France has become so rude to tourists, its Foreign Minister has launched a campaign to get locals to be nicer

If you were playing some kind of party game and someone told you to act French, what would you do? If your answer would be to curl your upper lip, sneer at whomever you're speaking to and take an exaggerated pull from your imaginary cigarette, you nailed it. And France's foreign minister knows it. Laurent Fabius has announced a new tourism initiative – and a new tourism investment fund – for the country, one that will come with a humorous (at least to him) ad campaign and the simple suggestion that maybe the citizens could start being a little less, well, French to tourists.

Fabius understands that France is as legendary for its rudeness as it is for its wines and cheeses and he'd like everyone to do their part to downplay that stereotype. He said:

Tourism is a national treasure that needs to be protected, nurtured and developed [...] We have room for improvement here. When we come up against a foreign tourist, we are all ambassadors for France.

The fund – the tangible part of his plan – will be spent to improve some "tourist hotspots," like the Gare du Nord station in central Paris, to encourage border agents to say "Hello" and "Goodbye" when they're stamping visitors' passports and to increase the amount of signage in popular locations, and to translate those signs into languages other than French. Despite its reputation for service with a smirk, France is the most-visited country in the world, welcoming (and we're using that word in its most general, least enthusiastic sense) 84.7 million tourists, according to The Independent. Fabius hopes to increase that number to 100 million by 2020, and to improve the country's international reputation along the way.

The image of the French as being rude and uninviting has contributed to a condition called Paris Syndrome, which was first discussed in a French psychiatric journal in 2004. The condition, which is most prevalent amongst Japanese visitors, can cause "acute delusions, hallucinations, dizziness, sweating, and feelings of persecution." An average of 20 tourists fall victim to the syndrome every year, and despite the small number of cases, the Japanese embassy does have a phone hotline to help those who believe they might be contracting it (we swear we aren't making this up).

If France manages to take care of that whole rudeness thing, then perhaps the country can try to figure out why it's so fascinated with Jerry Lewis. That's even more disturbing, really.