Month: August 2017

obiternihili:

anaisnein:

cymae-mesa:

anaisnein:

ranma-official:

alphariusthecontrarian:

littlethingwithfeathers:

eatingcroutons:

aphilologicalbatman:

willtherealmadridpleasestandup:

you know how if you ask someone where they are from, they’ll tell you their country of origin like “Norway” or “India” or whatever but Americans are all “my parents are originally from ohio but i’ve lived in utah forever until i moved to houston- NY not TX haha” 

okay ashleigh you could’ve just said usa, but no you expect the whole world to know every state in your country when your 23 year old ass can’t point to china on a map. so now i’m on urban dictionary bc i thought SoCal is an artificial sweetener

THIS IS MY FAVORITE DUMB AMERICAN THING??? it captures the entire experience of being an American. it seems super dumb and self-centered to anyone who isn’t from here but it is completely comprehensible to any other American and also NECESSARY because most states are size of European nations and we have the same weird hateful feelings towards one another??? so I need to explain to you why you shouldn’t hate me like, bitch, you better not think I live in Texas bc fuck those guys MY STATE DIDN’T VOTE FOR GEORGE BUSH

yesterday, @freekicks accidentally referred to California as a country and I launched into a spiel about how we’re big enough and have the fifth largest economy in the world (SUCK OUR DICK) and she told me to go fuck myself and that’s how you know I’m a Californian (and she is a New Yorker)

but ALSO we are intensely competitive about how authentically whatever we are so you can’t just say you’re from New York when you really grew up in MINNESOTA and just moved to New York as an adult so I need to tell you that my FAMily is from SoCal and I spent a bunch of my childhood there bc I can’t say I’m Californian just bc I’ve lived here for four years DOESN’T COUNT

but I am Californian bc I’m a snotty asshole and also I say “the 5” when I’m talking about freeways and I eat too many avocados and I know how to pronounce Vallejo and La Jolla

Other Americans may find the distinctions important, but it still absolutely comes across as dumb and self-centred to the rest of us xD

I mean, it’s been over six years since it happened, but I still distinctly remember the first time I heard an American answer that question with “the USA”. It was his first time hanging out with my friendship group, and there were maybe a dozen of us there from as many different countries – and every single one of us was like wait, what??!?

Literally before any more introductions could happen, the entire conversation devolved into the rest of us bitching about how Americans always expect the rest of the world to know and care about the differences between their states and cities. (As if other countries don’t have deeply entrenched local identities and rivalries. And the size argument falls a bit flat when you’ve got people from China, Australia and Brazil in the room.)

In this case it turned out our new American friend had spent quite a few years living in Europe, where he’d picked up on the fact that this is something that the rest of the world finds slightly exasperating.

This is good to know as an American. Like seriously. I had no idea it came across as arrogant. 

But for the record… it is actually important to us. So that’s why we tell you. I’m not from the United States. The state/city I’m from happens to be in the United States. That’s literally how we think about it, because to us saying we’re from the US is totally unhelpful. And because the vast majority of us don’t/can’t get off this contintent very often, we don’t really have practice answering the question, “where are you from?” with “The United States.” Also… I would figure the accent would give it away.

Also, it does control which American stereotype inevitably gets pulled out. The number of times I got asked if I played the banjo because I’m from the American South… I swear. But at least they weren’t saying, “Fuggetabbatit!” or “Surf’s up!”

The Entirety of Europe is
3.931 million

square miles in area (About 10 million Square kilometers)

The United States is
3.797 million

million square miles in area.

Saying “Im from the USA” is, geographically similar to saying “I am from Europe.”

We are the third largest country in the world. The difference, geographically, between California and New York is about 1000km larger than the difference from France and Russia, and you pass 3 or 4 fucking countries between France and Russia depending on route.

So how is it self centered to give more detailed information? Like if someone said they were from the UK I would ask what part, because a Scotsman and an Englishman are very different, and they fucking border each other.

So fuck off.

Russia is significantly larger than the USA, yet I never feel the need to elaborate exactly what part I’m from, neither do I lie that my country is literally more culturally diverse than the entirety of a continent because you cook mildly different burgers. You fuck off.

well, but I experience frustration when people are like “I’m from Russia,” because surely what part must matter?

Why does area matter? Surely we care about cultural distance not literal distance? Greece and Portugal are vastly more different from each other than California and Texas.

Are they? Are they really? Maybe. They’re certainly different. But it’s not obvious to me to the same degree it is to you that they’re VASTLY more different. They have a lot in common; they’re both Southern European countries with Mediterranean coastlines that use a lot of olive oil and got screwed by EU monetary policy. It’s at least arguable that CA and TX have about the same amount in common.

I was born in South Africa but moved here young enough that calling myself South African would be overly nuanced in roughly the same way as listing all the individual states in a region I’ve ever lived in. Even if the parameter is “nation of birth, full stop,” that’s not necessarily a simple question guaranteed a simple answer.

I usually ask Non-Americans to elaborate myself actually. Also what matters with Russia is that it’s not very populated east of the Urals, and no particular region really stands out economically like the disparities between California and say Alabama. There’s also that thing where European countries are known for their ethnic homogeneity. The biggest differences as far as I know are whether your Russian sounds somewhat like Finnish, Ukrainian, or Belorussian, or if you’re a bred and blood Muscovite. Here it’s like are your values from working class Chicagoan Italian immigrants, Russian Jews in New York, puritans, pioneers, gold rush fuckers, hollywood, are you rich or are you poor, are you urban or rural (Western Europe just doesn’t have rural like Americans do, sorry, call me back when you have to drive 60 miles to get groceries or get helicoptered to a hospital from your house) and each of these come with speaking styles, ethnic ratios, food (around here you get tacos and tortas not burgers actually), predominate denomination of Christianity in the area, and so on.

Like part of the point of Western Europe’s welfare is actually to homogenize; most people are within the same income bracket, maybe you technically travel across village lines but you don’t have to drive an hour to reach the next metropolitan area, you get pretty close to a living wage, you have largely the same stores and so on, despite all the dialect stuff you see in say Germany.

America has explicitly tried to prevent all of that. That’s socialism!