Thread by @kunley_drukpa

THE SWEDEN THREAD 🇸🇪

First Posted by the User Mencius Moldbugman - A Thread of observations about the Swedish and Sweden

“I would like to present some notes taken from 2015 when I spent some time in Sweden and concluded it was hell on Earth” 🧵

Important point: I was in Sweden during the winter. The winters are, obviously, brutal in Sweden with about four hours of sun and freezing temperatures. If I had visited in the summer I may have had slightly more positive feelings about the country. I doubt it though.

Sweden was cold, dark and depressing. We were getting about 5 hours of daylight from 10am till 3pm, and when I ventured up to the frozen wastes of Lapland I was getting about 3 and a half hours of daylight only. Maybe fun for a winter holiday, but I was there to work.

It was freezing, though I found the slightly warmer temperatures of Stockholm (minus five roughly) harder to handle than the snowy Lapland temperatures of minus 25 simply because the cloud cover and the light reflection from the knee deep snow in Lapland made me feel warmer.

Let’s State this from the beginning though: it was neither the cold not the darkness that depressed me during my stay in Sweden.

It was Sweden itself that was the killer.

First of all, it is ludicrously expensive. I’m not short of a dollar or two but every time I bought something I genuinely felt like I had been gang raped by a squadron of socialist accountants.

Beer: $15 USD a glass
3 stops on the Stockholm metro: $8
McDonalds meal: $10

You get the idea. Just simple acts like getting on the bus had to be weighed mentally on their costs and whether it was worthwhile or not. Sadly, even simple public transport didn’t seem worth it considering how it was full of inhuman horrors from the world’s biggest shitholes.

The expense of Sweden segues nicely into my next point as I believe the two are related: I have never met a more depressed or miserable people. Again, I issue my caveat that I believe most of my observations may only be true in winter - but by Odin the Swedes are a miserable lot.

Walk around Stockholm and everyone looks like they're about to kill themselves. Crucially, everyone looks fucking poor. Everybody walks around in the same shabby, slightly-worn utilitarian winter clothes of baggy black, brown and grey.

The general impression I got was that there is a deliberate government policy to make everything so expensive that it impoverishes all and brings everybody into a ghastly egalitarian median.

Ghastly egalitarianism would be the main feature of my trip.

There are no grand displays of wealth and few options to jettison yourself above the likes of even the most prole of basic travelers - even if you're ready to splash the cash. Sweden is a society that seems to really attempt to pull everybody and everything into a grey middle.

This means that although you don't see some of the poverty of London/Paris, you also don't get the nice contrasts either. It's kind of hard to summarise but if you went you would see it immediately. I guess nobody can demonstrate their wealth when they are paying $15 for a kebab.

This ghastly egalitarianism runs deep in their psyches & especially into their woeful customer service. Sweden makes Eastern European customer service look good. Servers seem to think “we’re all the same” so treat you like shit cos otherwise would imply you’re better than them.

This cultural attitude is called Jante's Law and is endemic in Scandinavia. @rooshv once wrote extensively about it. Here's a link: 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Ja…

Here are some examples of how that plays out:

1. Nearly every request made to someone in customer service is met with "do it yourself". In my Stockholm hotel this reached ridiculous levels.

They messed up our booking and had us in for 3 extra nights than we were actually there. Rather than actually address it themselves, they told us to our face to go onto their website and change the booking ourselves manually.

They refused to do it even though they were sat on the reception desk 2 inches from my face with the booking system open right in front of them. When we asked if we could use their PC to change the booking, they said no and highlighted that wifi cost $4 a day.

2. In the same hotel, I left something in the bar. I went to reception to ask if the cleaner had picked it up or if anybody had handed it in; the receptionist told me "You can go back to the bar and look yourself. Or you can call the cleaner and ask her if she has it!”

3. I know people will question this but it is true. In some hotels in Sweden, the hotel tells you to put the bedsheets over your bed/duvet/pillows yourself each day. They don’t do it for you. Interesting fact: all bedsheets in Sweden are white with zero exception.

4. At check-in at Stockholm Airport, the check-in woman had a rant at me for having the audacity to ask for help checking in - and by "help" I simply mean "doing her job and checking us in".

She kept saying that I should pay to go online, check in manually, weigh the bags myself, print out the tags and then deposit them at a drop off. Now, she had the ability to check me in, she just didn't want to do it. She actually said "Why should I do something that you can do?”

Coming from Asia (though I admit it isn’t much different in the rest of Europe) there is absolutely NOTHING to do after 5pm which is when EVERYTHING closes. These lazy socialist opening hours permanate all of Sweden.

The only thing open late are bars: that’s if you don’t mind spending the price of a New York condo on a pint of beer. Even in the fucking airport there is nothing open in the evening. Odin help you if you are flying a red-eye flight.

Ok - that’s the basic stuff about Sweden out of the way. However, this all pales into insignificance when you stay there for an extended period and are eventually forced to deal with the absolute worst and vile feature that embodies everything that is wrong with Sweden...

That’s right. Washing machines.
It’s not well known outside of Sweden but their washing machine culture epitomises everything wrong with Sweden. A worthier writer than me - perhaps a Scandinavian Houellebecq - needs to write a drama based around Swedish washing machine practice.

It’s called the Tvättstuga (“Laundry Room”). In Socialist Scandinavia, it is unseemly to have something as bourgeoise as your own personal washing machine. Stated simply, it’s communal laundry facilities in apartment blocks.

