Australians labelled ‘flaky’ by Canadian expat
Australians have been offered a piece of humble pie over a painful habit many may not know they’re guilty of.
Australians have been delivered some hard truths about how they really appear to people from overseas trying to make new friends.
Canadian expat Ioana Dragnef, now based on Queensland’s Gold Coast and formerly in Melbourne, accused Aussies of dropping the ball when it came to forming friendships.
She played out a scenario in a TikTok that depicted how friendships would typically be formed and maintained in Canada to demonstrate how different things were in Australia.
An initial invitation to hang out inevitably evolved into being part of a “tight knit community” where each person’s close friends became interwoven to form one big loving and supportive group.
“You’ll always have someone to hang out with and we’ll be friends for many years to come,” she said of friendships in Canada.
In Australia however, she said friendships were particularly tough to break into.
Enacting a scenario based on her experience since arriving seven years ago, she accused Aussies of blowing people off and only being vulnerable when they were drunk.
“I can’t hang out this weekend, I’ve overcomitted myself to like six different events, 30 different friendship groups, and the only way I’m going to be vulnerable with you is if I’m completely plastered,” she said while in character as an Australian.
“And you don’t drink that much so … even if I don’t drink, I’m gonna wanna keep things pretty superficial because feelings make me uncomfortable.”
She captioned the video: “FLAKES, the lot of ya!!!”
More than 300,000 people have watched the video since it was uploaded on Tuesday, with the clip seemingly upsetting some of her Aussie viewers.
Later on Tuesday she took to Instagram to defend the video, writing: “this video comes with the caveat that this is my experience as someone who has lived in Melbourne and on the Gold Coast for the last seven years and as someone who isn’t a big drinker”.
The criticism was nothing new for some Aussies in the comments though.
“As an Australian can confirm most of us haven’t made a new friend since high school,” one comment read.
“Aussie conundrum … we are ‘friendly’ but it’s not easy to make friends especially as you get older,” another wrote.
“I’m 31 Aussie and only have one friend. Nothing sticks and it’s lots of empty words,” a third said.
Even a Kiwi chimed in to say Ms Dragnef was “speaking facts”.
“As an immigrant in Australia, this is spot on to my impression of local people,” another person said.
Based on more than 1600 comments, the creator was blown away by how many people shared her experience.
“I can’t believe this is such a widespread thing, I always thought it was just predominantly an age thing,” she wrote.
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