The American Politeness Reflex

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Every time I meet someone new in Dallas, I know exactly how the next five minutes are going to go.

"Oh my god, Lord of the Rings!" "I've always wanted to go there." "Do you know [someone's cousin] in Auckland?"

Every time. For six years.

It's not rude — it's the opposite. It's the American politeness reflex, the one that keeps every conversation exactly three inches deep forever.

So now I say "Dallas." Or "I moved here from Australia." Or I just let them assume.

Because the truth is, being from somewhere interesting in America is a trap. You become your country. You become a tourism ad. You never become a person.

The three-inches-deep conversation

The reflex itself is well-meaning. Americans are warm, curious, encouraging. Hearing where you're from is genuinely interesting to them, and the immediate response — questions about the flight, the scenery, the celebrity sightings — is the cultural equivalent of leaning in.

But it's a script. And the script has a beginning and an end. By the time you've answered the third Lord of the Rings question, you've used up the conversation's entire allocation for "this person." You haven't actually met them. They haven't actually met you. You've performed New Zealand and they've performed interest, and then you've both moved on.

Six years of that adds up. You stop being a guy who happens to be from somewhere. You become a category — useful at someone else's dinner party as the interesting anecdote, less useful as a friend.

What was different in Brisbane

The weird thing is I didn't feel this in Brisbane. Seven years in Australia and I was just... a guy. A Kiwi guy, sure, but a guy. Same shorthand, same humour, close enough to home that nobody needed to make a thing of it.

The geography did most of the work. Trans-Tasman culture is overlapping enough that the Kiwi-Aussie thing was a running joke, not a defining feature. Conversations could start at "where are you from" and immediately move past it because there was nothing exotic to dwell on. Within a fortnight you were just someone's mate.

Texas is different. Six years in and I'm still an interesting anecdote at someone else's dinner party.

And it's not that the Texans don't try. They try harder than the Australians ever did. The trying is the problem.

A table that doesn't need explaining

That's the gap Franzus Social was built to fill. Not loneliness. Not networking. Not another room of expats from twelve different countries opening with "so where are you from."

Just a table of people who already know the version of you that doesn't need explaining. Where the conversation can start three inches deeper because nobody needs to be educated about the country, the flight, or the cousin in Auckland.

That's a small thing. But over six years it's the thing I've missed most — and the thing the wider expat scene wasn't ever going to give me, because the wider expat scene optimises for first impressions and Franzus Social optimises for the second hour.

First Dallas dinner is Wed 13 May. Applications close Fri 8 May. If you're a Kiwi or an Aussie in DFW and you're tired of being the interesting anecdote — that's the table.