Most Swedes live in Soviet style concrete blocks and the individual apartments are not even set up to allow the installation of individual washing machines. Instead, each complex has a designated washing room which has washing machines and drying facilities.

To use the washing machine, you have to sign up for a 1 to 2 hour slot which typically involves a 1/2 week waiting time. So you can only do your washing during these pre-arranged appointments. Obviously competition for the top washing spots at the weekend is fierce.

People often have to take days off work in order to do their washing because they have not been able to do their washing in the evening or at weekends for months - months! - on end. Some people resort to booking slots at 3am and setting their alarms to wake up on week nights.

You have to PHYSICALLY be in the room to do your wash otherwise the sensor turns everything off. People have huge arguments when others are late for their slot/do too much washing/don't clean the washing machine afterwards (you’re obliged to clean the machine fully after use).

The constant battle for slots actually dictates peoples lives and schedules. Can you imagine living under such a regime? You'd be considered a dangerous free-thinking maverick if you bought your own machine or attempted hand-washing. You would probably be shot.

With all the - ahem - recent added diversity into Sweden, you can just imagine the fun this creates when you have such a system and one adds some free-thinking immigrants to the usual mix of Swedish NPC clothes-washing automatons.

When I’ve told people about the Stalinist clothes washing machine that exists in Sweden, I’m normally met with disbelief. Let me share the statements of others as accompanying proof: welcometosweden.blogspot.com/2014/10/moving…

"I jumped out of bed ready to tackle the day. And by tackle the day, I mean do my laundry. I had scheduled a laundry time for 7am. That’s a silly time to do laundry, I know, but I had zero clean pairs of underwear and zero clean pairs of socks. Don’t judge me."

thelocal.se/20100224/25178

"Nothing raises more hackles, shortens more lives and causes more gnashing of teeth in Sweden than a bleak room filled with washing machines."

"The tvättstuga is naturally a place of conflict."

An entire website devoted to passive-aggressive notes left in laundry rooms:

argalappen.se/tvattstugelapp…

csmonitor.com/World/Global-N…

"Communal laundry rooms in Sweden stir strong emotions. In Stockholm in 2008, more than 70 cases of laundry-related threats and beatings were recorded.”

After all that hell involved in washing your clothes, you probably wish to go out, but some alcohol, and have a nice drink to relieve the stress, right?

Easy, right?

No. Fuck you. This is Sweden.

Alcohol in Sweden is purchased at a brutalist dystopian store that seems like it was taken from Yevgeny Zamyatin’s “We”. It’s a government monopoly called “System Bolaget” or "The System" for short. A name straight from a Soviet dystopian novel for sure.

Sweden’s nanny state doesn't think that it’s population can handle the normal sale of alcohol. Presumably because due to the darkness and everything closing at 5pm the Swedes would just spend their evenings drinking themselves to death with lack of anything else to do.

The government strictly regulates the sale of alcohol. All alcohol, with the exception of light beers with an alcohol content of less than 3.5%, can only be sold in one of the state sponsored off licenses delightfully known as The System.

The System is the alcohol store equivalent of America’s DMV. These shops make it as difficult as possible to purchase alcohol - a deliberate government policy (you can look all this up). Opening hours are 11am till 4pm and they don't even open on a Sunday.

Hence you can only really buy alcohol on a Saturday (unless you take a day off work) and it shows: there were huge lines of people stood outside The System when I went on Saturday like peasants queueing for potato’s during the final days of the USSR.

There are no promotions, no deals, nothing. All alcohol is kept behind glass cases and has a number printed beside it. You then have to remember the number, go to the counter, and tell them for example "I would like a bottle of 1765 and a can of 88427" which they then give you.

Supermarkets and other stores in Sweden are also weirdly socialist and fucked up. You have to do the cashier's work for them. I first discovered this when I went to an Asian supermarket to buy some noodles for self-catering since I couldn’t even afford a cheap Swedish restaurant.

The cashier threw a fit at me for just putting my basket on the check out conveyor belt and shouted at me to take everything out. At first I thought this was just a crazy autist, but it turns out that there is a set protocol to how you are supposed to behave at a Swedish cashier.

You are supposed to take all your items out of the basket and line them up in a neat row on the conveyor belt with the barcodes facing outwards. This is so the barcodes can scan themselves automatically as they pass the scanner and the cashier doesn't have to touch the items.

Then they fall into the tray at the end and you pay 5 fucking euros per plastic bag or some ridiculous near-equivalent and bag them up yourself.

I asked why the cashiers won't touch the items & was told it is to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome in cashiers if they are forced to perform small repetitive movements all day like slightly raising bags of peas to a scanner so for their safety you have to do the scanning yourself.

In keeping with Sweden’s policy of impoverishing its citizens - everywhere in Sweden is laughably mean in regards toilets & wifi. No doubt due to dusky freeloaders. There is no free wifi anywhere except the bloody airport - which you'll need when you have nothing to do after 8pm.

The toilets in malls/stations/etc cost 2 euros a go and restaurants 100% keep toilets locked. If you’re a customer you can ask for the key, but even when you've bought a meal they sometimes charge extra to use it. Even in McDonalds you have to pay 1 Euro for a toilet coupon.

A lot of the nonsensical things I have mentioned above stem from Sweden’s traditionally high-trust homogenous society. However, when you add a whole lotta low-trust immigrants from third world countries, things really take a turn for the worse.

Don’t get me wrong. There are some good places in Sweden. There are some lovely old towns, islands & mountains if the cold and the expense doesn’t put you off. But it is no wonder that this is the country that produced Greta Thunberg.

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