Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nacirema

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 48 posts

Re: Nacirema

#11

Post by saalweachter »

lordnacho wrote: post #5

I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…

As an American, I've actually already experienced this, sort of.

I grew up in the Midwestern US, on a farm, miles from the closest town and miles more from the closest city, the name of which would probably only register with people in a 2-5 State radius.

When I moved to New York City after college, I realized I could already name more streets and places in NYC than I could from my childhood. I knew the museums and the bridges, the boroughs, the landmarks; Battery Park and Castle Clinton were right out of Deus Ex. My "home town" didn't have a mayor; I couldn't name one of the nearby city, but I knew LaGuardia and Giuliani.

I'm not actually sure if NYC and LA are overrepresented in American media -- the NYC metro area is something like 8% of the US population, after all -- but because a half dozen cities are the backdrop of so much of American culture even the people who live in one have all the rest, thousands of miles away, to develop that distant familiarity with.

(On the topic of brands, the biggest question New Yorkers had for me, coming from the Midwest, was whether Long John Silver's really existed; the ads saturated New York advertising despite not having any locations within a state or three. Likewise, I'd never encountered a Dunkin Donuts prior to moving to the coast.)

Re: Nacirema

#12

Post by pjc50 »

lordnacho wrote: post #5

I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…

> I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries

The hegemony of coverage of the US legal system and politics causes all sorts of weird effects. You get Canadian protestors invoking the First Amendment .. to the US constitution. (The first amendment to the Canadian constitution seems to be the accession of Manitoba?)

Just as you get people wearing NY Yankees baseball caps everywhere, people outwith the US claim allegiance to one of the US political factions, follow along with the games, and get into fights with supporters of the opposing team.

Re: Nacirema

#13

Post by cainxinth »

lordnacho wrote: post #5

I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…

I solo backpacked Europe in the mid 2000s and found that telling people you were American was decidedly uncool. I’m sure the dislike of W Bush abroad had something do with it, but it was also partly because of what you are describing. Everyone already knew a lot about America. It wasn’t interesting to then.

I remember staying at a hostel in Croatia with a diverse group. At breakfast we went around the room saying our names and home countries. There were Germans, Australians, Koreans, French, Brits, Brazilians… and then it got to me and people practically rolled their eyes when I said I was from the states.

Re: Nacirema

#15

Post by taneq »

Tade0 wrote: post #6
jayyhu wrote: post #3

In the same vein: The Sacred Rac https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/user/millerg/ANTH_...

> Unfortunately the rac breed is not very healthy and usually does not live more than five to seven years. That's a gross misunderstanding of the topic! A Rac's natural lifespan is easily in the twenties, it's just that they're a display of status and virility, so those 5-7 years are actually the time after the original owner sells of the Rac to the less fortunate. It's quite the irony. An animal held at such high es…

In fact you can, somewhat gruesomely, keep a rac alive long after it would normally perish by grafting body parts from other deceased racs onto it. There are even stories of necromancy whereby a rac thought long dead and buried could be exhumed and revived by feeding it fresh yrettab and cleaning its nostrils with a squirt of the potent restorative, 04dw.

Re: Nacirema

#16

Post by Fnoord »

lordnacho wrote: post #5

I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…

When someone who's native English complains about my English (and I've been complimented about it throughout my life, it being the only secondary language I more or less (feel like) I can control), I say: how's the quality of your secondary language? My primary language is Dutch, not English.

Same with anyone in Europe I meet who speaks English (except for Ireland and UK): its their secondary language. So when I hear someone who's native Spanish speak English, I have compassion and appreciate their effort. For Dutch not so much. Its a relatively small and nowadays insignificant language. We grow up with English, its normal to speak, read, and comprehend English.

What you shouldn't forget is that you're generalizing. Americans refers to people of USA in this context, and USA is a large country, with a lot of cultural backgrounds, and various levels of intelligence. That goes for any country, but this country specifically has over 200 million people, and last 20 years it has become polarized as hell.

Re: Nacirema

#17

Post by ChrisKnott »

Reminds me of Twitter user @gathara who adopted a Western style of talking about African politics during the US election. Stuff like - "observers from the African Union urged calm amid worries existing ethnic tensions could break into violence in the oil-rich North American nation. Speaking from the coastal capital of Washington DC, incumbent President Trump said today..."

Re: Nacirema

#18

Post by thatBilly »

pjc50 wrote: post #12
lordnacho wrote: post #5

I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…

> I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries The hegemony of coverage of the US legal system and politics causes all sorts of weird effects. You get Canadian protestors invoking the First Amendment .. to the US constitution. (The first amendment to the Canadian constitution seems to be the accession of Manitoba?) Just as you get people wearing NY Yankees baseball caps everywhere, peo…

Hi pjc50, are you Scottish?

Re: Nacirema

#19

Post by selimthegrim »

jayyhu wrote: post #3

In the same vein: The Sacred Rac https://laulima.hawaii.edu/access/content/user/millerg/ANTH_...

This becomes funnier when you consider the brethren of the Asu must be the Asurs because they specialize in forging.

Re: Nacirema

#20

Post by rendall »

lordnacho wrote: post #5

I've often wondered how Americans see the world. I have a lot of family and friends from there, and something about meeting them is striking. The rest of the world gets an enormous amount of information from America. I've never lived in the US, but I know all the states. I couldn't write out all the counties in the UK. I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries. I know the presidents…

As an immigrant from the US to Finland, it's such an overwhelming advantage that it actually interferes with my engaging with Finns on their own terms and in their own language. Almost everyone is delighted to switch to English and discuss all things America, to the point that I really do not have immediate, external pressures to level up my Finnish. Nearly everyone finds my grumpiness about this baffling, so I just have to choose cheerfulness. But holy shit I wish English were not my native language, sometimes.
Post reply on HN