Another example of American Derangement Syndrome, where socially uncouth but generally well-meaning Americans (in the aggregate) are made out to be some sort of existential scourge. Many Europeans have this due to Americans seeming to have much more money than their taste would imply.
Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
41–50 of 86 posts
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
As an Italian, I feel the exact same. This guy just doesn't know how to seriously talk about imperialism, globalization and over-tourism from a geopolitical and economic prospective, so instead he talks about things more at his level: gelato, coffee, and quirkily decorated restaurants. With a bad, paternalistic attitude as well. BTW we all hate those hipster burger places (which now turned to doing smash burgers), an…
I think the last part was touching on how Italians are also doing this and coming to tacky restaurants or etc? It feels like the author is guilty about being complicit in it to me
Yes, the big reveal is that he understands perfectly well he’s one of the asshole tourists in another context, too.
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#43> When Americans analyze a small shop in a foreign country, time stops counting itself on clocks and pondering its own dull finiteness. Now it can pleasurably yawn into the holy hollowness of the 30-plus questions the tourists are asking. Now, everyone around the American family is swamped in the buttery goo of the present, stretched. The other people in the gelateria can’t name the feeling that wraps itself around t…
So how do you feel about the ending thesis that now you are also this American family?
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#44I'm not sure if I like this piece but it's interesting. I just come away with the sense that the author feels something is off and did the best he could to articulate it but didn't quite put the finger on why things are off. I'm not sure I can do so either. Something about cultural and monetary pressure, how people respond to incentives for better or for worse. People crave the new and different and authentic, they f…
I was just on my phone in an Italian gelato shop in Belgrade, looking up what "stracciatella" means in the context of gelato so I didn't sound like an idiot or struggle to communicate with the employee. I understand the latter, but just as one datapoint, I would not think you sound like an idiot for asking "what exactly is this that you're selling?"
I get that, but the opening paragraphs of the article go out of their way to point out that the Americans are in the way by asking 30 questions about gelato!
I think I just have a hangup in general about "acting like a tourist".
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#45I'm not sure if I like this piece but it's interesting. I just come away with the sense that the author feels something is off and did the best he could to articulate it but didn't quite put the finger on why things are off. I'm not sure I can do so either. Something about cultural and monetary pressure, how people respond to incentives for better or for worse. People crave the new and different and authentic, they f…
Or "there's really no way to do that without some kind of fiction".
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#46All the olds and the people who have succeeded in life need to offer better jobs to young workers than the tourism sector does, and then the problems that the author so pathetically complains about would go away.
But people don't want to do that. They want to put all their wealth into real estate and "guaranteed" profits with no risk and no need to bother your mind about it. Not investing in a small business or in industry, in your nation, in your youth. "Yuck!" is what the author and other very refined people think when hearing that. "No thanks!", naturally followed by "Let's tax anybody who does that!".
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#47For the confused: gelateria is some foreign word for an ice cream shop.
Not exactly; gelato is different than ice cream.
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#48> The cold brew order is no new behavior. We know what it is. The American empire is just the fourth incarnation of what started as Roman, became Christian European, and then predominantly British. We know what it is. We still have it in our veins, the disdain these tourists are showing. Their carelessness and abstraction. They are the rulers, the ones who believe they are giving meaning to reality for the first time…
Your list is imcomplete I believe: Too merciful to slaveowners before, too merciful to warmongers as of late and way too merciful to grifters for as long as this country has existed. I learnt that you should never bet against the U.S but I don't know how much longer you will be able to waste that seemingly infinite potential. Good times creates bored, ignorant men. Bored ignorant, men create bad times.
This is true, but remember, bad times creates violent, ignorant men who also create bad times.
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#49But seriously, why is it such an impossibility to get an iced coffee over there. You have affogato! You can take a caffe americano and pour it over ice!
You can ask for Caffè in ghiaccio and will likely get it, let alone something fancier like a shakerato.
(FWIW, The author did say cold brew, and not iced coffee, but still...)
Re: Are You Enjoying Our Linguine? (2025)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most Europeans can separate Americans from their government, but a person's views and behavior matter. Paying customers are always welcome but obnoxious ones, regardless of culture, might get an eye roll or worse.
Yeah but that doesn't mean we also don't dislike people from the US. It's a shock to many but there are Europeans who dislike both US politics and the average US citizen who flashes cash, doesn't learn the language, doesn't research where they're travelling, shouts all the times, spends 1 night per city, and is the kind of traveller in the article, etc etc. Loudly proclaiming you're anti Trump is not a skip-the-line…
I understand some people are jerks, but that also includes those who monolithize an entire class of people based on a stereotype.