Oh dear Oh dear Oh dear
Oct. 29th, 2022 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oursinOkay, this lady writing in to AITA was creepy to the max, because she wasn't being inspired by her groovy cosmopolitan multilingual coworker to actually broaden her interests, only to copy them to her dating profile with the intention of making herself look a more interesting person.
Which not surprisingly backfired on her.
But what made me bang my head on the desk, at least metaphorically, was the cringeyness of 'I’m your “basic white girl” with generic interests and by being born and bred in Birmingham, I speak only one language, English.'
Maybe it's a different Birmingham, not the multicultural multiethnic city in the West Midlands, the largest metropolitan area in the UK outside London, 'the social, cultural, financial and commercial centre of the Midlands', with all this to be said about its cultural scene.
However, even it's Birmingham, Alabama, that also seems to have a vibrant cultural life going on.
Not to mention, coming from anywhere doesn't mean you only speak one language - people do learn other languages, for fun or profit or necessity.
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Date: 2022-10-29 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-10-29 05:30 pm (UTC)"AUTOMOD Thanks for posting! This comment is a copy of your post so readers can see the original text if your post is edited or removed. This comment is NOT accusing you of copying anything. Read this before contacting the mod team
I (28f) for work a big sales company. I’m an assistant. One of the people working in my department is Sarah (33f). She only just started recently but seems to have made herself at home.
I admit, at first I was a bit jealous of her but then, I started admiring her. I’m the first to admit that I’m your “basic white girl” with generic interests and by being born and bred in Birmingham, I speak only one language, English.
I’ve been very inspired by Sarah to change things up.
She has such an eclectic music taste, she’ll listen to death metal one minute only to switch to Cumbia or 90s pop the next (she uses Spotify on her phone while working and I’ve seen her music selection). I tried listening to it but can’t stand it, even symphonic metal is too much for me and cumbia is in another languge. Got headache from listening to both.
I also love her fashion sense but she’s like 8” taller than me so a lot of clothes inspired by her look funny on me but hey, I love them and feel great in them.
Anyway, I am single and thought about trying online dating so I made a profile. Like I said, I’m your boring white girl so I got inspired by her. I made my profile also my with social media profiles to match them. I listed some bands that she listens to so I can sound more interesting even though I don’t listen to them.
I did the same with some of the authors she reads (although I haven’t realised some of those authors never oublished on English until it was pointed out).
I listed some of the movies she mentioned in conversations only to realise that they too haven’t been released in English. I tried watching some Spanish series she listed but I got bored.
Last thing I’ve done is list languages she speaks as ones I speak. I thought it would make me interesting and I highly doubted someone else would speak all of them and try to test me. (Oh yeah, Sarah Estonian and speaks Russian and Estonian natively and when speaking with customers, she flips between English and Spanish and Russian like crazy. I wish I could do that!)
Here’s where things got icky. One of the guys i work with found my dark my profile and recognised these things as Sarah’s (they’re friends and have known each other before she started working with us). He told her and she got really funny with me. She didn’t confront me but I think the guy told everyone we work with because people started making comments or asking me things like “name 3 songs by” or did you watch an episode of xyz, etc. obviously, I couldn’t answer so I confronted Sarah about this and told her she was bullying me. I was inspired by her and she went and done this.
Sarah said she didn’t do nor say anything and she barely knows me that what I was doing was creepy and k should stop.
I told her she’s an asshole for taking an innocent inspiration so out of proportion. She told me to never speak to her again.
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Date: 2022-10-29 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-10-30 03:13 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-10-29 05:24 pm (UTC)Said entirely unironically and with no sense of how depressing that is?
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Date: 2022-10-29 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-29 07:08 pm (UTC)I came across a thinky piece during the week about people who sneer at 'intellectual/cultural snobs' and how they are most often the gate-keepery ones who don't like it when people have tastes outside the box they think is the right one (which is a bit like the people who think people only say they like classical music or serious novels or whatever and they don't really, it must be A Pose).
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Date: 2022-10-29 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-29 06:17 pm (UTC)So much to be boggled by, not least that that is an incredibly small town attitude for someone who grew up in a very multicultural city (I'm wondering if she actually comes from somewhere that's actually next to Birmingham that no-one non-local will have heard of, like the folks I grew up with who now claim they come from Stoke-on-Trent on their FB profiles) and B - how the hell does she think she's going to find a fun date by lying that she likes a load of stuff that shd actually doesn't?!
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Date: 2022-10-29 07:44 pm (UTC)"I think the guy told everyone ... so I confronted Sarah" is particularly special.
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Date: 2022-10-29 07:49 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-10-29 07:52 pm (UTC)If it's Brum, then 'necessity' would include it being mandatory to study at least one language during UK schooling. Okay, that's mostly not to any high level, but it is a non-zero exposure to a foreign language.
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Date: 2022-10-30 01:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-10-31 03:20 pm (UTC)(And anyone who decides to embellish their profile with something they don't actually do, like, or otherwise is setting themselves up for a backfire. Be what you're like, be like yourself.)