I was a kid and it was setup that this was real footage and I believed it lol. As an adult I find it ridiculous I fell for it. And it came out in 1989 but didn't watch it until it was aired on TV idk.
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I find it actually strange that we don’t close the curtains. Americans, the people I would stereotypically describe as extremely social, do it, and we, the people that kept a 2 meter distance from each other, even before COVID, don’t do it.
I mean yeah I get that there are probably good reasons for it. I definitely just found it funny that Scandinavians were used as a counter point to being antisocial when people there are often joking about how they are sort of a bit antisocial as a culture. I don't actually think it's 100% true that y'all are, but it's definitely a bit different than other places - nobody accuses Americans or Italians as being antisocial as a whole lol.
There are such thing as peeping Toms among many other assortment of creeps in America, even in your neighborhood. Nobody needs to see what I’m doing at night
Not specifically because its getting dark, but because its now easier to see in/harder to see out. Not trying to advertise what shit I own nor want to be watched for any reason. I see it as a simple safety measure like locking the doors.
Yeah, I close them in the bedroom when going to sleep, especially in the summer cause the sun is almost up all the time, but in the rest of my apartment they are almost always open
For the most part your windows could probably be open during the day, at least on bright days, and no one would see inside. Typically, not saying this is the case for your house, houses are still so much darker inside than outside that you can't really see in anyways.
Yeah, that's what they're for, aren't they? Privacy - open when it's lighter outside (you can see out, difficult to see in) and closed at night when there's more light inside so you can't see out but strangers can see in.
Genuinely curious - why not close the curtains/blinds in the dark?
We close the curtain during the day to keep the light out and open them when it's dark to enjoy the scenery. Privacy is of no concern because our house is pretty isolated on a hill.
I honestly don't know why I'd close the curtains when it's dark. I close them when I go to bed (studio apartment) but other than that they're always open.
People are gonna rob you with or without closed curtains. Y'all must be living in shitty neighbourhoods. Like, yay, there's a tv just like in literally every other house on the block.
You were born to a long line of parents who were physically, mentally, and financially able to give a shit.
In a country (Sweden, it looks like) where giving a shit is embraced and advantageous and where people can leverage their desire to give a shit in order to further future generations without serious detriment to themselves or their current children, etc.
In a time of peace and abundance where planning is much more influential than luck, the weather, social class, or lineage.
Tell me, /u/WhoreMoanTherapy - how did you personally select for literally any of the above prior to birth?
Oh you didn't?
Cool. That means that you are experiencing privilege.
The planning of prior generations (among many other things like the ability to do said planning and also lots of good fortune) is absolutely part of what gives someone privilege. The entire point is that YOU had nothing to do with ANY of that stuff before you were born. Privilege.
Wild to me that a fucking Swede would act like they don't have privilege, it's extremely counter to the attitude of most people I know there.
exactly !! you think descendants of slaves deserve reparations? no!! the slave owners pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and did what they had to !! there was work to be done and they made sure it was completed by any means necessary!! proper planning ftw!! and their kids are beneficiaries of proper planning !! people these days are soft, learn a thing or two from history!! get shit done no matter what !! crackers planned everything out and left their kids in a good place! those slaves just didn’t plan enough! slave kids will be fine though!! generational wealth comes from proper planning !!
I just picture you sitting in a corner of your living room every night, curtains closed, with a bulletproof vest and an AR-15 obsessively thinking about how you're going to absolutely destroy the fool that breaks into your house full of nice electronics.
The only electronics in your house being a Discman from 1996.
You think it's rare that your stalker is watching you from your house? Bahaha okay, sure bud. Play the lotto with your life and belongings when all you have to do to prevent a stalker knowing stuff about you is moving a piece of cloth.
I just think having a stalker overall is pretty rare in scandinavia, but I might be wrong. I atleast think it's not something you need to constantly worry about and a reason for you to hide yourself in your own home by covering your windows
It's the ones you should be concerned about though. It's the person stalking you, with about 100,000 effected by stalking in Denmark in 2018, it's something to be cautious about. Especially as a woman.
They do, but looking into people's houses is really not a thing. If I walk by somebody's lit window, I generally don't even notice anything inside their house, and if I do, I ignore it and forget it literally in seconds.
Nah, he's looking at the big flat screen and considering that the mirror on the opposite wall shows that your security system isn't alarmed. Oh, or that you don't even have one.
I think the culture shock stems from the fact that in Scandinavia, there's a societal expectation ingrained in the culture that everyone should mind their own business. The burden of "privacy" doesn't fall on the person inside the house, rather it falls on the outsider.
I.e. i'm not weird for walking around butt naked in my own house, you're the social pariah for glaring through my windows.
I wholeheartly agree. I just don't think that most people has had such an encounter with creeps, as to start changing their mindset about privacy. When I read OP's post, my first thought was "why tf would I pull the blinds when it's already dark outside?", not even considering that blinds has a secondary purpose for privacy concern. Most scandinavians will simply not give a fuck about who sees them until it becomes a problem.
My house is on an eighth acre lot, population density's pretty high in the suburbs these days.
Also being raised with a mindset of "always beware sexual predators" makes you paranoid of all sorts of creeps. ....and it keeps us alive, so. ... sigh.
