This is long text.
I have met many people from a lot of nationalities in the internet. US-Americans are a special thing in the internet, but I don’t know how it is in the land of the free itself. Probably the stupid ones keep staying on the internet, while others behave like “normal” people, but I don’t know for sure.
A majority of people lives on an other continent. They have internet as well and they also can speak english. Why assume, that they do not exist? Look, I don’t like clichés. But in far eastern Europe there was always this cliché about US-Americans, that they are ignorant as fuck. Living in western Europe today, this cliché is still present, that’s something people like to think.
And I really don’t know how to feel about that, I think there is a tendency that this cliché may apply. Not because “people are dumb hahaha”, but more how the US propaganda works. Like it makes them defaulting to USA most of the time.
I was always aware, that there is a world outside, no matter how many friends had and people I met. Even when I visited school, it was always clear, that other countries exist, they are present and they also may have other laws, morals, cultures. Let me repeat it: Other laws, different morals and culture.
On social media plattforms like Reddit and YouTube, where US Americans are not an absolute majority, it is easy to experience. I am also not talking about topics which are obviously centred around the US.
Few example:
Everything related to age is an absolute clusterfuck and you better not engage in any of suchs discussions. They can’t comprehend, that it is different somewhere, like in the most of the world. Some 13yo child murdered his mother and was then charged as an adult. Sounds stupid for me, to be honest.
But it were most of the time US-Americans who absolutely supported this decision:
- Only an adult could have so much criminal energy, so he should be threatened like one.
- He planned it and showed so much brutality, only an adult could do this.
- I hope he dies in pain
I asked if it is OK now, if this 13yo adult could vote, drink alcohol and also have sex with people 40 years older then he is. I mean he is treated like he is an adult. After that, peak mental gymnastics were applied on me and I was not liked that much. They were just angry at me. And didn’t give me an proper explanation, why this 13yo old is now an adult.
However I was blocked few days ago from commenting in a post in a subreddit, because I kept saying that being 17 doesn’t mean to be a child. There is need to differ. I know that this is legally different in other countries, but this matter won’t be resolved by insisting: “I live in the USA and in my state you are a child if you are under 18 and I don’t care" where you all live”. - I am not lying, that was something I read.
US fucking legal system is the standard for the entire world. For real, I rather receive an unsolicited dickpic, where I can at least block the person or inform mods/admins, but there is no way avoid a unsolicited legal advice, why you should sue your neighbour according to law in Florida, despite obviously living somewhere 5000km (3106 miles in freedom units) far away in a different country. I understand the intention, its a friendly one. But this happens on international social media sites. And it happens often.
Also no point in talking about prison sentences. While people which are unluckily not living in Freedomland has the tendency to understand and accept, that there are differences in each country and someone may like or dislike it, pure ignorance is striking many in US Americans. But why, even if you point out that you are from somewhere else? Because morals!
It is morally correct to do x,y and z. But not a,b and c. Why is it morally correct? Because there is an everlasting, unchangeable moral in the world which is rooted in the USA. When is this card used? Often when something is illegal in Freedomland, but legal in the majority of other countries.
Morality is not the right thing to decide if something is OK or not. In some places in the wide world it is morally wrong to be gay and Ramsan Kadyrow will make sure that this moral principle there will stay for sure. This is an other topic of course.
Its like you are desperately trying stay in denial. I thought once that probably some younger people behave that way. Being young means, that you are probably developing in a different pace then others in you age. Many things have an influence if you behave more like a child or an adult. Being very very young also means to believe into absolute things. This usually should change till adulthood. But no, older Yankees prefer to behave the same. What kind of brainwashing is USA performing on their population!? It is absolute effective.
The last thing is easily observed on Reddit. Also on Facebook and YouTube. But Reddit is full of this. They have such an fetish with pedophilia, it is absolutely an insult to vicitms and also a relativization of it. Its like they are actively searching for any clues for anything remote probably illegal by the law of a yankee state.
I indeed feel insulted, if they start calling something pedophilia, if it is indeed not. I experienced very bad things as a child and I also met other victims. But it were almost always USians on Reddit on YouTube who handled this matter with such disrespect. It always sounds more like an excuse for canalising their rage towards someone, never real care for victims of sexual abuse and violence - adult or child. Discussing that or making your point in this matter is like talking with a gorilla, which starts throwing shit at you as soon as you make a sound.
