Tuesday, September 28, 2010

National stereotypes

I'm having a hard time lately finding inspiration for blog topics, which is sad, but even sadder for me given that I don't even blog about strict WoW stuff most of the time.

Anyways, so in keeping with my "not really related to WoW at all" blog theme, a kind of funny and not necessarily politically correct lesson in reminding us that we're each looking at things from our own perspective with our own stereotypes. Yanko Tsvetkov has created a series of maps depicting Europe according to national stereotypes.

Europe according to Americans:

Europe according to the Brits:

Europe according to the Italians:

Europe according to the Germans:

Europe according to the French:

Ok, maybe I should at least try to bring it back to WoW somehow. So we have US, EU, Oceanic, South American, and Asian WoW servers. I wonder whether server or pug or raiding dynamics differ based on cultural and country differences. I mean is there less pvp graveyard farming on EU servers? More pleasantries and hellos in pugs on South American servers?

4 comments:

  1. British Map is spot on!

    To be honest we have had a real mix of people in guilds I have been in haliling from as as far away as Brazil and Israel.
    One thing I have always been impressed and slightly embarressed about is their excellent written and spoken english. In fact some of the worst spellers in our our guild hail from the good old UK.
    Though for some reason some of the real nutters on vent have always been Dutch.

    Zetter

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  2. I have no idea about cultural differences across WoW regions, but I love my international guild to bits. And it's useful too! Since I'm used to all the different accents, starting a new job in a multinational company was pretty easy, I could even understand the Chinese guy who mumbled.

    Also, like Zetter said, the Brits are usually the worst spellers and it gives me an evil sort of satisfaction to correct them. (Then again, I do it in Romanian too, I'm a grammar nazi.)

    But one thing I really, really dislike about the EU WoW servers is the existence of separate ES and FR zones. Those are the two languages I want to practice and there's no one around to do it with...

    I'm impressed by the pictures, by the way. We exist! Ok, everyone thinks we're vampires or thieves, but at least we're not uncharted territory...

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  3. This was awesome. Thanks for the heads up.

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  4. @Zetter: Those Dutch! Nutters, eh! It must be all the orange.. it goes to their heads and makes them nutty?

    @Jen: You know what? I should do my own version of the map with how I think of Europe in terms of the WoW blogging world. Like Zetter and Tam would be in England... and you'd be across Romania... Larissa up in Sweden...

    @Damemrung: Thanks! I was hoping no one would get offended since I found it quite humorous.

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