Cringe sublime

IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
entertainment said:
I don't know much about Icelandics but the Finns are supposedly the most extreme in this aspect, very averse to any form of social interaction.
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I've got some good friends who are Finn's and I've been to Helsinki - but I thought it was a miserable place.

Mr. Tea said:
Hence the joke, that I'm all the Nordic countries had (but definitely the Finns, anyway), that when the government relaxed the two-metre social distancing rule, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and went back to the usual ten metres.
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There is the joke that the four (identical) statues on the main station represent the four Finnish emotions.

Iceland seems to have or at least did have extremely strict and oppressive laws though.
 
IdleRich

IdleRich

IdleRich
Also Petteri often tells the one where two Finnish brothers go their mother's funeral. Afterwards they are in a bar and they have a pint and a double vodka each in silence, then another, and another... as they sit down for their fourth one of them says "So..." and the other interrupts saying "Did you come here to drink or to talk?"
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
luka said:
I havent felt embaressment since the age of 14. its an adolescent emotion essentially.
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who can remember the last time they blushed?

I was a chronic blusher when i was a teenager

I feel like I might have blushed about something in reasonably recent memory, but I can't remember the circumstances - it's hard to imagine what they could have been. you would think at this age one would beyond such reactions.

it's a curious physiological response - a reaction to humiliation, awkwardness, or just being the centre of attention, that draws even more attention to the sufferer - like waving a big red flag above your head, "over here! look at me!"

probably there's something in Freud about it

one of those only humans do it things. like being tickled / ticklish. Arthur Koestler had a whole theory about tickling.
 
shiels

shiels

_
It’s involuntary signalling. A social cohesion mechanism that evolved to stabilise and reaffirm status hierarchies, signal arousal, expose lies etc
 
shiels

shiels

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Last time I remember was a big brain in work who I really respect gave me a good compliment out of the blue and I was ashamed of how much it meant to me maybe, tried to play it cool in front of her. Beamer. Scundered
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
My guess is Americans blush far less often, since we typically love being the center of attention, love to receive praise, and generally have no shame. Slight exaggeration, but not much.

One of my English wife's biggest fears is being the center of attention, and/or receiving praise. I tell her she just made a delicious dinner and her immediate reaction is to point out a few minor things that could have been better.
 
Leo

Leo

Well-known member
Funny that embarrassment can be generated by opposing forces: when you do something wrong, but also when you receive praise. One is being uncomfortable for screwing up, the other is the whole I'm-not-worthy, pride before a fall, etc.
 
shiels

shiels

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That’s quite a common thing, all kinds of cultures around the world are fiercely deprecating especially in hospitality
 
B

blissblogger

Well-known member
I wonder if it is possible to blush on your own, in the memory of a social embarrassment that happened, or in the imagining one to come. Or do there have to be people around for the signaling to signify....

(C.f. Koestler who says it's impossible for person to tickle themselves - you get the sensation but not the nervous laughter because in his explanation of tickling, it's involves a very rapid oscillation between fear and reassurance (you know the person tickling you is not out to harm you. If a stranger came up and tickled you, you wouldn't laugh, it would be alarming - you'd fight them off or run away).

I like all those old expressions like "colour went to his cheeks". Or "Ginger blushed hotly". Probably these are all quaint bookish kinds of language never heard in real life.

It is becoming in a woman, but less so in a man. Perhaps that is patriarchy at work. But even the fact that one of the main kinds of make-up is blusher seems to suggest it's deep rooted. (although I suppose pink also connotes health and youth as well - rosy cheeks).
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Leo said:
One of my English wife's biggest fears is being the center of attention, and/or receiving praise. I tell her she just made a delicious dinner and her immediate reaction is to point out a few minor things that could have been better.
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That's a very specific kind of Englishness. I mean, I don't think most English people instinctively do that - but most people who do that probably are English.

Edit: I've just read shiel's post about the universality of self-deprecation, and now I suspect I was talking complete bollocks just then.
 
M

martin

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My experience of Finns is you can barely get a word out of them - then, a bottle of vodka down, they're laughing and dancing on the bar, or holding onto their mates' rear rear bumpers and being dragged through the snow at 30mph.
 
Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
Leo said:
My guess is Americans blush far less often, since we typically love being the center of attention, love to receive praise, and generally have no shame. Slight exaggeration, but not much.

One of my English wife's biggest fears is being the center of attention, and/or receiving praise. I tell her she just made a delicious dinner and her immediate reaction is to point out a few minor things that could have been better.
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saying sorry, sometimes even for existing, lurks deep within the English psyche

if I take the bus from Sherwood into town some days, when it’s the equivalent of pension day for masses of old dears who tumble into the shops for bargains, every other word is sorry on this short trip

if I had to put a face to this phenomenon it would be an older version of Olivia Colman, nervously flitting with a specific half-smile (not your partner @Leo , more a generalised trait)
 
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