The very German-looking Philip Oltermann (the glasses!) asks whether Germans just don't get social media because they, er, don't get communication in general:
When news magazine Focus announced this week that Germans were finally cottoning on to Twitter – the site reaching a record 3.5 million users – it was met with the digital equivalent of a shrug. One blogger suggested that Germans just don't know how to deal with social media:
"What they fundamentally do not see and get is the obvious, namely that Social Media is about communication. Communication/conversation is a dark hole in German culture. For Germans, talking first and foremost means conveying information. Conversation as a bonding agent in any form of interpersonal encounter is literally a non-starter in Germany. (If you've ever been to an awkward German office party where people have no problem with facing one another without saying a word for, oooh half an hour, you'll know what I mean.)"
Most Germans will recognise at least a grain of truth in that. Even back in the late 19th century, the sociologist Friedrich Tönnies wrote in despair about the German inability to get its head around the concept of an open and interactive Gesellschaft or society – tight-knit, closed-off Gemeinschaften or communities was apparently all they could do. Few young Germans still keep up the Stammtisch tradition, though small talk can still be a struggle. I recently attended a German conference in which the last item on the programme was billed as Kommunikatives Beisammensein, "communicative socialisation". Or, as people might call it in Britain, "going to the pub".
The rest of the article tries to add some caveats to the stereotype, in my view not very convincingly. Germans are just plain much more reticent and cautious about sharing information than Anglo-Saxons. Again, as with all national traits, this is a matter of averages and bell curves. The chart below, which I stole from some website, shows light orange as the standard normal distribution of 'communicativeness' (or 'chattiness') among Anglo-Saxons on the right, and among Germans on the left, in darker orange.
No, really, this is exactly what the chart shows! This is Science, people! In any event, if makes my point: although you can always find some German who's chattier than an American, the modal German is much more taciturn than the modal American. I think the Brits would fit just about in the middle, but I'm no expert there.
I'm german and I approve your theory.
But I also want to add my perspective on that matter. While I do find my pleasure in social interactions beyond the pure exchange of informations, I'm regularly overwhelmed by the chattiness of american or british or australian people. You may have the need to talk all the time but I don't and all too often I get highly annoyed by anglo-saxons who have to share every frickin thought that comes to their mind. I HATE THAT it's exhausting and an abuse of the ability to speak!
Posted by: deutschmann | March 06, 2012 at 05:24 PM
Germans are much better at light-hearted conversation and smalltalk than English speakers. Bonding in a relaxed Klönschnack is much more common and accepted than in those tight-lipped "Anglo-Saxon" countries where people stare at each other wordlessly for hours on end. In addition, the Germans' grasp of social media is far superior. Americans and Britons rarely use Twitter at all, and if they do, they use it incorrectly.
My evidence for this? Oh right, you don't need any evidence to play at this game.
Posted by: Sebastian | February 25, 2012 at 07:20 PM
> as with all national traits, this is a
> matter of averages and bell curves [...]
> This is Science, people!
No it isn't. Positing the existence of national traits is known as culturalism to any self-respecting member of the regressive left, and it's considered heinous. You're not even to joke about it as that would acknowledge the existence of undesirable thought, which we must not do.
Thank God we're being heinous over here, at least now and then. We can afford that, as we rest assured that those traits follow strictly national boundaries and nothing else; there's more, um, science to prove this than you can shake a bell curve at. Should we err on the side of righteous thinking we'd still rest assured that it wouldn't matter in any relevant aspect of human existence and beneficial societal order, so wrongways is rightways anyways. Socialism will sort things out eventually, so we don't have to. Should nothing help, keep tongue in cheek til further notice. After all, strips like these do entertain the intelligentsia, so not all hope is lost. They're not dumb, just shy, they chuckle when nobody's looking.
Posted by: M. Möhling | February 24, 2012 at 11:04 PM