alt Hacker News"Fine, I won't connect then!1!!"
What's wrong with you, you're responding to literally the opposite of what I said? You are free to connect, to seek your roots, figure out weird quirky things from the culture of your ancestors, and nurture as much fondness for Ireland and Irishness as you please. No-one in Ireland (Note, I'm not Irish!!) is gonna object to any of that.
The one thing, the ONE FUCKING THING we're asking you not to do is to call yourself Irish, because that will guaranteed piss off everyone you meet in Ireland.
How is this difficult to do or understand? We're asking one thing.
Everything else is up for grabs. You can appropriate as much culture as you please, real, fake, stereotypical, exaggerated, whatever. Grab it, use it, do it, perform it, that's fine. You don't need to excuse yourself or justify yourself or claim ancestry or heritage or anything. Absolutely no-one will gatekeep the culture. Enjoy it, all of it! Do this one thing, and real Irish people will be super happy to share their culture with you.
Dude. The vast majority of Irish people can't speak a word of Gaelic. 10 years ago when I went to Ireland, the bilingual population was 0.1%!!!!! How many people use Gaelic in their daily life in Ireland? Less than 100 000. Guess the rest of you are just English, pretending to be Irish, eating fish & chips & going to Tesco's...
The only thing I ever heard from Irish people that they hated about being "Irish-American" was the idea that Ireland was a magical pixie world full of leprechauns and gold.