German etiquette group targets workplace kissing

[Feuer Frei!]

Originally Posted by Skybird

I take grim pleasure from rebouncing in a somewhat Klingon attitude every stranger trying to hug and kiss me. While it may be social convention developed over long time in Southern America and mediterranean countries, it certainly is no social convention in Middle and Northern Europe.

I already feel pissed when walking through an Ikea market and every sign and poster there adresses me with "Du" instead of "Sie". That may be convention in Sweden. But in Germany, it simply is crude and chumming up.

But as I see it there is a massive trend for infantilisation of social conventions and media.

As a German comedian, I think, put it some time ago, today the mother does not go to a parents meeting at her son's school and introduces herself with "Guten Abend, ich bin Frau Meier", but she trills: "Hallöchen allerseits, ich bin die Mutti vom kleinen Linus!"


Bootcamp. All of them.

You know, I was wondering about that.
When I was growing up in Germany, It was all about formality. After I left I heard that Germans were becoming "lockerer". More relaxed.
But I was also wondering wether the courtesies and formalities had gone out the window. Or is this only confined to the younger generation nowadays?
I would hazard a guess that the older generation would still address with: "Guten Abend, Herr Maier hier".

[Skybird]

When pedagogics took over the education system, manners and bad behavior, not to mention parent's education of children, went right out of the window. While some laid-back relaxation after the tightened 50s and 60s certainly was welcomed, in the late 80s at the latest relaxation turned into simple lack of manners and education more and more. The public taste reflected by what the media delivers in daily shows, is a nice reflection. So is a decline in consent on values, and respect for authority - I do not mean submissive, cowardish respect for authoritylk, but the healthy trust and friendly kindness you for example pay for the policeman doing his patrol in your neighbourhood.

That our self-declared elites also cannibalise themselves in their eternal greed and hunger for more of everything, does not help to revitalise this society's insight into the need of consent over a minimum of manners, respect, and rules.

So, from the 60s to the present, it seems to me that the pendulum swung from one extreme to the other.