At least I rarely read something about their racist system in categorising people. Something about black, the Caucasus and Spain. But OK, this is present for a long time there and people are used to it. This doesn’t change fast.
I actually somehow accepted this stubbornness and the urge to be in denial and I just think my part. I am sure, very sure that those morons don’t represent the entire US population. I know and met people from US in a political context and they were totally normal people. But maybe they were it that way, because they are well educated communists?
I met younger and older reactionary people from Russia, Britain, Germany, Türkiye, Kazakhstan, Moldavia and Chechen. Reactionary? Yes. But even they were not really comparable with US-Americans on Reddit, Facebook or YouTube.
There is something very wrong with people in USA and I think capitalism is to blame for it. Where can I find US-Americans, where this cliché from the Soviet Union about them, don’t apply so easily? Or am I dumb and don’t see them, because the annoying ones are so annoying that it is easy to notice them?
Thank you very much if you read it all. It took a very long for me to write it all and I am proud, that I did it without DeepL!
People like e.g. the Lebanese (just one example) get that there are a variety of cultures in the world.
They meet someone and are perceptive of the fact that they’ll have different values, thoughts, etc.
Americans meet people and assume they’ll think the “normal” way.
I have been asked “Do you vote Democrat or Republican” and had to explain that other countries have different parties.
Another example: I have had to explain that the words ‘civil war’ have a general meaning, don’t refer to one war in the USA one time.
It’s not that Americans even say this in a domineering way, they just seem confused.
Oh yeah and meant to say this becomes a grave problem when they’re talking about politics/religion.
Americans can cross the line to “Why do you have those treasured cultural practices that’s fucking dumb”. Impossinle to imagine a Lebenese saying that.
Or “Why aren’t you woke? You should have [[ideology created by the specific ethnic struggle in the USA]]”
Again, it’s more ignorant than domineering, but fully deserves being taught a lesson.
The dominant Australian conservative party is named the Liberal party.
The mental discomfort from Americans about this is enjoyable.
This of course makes sense if you’re aware of what liberalism is like people here are, but the amount of USA citizens that know this are 0%
i had to explain what colonialism was to an american in a face to face convo
The short version of the answer, that someone far more articulate than me can explain better is: in the USA, we’re fed the line “America #1 best nation” from the minute we’re born until the day we die, from any of the following list: parents, teachers, preachers, TV, movies, etc. Years and years of that tends to take deep roots, especially before the internet made it easier and easier to spread reality far enough to break through the American propaganda noise.
That’s a pretty succint and articulate way of putting it
I appreciate that, I felt like the ending stumbled a bit. Thanks for the reassurance, comrade.
“America #1 best nation” from the minute we’re born until the day we die, from any of the following list: parents, teachers, preachers, TV, movies, etc.
Funny is that I remember how television channels here where flooded with cheap documentaty films from the US when I was a child. Biggest/Mightiest/Strongest what ever and it was often some military stuff. Or prison stuff, where the prisoners where obviously struggling. Worst thing was, that its hard to know if it was staged or not: “America, fuck yeah! Look at those criminal scum which is suffering, beaten up by police because they are still not behaving”. This sounds like pure satire.
Sadly, a lot of those are meant to be exactly what it looks like on the tin. Shows be like ‘Help us celebrate how horrible we are to people because “they deserve it” (please ignore the systemic racism, it’s all their fault and not at all the system designed to make them poor and desperate all their lives)’
The vast, vast majority of Americans are like this.
I once had a coworker from Azerbaijan. I was his only coworker who knew where his country is. He was baffled and appalled at the general ignorance.
“It was part of the Soviet Union!”
Poor dude thought America teaches literally anything about its past or present rivals in schools. After that, another coworker just called him “Russian” for the whole rest of the time I worked there.
Same thing here except with Ukraine. Had two people from there at a place I worked. Surprisingly, they were communist; as I expected them to be more western-aligned by moving here. I learned more over time about the overall situation in Ukraine and talked to them about it a bit.
Turns out I was the only one who knew where Odessa was. They were also called “ruskis” by HR. Fucking vile.
ukranians being called ruskis by americans is pretty funny ngl
Funny, but sad. They were good, hard-working people I talked to a lot during my off-hours as a maintenance guy during hot summer days.
They do not deserve the treatment. They moved because of Maidan and saw the writing on the wall for their family. One of the sinister parts of the imperial core is that one of the best ways to flee is towards the west preying on their hopes for a “better world”.
