u/Cute_Advance_2124

I'm going to be moving to the mainland very soon. I am extremely nervous about it, I've visited multiple times but visiting is different from living somewhere.

This is a fairly highly specific experience, but the culture shock that I experience whenever I have visited the mainland is crazy considering it is the same country. As someone who spent their entire life in Hawaii, even though Hawaii is a state, the culture here is legitimately distinct and not just in a "oh, we like this food here" kind of thing.

It is much more conformist and conservative ( not in a republican way, but in an East asian way). To the point where, I think that your average Republicans are actually more ideologically liberal in some ways than your average person here who votes blue.

I think family structure is considered to be much more important in Hawaii, and your lowkey expected to put your family of everything else. Many local parents expect you to take care of them when they're old.

Whenever my boyfriend has gone out and people have tried to speak to us in public on the mainland he gets weirded out by it, wondering why people over there talk so much.

I remember there was a lady talking to us in the store once when we were in the PNW, and my boyfriend was saying how much he hated the area because people talk to strangers and emphasized how she was weird for complimenting me so passionately.

He actually got uncomfortable with how many compliments I got from strangers, just because he's just not used to that.

Something that i've also noticed is that I get complimented regularly over there, which pretty much never happens here from people who are actually from here ( it is always tourists).

If you want to know something funny, I've actually seen cashiers from the mainland get yelled at by locals here for talking too much and being told to shut up.

I remember this one time, we had a cashier from California who was Asian so people who would assume that she was a local, until she spoke. A local man told her to "stop talking so much" in Japanese, because he assumed that she was herself was Japanese. She said that she was not Japanese after he asked and then he told her that she talked too much in English.

I just think it's a much more reserved culture in some ways when you're outside of the touristy areas. The only person that I know who makes regular small talk with strangers is someone who is mentally challenged ( I don't mean that as an insult, it is meant literally), while on the mainland I feel like it's a much more normal default position to have.

I never get into conversations at the grocery store, or in the elevator here like people talk about. It's like a parallel universe to me.

Also, something that is weird for me is when people tell you that they want to hang out, and they don't actually want to do that. I've never experienced that here. I think that's more of a west coast American white people thing to do lol. I think that people in Hawaii are just less likely to extend any sort of invitation to people who they just met like that, unless it's actually a plan of theirs.

I also think that white and black American people tend to smile at strangers more, which is something I am not used to. The only times that people have done that is when they are trying to actually scam me here because they often assume that i'm not from here.

It's also weird seeing how more individualistic the culture is. In Hawaii, you don't see a lot of alternative people when it seems that even in conservative areas of the mainland they are comparably everywhere, even places you would not expect like Tennessee. It's fun. Everyone in Hawaii is kind of boring lol.

Also, something that I have noticed is that people here did not have a filter and a lot of topics are considered fine to talk or joke about here that would be considered taboo in most of the country.

None of this is exactly bad, it's just very different. I feel like living in Hawaii is unique experience due to the fact that it's so isolated and it's kind of a cultural enclave.

To begin, there are many, many things that are wrong with the US and its culture, and many things that are indeed uniquely American in spirit.

HOWEVER....

This kind of thing gets really irritating, and i'm going to share an example. I am American, but half of my family is not. They live in their country, they are not immigrants to the US, I lived over there when I was a little kid but then moved to the US with my mom.

It is an extremely conservative culture. Very prudish, very misogynistic, extremely homophobic, transphobic and nationalist. I do not talk to my family anymore for a variety of reasons, but that is a part of it.

Now, my interactions with my father have been especially bad. He disowned me for dating outside of "my color", telling me that i've been brainwashed by America and the woke agenda.

Whenever i've spoken about this online, just venting, it seems that many people, especially women from there, know exactly what region my dad is from from just my description and have been very kind about it, usually telling me the men are cheating, violent assholes and to not get entangled with them.

My own family from that side, have told me that I was intelligent for not dating men from that country. The shit that my dad would say ( saying that beating your wife is fine if she's out of line, bragging about beating gay people in the street) is wild to most people from western countries. Also, my entire family from that side has disowned my LGBT relatives, which is not really seen as a problem by any of them, even the more liberal ones.

Occasionally, I'd get a (usually) European person commenting saying, how Americans are obsessed with race and how this is an insanely American thing.

Which...they would often delete when I said what country my dad is from and how he tells me I am Americanized for thinking it is OK to have a boyfriend before being married, that gay people are fine and also to date outside of my race (well, he says "culture" but he really means "race" because he is against me dating other "colors" of people, including if they were from his country and says that in his country, if people saw me with a man not of my color it would be a great shame and that I would be a social pariah.)

It's kind of entertaining, because my father would actually do the same thing i'm complaining about ( thinking that only Americans think it's okay to date outside of the race as a woman or thinking that being in a relationship without being married is okay). He thinks that the only reason why I think that this is acceptable behavior is because i've been brainwashed by the USA, and if I was raised in his country, I would know that this is evil and American behavior.

Reddit would get a kick from the fact that my family from that side have said that not being religious and not thinking that there are satanic forces is an American thing.

There are plenty of minor examples that I could think of right now, but this is just a pretty interesting example because it's basically ascribing anything that someone does not like to an Americanism.

There are many stupid things about the US, and there are plenty of stupid people in the US, but the idea that anything that you do not like or agree with is American is irritating and is pretty perversive on social media.