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Paul05
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10 May 2021, 12:54 pm

Hello again, I'm in mood to highlight some of my experience about a variety of countries – and communications too! This new era brought changes, but I still remember several nearby countries and cities, including Stockholm, well. I admit that historical center's narrow, winding streets with vegan cafes add holiday atmosphere to a visit. Bridges after royal buildings lead to modest, silver-coated downtown area. Despite the short distance from other European regions... I felt pacific vibes in this city, where even urban districts are free from that modern fuss.

I'm also interested in Swedish language and its musical legacy. They sing in both languages, and most songs that are in my collection are pop (ABBA, Björn Skifs, Herreys, Eric Saade) The more song lists I read, the more talented artists around EU I discover. That's a pleasure :)

However, social side of life seems different from cultural, and most of my attemps didn't give success. Despite my Aspergers, I'm sociable and easy-going (especially in the Internet, writing seems so comfortable). That doesn't correspond to popular stereotypes and I'm OK with it. I often use Facebook and it has majority of true EU people in it. Unfortunately, nearly all the messages I send to Finnish, Swedish or German users seem to disappear. I often write in their native language with A2-B1 level (!) I'm not sure if they deleted them or system rebuked them automatically. What about friend requests... I'm quite shy to send them, and aside from a couple of other persons, the most notable who confirmed me after a series of interesting conversations was a Belgian man who once quit his job and became homeless. Don't you think that it's a feeble magnitude for a person who is keen on cross-cultural communication and friendly dialogue?

I heard that it's not mainstream to add people from other social circles on FB. I'd like to know if it's myth or not. As you might understand I have more gypsy-like format, so chatting with neighboring people (that excludes my mom and close friends) isn't my cup of tea. I also know some penpal and dating sites, but most of the Nordic there are impolite, they often make requests and rules (wawawa I hate boring rules) and tend to ignore messages. Possibly their profiles are fakes, as Scandinavian spirit seems much higher to me.

It all gave me kind memories that I keep, but I would be interested if it's possible and worthwhile to develop my acquaintance with Sweden outside cultural sightseeing's boundaries, adding social liveliness.

I would like to ask our friendly community – especially who also faced this situation, is there an opportunity to get effective remote contacts? Aside of family-based folks and school pupils, it would be great to see linguistic students (e.g. Finnish or Chinese), leaders who give vocational guidance to someone with ASD or psychological volunteers. The list can go for so long, actually, whatever comes on mind. Let me count on you!

Not that picky, but just in case I admit that I'm not into all that Discord or PewDiePie stuff, or philosophical discussions and flirting. Preferably into calligraphy, DIY, travels, music, watercolor art...



Fireblossom
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11 May 2021, 10:17 am

Paul05 wrote:
However, social side of life seems different from cultural, and most of my attemps didn't give success. Despite my Aspergers, I'm sociable and easy-going (especially in the Internet, writing seems so comfortable). That doesn't correspond to popular stereotypes and I'm OK with it. I often use Facebook and it has majority of true EU people in it. Unfortunately, nearly all the messages I send to Finnish, Swedish or German users seem to disappear. I often write in their native language with A2-B1 level (!) I'm not sure if they deleted them or system rebuked them automatically. What about friend requests... I'm quite shy to send them, and aside from a couple of other persons, the most notable who confirmed me after a series of interesting conversations was a Belgian man who once quit his job and became homeless. Don't you think that it's a feeble magnitude for a person who is keen on cross-cultural communication and friendly dialogue?


Many people in Facebook ignore messages that come from strangers, especially if they come from a foreigner 'cause they're likely to be spam. Even if the people you message are part of same facebook groups as you, like a group dedicated to certain band or music genre, and you've talked with them on that group a little, they might not realize the connection or even if they do, they might not be interested in talking in private.

You know, I'm not sure what you're trying to ask with your message. Are you looking for tips on how to make friends online from other countries? Or are you looking for foreign contacts with similiar interests from this site? I'm not a native English speaker so I might simply be misreading or missing something, of course. :)



Paul05
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11 May 2021, 12:23 pm

Thanks for your guidance. Some people, including my Belgian penfriend, have already told that Facebook is solely for engaging with family, closer people or classmates. I only wanted to become finally convinced in it. I agree, it has a variety of groups, but despite numerous discussions, nearly everyone is on their own there, and I turn out to be rather shy to publish posts. Moreover, I'm not sure if they can ever be interesting for audience.

On Facebook, there are a couple of far-away friends with whom my family once talked in person. They also didn't get my messages. So pity and disgusting that they seemingly mark all distant messages as spam. Perhaps users themselves put filters so nobody can bother them, I'm full of understanding and so it can be justified.

Doctors told about my high-functioning ASD ten years ago and I don't know how things have got changed since then. Personally, I think that my disorder affects my mentality in certain way and THAT may distract foreigners who grew up seeing local ways of communication. I fully have EU origins, but despite my writing skills, you probably have noticed that my accent and vibes might be similar to ones you saw in Thailand or Sri Lanka (once I had a couple of Chinese friends that were found so easily)

Yes, I would like to get acquainted with someone online. I understand that I can't get genuine friendship over the screen, but we still could share wishes, holiday cards, discuss various events, practice languages or exchange information that is barely found on search engines or YouTube. For me, this hobby would be more fun than loads of repetitive stand-up videos.

