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Are there customs and/or habits in your country that you find negative?
I'll start off with a couple:
Spitting. Mostly done by young males, but its quite common for girls as well and even among older folk from certain social backgrounds. I remember back in school, when we'd just stand in a circle with a bunch of guys during recess, talk shit and spit into the centre. I suppose its partly due to the climate: most people have runny noses for half of the year and its easy to unload into the snow by spitting. Whenever you exercise / do anything more demanding than a slow walking pace outside in the cold, your nose starts to run. Another reason would be that it has probably been socially accepted since long ago in a mostly rural, northern country where people have spent and still spend much of their time working outside. I admit to doing it myself quite a bit, but as I've gotten older, I'ver started to be more careful about where I do it - a lot people aren't, though.
Swearing. I don't know if I'm going grandpa here, but much of the time I find myself appalled at the language of some people, especially young girls, who punctuate their (air-headed) sentences with expletives. I was a little annoyed by Finnish ('comic') rap-artist Petri Nygård performing at the victory celebrations yesterday, as he at one point told the Swedish tabloid media (If I heard him right): "Fuck you." I saw lots of families with small kids there, and I knew half the nation must be watching it on a screen somewhere (not to mention it will be recorded in The Annals of History ), so it felt a little undignified somehow.
Anyway, your turn!
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