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- So, I am going to use dating apps as an example for differences in host culture. I will keep it PG though. So, there’s a gay meet app called Grindr. When I was in the UK, I realized that it was more common to meet at a bar than it is here. I’ve travelled to many places within the US and the consensus throughout the US is that you can just meetup for a hookup without like really knowing the person. Whereas, in the UK, there was way more communication involved. So, it was either the person wanted to exchange phone numbers and talk on the phone or something, or like meetup somewhere public first and then head back to either my place or theirs. There are obviously people everywhere who do this and there are people in the UK who don’t do this; however, it was common (at least from the people I messaged) to want to make it more than it needed to be – so to speak.
- So, I did not completely hate the idea of getting to know the person first. But, it did make it awkward because if we met outside of a tube station or at a bar or something, it made the whole thing more real. So, I had to be more accepting of the fact that I was simply meeting someone for a night and probably never going to see them again (especially because I don’t live there). Because of that, it made me think about how I never really thought about that in America. So, now that I am back in America, it’s making me reconsider how I go about meeting on the app.
- I think that someone from my host culture would say that the way they do things is pretty standard for London. In London, most people go straight from work to a pub or something and they remain in their work attire. There are also way more people in London compared to my small town or even Orlando. So, I think they would say it is normal to want to meet out first before going straight to a hookup or something. I will say though that I surprised people when I questioned why we needed to do that. They would say, “you Americans are wild,” or something like that. So, it was interesting because they had a cultural clash as well where they had to consider why they felt that they needed to meet somewhere else. Sometimes it would just be walking me from the tube stop to their place to help with directions but also talk beforehand. I would say that because we don’t have a subway system in Orlando, it’s less common to meet at a station and therefore more common to just drive to someone’s house and go from there. So, that was interesting.
- I think in the future it will make me more open to different types of dating styles. I had a very American-centric view of the gay dating world and I didn’t realize that until I wasn’t in America. So, it definitely expanded my thoughts on what dating or hookups can be.
