21–30 of 48 posts
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'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 t…
Marx and Lenin wrote about the "idiocy of rural life" but there is an urban idiocy to go with it. Frequently you meet urban people who have no idea where wealth comes from, any more than you'd get an understanding of ecology from looking at a fish tank.
In New York it is a running gag that downstate black politicians are opposed to marijuana legalization because they think some of the business has to be "cut out" for black people because otherwise white people are going to sell all the weed, or that a city councilmember wants to see off-track betting subsidized (not even the racetrack!) to "save jobs".
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
As a european, i found that one hillarious! They reversed all the cliché things, and express a lot of wonder about bizarrely presented austrian culture.
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…
Many are mesmerized by it and lots want to travel, but are prohibited due to costs or time from doing so. Other countries are seen as exotic, my wife can probably name a dozen fashion companies from Europe and requests gifts from them for holidays. Going to most places outside of the Caribbean islands, Central and South America, or Canada is outside the limits of many people. Taking a vacation to Europe is often seen as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The language barrier is big, there's usually little need in many states to learn a second language, though in parts of California and Texas that being English/Spanish bilingual is becoming much more commonplace.
I've lived in, and visited many regions on America, and it is not homogeneous. The US is geographically large (many of our states are bigger than most European countries) but relatively sparse with often many different subcultures inside the same state. One place I lived was 1,000 km to the nearest foreign country. Accents in the various parts of the country used to be a lot more distinguishable but that seems to be evening out a little. It can still be difficult for some Americans to understand other Americans.
While many forms of media are commonly consumed by America, a lot of American subcultures are heavily and incorrectly stereotyped in media or ignored altogether. Most of the media comes out of very small regions of New York and California, with most of the details described being at a federal (national) level, which doesn't affect our day-to-day activities very much. Europeans may know a lot about America, but very little about the things which affect you. Most Americans also don't even know much about the rest of America, and many people can't even remember the state I live in, which is quite different from the other states nearby.
The problem is a fan-in vs fan-out problem. It's easy for many countries to look at the heavily broadcasted messages of America, but very difficult for Americans to become intimately familiar with details of other countries especially due to the language barriers. Modern technology has simplified this quite a bit, and hopefully Americans are becoming better informed travelers.
In 1996 some crazy folks produced a very dark, yet extremely funny, satirical mockumentary about Austria's culture in the style of western documentaries about Africa, from the perspective of a rather serious all-african documentation movie crew: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 As a european, i found that one hillarious! They reversed all the cliché things, and express a lot of wonder about bizar…
In 1996 some crazy folks produced a very dark, yet extremely funny, satirical mockumentary about Austria's culture in the style of western documentaries about Africa, from the perspective of a rather serious all-african documentation movie crew: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109689/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 As a european, i found that one hillarious! They reversed all the cliché things, and express a lot of wonder about bizar…
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…