Once I used a handful of web sites, half of them is attended by people with commercial aims (e.g. tutors, professional learners or sellers). Others are mainly full of perverts, slight profanity, silent profiles or ignorant people who set up pointless requirements.

In other words, one of my dreams is to interact with Germans, Swedes or Danes online the way it happens in simple everyday life, exchanging actual vibes mainly behind the screen, but without that so-called iffy digital cover that most people run to while surfing on Internet. However, I already think it's nearly impossible because of my differences of correspondence and scarce ways to closed social circles of people of 1st World countries.



Fireblossom
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12 May 2021, 10:07 am

Paul05 wrote:
On Facebook, there are a couple of far-away friends with whom my family once talked in person. They also didn't get my messages. So pity and disgusting that they seemingly mark all distant messages as spam. Perhaps users themselves put filters so nobody can bother them, I'm full of understanding and so it can be justified.


I think there's a bit of a better safe than sorry -mentality there; as in, better to assume a message from a stranger is spam and not answer, potentially losing a chance for a genuine friendship than to take the chance with every stranger and end up getting links with viruses or messages with inappropriate content. I'm the better safe than sorry -type; I always delete the messages from complete strangers when using Facebook. Keyword here is complete, though; I've had long chats with people I've run in to in Facebook groups and have never met in person. There was this one hotel worker from Vietnam in particular that I chatted a lot with about a lot of things... though for the first week, I thought he was a she. :lol:

Quote:
I fully have EU origins, but despite my writing skills, you probably have noticed that my accent and vibes might be similar to ones you saw in Thailand or Sri Lanka (once I had a couple of Chinese friends that were found so easily)


Actually, no. I'm really bad with different English accents; online I usually can't even tell Brits and Americans apart.
Fully EU origins = Britain?

We have, or at least we've had, a few Swedes here on this forum. I also recall there being at least one guy who's probably a Brit but is really interested in Germany. Of course, there are probably people from the country itself here too, but I can't think of anyone from the top of my head.
You could start another topic in the off topic discussion -section (or here in friends -section) with a title "Any Swedes, Germans or Danes here?" or something similiar to that and then explain in your first message to the topic that you'd like to have friends from those countries to talk about casual things. Not sure if it'll work, but it should be worth the try; at the very least, others on the spectrum who know that you're on it too might not be as put off by your communication style even if it is somehow weird.



Paul05
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12 May 2021, 12:53 pm

That's a true story. My mom has said that 1st World country residents are extremely cautious when accepting a new contact on Internet. She compared it with picking up mushrooms around the forest, because they can eventually stumble upon a poisonous one.

No, I live in Russia and I was born here, but since the old system broke down in Eastern Europe, many of remaining republics now try to draw closer to Western standards of life and accent. Our country is still not a EU member, I think that economical and social reforms are lacking to make collaboration work properly :I

Thanks for your idea, but I'm not sure if it actually works haha. I've actually mentioned Scandinavia in my topic, but in fact nobody comes anyway. I can gladly create a topic whenever I'm ready and I'm not shy enough, just don't want to be way too persistent with it.

It's all great, but I would like to communicate with Sweden, Danes or Germans on wider basis, including neurotypicals. I'm not sure if such networks exist, where peaceful casual conversations with simple, down-to-earth, but at least relatively *real* EU foreigners are possible. It appears that Facebook is not the best option for it so far. I heard about MySpace but it seems like it's been down for a while, and I'm not sure if they operate it still. As I remember it was better for FINDING friends. :)



Mona Pereth
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21 May 2021, 4:55 pm

Paul05 wrote:
I agree, it has a variety of groups, but despite numerous discussions, nearly everyone is on their own there, and I turn out to be rather shy to publish posts.

Do you feel more comfortable publishing posts here on Wrong Planet than in Facebook groups?

(I hope so. Welcome to Wrong Planet!)

On pretty much any online platform, if you want to make friends with whom you can have private conversations, you need to participate in public discussion for a while first. If you feel shy about publishing an initial post, then perhaps it might be best if you just post replies to other people's posts most of the time, instead of introducing new topics.

But don't force yourself to post just for the sake of posting. Post only when you naturally have something to say about a given topic.

Anyhow, to meet people online, a better place than Facebook would be message boards, similar to Wrong Planet, devoted to whatever topics you personally find especially interesting. Alas, there are relatively few message boards anymore.

So if you can't find a message board devoted to a given interest of yours, another alternative might be to find a major social media platform that is more discussion-oriented than Facebook. An example might be Reddit.

No matter where you go online, most people will prefer to engage with your primarily in public discussion and only secondarily via exchange of private messages. They will be willing to exchange private messages only after they have already gotten to know you fairly well via public discussion, and, even then, they will still prefer to communicate with you primarily in public and only secondarily in private.

The main reason for this is simply efficiency. You can stay in touch with more of your online friends per amount of typing in a public discussion than you can in a private discussion.


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amykitten
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21 May 2021, 5:06 pm

If you game at all pick an MMORPG and go on a EU server, join a guild/gang/whatever they happen to call them and get to know them that way. I still have a lot of friends in various EU countries that way after getting to know them whilst gaming along side them.

Is it possible to go to Sweden and do some studying there? If I recall they might have some free university courses, obviously you'd still need to sort out accommodation and living expenses.