Thanks! It's great practice to look for your own fault first before finding it in others.

I noticed how deep in bullshit territory Western society is when talking to people from former communist Eastern Germany (until maybe the early 2000s), a place where self-promotion wasn't a thing, where nothing could be gained by bullshitting.

People would just plain state a realistic state of their affairs, like that they're unemployed, whereas I thought "dude you just moved here 2 weeks ago and you'll find work in no time, don't put yourself down like that". It was really eye-opening how much self-promotion is going on even among the most humble people.