Do you have any opinion about cultural exchanges?
Hello tildes, sorry if this is the wrong ~tilde to ask about it.
I have been a mod of /r/brasil for almost a year now, and recently became a mod of /r/europe. One of the things that I really kept me on Reddit were the AMAs (I loved the Obama and Bill Gates AMA) and cultural exchanges. You see, since 2015, /r/brasil organized this event between different national subreddits like /r/de, /r/AskAnAmerican, /r/singapore, /r/portugal, /r/CasualUK, etc. You can see the full list here. Also, we're currently running one cultural exchange with some Canadian subreddits (link). I really like how the Internet can still help us learn different perspectives, new music, food, and some funny banter between countries.
When I see people lamenting the current state of the Internet, I try to point them out to this kind of thing, because I genuinely see good things. I see opportunity to learn, to understand, to gracefully disagree or agree with someone.
When I first found out about tildes I thought, "how can we do this kind of awesome event between different cultures and nations?", and I guess there's no way to do this unless it's relevant for the context of a post. In a way what I want to say is, "there's more to internet discussions than the US and their issues".
Anyway, I guess this way kind of a ramble, kind of a question to y'all.
It would be really cool to use the systems of ~ itself to promote cultural exchanges. For example, I imagine there will someday be a ~brazil, ~sf, ~paris, ~morocco, ect. If ~ puts them down under a hierarchy, say ~places or ~world or something, then they'll be grouped under a single, visible spot.
Which could promote a lot of different worldviews.
In the original prototype for the ~ hierarchy we had a section for ~world (or ~loc or ~geo we didn't decide on a name) .. and if we get popular enough it would likely be added as a group with various subgroups in it like ~world.us, ~world.canada, etc.
That seems cool, I like that :D
That would be interesting! Of course, it should be mentioned that moderation shouldn't be overlooked. Some european subreddits were taken by extremists for years before admin intervention.
I started /r/snackexchange and (the half-failed) /r/mysterybox back on reddit for that purpose. The problem with any sort of physical cultural exchange is that postage costs and shitty/corrupt postal systems exclude most of the interesting countries. I don't think we've ever had an African exchanger or most countries in Asia. Latin American, Eastern European, and Middle Eastern countries are wildly underrepresented while most exchangers are from North America or Western Europe. It cost me $80 when I was stationed in Japan to send a box to Norway, and while that was no big deal to either of us it's an average week's wage in some places.
Limiting it to postcards or small envelopes would help with that but unfortunately reality lag behinds the internet in internationalism.
I think you got the wrong idea. This kind of cultural exchange is not really like Secret Santa, but more like an exchange of questions, discussions, perspectives.
This kind of stuff you're proposing is much more complex! Check our cultural exchange with /r/AskAnAmerican to understand better what I'm saying.
Here's hoping one day we can help you facilitate a similar cultural exchange between the various regional/country groups on ~
It's a neat idea and I love your optimism, btw. :)
I think it'd be a great idea. I used to read /r/AskEurope quite a bit, they did cultural exchanges sometimes, not to mention the whole sub itself is like a cultural exchange. I think at the moment Tilde has too few users for this to work really well, but once the site expands a little and is opened to the public, I think such a thing would certainly be possible.
Absolutely! /r/europe also does cultural exchanges.
I don't know if it's been done before, but when you mentioned food in the OP I imagined people sharing recipes from their culture and other folks trying to make them, posting their results and talking back and forth about tips. A bit more involved than talking about it, but maybe interesting?
(I guess it could get flamey... "This dish sucked." "No, you sucked at making it." "I hate [x] food.")
It's something like that, but I've never seen a back and forth, just sharing recipes (sometimes with a link), tips, etc. Some people happen to be married to brazilians, or know them, so I guess they get curious. I have seen foreigners post in /r/brasil asking for tips of a gift for their brazilian SO, and most tips are related to food!
I think part of the difficulty would be the ingredients. I love cooking new things, and will go on experimental binges. But sometimes it's REALLY experimental because It's hard to find the ingredients. I can't get stuff for a good masa (tamale corn based dough) where I am now.
When I lived in Arizona in the USA, I couldn't find breadfruit for fa'alifu ulu, (breadfruit, onions and coconut milk in a sort of potato salad consistency,) but it was possible to find taro and taro leaves.
I think it would be really fun to have recipe challenges. Perhaps some brainstorming would help. I still am befuddled by the dish 'Toad in a Hole.'
That's true, I totally hadn't thought about ingredient issues.
My dad makes toad in the hole~ It's basically just Yorkshire pudding with sausages in it, but Yorkshire pudding can be tricky so sometimes it's just easier to cook the sausages separately. (Yorkshire pudding is a bit like American popovers... I think? It's the best~)