this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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International student’s video on getting free food in Canada unleashes anger and abuse: ‘Please die’ (nationalpost.com)
submitted 6 months ago by lautan@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Mehul Prajapati, an international student in Canada, made a video about using a food bank at school. The vitriol he received was intense

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[–] FunderPants@lemmy.ca 55 points 6 months ago (4 children)

It's been my experience that international students are more at risk of insecurity due to outdated regulations on the amount of money they must have, increasing costs all around, and restrictions on their ability to work and for their spouse to work.

Combine that with social media culture and communication challenges and we get situations like this, I work with a number of students from India and they speak English well, but differently from a long term Canadian. Often, the english is more direct in word choice and more... bombastic or sales oriented. Combine that with social media presence and you are bound to get culture clash.

So instead of using a more Canadian culturally appropriate phrase, like "here is where to turn when in need" or "this helps me afford rent", many will just be less cautious and might say "here is how I save hundreds of bucks" or "here is how I get free food".

That it turns out this guy was struggling like many others, and trying to help people like him is honestly no surprise to me.

[–] penquin@lemm.ee 15 points 6 months ago

This is true. As an immigrant myself, I have struggled with expressing my thoughts for the longest time. Different cultures and different ways of learning English. Trying to translate my thoughts from my own language to English often comes out either rude, or just wrong. I've learned to take moments before expressing my thoughts and then also explain just in case. I also throw in a disclaimer when I meet new people, especially at work. I'm getting better. It gets better with time. I feel bad for him. People on the internet are just brutal.

[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm an immigrant from Australia and I remember having to change my word choices even though Canada and Australia are nearly culturally identical. It must be a lot more work coming from less culturally similar places.

[–] eezeebee@lemmy.ca 3 points 6 months ago (3 children)

This is interesting to me. Do you have any examples of how you would word something differently in Australia compared to Canada?

[–] baconisaveg@lemmy.ca 23 points 6 months ago

Well, they really don't like it when you call them a cunt here.

[–] ArbiterXero@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago

I worked with a guy fresh from Australia….

Sooo, racism is a bigger deal here than in Australia, often words that have racist histories have been just accepted as slang in Australia ina type of “reclaim” thing. He wasn’t racist per se, but he did need a lot of education on the history of some slang and why it isn’t used in Canada. He was ALWAYS good about it, didn’t mean any harm but just didn’t know.

Also, when looking for flip flops, walking into walmart asking the employee where the “male thongs” are WAs a mildly embarrassing venture for him.

[–] ag_roberston_author@beehaw.org 4 points 6 months ago

Yeah, righto cunt, I'm heading to the bottle-o to grab some grog, I reckon I can drop by after for a bit of a chinwag.

[–] eezeebee@lemmy.ca 0 points 6 months ago

So instead of using a more Canadian culturally appropriate phrase, like “here is where to turn when in need” or “this helps me afford rent”, many will just be less cautious and might say “here is how I save hundreds of bucks” or “here is how I get free food”.

"Bigots HATE this one weird trick!"