Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
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Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
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4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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I understand your view, but it depends on your country. In Denmark the flag is used in a different way in everyday life I think. And I would say there are good reasons to be proud of Denmark as a country and the people have done well to own the flag themselves in this way. But yea, it can also be used in bad ways.
No need to be sorry :)
Definitely more the latter rather than the former. There is a great deal of trust in Danish society. There is a shared understanding, community and culture that Danes are proudly part of - proud because we believe it is a good culture (and I think the happiness scores that get released every so often for different countries speak for themselves).
I don't see it like that. Yes, someone living in the other part of Denmark doesn't directly affect me of course. But I do think they meaningfully affect me, even if in a small part. I think Denmark is still small enough that it matters that someone in the big city in the other part of the country is still connected to me by culture and a shared "zeitgeist", if that makes sense.
Anyways, I hope you can maybe understand that for some people, there can be such a thing as being proud of your country. You don't have to understand fully though, I understand it can be hard coming from another culture (also it's not like I speak for all Danes obviously and some would certainly disagree with what I'm saying here). I would encourage you to try visiting Denmark one day and maybe see for yourself :)
I think that's very reductionist. Countries clearly have a large influence on culture and culture often forms around countries as people in a country share borders and law and politics and all that.
Anyways, we can agree to disagree if you insist. I do think you're being slightly closed-minded in this case though, but it's not a big deal.
My vaugue understanding as a dumb American is that folk in other countries by and large aren't about repping flags in the first place, flying them, wearing them, etc
I can’t speak for other countries, but here in the UK the National flags tend to be flown for two reasons:
There are shit loads of St George crosses being flown at the moment, because the England team has got through the Euro football finals. If we lose tonight, they’ll begin to disappear tomorrow.
You’ll mostly see the Union flag being flown in areas of high racism. Deprived areas, where people have been made to believe that forrins took their jobs and welfare money. They display the flag to show that they’re “true Brits”, unlike all those brown folk.
Outside of this it’s quite unusual for regular people to display either of the national flags. I can’t say I’ve ever owned one, and I’m in my 40s. That said, I’m not terribly nationalistic. I’m proud of my country in terms of how it looks, and how we (now) preserve our long history, but I’m also painfully aware of the failings of the UK, and more specifically, England over the past few centuries.
Yeah, while obnoxious us patriotism used to be relatively innocent, at this point I immediately assume anybody with a flag is the absolute worst of us.
Not in the same way. In the US I believe you swear to the flag or something? Which seems super strange to me.
In Denmark the flag is used in basically any celebration, especially birthdays. It's common to have a cake with as many flags on as your age (usually for kids).
Luckily that flag is easy to emulate. Imagine trying to frost 10 American flags onto a cake.
Oh usually it's small paper flags stuck into the cake on small wooden sticks, not frosting :)
That makes more sense. Thanks.