Hanging out on G+ - with people from all over the planet - I have to say, yup, only a very tiny percentage have a clue what's going on, and are content to be hosed as long as things don't get worse too fast. A friend in Germany, heck, he lives in a tiny village, they don't notice much - beer over there, lives over a bakery - heaven. Retired already, doesn't care about jobs. EU doesn't seem to impact on his life at all.
Friend in Israel. Cool dude, engineer, well off, musician. Jammed with him and a guy in Iran the other night - swapping licks, politics didn't come up. Yet both their governments want them to kill each other.
Expat friend in Japan. Yokohama. Doesn't care about Fukishima, gets on fixing guitars and playing music and scoring the music for anime computer games. Doesn't care about the economy - he's got a tiny place and a nice life doing what he does.
Finns and Norwegians get just as drunk as the best Aussie pro redneck, maybe more, and gabble at one another and fall down in amusing ways. Nice people.
People in OZ and NZ seem to be more aware of what's coming. Very export driven and orders not so hot these days.
The brits are a ton 'o fun, a real interesting and diverse set of people, mostly think someone will muddle it through for them. I've not made any french friends other than in Canada. Most "real" french look on speaking English with disdain, they are self-imprisoning. And, well, French.
Haven't seen any Greeks so far. They must be busy with something else that doesn't involve being online. Plenty Spaniards and Italians, who also tend to think it's the bust that is fake, not the preceding (fake money printing via derivatives that all went poof) boom. Doesn't bode well for them if they think that, but...you can't tell 'em anything unless they're asking if you want them to hear it.
The takeaway I get is that for one thing, almost no one in this world is as bad/nasty as our governments want us to believe - they don't want to take up arms and shoot us, nor we them. Hell, they mostly don't even want to discuss those issues, it's stupid and boring. This has shown us all how much of a big lie it all is. We make friends more or less right off - what's that crap political noise again?
There really is something special about realtime video compared to say, email, even if like me you type very fast. You can be more open. If someone turns out to be a jerk (they're out there too) - they are gone with a click. Quickly you make circles of just the good guys, and their friends, and their friends.
This stuff has a lotta potential to change the world in a good way. I've picked up a few people to mentor and I'm helping them in real ways, and they appreciate it.
We are all finding out we're not as different as our governments want us to believe.
We are all finding out our governments suck no matter where we are. We are all facing similar challenges.
We are finding out that when we win, fuck you, I DID BUILD THAT.
Makes me less misanthropic than I was becoming.
Unlike FB, no one saves these chats - they're gone as soon as you click exit. So a little of the boring puerile stuff isn't so bad, it doesn't hang around to make a fool of everyone later like on FB. No, I don't maintain a G+ page as such...that's too FB-like. Just get on there and see who else is there - usually don't have to cast a public net to find some of my new pals already online. It's like we're building a human network no longer bound by where you are, of all the cool/smart folk there are, and there are a lot when you cast a big enough net. That's gotta be good for something down the road.