How to Cross Culture

Cross Culture Discord is a place for anyone who is curious about the world. It's not just about customs and tradition, it's for people who want to make friends from places they know little about.

I’ve been playing with ideas to expand the purpose of Cross Culture community and make it more interesting while also planning a private project which will connect to this theme.

I have a few ideas I'd like to get some input on but first I want to share where I'm coming from

I’ve been pondering over how interest translates to conversation. Some things we talk about easily and others we aren’t sure where to start. It doesn’t mean we aren’t interested.

How does one connect over “cross culture?” It’s not as easy to start a casual conversation around an interest in culture as it is around games or sports or other hobbies.

When two people are interested in football, their object of interest is actually quite far away. They just mention their favorite players.

“Did anyone see the game last night?”

There is nothing strange about this question. In most countries around the world and there is enough distance that we can remark on it casually.

Games are the same. “What is everyone playing right now?”

Cross culture is a little more challenging because we want to speak to each other as equals but if we constantly ask the question “Do Venezuelans do this? Do Venezuelans have this?” We are reinforcing their national identity which is something that sets us apart. This is kind of inevitable at times but it’s not as casual or lighthearted as talking about games or sports or even finance.

Prompts get people involved but that’s not as casual as just speaking directly too each other. That’s why, while I find reliable people to curate good posts and keep things active on chain, I’ve been thinking about the chat and how we relate off-chain.

I’m still not sure how to make this more natural and fun. I know that my private conversations with some new and old friends from other cultures have been really fun and enlightening but I’m still not sure how to encourage more of these conversations among other people. I feel like everyone is dipping their toes into our community, a little bit unsure about whether it’s ok to jump into the water. I get it though.

Culture isn’t as dopamine pleasing as sports or games. There is nothing addictive about it at first glance. You may be interested in what’s going on somewhere else, but it doesn’t have that same pull as your favorite team or tv show. It’s far away, you may not know when you can actually go there. Perhaps the state of the world has made it something with less of a pill too.

And there are things that could offend or alienate others so it requires more effort or tact at times.

Still I feel this is a topic that many people are deeply interested in, despite not knowing how to approach it and so I want to make our discord chat a place where it's easy to start.

Here are some ideas and changes I've had in mind for the community to make it better. I would love your input on how to execute these ideas and add on them.

1 A twitter outreach contest

I've been sitting on this for a while. The plan is to make a contest for non-Hiversters to make their first Hive post. The topic is language learning, and I'm still thinking about the question. "What inspired you to learn a language?" might work but I would like to choose a topic that would encourage very interesting write ups. I think I could do better. Any ideas?

2 Overlap with Decent English

Decent English is a project I've been working on with @kendewitt. We were essentially finding people studying English and making a chat room for them to practice. We decided that it had enough overlap with Cross culture that we might be better off merging the two discords. So don't be surprised if you see some non-Hiversters in there, especially from Japan. Please welcome them, and don't push Hive too hard, they'll join eventually if they keep meeting people who are on hive.

3 A Photo Share room

Friend and curator @ceparl came up with an idea for a room where people can share photos from their life. They can be funny, interesting, or just really mundane but with some of the scenery or town in the background so we can get a taste for what your life is like. We opened #show-your-world in the discord chat. If someone leaves interesting photos regularly I might throw some Hive their way.

4 Bi-Weekly "Show and Tell" meetup.

I've been meaning to organize some regular meetups in cross culture but I was thinking of how to make it engaging and more interesting than just "What did you do today?" and also looser than a strict prompt. I thought maybe a show and tell would be cool. You could tell use something about you, your favorite place, the best time of your life, someone who inspires you, something you are interested in, anything that you really want to share with people.

5 Chat moderator wanted

Looking for someone who is good at making conversation and knows how to use discord well enough to help get people engaged and keep the chat active. You can earn some hive from this depending on how good a job you do, but I'd prefer people who are mostly interested in making new friends and getting to know people and keep low expectations for payment.

6 ??????

Let me know your ideas! If you have any project you'd like to do through Cross Culture, let me know. We want to keep it fun, not feeling like work, and not that formal, but anything you want to see from us or anything you might be able to bring to Cross Culture, let us know :-D

🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎🌎