobes if I put in some work. I feel very strongly about multiple causes, but do little active protesting.
At the same time, I’m (afab, received socially as a woman, but who knows?) married to a man apprenticing as a butcher, I went back to school after saving up enough money in my role as an adjuster for litigated long tailed claims (basically contract analysis and directing defense strategy), I currently work in my desired field (German language education for new arrivals here in Germany), and I help run a mutual aid group and immigrant support group instead of demonstrating because I’m an immigrant with uncertain status.
I’m very interested in preserving food, handicrafts that help me to be self sufficient, folk dance, and puzzles, but I’m also interested in TTRPGs, mtg, larping, and involved board games. Those groups of activities each fulfill different genres of SJW stereotype (puzzles and larping might work as cross category overlaps), but I also like cycling, rowing, swimming, and lifting weights, which feel like they don’t really fit.
I guess most important would be that I try not to be preachy or judgmental in my daily life and have no reason to believe I don’t succeed- it’s pretty easy to get honest feedback from large groups of students who aren’t expecting my brain to hyperfocus on all spoken English after so long in Germany. Through those aid groups and my husband’s job, I end up giving out about €75 worth of meat a week, which means people are often very surprised that I’m a vegan (but the meat can no longer be sold, though it’s still safe to consume, so there’s no profit going to the butcher, and people buy less meat when they can get it for free, so it reduces demand, so my conscience is clear).
As for being an American in Germany: again, I’m a vegan leftist, but I’ve also mastered German to the degree that I’m a German teacher, and my full married name sounds as bland in Germany as “Katherine Marie Parsons” would in the US.
Jesus, you really do fit most of the stereotypes.
I know… I’m not a dick though?
if you lived in the USA you’d be a dick.
German culture is a lot more chill. germans leave people alone generally. Americans can’t help but get in your face.
I lived in Germany a couple of times and it was glorious because nobody ever talked to me. In the USA people just come up to you and start talking. It’s so weird.
I’m from the USA and I wasn’t a dick there, either. I don’t know why you’d assume I would be, especially as I said that I’m not the stereotypical American. I definitely don’t approach strangers to start conversations and when they do it with me, I respond politely and in a friendly way, but don’t try to drive the conversation into any divisive areas (or really anywhere at all, I try to let conversations with strangers whom I’m not planning a get to know die out as quickly as possible while maintaining friendliness).
yeah, what I notice with those types is they are self-obsessed and kind of project that onto everyone else.
and if you don’t think they are ‘special’ they get really mad and feel like you are invalidating them.
every third person I meet tells me they are autistic/ahdh/socially anxious. it’s just like… wow you’re normal, we get it. i now sporty extroverted and apolitical people who claim those labels now… because they self-diagnosed on the internet…
your obsession with labels is def on par for the streotype of a SJW.
everyone i know who is one IRL is obsessed with labels and labels everyone else and themselves and acts upset if you don’t buy into their labeling nonsense.
I’m not personally big on labels (that’s part of why I’m not sure of my gender- I just don’t really care how people perceive me, so it doesn’t seem like a priority), nor do I ever introduce myself like the above irl. Very few of the people in my life are aware of all of the above, but it’s relevant for the post, so I looked for all the labels that fit.
This isn’t a topic that consumes me, it just occurred to me that I check off a lot of boxes even though I don’t think I seem to.
you’re not ‘big on labels’, but you used like 20 of them in reference to yourself…
you don’t see the hypocrisy here?
but it’s relevant for the post, so I looked for all the labels that fit.
I’m aware of labels, but don’t typically use them, unless they’re relevant, like here. Not sure where you’re seeing hypocrisy, but it seems like you’re reading a lot into this that isn’t there.
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Hedy Lamar?
do you also like sometimes going out, but sometimes staying in?
I think I break more. I don’t use makeup and wear very boring clothes and we have strong religious cults around here, so I’m always expected to be one of those cultists - until I open my mouth and start swearing.
I do cover a lot of German stereotypes or so I’m told.
Efficient!
I’m probably a stereotypical millennial, but if you focused on any of my various individual interests, I don’t really fit into any of their cliches.
I fit into more than I break steretypes.
Music style and operating system can be guessed from my looks.
Hobbies is an “aha that makes sense” if you know where I live.
I’m a pretty geeky IT person, who is trans, watches anime, reads manga, and plays WoW.
Yeah I’m basically a walking stereotype at this point 😅
Sometimes I wonder about which stereotypes I’m resembling, for example when I’m wearing a plaid shirt and cutting down trees with an axe. But that normally only happens two or three times a year.
seasonal plaid is just boring basic white person stuff. esp if you are in a suburban area with an acre+ and you’ve got trees to manage or deadfall to remove. your ax was probably 20 bucks form home depot too.
lumbersexual is the year-round plaid people in cities who have $500 axes and outdoor tools purely for a esthetic reasons.
I wear flannels nine months a year because it’s good for layering and I tend to get really cold and really hot multiple times in a day. Plus, it looks professional enough for teaching and I’m unlikely to have any wardrobe issues with it (I learned the hard way that ponchos don’t mix with writing on the board). It doesn’t normally make me feel any kind of way, but a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about drinking culture in Germany vs our home countries with my students. I didn’t even think about how I was dressed when explaining that we typically played a drinking game with a stump and either hatchets or axes and we always drank in the woods as youths, but my students started laughing at me for being a lumberjack.
I’ve never felled a tree, but I really love splitting wood, and a flannel is comfortable for that work. It might be less a stereotype and more just specialized gear.