To call them ruskis is pure ignorance. I hate that. If you don’t know the difference, that’s not a problem. Everyone makes mistakes and you can learn. But just ignoring it is next level. People are born in different countries, and also speak a specific language and grow up by experiencing culture which developed for several hundred years and probably far far more. Then some asshole behaves like it doesn’t exist, knowing the difference for sure.
The vast majority of Americans didn’t realize Ukraine even existed until the conflicts.
TBH, Ukrainians without nationalist brainworms usually do not care.
Agreed, it was more so the McCarthy style “ruski” being thrown around that was vile.
I don’t think my other comment really answers your question, so I’ll be clearer. This phenomenon is not just a Soviet cliché. It is a clear picture of the American people’s knowledge about the outside world. A high schooler who can point to France and Germany on a map is doing better than most of their peers.
Online is the only place you can find any American who knows anything. The ratio offline is even worse.
Americans are chauvinist little piggies who should be pitied were we not so destructive. The vast majority of the symptoms you describe stem from intentionally curated ignorance. People here can’t be taught about other cultures, lest we cease being amenable to their exploitation. The fundamental approach with which we engage with the world is also tailored to this end-- our noble troops protect our freedoms (enable hyper exploitative capitalist extraction), those criminals deserve what’s coming to them (maintaining the world’s largest prison population, who, conveniently can be legally enslaved), whites are superior to other races (justifying the maintenance of immense wealth disparities accrued over 200 years of discriminatory policies) etc. What you are witnessing is the artificial skin stretched over the gleaming terminator skeleton of american imperial hegemony.
Of course the communists you engaged with are better, we recognize and reject all of these framings. It can’t be stated enough just how much deprogramming it takes to be a communist in the US.
That’s scratching the surface. Reddit is a whole different can of worms-- the pedophilia shit for example is a distinctive reddit phenomenon… Along with a lot of the other bad takes one would expect from a large concentration of white men employed in high paying industries.
Stay off reddit and you will be happier I think :)
Thank you very much if you read it all. It took a very long for me to write it all and I am proud, that I did it without DeepL!
Great job!
I can say, I live in the US and I notice this too. Though I don’t think it’s as obvious to me because I’m from the US and live here, so it’s harder for me to separate out what is people being US-centric and what is not (including from myself). I do know that in learning about communism and imperialism and such things, I did grow some in nuance. For example, prior to being communist in views, I had become atheist and had a sort of generalized view that I don’t believe in any religion or gods. Now my views about it is more like that I don’t believe in any specific god, or gods, but I am careful about how I think about religion as a whole, especially religions of colonized peoples that I don’t understand. I don’t want to be a Bill Maher style atheist who uses it as a bludgeon to act morally superior to the rest of the world.
I have also tried to adopt a view like “if I don’t know about this other culture, I won’t try to speak for it”. So sometimes I make a point to emphasize my views are based around the US cultural context. It’s a strange thing, but I get the sense that because of how the empire news bubble works, many of us in the US, unless we go out of our way to find information outside the bubble or travel abroad sufficiently, end up with a very cartoonishly simplified view of the world outside the US. To some extent, I think this simplified view is a continuation of the civil/savage mythology that was used for colonialism long ago. The general picture seems to go something like: “The US (and anyone it considers an ally) is exemplary ‘civil society’ even if it has flaws because everybody has flaws and history is rife with exploitation, and anyone who the US considers suspect or an enemy is savage and backwards and every flaw they have isn’t ‘normal history’, it’s a direct result of them being a terrible, sick place run by terrible, sick people.” The double standard is wild and the implication in it that history is just people exploiting others and a country like the US happens to be a strong entity in that equation, is so nonsensical and bizarre.
I think there’s very much a “you don’t know how good you have it” abuser nature to it. Where the empire news machine has to insist to people that everywhere else is somehow way worse than the US is and way worse than it could ever be, and if it’s even slightly better, it must be because it’s an ally of the US and is following a similar trajectory. No space is allowed in that for people to think the US could be a hellhole, for lack of a better word, because that would mean the whole image of western superiority is a whole lot of nonsense (which it is, but if the US people actually thought that as a whole, they might turn on its governance a lot more easily).
This is also a good explanation. Thanks!
I have also tried to adopt a view like “if I don’t know about this other culture, I won’t try to speak for it”. So sometimes I make a point to emphasize my views are based around the US cultural context.
It would be soooo great, if more people could be that way!
