To think Irish people have more personality and character

Sure he was a grand fella. The robin hood of modern times 🫣😆

Totally agree, I haven’t ever met an Irish person who didn’t have the gift of the gab. I do think the accent helps though. I also always think Americans sound charismatic but it is an accent thing.

Is he not sound? We will have to wait and see if a movie gets made before we decide.

'The General' turned out to be a great fella after all giving nappies to the neighbours in need and of course there was the very romantic love story between him and two sisters going on at the same time. Everyone was happy. There was the small matter of him crucifying some innocent guy on a pool table but feck it, mistakes happen.

Whilst this is of course stereotyping and I would never voice this in public, I was speaking to my husband and adult kids the other day, and I said that it was interesting that I have never met an Irish person that I disliked.

We discussed that obviously there will be the same range of personalities as in any other culture, but without fail, every Irish person I have met has been warm, engaging and great company. Perhaps it is because I work in the NHS and I meet lots of Irish nurses, and that may have skewed my opinion and maybe they are a particular breed. But even outside of work, I have always loved chatting to Irish people.

Perhaps statistically I am now due to spend my next fifty years meeting Irish dickheads.

And Gerry "The Monk" Hutch....

But he's been found guilty, so the jury are sound, and the Judge, and all the people Nikita thanked, and Nikita herself.

I wish.

Oh yes Conor McGregor is NOT sound. He's the only one though.

Yes Irish people are sound, English people are wankers. The only people on a par with the Irish for soundness are the Scots. This is a universal truth. If you're confused watch Braveheart, the Mel Gibson one from the 90s.

Such a negative response to an innocent question, I certainly have more personality and character than anyone else, so have all my neighbours, and everyone in my nearby town (except the quite extraordinary number of them insisting on driving the wrong way round the car park this morning, they had no character or personality) (and the politicians on the radio failing to explain why they'll do in the next five years what they have signally failed to do in the last five) (and Conor McGregor) But apart from that we are outstandingly outstanding to a man and woman.

And @curlywurlymum was spot on when she pointed out we are almost all outstanding beauties.

So there.

You mean English don't you..

But Irish people and northerners are generally friendlier than southerners in my view. It's not always true of course there are plenty of bah humbug misanthropes and snobs everywhere. In the stereotype about Londoners not being generally friendly I think it is true (I am one by the way) - as is generally true of people who live in big anomising cities. Im a friendly person and will stop to help strangers etc but am often zoned out on the tube, in the streets. I live going to Manchester etc to have more warm and friendly interactions.....

Stereotypes are a function of the human brain needing to generalise to learn how to manage situations. Otherwise every time we walked in a shop we'd have to re-learn how to behave and every time we as women walked home alone at night we would need to re-learn taking precautions to keep safe.
Generalisations are generally useful but stereotypes can lead to prejudice built on ignorance.

Is the percepton that northerners are more friendly than southerners, also because of colonialism?

They evolve in a colonial situation for very obvious reasons — it’s easier to oppress, kill and dispossess a set of people when you’re firmly convinced they’re ‘savages’.

The roots of the pejorative Irish stereotype (pugnacious, sly, ignorant, superstitious, ‘uncivilised’, loquacious but incomprehensible, dangerous) were already in place when Giraldus Cambrensus wrote his Topographica Hibernia in the 12th c during Henry II’s conquest of Ireland, and were further refined by Edmund Spenser during the Tudor campaigns, when he justified advocating a scorched earth policy on the grounds that the Irish were a ‘disruptive and a degraded people’. And the wave of Punch and other periodicals’ cartoons of Irish people as apes didn’t accidentally coincide with the campaign for Home Rule and the Land War.

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/01/28/irish-apes-tactics-of-de-humanization/

I’m not thrilled with any kind of stereotyping of Irish people, whether it’s dehumanised ape-like savages or winsome, blarneying charmers with a glint in their eye and a song in their heart. It has a deeply unpleasant colonial history.

Stereotypes is an interesting area.

They don't happen in a vacuum. They happen because the human brain evolved to find it useful to subcategorize other people.

Swamp people? Funny guys! Great food! Love those fellas.
Mountain folk? Hide from them. They'll steal your food then your wife.

When your survival depends on assessing who might be friend or foe, it makes sense for your brain to develop a rapid-check system for that.

As long as they are neither offensive (all x people have y negative trait) or reductive (all x people are only z trait), there's little harm in them. I like noting the idiosyncrasies between cultures.

No.
People of all nationalities can have different characteristics and personalities.

Are they more friendly than northerners? Are northerners more friendly than southerners?

Weird post! I think people from all countries have awesome and shitty people, bit of a sweeping generalisation!

Canadians=nice, but generally (not all!) quite boring...

It’s really not so clear cut. Human behavior is a result of both environment and genetics. It will slightly affect closely related groups. It’s a spectrum, but each group would be represented at different points along a broader spectrum.

This is what makes humanity so interesting.

Humans are humans and have personalities depending on their genes and upbringing and experiences.

Whether they are Irish, French or Chinese is irrelevant.

Obviously there are cultural things - and how the government treats its people in the case of China, but ultimately we are all the same.

@arisingstar that's a ridiculous statement!!!

@BitOutOfPractice re PR I agree, definitely coming mostly from the USA migrants. So many have done well. Its a wonderful underdog story too. An oppressed race that gained independence, a country gripped by extreme poverty turned into a first world country. From uneducated poorly paid labour to educated middle class in one or two generations. In that sense I think irish have a lot to be proud of. Our English language was a huge factor here especially in US.

I lived in England for a long time, and wouldn’t say I noticed any great difference in terms of people affectionately taking the piss out of one another. Don’t get me wrong, I think there are in some ways huge cultural differences between Ireland and England, but that’s not one of them in my experience.