Yesterday I was invited by a friend and curator to revive the Cross Culture Weekly Question Prompt.
My initial reaction was that I don't have time or energy to commit to leading a community again....but then I started thinking...what if I did this on my own terms?
Hive Cross Culture
The community was initially a place for language exchange but quickly grew to encompass all culture related topics. That includes:
- Culture Differences
- Culture Shock
- Stereotypes
- Generation gap
- Customs and Traditions
- Subculture
- Personal travel stories (deeper than travel diaries)
- Language related post (from analysis to Experience studying language, linguistics etc.)
- Comparing life in different cities
- Talking about different lifestyles in the same city
- Company culture
- A specific neighborhood or area and what makes it unique.
- Exposure to new things from a culture you are unfamiliar with or learning about.
- Nostalgia and comparing now and then.
Here are some examples I could easily write about, true stories from my life (I'll skip the examples that have to do with living overseas as most people don't have that experience):
I recently discovered the music of Ayahuasca ceremonies in the Amazon through a band from Chile. I have friends who tried Ayahuasca in both tribal and urban environments. I could talk about this from many angles (drug vs. medicine, meditation vs. substances, healing music, why I'm curious about such things, or just my experience of the music).
A friend of mine has been to Africa 8 or 9 times and often tells me stories, I could share my reaction. I am very interested in West Africa as well as Uganda and Ethiopia and I could talk about where that curiosity comes from. Yesterday I went to his pop up restaurant and tried some Doro Wat from Ethiopia and Mbahal from Gambia and some Bissap juice.
I could easily talk about nostalgia for the 60's 70's 80's or 90's as different eras have a different culture. Recently I've been re-listening to all the music I hadn't heard for decades, from Stone Temple Pilots to Eminem to the Kinks to Michael Jackson. All nostalgia welcome.
There are some ways my group of friends are far from stereotypical. We have our own culture that is exclusive to us. I could easily write about our unique culture, as one of the purposes of this community is to explore how culture belongs to us as individuals and as communities, as something living and evolving, not only as something inherited.
I can talk about the way my town has changed for better or worse.
I could talk about how I grew up being taught all about gender equality but finding that many of the ideals I was taught were not practiced by the people who preached them. Mo one taught me that I was supposed to ask the girl out, though all the girls kind of expected it, so even though we were pushing for equality, not everyone was on the same page about what that looked like. I could go into confusion about that.
Recently I watched a documentary about the Piraha tribe which is said to have no tense indicating past present or future as well as no exact numbers, only "many" and "few". I could talk about that documentary, or another like the brilliant one I watched a few years by Werner Herzog ago called "The Act of Killing", about politically fueled massacres in Indonesia and whether or not the people who initiated it felt any guilt (Amazing film!)
All these topics and more are fair game!
Curation?
Hive curation tends to follow a similar pattern. Curation trail run by or supported by whales or large amounts of dolphins. Curation posts to raise more funds to reward curators or submissions (Nodbody reads the curation posts). The community has a community account that is shared by multiple members.
I want to do things differently.
What if we keep it simple?
Since the two of us together have at least a $5 upvote behind us, that means we don't NEED much outside support, and we likely will get some anyway.
If we do the curation ourselves, we don't need to pay curators. If we use our own accounts, we feel compensated enough and just get rewarded for our contributions as individuals through curation rewards and post rewards.
A Different style of Curation
We will have no curation posts, all submissions will be easily accessible in the Cross Culture community and anyone interested is encouraged to browse it.
I will combine my own submission to the topic with the post introducing a new topic. I will use my own account and people can vote it or not as if it was a regular post. First I'll introduce a topic, then I will share my own response. Feel free to read it or not.
We will skim all posts and read the one's we are interested in, upvoting at different amounts based on how much we think it deserves or how much HP we have left.
We may have submissions from other people from time to time. If someone has a good topic, I will invite them to write the prompt post for the week, including their submission.
I may throw a few tips other peoples way if my post does very well, and I encourage others to do the same.
Topics
Topics will follow one of two formats:
1 . A simple question about your culture or experience
2 . An opinion or experience, inviting all submissions to respond to that stance or experience as a full post rather than a comment (these will be my own experiences and opinions, or those of people I've met, and from other community members who I've invited to make the prompt for the week.