I’m like the worst mix of stereotypes. I’m an uneducated factory worker, but I’m not into anything like sports or cars or anything that would connect with these types of people. I’m a science/video game nerd that likes anime, but I’m not in the slightest bit intelligent or involved in IT and have no interest in “cons” or owning any kind of “toys” that relate to games/anime. I’m anything but “normal” but my aesthetic is “Khols stock photo.” Other “Khols stock photo” people would have no interest in me.
I pretty much don’t belong anywhere lol
I also dress like kohls stock photo and none of my friends do at all. I’m a pothead, but I give off absolute narc vibes :(
I typically want to dispell a lot of ridiculous Canadian stereotypes, but I find the opposite happens instead. Case in point:
This is a picture of my father eating cheerios with maple syrup instead of milk.
That sounds delicious though (in small quantities, as he seems to be)
I fit no stereotypes that I know of, and have never met or heard of anyone else like me … I don’t think I’ve fitted in a particular box at any point in my life now I come to think about it!
Yes and No. I work in Science, an Engineering Departement, do like some good Metal or Rock and wear a lot of Caro Shirts. But I am also a woman, so that breaks the stereotype a bit.
I am also really into books, cats and baking which somehow fits into some stereotypes about women.
At the same time I like to lift, run long distances and do events like Mud-Masters (basically a muddy obstacle run). I guess this fits a bit more into the Engineering/Science thing, but not quite.
I don’t know any women into cats, books, or baking.
Stereotypical woman in my city is into traveling, hates pets/children, and doesn’t cook/bake. They eat out most meals or they get those mealbox services or they do ‘meal prep’ where they eat the same thing all week because cooking more than once a week is too ‘inefficient’.
No. People assume I do and they get super mad when I don’t. Everyone assumes I am a ‘bro’ but I am not in anyway other than physical looks.
I don’t understand how anyone can want to embody a stereotype, but many people certainly do and they only want to interact with other similar stereotypical people. I dislike environments and people who are very stereotypical and avoid them.
I don’t meet many people who are upset when I do or don’t fit a stereotype (some Germans are sad that I’m not very “cowboy,” but that’s mostly just true for people who don’t meet a lot of foreigners and are excited to, so they definitely don’t get super mad). I’m not even sure what that would look like- I’ve only ever reacted with or received the reaction of positive surprise when an incongruent aspect of someone’s personality comes out, unless it’s something that would be upsetting from any personality type.
I don’t seek to embody a stereotype: I evolved gradually over the last three decades, certainly influenced by my family, peers, and culture, but independently and as my own person. I don’t think many of the people in my life are very stereotypical either, but that might be because I’m an immigrant with very few friends from my home country, so people who interact with me are intentionally choosing to interact with people outside of their cultures.
It sounds like you’re reenforcing stereotypes if you’re seeing that people seem to fit a stereotype and responding based on that without getting to know them (because again, I don’t identify with the SJW stereotype, even though I fulfill a lot of the tropes- based on this thread, I’m not alone).
I probably break a lot of stereotypes, or maybe I don’t?
I’m a woke leftist who grew up “poor” (United States) in a rural farm area, yet I wasn’t a farmer, and had two college educated parents.
My roots are redneck, I grew up eating hunted game and surrounded by corn fields and forests.
I watch Democrats where I live now mock rural people, which is a shame. You should mock their bigotry and their stupid ideas, but you shouldn’t mock their existence or scorn all things rural.
These people are the downtrodden workers we’re supposed to stand for, they just need to be reached with the right messaging to break the chains of decades of propaganda and education, but no one really seems to want to do that.
I’ve always been a misfit, didn’t fit in with the red necks, but I don’t fit in with the cultured people, I guess I am the intersection of two borderzones of American culture, and it kind of fucking sucks.
People make tons of assumptions about me from first glance, but I don’t even know where I fall on half of the scales of sexuality and gender, I’m just me - I like to dance, I like good music, I to look at beautiful versions of the human form.
Thanks for reading.
you sound like you belong in one of those leftist small cities they have in the midwest.
the coastal elite leftists would eat you alive. they hate poor people more than anything else.
Yeah I live amongst a lot of coastal elites, they don’t get it at all.
Spouse and I have Michigan as one of our five year plan possibilities!
i went to Harvard and i come from a poor family that is uneducated.
I’ve regularly had interactions where I was told I should kill myself my entire adult life but supremely bitter rich kids who are super angry I’m smarter/more driven than they are. basically only made friends with international students because they didn’t care about how rich my parents were.
But I like living in a big city, so I just suck it up. There are no people like me here. They all got priced out, but I make enough to afford it and I ‘pass’ but as soon as anyone finds out my upbringing they HATE me. It’s so bizarre how much resentment they have towards poor people. The whiplash of ‘oh you went to HARVARD you must be so AMAZING’ to ‘you poor rural piece of shit you should just die’ is wild.
Man, I was raised super conservative in a town on the east coast. Now I’m a leftist. The distaste of undereducated, poor, rural people breaks my heart. These people are some of the hardest workers in the country and so much of our society relies on their labor. There’s no reason to look down on them. I hate the ignorance and conservative views, but when you’ve been fed propaganda your entire life and your community is full of like minded people it’s really hard to break out of it. I don’t get why leftists don’t try harder to reach them. Yes, it’s hard, because those beliefs are deep rooted, but some people can be educated. I’ve talked to people that say they won’t talk to people with super conservative or harmful religious beliefs because “there’s no changing them”. My response to that is always that you don’t have to argue or be hostile, but I was raised very conservative and if no one ever presented me with different viewpoints, gently challenged my beliefs, or educated me on facts that were hidden from me, I never would have started doing the thinking and the research I needed to change my worldview. I’d probably be a die-hard MAGA tradwife right now instead of being a single woman with a career who is also one of the most left leaning people most Americans will meet IRL.
