So much, this. I saw a news item a couple years ago… a journalist had asked something important but critical of the presenter at a UN press conference about online topics, and the presenter was angry and asked where he was from, presumably to get him barred from future ones. He said “I’m from the Internet!” I related instantly.
I had heard about it because the story had been tweeted by a political scientist expressing deep confusion about why anyone would say that, so I tried to explain a bit. I don’t think I convinced him that it was a sincere belief held by anybody. Oh well?
I used to subscribe to that, until I frequently ran into the problem that in the absence of additional information, people used to assume one implicitly. Usually, they assume somewhere in the US.
This means that I get frequently explained how things in Germany are, though being from there. Sometimes even using “well, that’s how things in Germany are” (well, discussion partner, that’s why I know them!). Since then, I usually try to make my location and background clear as much as possible.
Yeah, being legible has its advantages, even though the questions people want to ask can get arbitrarily rude. (“I get that your pronoun is they, but are you a man or a woman?”) When you can meet their expectations without giving up too much of your own comfort, it can definitely be worth it.
This is cute and idealistic, but I feel like to glosses over people’s individuality too much. Also, there are many internets. You are probably not from the Chinese internet which is nearly completely different. Or from the Iranian internet, where you are banned from many other parts of the internet because your country has no copyright laws. Even being from the internet is now balkanised.
I have the same problem with being from the internet as I do with wanting to have meritocracies. Neither really works. If you really want equality, you have to really understand individuals and their stories, not gloss over them as if they didn’t exist or were unimportant. Intersectionality is important.
I get that you probably want to be identified without any preconceptions of who you are, but if you want to be understood, you should share your story. More importantly, you should listen to other people’s stories.
No, honestly, it’s not about avoiding preconceptions, it’s that I strongly don’t identify with the place I have citizenship, since I find my interests completely ignored by its politics. I do identify with the place I met everyone important to me.
People asking introductory questions sometimes want to hear a real story, but they’re the minority. When I start explaining things like that, I usually get cut off. So I don’t bother trying to be polite, and just answer their question tersely according to what I believe instead of what they want to hear.
I agree that listening to others is important, though conversational niceties are not the place where they’re likely to say anything that matters to them. These niceties are about snap judgements, not important things.
Sure, I’m becoming an expat too. But even then, aren’t you kind of shaped by the place that has rejected you? That’s part of your story, being rejected from one place and being accepted by another. It’s probably a big part of who you are now. So you could always, as you are doing now, give an explanation of why “where are you from?” being a complicated question, if there is time, and we have that time now. I can’t cut you off in text. :-)
I guess even saying “from the internet” is in itself an interesting story, gives some indication that you do not identify with some locality.
It’s definitely part of my story, and it sounds like yours too. If it gets to them wanting a full answer, for sure, it’s relevant and I’d explain it.
I promise I’m not as rude about this in person as it may sound! But figuring out how to be polite when I’m not easily sortable takes a lot of thought about the intent of what’s being asked.
Elsewhere in this thread I was talking about how having Iranian internet probably blocked you off from many parts of the rest of the internet. I have also heard that a lot of Iranians know how to use proxies and VPNs. What is your experience?
Yes, we’re well versed in bypassing them, mostly just an inconvenience. The real problem is limited bandwidth, which has been partly due to—recently lifted—sanctions.
I worked on a project a few years ago, creating a system to organize artifacts and articles from the Qajar period. It was fascinating working with the clients (a Professor and her grad students) as they would go back and forth from Boston to Tehran, and how much more complicated it was working on the site w/ them while they were there. In Boston – skype calls, screenshares, they whole nine yards, in Tehran, I’d be lucky to get an email.
Not to mention the complicated an disheartening process of making sure all the icons on the site didn’t come across as too politically subversive.
All this to say, even my secondhand experience with the level of crap you have to deal with tells me “inconvenience” is an understatement. Here’s hoping the lift those restrictions someday soon.
You’re right, but as I said the real problem is the capped bandwidth and the added latency—to an already slow connection—of solutions used to bypass the restrictions. Bypassing restrictions is the easy part, but actually using the produce, not so much: a very slow with high latency Internet connection. You should get used to waiting several minutes for GMail or Twitter’s web interfaces to become responsive.
Is this every Iranian? It’s an open secret how to get around internet restrictions? Or just a few technically savvy people? Do grandpa and grandma know how to bypass internet blocks?
You’re right and my judgment is, probably, clouded with selection bias; but I think most of the young generation know how to bypass it because the censorship has been part of the Internet since the day they’ve started using it. And they usually take care of their grandpa and grandmas.
