Non-americans really love this weird bogus narrative.
Sometimes it’s a case of you can make fun of your own country but no one else is allowed to.
I know seriously lmao. I mean I know it’s anecdotal, but I’m in the US and my friends and I constantly criticize the US. Most people I know tend to agree with most criticisms, myself included.
That’s probably because the loudest and most overly defensive ones are the Americans you’re most likely to encounter and remember in online arguments and on American news, so that colors the perception. Especially when you don’t live amongst the more reasonable majority of Americans 🤷
well if an american does respond to this it proves them right if they dont respond it doesnt prove them wrong its a bad argument for an otherwise pretty dumb claim
unless americans do care i hate america and am american so idrk
If I ever have to read the bogus claim that “USA #1!!!” I’ll flip my shit.
#1 in teen pregnancies maybe
#1 in prison population
#1 in school shootings
#1 in wage gap
What the US is not #1 in: happiness, progressiveness, quality of life, freedom
That is not my experience at all. Most Americans get extremely defensive when someone criticizes the US, even people who know better. Many are ok with specific criticism (like, healthcare sucking), but it doesn’t take much for them to revert to 'murican mode.
I have been living in the US for over a decade and been to 2/3rds of the states.
That’s really interesting. I’ve lived in 9 states and I can honestly say that outside of the southeast, it is legitimately difficult to consistently find people that dont think the us is a flaming sack of shit or at least headed that way. Seriously, I’ve heard waaaaaaaaaaaaay more negative talk on the us from Americans than anything positive. Especially in like the last decade. But this place is so damn big that anyone’s experience would vary a crazy amount so that makes sense.
Are you in tech or some other field that doesn’t involve interacting with different socioeconomic groups?
Most of not all states guarantee some “interesting” encounters if you leave the cities. In California I have seen Confederate flags flying, met neonazis, and plenty of Trump supporters. Trump got over 34% of the vote in California, almost 39% in Washington and over 40% in Oregon. Those percentages are not a majority, but I think it sets a floor, since Trump supporters are not exactly trash talking the US.
I have spent a lot of time doing canvassing and other activities that mean I encounter people with very different ideas, so that would definitely explain the different experience.
I think they’re full of shit, for what it’s worth. 33 states in 10 years? Wtf…
If you’re going to accuse me of lying, at least have the decency of doing it in a reply to my post. I lived on the East Coast and traveled up and down some, then I moved to the Midwest, I got into politics and canvassed in several states plus I went on a few road trips for fun. Then I moved to the West Coast, which somewhat limited my ability to go on road trips to other states, but still, I went as far as Colorado, I spent a month there doing backpacking and visiting a few places like Denver and Aspen.
Why do you think it is so unlikely I could visit 3 states a year?
What the fuck did you just fucking say about America, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit about America over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” meme was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.
Least aggressive response.
It’s a copypasta meant to make fun of overly aggressive keyboard warriors but yeah, it’s very un-chill indeed 😁
Holy shit, its been a while since I read this.
I love the gorilla warfare bit 🦍
Ever heard of guerilla gardening? I give you…a gorilla gardening!
This is starting to turn into gorilla marketing
Assbro turfing
You mean like this?
Stars and Stripes out for Harambe.
Americans when literally anything
THIS IS BULLSHIT!!! YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT!!!
WHAT? CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!
How do you know somebody’s American without meeting them first?
You hear them.
Unless we’re talking protesting or voting. Then they’re asleep.
Nah. Democrats protest, Republicans vote. Funny how one of those groups wields a grossly exaggerated amount of political power.
As an American you can make fun of America all you want. It sucks here.
The only Europeans I’ve had a problem with are the Danes. They have absolutely no sense of humor.
Or was it the Swedes? I don’t know. I mean they’re right there together. They’re basically the same people right?
Hehehehehehe
First of all: How dare You!?
They have absolutely no sense of humor. Or was it the Swedes?
It’s definitely the Swedes.
There are only two types of people I hate. People who are intolerant of other people’s cultures, and the Dutch.
I think it’s definitely true that Americans get defensive when you criticize the US. I also think it’s true that a huge reason for that, is because the only thing the internet seems to enjoy doing at the moment is complain about the US—no one likes to hear their country that they’re living happily in trashed on constantly.