I was happy to have found Grad and it being a little less USA dominated, but having been here a little bit it’s pretty clear that Hexbear is 100% yanks, 80% white, and that Lemmy.ml and Grad aren’t that far off from that either. I agree with everything you wrote.
The dominant presence of US-Americans
on the Anglophone Internetin the world is annoyingFrom USA, can confirm
It is enough if you wouldn’t spot them so easily. Most of the time it is not easy to guess where someone is from. But an average US-American will mostly reveal itself through the behaviour I observed.
OMG THIS! Not to mention the absolutely braindead random mentions of stuff like Vietnam war, 9/11 etc in casual conversations(alluding that it is seen from their perspective), boring the ever living shit out of people with 4th of July and their elections. They think that literally the entire world is looking from their perspective. Not to mention the stuff they talk about other countries.
Thanks to unequal exchange, folks in other countries have shit internet. That’s why it’s dominated by the Yankoids.
Where can I find US-Americans, where this cliché from the Soviet Union about them, don’t apply so easily? Or am I dumb and don’t see them, because the annoying ones are _so_ annoying that it is easy to notice them?
You won’t. On lemmygrad/hexbear and adjacent related places, sure, but we “self-hating” Americans are effectively zero percent of the population. It’s safe enough to assume most Americans you encounter online will have some reactionary opinions, incredibly insane ones really, if you probe far enough.
Some of the stuff you listed, like the sick obsession with “discovering pedophiles” is generally the far right, essentially Nazis or equivalent and mostly projection by them. I’m not going to pretend pedophilia isn’t a problem in any society because it definitely is and has been throughout history, but as you alluded to the right wingers use it as a tool to simply smear those groups of people they don’t like. They call anyone who disagrees with their insane fascist policies a pedophile. They call LGBTQ people pedophiles. Someone just being gay is inherently pedophilic to them. A 35 year old guy marrying a 16 year old girl… well, that’s fine and actively encouraged by many of these types. But two gay 30 year old men have consensual sex… well that’s pedophilia. It’s “grooming” children to be gay like them one day. Why? How? Because these gay and trans people exist and that is somehow a “corrupting” force upon children. No one really explains the gap there how someone born straight suddenly has a desire to be gay because they saw two guys holding hands. But this is the current far right wing obsession in the US for sure. Everything is grooming, everyone is a pedo except the actual pedos, no they don’t count… because they’re right wingers and they want to support them.
A lot of the other stuff applies across the board though. The US has an insanely backwards view of crime, punishment, rehabilitation. Race is nearly comically engrained into society. It would be comical anyway if it didn’t determine life or death so often…
I will say on racism though that Europeans, east and west, sure have their own special flavors of it. I mean, the entire Balkans, lol. Call a Serb an Albanian and see how they respond. It’s ethnic division and such, so it’s different, but also much the same. Brits, French, and Germans are currently all working together to figure out the most efficient way to explode boats of refugees fleeing to the EU. They’re all extremely reactionary towards Arabs/Muslims in a way that Americans are towards Mexicans and South Americans.
I think a lot of times Western Europeans especially like to project onto Americans and act like they’re better when in reality our countries are nearly identical except they have better social services. That’s about it. The populations act similarly, not the same, but similarly. It would literally make me burst into laughter if a Brit or French person said Americans are racist implying their countries are not. I mean seriously they have parties, just like the US, built solely around how best to shoot migrants. So I really do not respect criticism like that from Western European people, although I’ve only had much experience dealing with Brits who are probably some of the most reactionary (maybe Germans are worse, hard to say).
But anyway, overall, many of your points are valid for large portions of the population and if you expect to find people who aren’t like that, you can, but it’s like digging for… I dunno, a diamond in a mountain of shit or something. Extremely rare. Basically non-existent.
Hexbear and Grad users are not as bad as elsewhere, but they’re still guilty of it pretty frequently.
I guess it was slightly ambiguous, but I meant it to include all Americans as having reactionary tendencies, yes even on here. Yes including me.
I think a lot of times Western Europeans especially like to project onto Americans and act like they’re better when in reality our countries are nearly identical except they have better social services. That’s about it. The populations act similarly, not the same, but similarly.
Euro-brainrot (a similar degenerative disorder related to Anglo-brainrot) is definitely a thing. But as a Canadian I’d have to say that there is something particularly rotten about Angloid culture and mentality (a particularly severe case of capitalist brainrot compared to the Euros, and also of course the biggest issue- settler-colonial mentality which inherently poisons every aspect of the society).
