How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance

I don't want to always sound critic of the USA, but if here in Italy you opened an activity with real or supposed insert your favourite heritage here style, no one would ever care.

You would get awful reviews if you weren't doing a good job of it, but aside from that, why would anyone really be offended?

If you guys were coherent, places like Olive Garden should never exist. And I am not even starting on how much of a shit job Olive Garden is doing of trying to look Italian, because I don't care.

Europe, with such a rich mix of cultures should be a trigger-hell for you Americans.

(I am being sarcastic) How can you really cope with all this?

Edit: to add insult to injury, how should we Italians feel about being always portrayed as "pizza, mafia, gobbledygook mamma mia". It's so far from our reality, we don't care.

Edit2: better phrasing

Rightly or wrongly, there are people here in the US that make it a hobby to become offended and make a big deal of how offensive it is. Obviously it would do everyone some good to use discernment with their actions, but everyone should also not try to look for how you can spin something that was probably tongue in cheek into something offensive. Is bodega a great idea? Probably not, but I don't know what the entire offering was, maybe the idea got funded because they were interested in a specific part of the whole idea. I would like to see people in the US realize that someone is going to do something they don't like and there is an option to ignore the behavior.

> if here in Italy you opened an activity with real or supposed insert your favourite heritage here style, no one would ever care

I bet many people would care, but they would not persistently & vocally voice their discomfort for fear of retribution/confrontation.

> how should we Italians feel about being always portrayed as "pizza, mafia, gobbledygook mamma mia"?

In popular media? Complain to the broadcaster/studio/publisher, support organisations like the Italic Institute of America to do this on your behalf.

Why should you do that? Because you think that the stereotypes unfairly prejudice Italians who may be denied opportunities in those countries.

The problem is, unfortunately, becoming a world-wide phenomenon, because the entire media industry runs on generating outrage to capture the audience.

That's my point. Critics of their business model do sound valid, but people that are shocked about so-called "cultural appropriation" should, trying to be polite here, see more of our wonderful planet and really understand cultures, which are very, very, very different from the cultures you believe to witness when changing neighborhood in your town.

I think your comment perfectly proves GP's point.

> I bet many people would care, but they would not persistently & vocally voice their discomfort for fear of retribution/confrontation.

How about: because they have better things to do with their time? The perception of oppression of any group you can name is mostly just manufactured.

> Because you think that the stereotypes unfairly prejudice Italians who may be denied opportunities in those countries.

If this is actually happening, then such a country has a much deeper problem of people being dumb enough to deny opportunities out of petty prejudices. This is not a normal state.

Look, if I were to believe I was being denied opportunities in the US because of the portrayal Olive Garden (and the like) was doing about Italy and Italian, I think I wouldn't deserve the job in first place.

Culture is important, you must know yours and others, but I really believe people on certain echo chamber aren't getting their priorities straight.

Or, if you let me, they have life SO good, they have run out of good things to complain about.

But I know I may sound to harsh about this. It's the perception we get from overseas.

I couldn't voice it any better, thank you.

> The perception of oppression of any group you can name is mostly just manufactured.

> This is not a normal state.

I think you underestimate how systemically racist most countries are.

> Or, if you let me, they have life SO good, they have run out of good things to complain about.

This is my perception of things. Or, as I sometimes put it in person, "people haven't experienced a war in a long time so they're going batshit with priorities now".

Also: it's not that we run out of issues to solve, it's that most of the actually important ones - like energy security, climate change, stabilizing agriculture and healthcare, developing - are hard and don't lend themselves into us-vs-them thinking. Even figuring out how one can contribute to that is difficult, and it's easier to find some proxy irrelevant non-issue to bitch about instead. And media only amplifies that.

EDIT:

Also, and this is probably a very controversial opinion: I think that the ongoing talk about a lot of those proxy-issues is strongly, actively harmful. The number one focus of the world right now should be stabilizing what we have. The technological civilization is very fragile, and at the point in which if it collapses, it won't rebuild itself for millennias, because all the easily obtainable high-density energy sources have been used up. And with the death of technological civilization, all the dreams of freedom, equality, long and healthy life, will die too.

Humour: I also like to think this is "Farenheit 451" becoming a little too real.

Serious: we are definitely not ready.

There was an episode on The Soprano (no mafia/pizza pun intended :-D) where Tony tried to visit a prostitute he was "in love" with.

She was not there, but her roommate, also a prostitute, from Russia (or an alike country I don't remember), with one fake leg, was.

As he was complaining how miserable he was, she starts lecturing him of how Americans people have stopped having real issues, or living in life threatening situations, and so they invents themselves new ones which looks ridiculous for people coming from less developed countries.

For me it's exactly that.

And don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly aware that there are people in deep trouble in America, homeless or not wealthy enough to treat nasty diseases right.

And this is a first world problem you can also witness in some European countries too. Or cities, not necessarily while countries.

It's like we, humans, cannot bare to go through life being just happy.

Okay so first off, the educated people in this country don't care about this stuff. I stopped reading a few sentences in because it was clear the author had some vendetta against the company. People don't just attempt to crucify businesses for no reason. And just to be clear: most of America has no idea what's going on in SV. We're not all wearing google glass to order Uber delivered Big Macs despite what you might think.

Secondly, a lot of Americans are behaviorally conditioned by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and Roger Ailes. They elected our President, but they don't represent America (as I assume you don't support Mussolini's ideals because you're from Italy - also check out "The Brainwashing of my Dad" on Amazon Prime to understand the plight of many young Americans dealing with this insanity)

Some people live off emotional editorials. Not to be confrontational, but how worked up you seem to be upon reading this fluff piece in Italy makes me think you're not that far off from a middle-america pleb.

Our media system has been developed to evoke emotion because emotions sell... don't buy into it unless you want to be pissed off.

Also, what don't you like about the Olive Garden specifically? While I was in the process of becoming an engineer, I was a OG waiter trying to pay my college bills. Nobody is calling it Italian... It was developed as an American company. I really don't understand the argument. Americans should just eat wheat, corn and chicken? Sounds a lot like cultural appropriation which is the first sign of fascism.

My curries are not Indian, they're American. My Mole isn't Mexican, it's American. My paella isn't Spanish, my fried rice isn't Chinese, my panang curry isn't really Thai, and yeah, I make a grilled cheese macaroni that might blow your mind. Deal with it.

Food is the common denominator between cultures. It doesn't matter where you're from or who you were raised by, if you enjoy food: you love everyone, because we all have our secrets of deliciousness. Please don't try to make it a dividing factor.

To add insult to injury, people from your country came here, incorporated what they loved about your culture with ours and to you they're 'portrayed as "pizza, mafia, gobbledygook mamma mia".' I don't think this way, and I don't believe anyone I know in this country feels that way.

If you want to generalize, I will too which means as an Italian, you're a Mussolini supporting fascist. However, if you're willing to be an empathetic human being, I will too, and maybe you'll understand generalizations are one of the main sources of hatred that you should avoid.

The author here either has an agenda against someone at this company or an issue with gentrification (an issue all major American metropolises are dealing with). Don't assume some wacko's point of view defines America's situation because Silicon Valley was name dropped. Again: Nobody wears google glass in this country aside from the diluted.