Adventures in Arguing with People in Facebook Comment Threads... (Continued)

There's a Facebook group that most Expats in Ho Chi Minh City are a part of.  It's a good way to get information about what's going on in the city.

There's also a lot of arguing and bickering that goes on.  (Some people come to the Internet specifically to argue about stuff.)

I posted an argument I had in the comment threads of this Facebook group last year.  And now I'm going to do it again.  (Re-posting Facebook arguments is admittedly incredibly self-indulgent, but sometimes if I think the topic is interesting, I get the urge to throw it up on the blog on the off-chance it might interest someone else.  Feel free to ignore this if it's not at all interesting to you.  All names have been removed and replaced by XXXX.)

Anyway, someone posted in the group Facebook page:

Everywhere I go I get cut off in queues, I get grabbed physically to be shown things, my questions are ignored or answered with the wrong answer without care if understood or not, service is expedited, rarely any form of greeting is ever used. Help me understand is the culture different or are just bad people to blame?

Actually, before I give my response to this, let me give some background.
About every week, someone will post something like this on the Facebook page.  And then people will flood into the comments section.  Half the people will post something like, "Yes, you're absolutely right, Vietnamese people are the worst!"  and half the people will post something like, "You are a racist jerk.  If you don't like Vietnamese people, you should go home!"

In all the fighting and mud-slinging, no one ever says the obvious, which is that the person is going through Culture Shock, and that these kind of reactions are perfectly normal in Stage 2 Culture Shock.

The JET Programme (W), which I did from 2001-2004, to its credit, did a lot to warn its participants about Culture Shock.  We went through a lot of training seminars and orientation sessions in which we were told about the stages of Culture Shock, and what the expected time line would be.

This is really valuable information, and every organization that recruits people to work or teach abroad should tell their employees about this.
Unfortunately, most of them don't.
In my years since JET, working in Cambodia and Vietnam, I've realized how little information most expats have about Culture Shock.
I've often encountered co-workers who are really depressed about Cambodia or Vietnam, and I have to explain to them that they are going through Culture Shock, because they don't know what is happening.  No one had ever warned them about what to expect when they were recruited to teach abroad.

So, anyway, I chimed in the comment section, to try to explain to this young man what was happening to him.

This sounds like classic stage 2 culture shock. I'm guessing you have been in Vietnam now somewhere between 2 and 6 months. Is this correct?
https://www.princeton.edu/oip/practical-matters/Cultural-Adjustment.pdf

He responded:

well I've been around Southeast Asia for a while and I'm myself of partial East Asian heritage so it's not like I'm unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Asian cultures, what I'm saying is very specific to VN.

I said:

According to the models of culture shock, what you're expressing is perfectly normal at about the 2 month to 6 months stage. Just out of curiosity, is this the length of time you've been in Vietnam at this point?

He said:

Yeah 4 months now but a lot of long-term expats I've talked to don't seem much more at ease either here or have just stopped trying to integrate. Psychologically the gap between Western culture and Sinic cultures is huge. So far the most cryptic place I've been among all 10 ASEAN countries. The mix of communism, confucianism and European colonialism has a very paradoxal feel.

I said:

 Aah. Classic. Textbook Case. You may find it useful to research the Culture Shock cycle to better understand what's going on right now.

And then he said:

I wouldn't call it a culture shock in the sense as I either disapprove morally or just don't grasp the underlying cultural assumptions that drive these behaviors. Culture shock is going to India, what I am referring to is just ethically objectionable in most world cultures.

Classic, huh?  At the very same time he's asserting that he's not in Culture Shock, he's saying that he disproves of everything that's going on and can't grasp the underlying cultural assumptions--which is the definition of Culture Shock.
It is interesting though.  In my experience, very rarely do people who are going through Culture Shock have the self-awareness to realize what is happening to them.
And I'd include myself in that category.  Even after all the training on Culture Shock that the JET Programme had given me, I still didn't recognize I was in Culture Shock when it initially hit me.  I thought that I was just accurately perceiving how awful things were, and didn't realize that my perceptions were being colored by Stage 2 Culture Shock.
It wasn't until afterwards that, with hindsight, I realized what had been going on.
There must be something about the human brain--most of us just don't have the meta-cognitive abilities to realize when something is affecting our thought processes.  We just assume we're thinking rationally all the time, even when we're not.

So I replied:

At the risk of being insistent, I've got to say that this comment is only further convincing me you're in stage 2 right now. It happens to all of us expats. Don't worry. I've gone through it myself. I suggest you google "Culture Shock Cycle" and read through a few different sites to understand what you're going through. You're going to be feeling negative about Vietnam for a few more months yet to come, but you'll work through it eventually.

He replied:

Westerners don't realize the much larger body of socialization Asian cultures involve, we aren't talking about modern individualistic, egalitarian, rational cultures, they are collectivistic, hierarchical, symbolical ones. What people do and why they do it is different than why you would or not.

...and at this point I just gave up.
He's so convinced that Vietnamese people are awful that he doesn't want to entertain the idea that something irrational might be coloring his thinking.  This is typical of Stage 2 Culture Shock.  (I know because I've been there.)  He'll work through it eventually, but he's got to get there on his own.

However, this being a public Facebook page, a couple other people chimed in.  Random Person number 1:

@joelswagman I bet most people active on this group are here between 2 and 6 months :D especially people expressing opinions about Vietnam as XXXX did. I wouldn't call it a culture shock necessarily, just expressing opinions :D
I also sometimes get irritated by this. Acting in various sneaky ways is typical for Vietnam. I visited many countries, rich and poor, including India and Nepal, never have I encountered so many ways to slightly cheat. Like pretending not to understand or hear questions, cutting into lines, giving a change which is too small. It's not a big deal, but it's irritating. I think I know the reasons, but it would be a long discussion, and no to have in this place. My country has a similar political history in some ways, and that's why I think I know how some political issues influence mentality.
However, I don't intend to say I don't like this country, it's just being a m**ucker is more acceptable here than elsewhere, but there are many many nice, kind people.

(XXXX equals the original poster).
I suspect the above person is also Stage 2, but I let it go.

Random person #2 was a bit ruder, and got under my skin a bit more.  (What is it about the Internet that makes people so rude?):

How many South-east Asian countries have you lived in or spent any considerable time in, Joel Swagman? Just reiterating something you read about culture shock on Google seems like pretty unconvincing advice TBH.

I probably should have ignored this, because when you respond at length to comments like this, it just lets them know that they got to you.  But... I responded at length.

I realize Google isn't ideal, but it isn't a website so much as a resource for searching other websites, some of which are credible and some of which aren't. At any rate, what would you have me do? The document I linked to in my first comment is from Princeton University. Other than that, I can't hand XXXX a book.
I first studied the Culture Shock Cycle in a University class. It's a credible theory that is subscribed to by all psychologists
I myself have spent 8 years in Japan, 4 years in Cambodia, 1 year in Australia, and now 3 years in Vietnam. In each country I've lived in, I've not only gone through the cycle myself, but seen other people go through it. Most people go through the predictable stages in a very predictable time line. It's incredible how predictable it is. That's why I immediately knew XXXX was somewhere between the 2 to 6 months stage.

I fibbed here slightly.  Culture Shock had come up briefly in a couple of my college classes, but the professors hadn't talked about it in depth.  I did have a high school social studies teacher who was very interested in the topic, and he had told us a lot about Culture Shock, but high school doesn't sound as impressive.  My primary source of information is still all the orientation sessions from the JET Programme, but I didn't want to bother with having to explain what that was.  So I just lied and said I studied it in University.
Everything else, though, is true.