Vancouver – The Callous and Entitled (Insider’s Opinion)

Ahh Vancouver, BC.

Home of the Canucks and some of the richest people ever to be born.

As a person that’s lived in three different cities throughout my life, Vancouver is a city like no other. Beautiful in nature, waterfront as you can get, mountainous as you can imagine. But it comes at a price, a million dollar price.

Vancouver is home to one of the most expensive housing markets in the world. Rising up in the ranks of Paris, Tokyo and Manhattan, Vancouver can hold its own for the luxurious. However, it comes at a costly price, both monetary and culturally.

The affluent class has dominated the way people interact in Vancouver. As housing prices keep rising, jobs become scarce and incomes are slow to grow, but and the cost of living keeps going up. For many (lower-upper middle class), it’s a struggle day-to-day.

However, I’m alluding to a deeper concern. The way people interact day-to-day in Vancouver. The affluent class has placed their cultural stamp on the rest of Vancouver, allowing for that culture to seep into the middle-class. People in Vancouver society treat each other different. They have become more callous, more conservative, and don’t interact with strangers. People, in a way, have become distant. It’s no wonder Vancouver’s nickname is “No Fun City”. Everything closes around 9pm on most nights, the alcohol laws are asinine, all on top of the fact that it’s hard to make friends and have romances in this city due to such callous interactions.

The best way to describe this feeling is the sense of entitlement. For example, today my friend and I were sitting in a busy coffee shop and numerous people walked by our table. They scoffed, glared and tsk-ed. Anything to insinuate for us to give up our seats faster. Then my friend said the most profound statement of all,”People in Vancouver are entitled, they want ownership to things they have no real ownership to, like this table in a coffee shop. Most people in Vancouver don’t own anything so they find other ways of showing ownership and entitlement.” Bingo.

This is why we treat the way we do. Tourists will fail to understand this because the locals will talk to tourists to help them out temporarily. Locals find it hard to talk to other locals, they almost want something to their benefit if they are talking to each other. And that definitely is the wrong way to go.

Perhaps I’m being rather harsh, but if anybody else has an opinion. The stage is yours.

Bored at the Pub. Generation Jaded.

 

I’m at a point where I’ve been at a club/pub so often that it has become quite boring here in Vancouver. Usually I love going places and hanging out with people, but this Saturday was one of the most boring nights I’ve had in a long time. I realized it isn’t drinking, the atmosphere, or the area. It’s the people or person.

The saying goes, “only boring people are bored.” Bullshit. You’re bored because you don’t fit the company you’re with. If you hang with a group of people, and they don’t fit your style, you are bound to bored with them, no matter how hard you try.

This Saturday was one of those nights. Every conversation was bland and monotonous. Conversations about pop culture, materialism, and unmasculine aneurysms from people who should be acting more masculine. These topics are okay for small talk but they quickly lose momentum. When you start probing deeper conversations of sexuality, race, culture and life, you hit a different level of interesting. I heard none of that last night. 

Note to people out there in the world: Find the right crowd of person / people to have conversations with, don’t be afraid to walk away from the conversations when they’re boring. This is a lesson that I failed to learn last night, walking away and amicably lemon-lawing these people.

 

The Theory of the of Third Reaction

 

I want to begin this blog by saying I’ve discovered aneurysms about the way in which human beings communicate in the 21st century. I call this the theory of the third reaction. 

To introduce myself, I am a communications graduate from a modest university, but the education system and my major have significantly impacted the way my brain is conditioned. Simply put, I am way too stoned to be writing this right now. Point of emphasis would be how much what we consume to be our interests tend to be how we think. So this being said, here is my semiotic perspective of the theory of the third notion.

Early tonight, I was attending a party, and I bumped into my friend that I haven’t seen in a long while. We got to chatting and we had gone through the tedious courtesy questions such as “how are you” and whatnot. When I had asked her, “where are you working now?” She responded with an answer and I simply did not hear her due to the music at the house party.So I asked her, what again?

Whoa. Slow down. Now, as we have our conversations, the usual me would have just replied with “yup, cool.” or a variation of that. But that’s because we’re too embarrassed or inconsiderate to ask for a third time what she said. This is the theory of the third reaction.

By reacting a third time, you don’t care what she thinks as long as tells you exactly what you are hearing. You simply must know. By the way, she said, “Famous Foods” and I had heard “Vice Versa”, by deduction I was guessing a retail shop? I don’t know.

The theory of the third reaction is simply how we communicate and how we can not fake it in everyday courtesy conversation. 

Example, if somebody tells you something, usually it’s a courtesy to say “what:” or “pardon” once.

I’m challenging that theory by asking twice, prompting that third reaction.

Yes, you may be considered a bad listener, inconsiderate, or selectively deaf, but be honest. Listen again and don’t be afraid to not lie by saying, “What, I can’t hear you.” Fuck that courtesy bullshit.

I encourage everybody out there to be honest to yourselves, because that’s how you get others to show their integrity. 

Outtie.