The brainrot is diminishing as the material conditions and white demographics also do- but the Angloid brainrot is far more pervasive, and destructive (even towards their own societies). And the US is the worst of the lot.
I will say on racism though that Europeans, east and west, sure have their own special flavors of it. I mean, the entire Balkans, lol. Call a Serb an Albanian and see how they respond. It’s ethnic division and such, so it’s different, but also much the same. Brits, French, and Germans are currently all working together to figure out the most efficient way to explode boats of refugees fleeing to the EU. They’re all extremely reactionary towards Arabs/Muslims in a way that Americans are towards Mexicans and South Americans.
Europe (Not EU, entire Europe) is not less racist then the USA. How racism works is different and has historically developed this way in each of those places. But I still experience that people from US are believing that racism generally works like it appears there. That is normal if you don’t know about other places in the world, I am not blaming.
But ignoring it, despite being shown that it is indeed different in other places, is weird. Caucasian, Black, Something with Spain and South America plus Asia won’t help in understanding why calling Russians “orcs” is racism. It makes all sense if you talk about racism in the US. But other parts in the world? Not so much. Racism includes not just skin colour. It is far far more then that of course.
It would literally make me burst into laughter if a Brit or French person said Americans are racist implying their countries are not.
There are many ways how someone can be a racist. One is to clearly believe, that something like human races indeed exist and thinking that a group is inferior or superior. An other way is to do the same, but lying to yourselt:“I don’t hate people from North Africa, we just don’t have so much place! And also criminality is high within them, our society won’t survive it. It is not racism, this are facts. We can’t save the whole world, there is nothing to do about it.”
Later one is well present in Europe.
No one really explains the gap there how someone born straight suddenly has a desire to be gay because they saw two guys holding hands.
That’s because the quiet part — that perhaps some of the people holding the views themselves won’t or can’t admit — is that these people aren’t anywhere close to 100% cishet, and only put on a front of looking that way due to compulsive cisheteronormativity.
I do think your points are valid, though I think part of the reason for Americans mostly viewing everything in American context comes down to the size of the U.S. The country is so big and there is even a bit of diversity of culture in different regions. Each U.S. state was (debatablely) originally meant to act as its own nation, with the federal government being something more akin to the EU.
The analogy isn’t perfect, but what I am getting to something here. Though I have never been to Europe, I do understand that there is a larger breadth of culture, largely a product of much more long standing civilization and history, most of which developed centuries ago when long distance travel was less easy. In the modern era, it is more common to travel in between countries and even speak multiple languages, making it much more obvious how diverse the cultures of the world can be.
Coming back to America, it is a settler colonial nation that is much younger in scope, so the culture is a bit more hegemonic but far larger in scope. All that is to say, an American who lives in New York could travel to Florida (roughly 1100 miles), and the culture would be a bit different, but no where’s near the equivalent travel of, say, a trip from Poland to Italy.
Again, I want to be clear, this is not a defense, just an explanation of part of the reason you see such American centric discussion. For many Americans, even if they have traveled, they very well may have largely only ever experienced the greater American sphere of culture.
The populations of similarly large countries like China, Russia, India, or Brazil aren’t remotely similar, though. And the specific American ignorance is a most intolerable kind- an arrogant, chauvinistic, hyper-aggressive, and often willful ignorance (granted, the same applies to the rest of the west, it’s just that the US tends to be the worst in of the lot in all these aspects). The rest of the Anglosphere trails not far behind, but the US is a country that basically celebrates obnoxious ignorance in its entirety.
“Celebrating obnoxious ignorance” is probably the best way to put it.
The United States is a country where you get dirty looks for trying to pronounce a foreign word correctly. Hell, insisting on saying it wrong is just proof that the other language doesn’t matter.
Never recommend a book to an American. In our culture, it is the gravest of insults.
Americans mostly viewing everything in American context comes down to the size of the U.S
Nope
Each U.S. state was (debatablely) originally meant to act as its own nation
Many countries have federal systems of government.
I agree that American culture is very hegemonic (particularly for USians) and that contributes to the effect.
Be fair, that’s still absolutely massive, the same respective area you put it over in Africa has thousands unique cultural identities, languages, traditions, etc.
Size absolutely does play a part, but its not enough to excuse the sheer amount of ignorance. Russia and China are massive as well, China is around the same landmass with almost 4 times the population, and the average Chinese isn’t as stupid.