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[flagged]

biesnecker 2y ago
There are 330 million of us, too. The vast majority can be reasonable people and that still leaves millions of batshit crazy Americans out there to write about. Edit: typo
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- wongogue 2y ago
  If people could understand this and have a better sense about the scale of millions and billions, a lot of social problems plaguing humanity would be gone.
  - brailsafe 2y ago
    Which social problems? I think many people do understand this and problems directly resulting from a lack of this understanding aren't actually that present in the real world, but by the same reasoning, people think others don't because that's the poison you see on the Internet. In day to day life, it's fairly acceptable to just acknowledge that some contingent of whichever population is made up of lunatics and move on with your life. It's only other lunatics, typically also only on social media, that can't do that, but normal people just don't bother paying attention to them. and hope they burn out.
- stavros 2y ago
  I don't know, I've seen Americans stereotype people up and down, but the moment you mention an American stereotype, it's always "this is a big country, there are lots of people here". Just notice how "Chinese people" and "IP theft" go hand in hand here.
- JBlue42 2y ago
  I'm American and I grew up with many perfectly nice people (including family) that have held morally repugnant beliefs. Same for people in many other countries. Only exception are cab drivers - they get talkative quickly with no filter. I think the US is veering in the direction. People are complex. It's only when you get to know them beyond superficial conversations / introductions that this becomes apparent.
outside1234 2y ago
This is exactly right. It is sort of like the trope that all Brits are drunk all of the time on vacation in Spain. It isn't true in general, but wow, that 1% where it is true are very loud and obnoxious.
- yazzku 2y ago
  Hilarious. I can attest that while not all Brits are drunk, all Brits in Spain certainly are. Source: Spanish
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Are they all drinking imported beer or are they addicted to local beverages?
    - xgkickt 2y ago
      No idea now, but San Miguel was the beer of choice in the 1990s.
fragmede 2y ago
"Dog Bites man" doesn't make headlines, but "Man Bites Dog" does. You'd probably be aghast at what sort of British and Australian news manages to make it to the States.
- yazzku 2y ago
  homo canem mordet
throwaway8754aw 2y ago
It's sad that those outside America think negatively of us (while in Iceland I met Europeans who felt the same) because of horrid media that a lot of it is made up crap and lies especially in politics (on all sides). I am sure to get downvoted and by other Americans for saying this as I've said many times here for years and it gets downvoted. Yet one argument that other Americans are feeling the same is via who the 47th US president will be. A president who I never voted for but has been strung up left/right/sideways by his opposition yet all that mattered zero and was ignored. Their political games got tiresome and didn't work yet more importantly though is inflation and no doubt people were paying less for things when the idiot was in office. Wages skyrocketed during covid to get ppl back to work causing things to get more expensive to pay for higher wages is one reason things are more expensive.
mattmaroon 2y ago
Is “totally normal guy does nothing out of the ordinary” a headline in Australia?
- hinkley 2y ago
  "Our top story tonight: Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead"
rescripting 2y ago
Media in general, but American media especially, is hyper optimized for clickbait. Informing people about news and current events is useful, but inducing outrage is _profitable_. Newsrooms across the country have realtime metrics dashboards showing what stories are doing numbers, and its not meeting minutes of local PTA meetings. All incentives drive journalists to search out stories designed to light up your monkey brain, and a byproduct of that is every stereotype under the sun is magnified and distorted into a caricature.
- Whoppertime 2y ago
  I just wonder why more Americans don't consume News in a raw form. You can watch speeches and Congressional minutes on C-Span. No talking heads (at least when they're directly covering an event) or ad breaks. I can watch C-Span 2 segments online, series like Book TV, but I never hear about Americans watching C-Span for their news
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    For the same reason people will choose to get calories from Twinkies rather than home cooked meals, I would imagine. You have to put a conscious effort in to avoid the product which is bad for you but has been meticulously crafted to be easier and hit the dopamine centers of your brain harder.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
It works the other way as well. More or less everything I know about the UK I learned from watching "Spitting Image", both the original as a child and the more recent revival.
imgabe 2y ago
From what I know of UK and Australia, I'm pretty sure you have parents who would do Jell-O shots at 10am too.
- desas 2y ago
  It's not necessarily the jelly shot, and day drinking is far from unusual in the UK. The idea of an official organised parents weekend where you turn up at uni to party with your kids is a bit cringe. YMCA or not.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
plandis 2y ago
For what it’s worth to was in college in the late 2000s early 2010s and parents coming to party wasn’t really a thing at my university (private, research university). That being said, both my parents died when I was a young child so I would’ve given anything to have some drinks with them as adults on equal footing. I don’t particularly find it odd that parents (humans too, after all) want to occasionally let loose.
hinkley 2y ago
The United States is a big fuckin place. If you don't want to have your world view challenged by other cultures, you can travel up to 3300 miles and still find people who think quite a bit the way you do - And that's without including Alaska. So if you encounter Americans outside of America, and they aren't holding guns, you're already in a pretty filtered group. Like anybody, some of us don't discover how uncomfortable being out of your comfort zone is until you try, and they revert to their lesser selves. But at least they tried.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bigstrat2003 2y ago
> I can only assume that American media is an environment in which only the very most extreme and grotesque representations can break through. Pretty much this. Our media is hyper-optimized for what drives clicks/views/subscriptions, and it turns out that nothing drives those things so much as showing outrageous behavior, rather than trying to portray what is typical. You can see it in our political culture as well: if you listen to the media, every single member of (insert other side here) is a step below Hitler on the evil scale. But if you talk to people across the political spectrum, you will find that the vast majority are good, decent people who share your same values and merely disagree on how to best reach them. I genuinely think that the media is responsible for most of the social issues in our country, and if we could get rid of them we would be significantly better off.
- JBlue42 2y ago
  >nothing drives those things so much as showing outrageous behavior Visiting my parents and having to watch linear tv made this more apparent than anything. MTV seems to just have a show on repeat for hours called "Ridiculousness". The commercials blare (and were split between political ads and random drugs for obscure conditions) and the 'news' channels have bright colors and everyone yelling at each other.
nradov 2y ago
I've heard Britons complain about the local chavs walking their kids to school while wearing pyjamas and drinking a can of beer.
rasse 2y ago
"The very definition of news is something that hardly ever happens. If an incident is in the news, we shouldn't worry about it." — Bruce Schneier

