Does local culture affect socialization success?

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My feeling is that yes, it does. Depending on where you live, you can have a reserved, private culture, or a gregarious, "anything goes" culture. Many other variations too of course.

I'd like to ask this in as general a way as possible, so no pressure to say where you are located if you don't feel like it.

I have traveled to parts of the United States where people are so much friendlier than in my home town. Even as an Aspie, it makes it so much easier for me to just open up and talk to strangers. So much easier. In my city people generally keep to themselves, and it is what I have grown up being used to. Of course it is worse when I really want to reach out being the loner I am, but the social climate makes it very hard.

Do you think that the local culture of a place can make it less challenging for you to make friends if this is what you want to do?

It certainly can. I grew up in a town of about 70,000, not a major metro, but big enough to get lost in, and I did. I had one good friend at the end of Elementary School and the first year of Junior High, but other than that, my socialization was pretty much limited to relatives. There were a few kids my age I knew at church, but only because we'd all been in the same classes there since we were toddlers.

Just as I started High School, we moved to a major city and I disappeared into the mass of humanity. For two years, there were maybe two or three people at school I had multiple conversations with and other than that, I stayed in my room at home, reading or painting and listening to music. The kids at the church there were even more cliquish than the ones at school - not a single one of them ever directly addressed me the whole time we lived there and of course, I sat in the corner just waiting for time to go home.

Between my Sophomore and Junior years, my Dad graduated from Seminary and got his first appointment to a church in a very small town in the Deep South. From the moment we got there, the people in that town, young and old alike, were more friendly and open than anyone I'd ever known outside my own family. Young people my age talked to me as though they' known me for years and several went out of their way to show me around town and introduce me to their friends. By the time school officially started at the end of the summer, I pretty much knew all the other students there, at least by name. Now that's not to say I was ever the Belle of the Ball - just because we all knew each other by name didn't mean I was automatically invited to join in the social cliques. I was still a fringe character - part of the Geek Gallery, the misfits who sat together because the popular NT kids forgot we existed - but it was a step up that I felt people knew who I was, even if many of them didn't care.

Within that more intimate social context, it was possible for me to do things like dating. Its much easier to work up the nerve to ask someone out if you know that they at least know who you are and you've had some sort of conversational interaction before. Lost among the strangers in the city, I could never have done that. It was the closest thing to socially functional I had ever felt. I was still decades away from a diagnosis or having any idea what AS was, but it was always apparent that there was something not entirely normal about me and I felt it much less acutely in that place than anywhere I had been before.

I live in the Deep South. We do talk a lot more than other places and are friendlier and are expected to say more to each other, but you can actually get by with just a few stock phrases at first, as long as you remember when to say them and about what. Also, in some social situations there is a lot more pressure because we have "casual social", "business social", "best behavior social" and then there is "Junior League social" - that last one is a real hard row to hoe, especially for people like me and learning social skills later and still being slow to pick up on them for a long time.

Casual social is something like hanging out with your friends, going to a ball game, going to a concert or a bar, going on dates when you are already a couple and comfortable with each other, family things, etc. Business social is work situations basically. It also includes your spouses work functions and things, and when you are interacting with someone on a business type level, or talking to the bank about a loan or when you have to talk to a cop. Best behavior social is anything dressy, and with non-business people that you need to impress, church, weddings and funerals, pageants, some parties, possibly Homecoming depending on who you are with and where your seats are. Junior League social is when you have to deal with society types like Junior League or any social charity type functions where you are not a recipient of the charity. That's a very important distinction. If they are doing something for you, spending money and going to a lot of trouble to raise money for a cause that will help you, or direct charity like Magic Moments or something like that, they don't expect you to act the same way as they would if you bought a ticket to go the same function because one of your friends is helping host it. The level of socializing at the Junior League type events is kind of intense for me. I have to make sure I don't make mistakes, I have to remember to watch my facial expressions, I have to make sure I pretend to listen and care about what they say to me, etc. It's pretty damn exhausting. Don't ask me to explain why those of us who don't normally move in those circles, feel a need to put ourselves in that situation. It would be impossible to explain. It just happens sometimes.

I lived in DC for a year and people were nowhere near as casual there as they are here, and it was a chore to try and talk to anybody up there. The only saving grace I had was the men found my accent "charming" and there are times when I could have said just anything at all whether it made sense or not and gotten a positive reaction. And I'm sure I did because I'm not always appropriate or concise. But that was only from the men. The women hated me. Again, I think it was the accent. Or maybe just me. Or a combination.

That help at all?