Living in all sorts of places, I’ve noticed that this question always has a context, and has a natural tendency to change much more often than one would think.
Originally in the US, I was Russian.
In England, I was from America. (It was enough to say Hi to anyone on the street in the evening to get their immediate guess on where I was apparently from.)
In France, I was from Canada.
In Canada, I was from the US.
In California, I was from Waterloo.
In Texas, I’m from California.
In Houston, I’m from Austin.
Now in Austin, Texas, I’m from all over, as I see fit (or not). :-)
As far as single metro areas go, the ones with 3+ lobsters in them seem to be: SF Bay Area (8), Melbourne (6), Chicago (5), Montreal (4), Austin (3), Berlin (3), Houston (3), and Toronto (3).
All places with 3+ responses so far, grouped in an ad-hoc way.
USA - 52
California - 12
San Francisco - 8
SoCal - 3
Colorado - 3
Illinois - 5
Chicago - 5
New York [state] - 3
Pennsylvania - 3
Texas - 8
Austin - 3
Houston - 3
Europe - 34
UK - 7
Nordic countries - 6
Germany - 5
Berlin - 3
France - 3
Canada - 12
Montreal - 4
Toronto - 3
Australia - 9
Melbourne - 6
Asia - 5
South America - 3
Debatable. The land lines are all held by a monopoly, so the prices are outrageous. Last time I used these, the connection was unstable as hell and the company wouldn’t lift a pinky to diagnose let alone fix the issue. Bad old copper down under, I guess. So now I’m stuck with mobile (4G). I never come close to one fourth of the advertised speed, and I need to pay hefty extra to avoid the CGN and get a public IP. And apparently using that APN puts me in the minority of customers that the company doesn’t take notice of when things go down. A mere month after first getting the connection, I had a 24 hour outage. The company thought they had fixed things much much earlier…
I’m not super happy, but when things work, they work reasonably well.
He he, I used to say that sort of thing as a kid (that fully qualified address), except that I didn’t mention Sol, and used to add Universe at the end.
Mexico. We Latin Americans are rare in this English-speaking tech social circle. As I’m writing this, if you count the Brazilian, we’re the only two in this thread so far.
Edit: ah, spotted a Bolivian too! There are probably dozens of us lurking somewhere!
I don’t know anymore, Having been moved from Minsk, Belarus, USSR to West Jerusalem, Israel at the age of 14, I don’t feel like I’m “from” anywhere. Now I live in Berlin, Germany.
Thanks, I wasn’t aware of the term. Though the article seems to describe temporary expats who keep the citizenship of their old country – migrants face different challenges and expectations.
Challenges
Confused loyalties: Third culture kids can experience confusion with politics, patriotism, and values.
I’d rather file it under Benefits: I’ve acquired partial immunity against patriotism and propaganda.
“Where are you from?” is an interesting question, as most people are “from” a lot of places. Here’s my upbringing/background:
Second-generation immigrant family of a Romanian mother and Italian father; mother escaped communism and father was a well-trained engineer who relocated to New York in the 60’s – he then worked in the emerging mainframe computer industry
Born in NYC, raised in Long Island & NYC
Got my first personal computer at age ~7
College at NYU (Comp. Sci.), first job out of college commuting to Manhattan from Astoria, Queens (Wall Street)
Wrote my first fully-functioning Perl program in 2001, my first fully-functioning Python program in 2004, and my first “production” web application in 2005; the last of which was written in Java/JSPs and is still running today!
Hacked in Python/JavaScript full-time since 2008, while maintaining “background” knowledge in C/Java/UNIX.
As you can see, the older I get, the more “where I’m from” references my tech background that my physical upbringing!
Alamo, CA. Despite a very strong math background & living minutes from the hotbed of SV tech, I didn’t start programming until 20/have my first tech internship until I was 21…
The Internet
So much, this. I saw a news item a couple years ago… a journalist had asked something important but critical of the presenter at a UN press conference about online topics, and the presenter was angry and asked where he was from, presumably to get him barred from future ones. He said “I’m from the Internet!” I related instantly.
I had heard about it because the story had been tweeted by a political scientist expressing deep confusion about why anyone would say that, so I tried to explain a bit. I don’t think I convinced him that it was a sincere belief held by anybody. Oh well?
Anyway, geographically, I’m currently sitting at the place where internet.
I used to subscribe to that, until I frequently ran into the problem that in the absence of additional information, people used to assume one implicitly. Usually, they assume somewhere in the US.