[flagged]

There are 330 million of us, too. The vast majority can be reasonable people and that still leaves millions of batshit crazy Americans out there to write about. Edit: typo

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wongogue 2y ago
If people could understand this and have a better sense about the scale of millions and billions, a lot of social problems plaguing humanity would be gone.
- brailsafe 2y ago
  Which social problems? I think many people do understand this and problems directly resulting from a lack of this understanding aren't actually that present in the real world, but by the same reasoning, people think others don't because that's the poison you see on the Internet. In day to day life, it's fairly acceptable to just acknowledge that some contingent of whichever population is made up of lunatics and move on with your life. It's only other lunatics, typically also only on social media, that can't do that, but normal people just don't bother paying attention to them. and hope they burn out.
stavros 2y ago
I don't know, I've seen Americans stereotype people up and down, but the moment you mention an American stereotype, it's always "this is a big country, there are lots of people here". Just notice how "Chinese people" and "IP theft" go hand in hand here.
JBlue42 2y ago
I'm American and I grew up with many perfectly nice people (including family) that have held morally repugnant beliefs. Same for people in many other countries. Only exception are cab drivers - they get talkative quickly with no filter. I think the US is veering in the direction. People are complex. It's only when you get to know them beyond superficial conversations / introductions that this becomes apparent.

outside1234 2y ago

This is exactly right. It is sort of like the trope that all Brits are drunk all of the time on vacation in Spain. It isn't true in general, but wow, that 1% where it is true are very loud and obnoxious.

yazzku 2y ago
Hilarious. I can attest that while not all Brits are drunk, all Brits in Spain certainly are. Source: Spanish
- hinkley 2y ago
  Are they all drinking imported beer or are they addicted to local beverages?
  - xgkickt 2y ago
    No idea now, but San Miguel was the beer of choice in the 1990s.

fragmede 2y ago

"Dog Bites man" doesn't make headlines, but "Man Bites Dog" does. You'd probably be aghast at what sort of British and Australian news manages to make it to the States.

