Americans- a little brash and maybe uncouth?

[OC Richard]

With the greatest of respect to all, Americans do not have the monopoly of freedom of speech, or brashness, or uncouthness.

It's been interesting, since I began viewing and participating in a number of forums (not XMarks) which included (amongst others) people in the USA, Canada, the UK, and Ireland, to see the various ways of communicating, various temperaments I suppose one could say.

I was immediately struck by the tendency of Americans and Canadians to political correctness and the avoidance of ruffling feathers to the point of vanilla mamby-pambyness, and the tendency of some from the UK and Ireland to make absolute brash "this is how it is and I don't care what anybody else thinks" sorts of statements.

There was one forum I attended where a group of Scots, Northern Irish, and Irish got fed up with the North American-imposed "play nice" rules and created their own no-holds-barred forum which of course degenerated into everybody yelling at each other.

The fascinating thing to me is how different this is from the way these various nationalities seem in person. I meet people from everywhere every day at work (yes everywhere... even Vanuatu) and in person many Americans can be more open/loud/brash, while the British and Irish are invariably extremely polite and courteous.

Well now... I've probably violated just about every Rule there is! Sorry.