This means that I get frequently explained how things in Germany are, though being from there. Sometimes even using “well, that’s how things in Germany are” (well, discussion partner, that’s why I know them!). Since then, I usually try to make my location and background clear as much as possible.
Yeah, being legible has its advantages, even though the questions people want to ask can get arbitrarily rude. (“I get that your pronoun is they, but are you a man or a woman?”) When you can meet their expectations without giving up too much of your own comfort, it can definitely be worth it.
This is cute and idealistic, but I feel like to glosses over people’s individuality too much. Also, there are many internets. You are probably not from the Chinese internet which is nearly completely different. Or from the Iranian internet, where you are banned from many other parts of the internet because your country has no copyright laws. Even being from the internet is now balkanised.
I have the same problem with being from the internet as I do with wanting to have meritocracies. Neither really works. If you really want equality, you have to really understand individuals and their stories, not gloss over them as if they didn’t exist or were unimportant. Intersectionality is important.
I get that you probably want to be identified without any preconceptions of who you are, but if you want to be understood, you should share your story. More importantly, you should listen to other people’s stories.
No, honestly, it’s not about avoiding preconceptions, it’s that I strongly don’t identify with the place I have citizenship, since I find my interests completely ignored by its politics. I do identify with the place I met everyone important to me.
People asking introductory questions sometimes want to hear a real story, but they’re the minority. When I start explaining things like that, I usually get cut off. So I don’t bother trying to be polite, and just answer their question tersely according to what I believe instead of what they want to hear.
I agree that listening to others is important, though conversational niceties are not the place where they’re likely to say anything that matters to them. These niceties are about snap judgements, not important things.
Sure, I’m becoming an expat too. But even then, aren’t you kind of shaped by the place that has rejected you? That’s part of your story, being rejected from one place and being accepted by another. It’s probably a big part of who you are now. So you could always, as you are doing now, give an explanation of why “where are you from?” being a complicated question, if there is time, and we have that time now. I can’t cut you off in text. :-)
I guess even saying “from the internet” is in itself an interesting story, gives some indication that you do not identify with some locality.
It’s definitely part of my story, and it sounds like yours too. If it gets to them wanting a full answer, for sure, it’s relevant and I’d explain it.
I promise I’m not as rude about this in person as it may sound! But figuring out how to be polite when I’m not easily sortable takes a lot of thought about the intent of what’s being asked.
The Indranet.
And, of course, the obligatory xkcd.
The library.
Love this answer :)
FED SPOTTED!
Austin, TX
I don’t understand why a federal investigator in 2016 would need to ask anyone where they’re physically located. :)
Tehran, Iran.
Elsewhere in this thread I was talking about how having Iranian internet probably blocked you off from many parts of the rest of the internet. I have also heard that a lot of Iranians know how to use proxies and VPNs. What is your experience?
Yes, we’re well versed in bypassing them, mostly just an inconvenience. The real problem is limited bandwidth, which has been partly due to—recently lifted—sanctions.
I worked on a project a few years ago, creating a system to organize artifacts and articles from the Qajar period. It was fascinating working with the clients (a Professor and her grad students) as they would go back and forth from Boston to Tehran, and how much more complicated it was working on the site w/ them while they were there. In Boston – skype calls, screenshares, they whole nine yards, in Tehran, I’d be lucky to get an email.
Not to mention the complicated an disheartening process of making sure all the icons on the site didn’t come across as too politically subversive.
All this to say, even my secondhand experience with the level of crap you have to deal with tells me “inconvenience” is an understatement. Here’s hoping the lift those restrictions someday soon.
You’re right, but as I said the real problem is the capped bandwidth and the added latency—to an already slow connection—of solutions used to bypass the restrictions. Bypassing restrictions is the easy part, but actually using the produce, not so much: a very slow with high latency Internet connection. You should get used to waiting several minutes for GMail or Twitter’s web interfaces to become responsive.
Is this every Iranian? It’s an open secret how to get around internet restrictions? Or just a few technically savvy people? Do grandpa and grandma know how to bypass internet blocks?
You’re right and my judgment is, probably, clouded with selection bias; but I think most of the young generation know how to bypass it because the censorship has been part of the Internet since the day they’ve started using it. And they usually take care of their grandpa and grandmas.
Barcelona ?
Good to know that I’m not the only one around here ;)
third one!
Living in all sorts of places, I’ve noticed that this question always has a context, and has a natural tendency to change much more often than one would think.
Originally in the US, I was Russian. In England, I was from America. (It was enough to say Hi to anyone on the street in the evening to get their immediate guess on where I was apparently from.) In France, I was from Canada. In Canada, I was from the US. In California, I was from Waterloo. In Texas, I’m from California. In Houston, I’m from Austin.
Now in Austin, Texas, I’m from all over, as I see fit (or not). :-)
As far as single metro areas go, the ones with 3+ lobsters in them seem to be: SF Bay Area (8), Melbourne (6), Chicago (5), Montreal (4), Austin (3), Berlin (3), Houston (3), and Toronto (3).
All places with 3+ responses so far, grouped in an ad-hoc way.
Nice… you can add another Montreal (me).
melbourne, australia
Originally Ohio.
Currently Austin, Texas, USA
I come from the land of the ice and snow. Well. One of many. Laval, Quebec, Canada.
Close! Im from more up north, but I live in Montreal now
What’s more north? I’m from Lanaudiere, originally.
La Conception, It’s about 15-20 minutes north from Mont Tremblant, not much more than forests and snow.
Montreal too!
Jakarta, Indonesia.
Kediri, Indonesia. Thanks for the invite, mate :)
France, on the Atlantic coast, near La Rochelle.
And where are you from, @alek?
Cape Town, South Africa
Amsterdam, Netherlands. Somewhere stuck in Metaverse.
Hyderabad, India.
There seem to be a lot of Melbournians here! Add one more to the count.
Middle of Nowhere, Finland.
You have good Internet there?
Debatable. The land lines are all held by a monopoly, so the prices are outrageous. Last time I used these, the connection was unstable as hell and the company wouldn’t lift a pinky to diagnose let alone fix the issue. Bad old copper down under, I guess. So now I’m stuck with mobile (4G). I never come close to one fourth of the advertised speed, and I need to pay hefty extra to avoid the CGN and get a public IP. And apparently using that APN puts me in the minority of customers that the company doesn’t take notice of when things go down. A mere month after first getting the connection, I had a 24 hour outage. The company thought they had fixed things much much earlier…
I’m not super happy, but when things work, they work reasonably well.
Pittsburgh ‘n'at.
Somerville, MA. Fluff was invented here :)
Edmonton, Canada.
Calgary, Canada
Prague, Czech republic
Houston, Texas, USA.
Ditto. We all make mistakes.
Same! Although I’m moving soon— to Cornwall, in the UK.
Originally New England, USA. Currently in the Pacific Northwest.
from sardinia, currently chicago
Marlborough, Massachusetts (~30 miles West of Boston).
San Francisco, CA
noiseboys and bridgebabes rally!
Oruro, Bolivia - South America
Wow. Been twice to Bolivia, but regretfully never managed to get there.
I am mostly in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Currently Tokyo, via SF and Seattle. Any lobsters free to send me a message if you find yourself in Tokyo!
Melbourne, Australia
Originally from near Groningen, The Netherlands. Now in Southern Germany. I like hills & mountains :).
Oops, I assumed Denmark from your username, but looks like it’s initials, not a country code.
Melbourne, Australia. As well. I don’t know if I know any of the other Melbournites from here in real life though …
Zurich.
Paris, France
Europe. Currently living in Berlin.
Beograd, Serbia.
Currently in Brisbane, Australia
Stockholm, Sweden, Scandinavian Peninsula, Europe, Eurasia, Earth (the third planet from the star Sol), Solar System, Orion-Cygnus Arm, Milky Way.
He he, I used to say that sort of thing as a kid (that fully qualified address), except that I didn’t mention Sol, and used to add Universe at the end.
Philadelphia, pa, usa
me, too!
Nice to meet a fellow philly lobster-er!
I’m a Romanian living in northern Italy.
Mexico. We Latin Americans are rare in this English-speaking tech social circle. As I’m writing this, if you count the Brazilian, we’re the only two in this thread so far.
Edit: ah, spotted a Bolivian too! There are probably dozens of us lurking somewhere!
Dublin, Ireland
Berlin, Germany
Born: Milwaukee, WI USA
Now: Cleveland, OH USA
There have been many stops in between, no real roots.
Originally? Little town near Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Currently living in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Originally from Wrocław, Poland, but I live in London, UK now.
Rhu - about an hour from central Glasgow, Scotland :~)
Boulder, CO.
I’d love to move to Crested Butte, Silverton or another small mountain town, but I haven’t quite figured out how to do it just yet.
Essex, UK.
OH, USA
I don’t know anymore, Having been moved from Minsk, Belarus, USSR to West Jerusalem, Israel at the age of 14, I don’t feel like I’m “from” anywhere. Now I live in Berlin, Germany.