yazzku 2y ago
homo canem mordet

throwaway8754aw 2y ago

It's sad that those outside America think negatively of us (while in Iceland I met Europeans who felt the same) because of horrid media that a lot of it is made up crap and lies especially in politics (on all sides). I am sure to get downvoted and by other Americans for saying this as I've said many times here for years and it gets downvoted. Yet one argument that other Americans are feeling the same is via who the 47th US president will be. A president who I never voted for but has been strung up left/right/sideways by his opposition yet all that mattered zero and was ignored. Their political games got tiresome and didn't work yet more importantly though is inflation and no doubt people were paying less for things when the idiot was in office. Wages skyrocketed during covid to get ppl back to work causing things to get more expensive to pay for higher wages is one reason things are more expensive.

mattmaroon 2y ago

Is “totally normal guy does nothing out of the ordinary” a headline in Australia?

hinkley 2y ago
"Our top story tonight: Generalissimo Francisco Franco Is Still Dead"

rescripting 2y ago

Media in general, but American media especially, is hyper optimized for clickbait. Informing people about news and current events is useful, but inducing outrage is _profitable_. Newsrooms across the country have realtime metrics dashboards showing what stories are doing numbers, and its not meeting minutes of local PTA meetings. All incentives drive journalists to search out stories designed to light up your monkey brain, and a byproduct of that is every stereotype under the sun is magnified and distorted into a caricature.

Whoppertime 2y ago
I just wonder why more Americans don't consume News in a raw form. You can watch speeches and Congressional minutes on C-Span. No talking heads (at least when they're directly covering an event) or ad breaks. I can watch C-Span 2 segments online, series like Book TV, but I never hear about Americans watching C-Span for their news
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  For the same reason people will choose to get calories from Twinkies rather than home cooked meals, I would imagine. You have to put a conscious effort in to avoid the product which is bad for you but has been meticulously crafted to be easier and hit the dopamine centers of your brain harder.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

It works the other way as well. More or less everything I know about the UK I learned from watching "Spitting Image", both the original as a child and the more recent revival.

imgabe 2y ago

From what I know of UK and Australia, I'm pretty sure you have parents who would do Jell-O shots at 10am too.

desas 2y ago
It's not necessarily the jelly shot, and day drinking is far from unusual in the UK. The idea of an official organised parents weekend where you turn up at uni to party with your kids is a bit cringe. YMCA or not.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

plandis 2y ago

For what it’s worth to was in college in the late 2000s early 2010s and parents coming to party wasn’t really a thing at my university (private, research university). That being said, both my parents died when I was a young child so I would’ve given anything to have some drinks with them as adults on equal footing. I don’t particularly find it odd that parents (humans too, after all) want to occasionally let loose.

hinkley 2y ago

The United States is a big fuckin place. If you don't want to have your world view challenged by other cultures, you can travel up to 3300 miles and still find people who think quite a bit the way you do - And that's without including Alaska. So if you encounter Americans outside of America, and they aren't holding guns, you're already in a pretty filtered group. Like anybody, some of us don't discover how uncomfortable being out of your comfort zone is until you try, and they revert to their lesser selves. But at least they tried.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bigstrat2003 2y ago

> I can only assume that American media is an environment in which only the very most extreme and grotesque representations can break through. Pretty much this. Our media is hyper-optimized for what drives clicks/views/subscriptions, and it turns out that nothing drives those things so much as showing outrageous behavior, rather than trying to portray what is typical. You can see it in our political culture as well: if you listen to the media, every single member of (insert other side here) is a step below Hitler on the evil scale. But if you talk to people across the political spectrum, you will find that the vast majority are good, decent people who share your same values and merely disagree on how to best reach them. I genuinely think that the media is responsible for most of the social issues in our country, and if we could get rid of them we would be significantly better off.

JBlue42 2y ago
>nothing drives those things so much as showing outrageous behavior Visiting my parents and having to watch linear tv made this more apparent than anything. MTV seems to just have a show on repeat for hours called "Ridiculousness". The commercials blare (and were split between political ads and random drugs for obscure conditions) and the 'news' channels have bright colors and everyone yelling at each other.

nradov 2y ago

I've heard Britons complain about the local chavs walking their kids to school while wearing pyjamas and drinking a can of beer.

rasse 2y ago

"The very definition of news is something that hardly ever happens. If an incident is in the news, we shouldn't worry about it." — Bruce Schneier