And I say that as someone who deeply enjoys complaining about the US
So I work with a lot of people from a variety of countries. Some of those countries have really bad governments. When we joke about each other’s countries, it’s about the governments. I remember this guy who used to work with me from the Philippines. It was near the beginning of lockdowns and just after Duterte was elected. He made fun of the shit Trump was saying and doing, and I got to joke that they had their own Trump(maybe worse) coming. Australian co-workers laugh along when we joke about their shit politicians.
What we don’t do is joke about the people or the culture. That’s shitty. All those people are just as much victims of their own circumstances as we all are of our own. But we’re adults who work with each other every day and it’s easy to remember that we’re all real people. The internet however…
I haven’t noticed Americans getting upset when people criticize shitty government policies or decisions. At least not from people who aren’t boot-lickers from jump. The problem is when people make fun of American stereotypes. Americans are fat and loud and whatever. Like, if all you heard was people talking about Canadians being stuck up about needing things written in French or topped with poutine, it would probably get old, right? “Go cry at your Tim Horton’s and take your polar bear for a walk.” (okay, so I had to google Canadian stereotypes and it’s a short list.)
I don’t like America’s gun culture either. And I hate when it comes up there’s always someone who comes in and preaches the gospel of the 2nd amendment. It also doesn’t feel great when people make that generalization about me. This thread is full of people saying Americans are dumb and racist. That’s just shitty behavior that no one bats an eye at because it’s normal to make those jokes. If I started making comments about like, French people smelling bad or (insert some other offensive thing. I don’t keep track of bad stereotypes and I’m done googling it) then that would also be bad and it’s a thing I think we should start calling out across the board.
As others have said, we often make fun of ourselves. On these platforms, the liberal side of America is very vocal about the conservative side of America. Healthcare, guns, cost of living, etc. are something we’re constantly being made fun of (often from ourselves).
If you’ve experienced pushback, it’s likely because it gets stale as a subject. We know our country has problem; most of us feel powerless to change it.
Maybe that’s what happens when you have this much diversity in a country. We’re not like the French who can all unify and protest when needed.
edit: Rereading this, it makes it sound like I think diversity is a bad thing. Didn’t mean to imply that, its just that we’re so different its harder to unify.
Uh, what? I live here and I shit on it all the time.
American folks want to poke fun at other countries? I say no problem, break a leg! Actually please don’t because it’d probably bankrupt you.
Damn that smarts.
I’d go to get that burn checked but my annual deductible is more than a used car cost before the profiteering here drove up the car prices so high.
A culturally relevant joke at our expense that still has class? See guys, it IS possible. You, in fact, CAN make fun of America without going “lol your children get shot lol”.
I haven’t encountered Americans getting mad over that but what I have encountered is them thinking everything involves the US, especially lately. For example people claiming the Ukraine - Russia war is a proxy war between the US and Russia instead or that NATO = US. Like chill, your country is not relevant to everything in the world.
The Ukraine conflict isn’t a RU - US proxy war in the traditional sense but it’s worth noting that the overwhelming majority of foreign aid to Ukraine has come from the US, more than double the amount of aid given by the EU as a whole. It’s not hard to assume that Ukraine would be in a much worse place without America’s support.
“Hey, isn’t nati the one that drone strikes weddings?” “No, that the US, that us.” “But america is part of nato…” “Yes, but you can’t just” “Why would nato do that?”
Classicrussianbadgermoment.gif
You aren’t totally wrong, but
reddit moment
Not all of us. Some of us hate it more than you do. We are however too poor to actually fucking leave.
I’d love to travel. See the world. Experience cultures instead of look at them longingly thru a screen. Alas, its not an option. Even if I wanted to physically leave I can’t afford to pay to get rid of citizenship and get established somewhere else.
American: makes any sort of joke about any country, even if it’s the smallest most unoffending thing
Person from that country : ur children get shot in schools
We might overuse that comeback, but at least we don’t have school shootings.
You should be ashamed of yourself. Many wonderful people live in this country. We have so much to do - and yes, we are plagued by many horrors - but we persevere.