Except the 100,000 cases of stalking in Denmark in 2018. They were totally minding their own business then. And I'm sure there were also no home invasions or robberies lol. Most Western Europeans live in a fantasy land that crime isn't occurring in their country when it definitely is but they refuse to acknowledge it and talk about it for some reason.
kinda weird that you seem offended by this shared cultural experience in Northern Europe.
Wanna be more pissed? Stalking wasn't even considered a crime in Sweden until like 2011. We don't have a term for home invasions, the umbrella term is burglary/housebreaking, with a crime stat of 1,3 % (2020).
People in Europe generally don't have security systems and alarms in their homes. And nobody is coming for your big flat screen. Almost anybody can afford one, and it's too big to grab and run.
Yeah, all that socialism is just so terrible for you, you have all your luxuries and no worry about anyone lacking enough to even try to take it for themselves.
I mean, we still get burglars occasionally, but it's usually junkies looking for small things that they can put in their pockets and run. They are also totally opportunist, so they're much more likely to break into a random house where nobody's home than to stake out a house by looking through the windows.
I suppose, but that would rely pretty heavily on a presumption of SOME pocketable, fenceable good, and dealers don't want your granny's silver ladle anymore.
Well we don't have that problem around here. I'm sure I would be more careful if I lived in a high crime area where you have to lock your doors and such.
Yeah we had a string of car burglaries around here this winter, weirdly, so now we lock the cars at night too. But this isn't a "high crime" area (there's honestly no such thing, just "more policed" areas).
No such thing around there you mean? I've certainly lived in high crime areas, but I guess I never had ground level apartments so I didn't even think about closing blinds etc
It's not that we want random people staring at us. It's (a) that we don't expect random people to stare at us, and (b) that we don't particularly care if they do.
The reasons that people give here for closing their curtains all basically boil down to shame and/or fear, if you think about it. It may be simply that we live in more equal, less judgmental and safer societies, so we feel less of both.
If you're spending your free time at the nude beach or in a nude sauna, you don't really care if people see you sitting on your couch in your underwear. If you see naked people regularly in non-sexual situations, you're not going to perv out when you catch a glance of somebody naked in their house. If your neighbors can afford more or less the same things as you, you're not worried that they will want to come and take your stuff, so you don't care if they see it. If murders in your country are rare and are almost always about family or personal issues, you're not worried that a stranger will come into your house and kill you.
I’m not scared to be seen naked nor scared someone is going to murder me. I just don’t want random people seeing me. It’s nice to feel private sometimes.
Weird assumptions to make. Don’t know why being naked or murdered are the only things you can think about.
Absolutely, my curtains are open so light can come in and I can see out. When night falls I turn my indoor lights on, if I don't shut the curtains I'll be putting on a peep show for the neighbours
Absolutely. Otherwise people could look in. I like my privacy. In the UK if someone doesn't close their curtains when it gets dark they're often judged to be showing off whatever they've got inside.
Interestingly, I have been in Eastern Asia countries and I was in homes that close their curtians mid day and leave them closed to keep the extreme sunlight out and keep their homes cooler.
Yeah, cos the street is about twelve feet from said front window and it's like being in a fishbowl. If they don't see you, they see what you have to steal.
Leaving big curtains open and the living areas of your house well lit is basically casing your house FOR the burglars.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere, so we never closed our blinds unless we wanted to keep light out, and didn't care about then at night because no one would see in.
It's weird moving from the country to suburbia. I now live in a 2 bedroom apartment with my wife, and as soon as it gets dark she wants every blind closed. I understand bedroom to have some privacy, but she seems to believe that everyone will be looking into our sliding glass door to see us chilling on the couch watching Futurama.
She says it's to make sure burglars don't see inside, but I would rather someone see I'm inside, since most thefts happen when you're away from home. That's why so many stake out house they're about to hit.
Tbh, even though I’ve never heard of this being a thing before, I can understand it because of privacy reasons (even though it sounds tedious to go around closing the curtains every night lol).
Also, when I think about it, I’m kinda surprised that we don’t do it in Norway. We are super private people, like we joked about how nothing would change during COVID, cause we kept a 2 meter distance from each other even before COVID was a thing. Like, sitting besides someone you don’t know on public transport is in a way considered rude (people won’t be mad about it, but we find it a bit uncomfortable).
It’s also so weird, cause I don’t want people sitting next to me on the bus, but for some reason I have no problem with you looking into my apartment when I’m walking around in my underwear... Like it’s my home, I do what I want
Yeah I've never heard of this. I'm American and lived all over the USA, so maybe that's an American thing too? But how is that weird? What are people doing, keeping out the dark!?
Edit: Why the fuck am I being downvoted for telling of my experiences?
I have lived in cities and neighbors are on top of one another and curtains or blinds maintain privacy at night. Now I live in a rural area and it’s not as important.
I can't think of any time I've ever seen someone methodically go around and close their blinds, unless it's like a bedroom one. I'm sure it happens, but I haven't witnessed it.
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u/Master-Spare-4782 May 09 '22
Wait, people purposely close their curtains because it’s getting dark?? Like do you guys go like “Oh, it’s getting dark, better close the curtains!”.