Culturally I consider myself mostly European.
You sound like a third culture kid.
Thanks, I wasn’t aware of the term. Though the article seems to describe temporary expats who keep the citizenship of their old country – migrants face different challenges and expectations.
I’d rather file it under Benefits: I’ve acquired partial immunity against patriotism and propaganda.
I’m from Bucharest, Romania.
I’m living in Oslo, Norway, but I feel more like home in various places in the U.S. (mainly Portland, OR).
India. Lived in both the southern and the central part.
Gothenburg, Sweden!
Funchal, Portugal ? but currently Southampton, UK
Montreal, Quebec
Oh, hey, there’s like four or five of us in Mtl.
The bottom of the ocean, naturally.
What, you mean you’re BLUE HADES?
Copenhagen, Denmark.
I grew up outside [London]derry, Northern Ireland, but I now live in a suburb of Philadelphia, PA.
São Paulo, Brazil.
Driving from San Diego California to Argentina. Currently in Huehuenetango Guatemala.
France
Hey, you work at Slack, and are based in France? Remote team? Where are you in France (I’m near La Rochelle)?
No, the “Slacker” in my profile is in reference to Slackware. I’m in Lyon, working for the Métropole du Grand Lyon.
Oups :-)
Slackware was my first distro, 20 years ago!… I haven’t tried it again since ;-)
Penafiel, Portugal
…well, working in Lisbon for the time being.
I grew up in a small hamlet, now living in Wrocław, Poland.
Obdam, Netherlands
Midland, Texas
San Bernardino, CA, but I’ve been living in West Virginia since last summer.
Seoul, South Korea.
India originally, San Francisco right now
Melbourne, Australia
Sydney, Australia. ✨
NYC! \m/
I’m in upstate New York, home of 30% of the state’s population and 90% of its surface area. =)
San Diego county, California
From Delaware, United States, but living in Seoul, South Korea.
Billings, MT
Sydney.
SLC, Utah
Cuiabá, Brazil.
Denmark
A couple of places in India.
Berwick-upon-Tweed, England.
Melbourne, Australia
Super small town in Colorado!
Manchester, UK
London. Though I left parts of my heart in the US.
Toronto, Canada
Same here.
I grew up in Dublin, Ireland but have been living in the SF Bay Area for the last ~5 years.
“Where are you from?” is an interesting question, as most people are “from” a lot of places. Here’s my upbringing/background:
As you can see, the older I get, the more “where I’m from” references my tech background that my physical upbringing!
Grew up in eastern Tennessee, USA. (Very glad i left)
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Quebec City, Canada
Chapel Hill, NC USA
SF for 3 more weeks. Then NYC for 2. Then Iceland for 1. Then Berlin until I choose to call somewhere else home :)
sounds fun
Writing in from San Francisco, California. I was born in Cleveland, Ohio.
I’m “from Connecticut” but I’ve lived in the SF Bay Area for 5 years and identify from there as much as anywhere.
I’m from the internet; it matters a lot more to me than where I physically am, in a very similar kind of feeling way. Chicago, IL, USA.
Lisbon, Portugal but living in Dublin, Ireland for the last 8 years
Currently Salt Lake City, UT.
Alamo, CA. Despite a very strong math background & living minutes from the hotbed of SV tech, I didn’t start programming until 20/have my first tech internship until I was 21…
Cologne, Germany
Chicago, IL
Internet: 192.91.235.243 Toponymic: Providence, Rhode Island
Madrid, Spain =D
Missoula, MT
Originally from High River, Alberta, Canada but I live and go to school in Edmonton, Alberta now
Madison, WI
The USA.
The Maritimes, down east,
Las Vegas, Nevada
Toronto, Ontario; via San Francisco. Before that, Minneapolis, Chicago (University), Boston, DC, San Diego, Palau, San Diego.
Harrisburg, PA
then Minnesota, Budapest, Madison, New York, and Baltimore (one of my cats is named Omar, as in The Wire)…
currently Chicago.
I already love your cat.
Portland, OR
Glasgow, KY.
Southern California
Atlanta, GA, USA.
San Francisco Bay area, by way of Metro Detroit area.
You mean right now? https://goo.gl/GG26JX
I have been living in San Francisco for almost four years, but I am originally from Newcastle, NSW, Australia.
Dallas, TX
Lived most of my life in Toronto, currently in NYC.
Hispania.
Originally from St. John’s, Canada. Nowadays I live in Auckland, New Zealand.
Cincinnati, Ohio - USA