But what if you express a differing opinion than this norm? It's clear to me that you will be regarded with suspicion at the very least, but more likely with scorn and derision. Needles to say, you won't be very popular among the European masses.
Luckily for me (and my lonely site-meter counter), I’m not trying to be popular. I can toil away in obscurity forever because I’m not trying to make a buck. But what if I were? Would it be wise to express my unpopular opinions on my potentially money-making website?
I have to say that business and "non-accepted" political views are not a good mix in Europe. I can't imagine a business venture-type web site doing well if it expressed unpopular political opinions - or if it had anything positive to say about America or Americans. Of course, it would not be a problem for that same web site if it expressed the usual negative views.
So listen up entrepreneurs in Europe! If you happen to think the U.S. is not the root of all evil, or not the cause of everything bad in the past and present ..... stay popular and keep it under your hat. A differing viewpoint will NOT be tolerated and you will be judged right where it hurts - in the wallet.
3 comments:
Yeah, you're right. There is a huge amount of "group think" in Spain. There's also an alarming tendency to believe what is printed in a newspaper or on the web without the slightest bit of skepticism or questioning, particularly if it plays into the Spaniards' prevailing stereotype of the U.S. Just yesterday I saw the following title in a Spanish forum: "Facebook y la CIA. ¿Nos espian?" The person linked to what they said was a news article, when in fact it was a link to what appeared to be a conspiracy theorists web site.
We all know that controversy sells but I think that any web entity in Spain with a pro-U.S. stance would be, as you said, easily dismissed and marginalized.
The only blogger I've seen in Spain get away with a pro-U.S., pro-capitalism stance is the multi-millionaire Argentine businessman Martin Varsavsky. He has a bilingual blog where he writes about all aspects of his professional and personal life and he frequently courts controversy by expressing his opinions. Last year he made quite an impression among his readers when he asked in his blog "¿Se puede ser realmente "culto" y no hablar inglés?"
I'm sure you can imagine what the reaction was like, with a lot of people getting angry and bent out of shape, taking what he wrote personally.
Whenever he extols the virtues of the U.S. there are always predictably a flood of comments from Spaniards telling him he's full of it. The only people who tell him "yep, you're right" or "hmm, that's interesting, tell us more..." tend to be his fellow Argentine compatriots and Spaniards who seem to be either MBA students or brown nosing wannabe businessmen who want to get in good with him for networking purposes. En fin, people cut from the same entrepreneurial cloth as Varsavsky.
But Varsavsky is already a wealthy man and his blog is obviously something he enjoys doing for his own amusement. It's clearly not a (primary) source of income for him.
His blog is at: spanish.martinvavsky.net The English side is kind of bland but it does have its moments. The Spanish side is where he lets his hair down and let's loose and that's where there are way more reader comments.
Thanks Bilingual,
I checked out his blog (in Spanish) and it is interesting. He obviously has a little more information than the average Spaniard - with his experience in New York. I'm going to keep reading him.
Oops, I just realized I didn't write the web address correctly for Varsavsky's blog. Here it is for anyone else who wants to check it out:
http://spanish.martinvarsavsky.net
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