Instead of persevering, how about you fix the problem that no other developed country has?
What do you want me to do? Wave my hands and say some magic words and presto have everything be fixed? It doesn’t fucking work that way.
I do what I can within my means. I vote every election for candidates supporting gun and mental healthcare reforms, I do my best to educate my less politically aware friends, I support activist organizations, etc… I’m fucking sorry if I’m not personally out there torching politicians houses or whatever the fuck you expect me to do, but I’ve got people that depend on me not being in fucking prison.
You ever considered that maybe the US deserves to be ridiculed for seeing children die and choosing to do nothing about it?
I understand it’s a touchy subject, but come on. It’s a serious stain on the US. The US deserves immense criticism for it.
If you’re allowed to mock children deaths from a mental Healthcare crisis can we mock you for your roving gangs of rape squads?
German link: https://jungefreiheit.de/politik/deutschland/2023/vergewaltigung-im-goerli/
Okay, but you do realize that comeback makes you look bad right, not us? No matter your reasons or intentions, you are mocking children being murdered. Like in the example below:
American: lol British people eat spotted dicks.
A brit: lol American children get shot at school.
Wow. What a zinger, you really got me with that one, a fool I was to not recognize the comedy of children dying horrifically.
(To be clear, I didn’t come up with that example randomly. I’ve seen the mocking of spotted dick be met with “lol child murder” more than once)
They’re mocking us for letting children get murdered. Don’t get all civility politics up in here if you can’t even grasp the concept of the jab.
Is spotted dick political? I suppose us americans should have known it was a contentious subject that warrants jokes about child murder
It’s a fucking ignorant ass jab directed at the wrong people. The majority of Americans support stricter gun laws, it is NOT the common mans fault that our centuries old political system is set up in a way that a minority party can have so much influence.
Like I already said, no matter the reasons or intentions, they ARE mocking children being murdered. Maybe it’s “lol you guys let children die lol” instead of “lol child death lol”, but either way children are dead and they are laughing. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans are horrified by it and pissed off nothing is being done by our government to stop it.
It’s also just incredibly thin-skinned. Really, you’re gonna get so offended over a joke about spotted dick that your only response is “you guys have school shootings lol”.
Your responses make the meme accurate. Bravo.
Nobody is mocking children for being murdered, that would be disgusting.
People are mocking the very much unique to the US culture of yes, we know children are being shot in schools, and no, we aren’t going to do anything about it, you crazy freedom-hating commie!
It’s a macabre mocking of your crazy gun culture and politics. Not of your children. I thought that was pretty obvious.
Seems like the comeback is working since it gets Yanks flustered and writing paragraphs of text as a reply lol
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One of them is a stereotype based on ignorance and racism.
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The other one is children getting shot at schools.
Funny how both of these things come from the US.
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IIT: dozens of extremely sensitive Americans not getting the irony
We’ll show you how much we can take a joke by down voting this comment!
(Yes, this comment will be downvoted too)
Didn’t vote + outplayed + you predicted wrong + go touch grass
You sure showed me the error of my ways!
Huh? Americans are like the most willing to admit their country is shit of like anywhere of the Lemmy audience… America fucking sucks, sign American. I had some dude from Pakistan super mad at me for saying women are second class citizens there the other day. Apparently they treat women super well, according to that angry guy anyway. I’m still pretty sure they don’t.
As always, these things can’t be generalised. Every country has people that talk about their own problems, and every country has “patriots” that will deny anything is happening. There are just a lot of Americans on the internet, so people notice those who relentlessly praise America more.
After all, few countries literally ingrain “[country] exceptionalism” into their population in their school system. Many Americans, while thinking they are pointing out problems, still say “but it’s still better than almost any other country at X”.
Americans do a lot of stupid things, but they are most likely to be self critical in this space. I think this meme should talk about Western Europe instead, because they have many problems, but they are so often never willing to accept criticism. They’re quick to call the US racist, but in my experience, Europe has so much racism it’s crazy it’s viewed as this anti racist place.
Ask any “America is so racist” European about their thoughts on the Roma people
I (a US citizen) literally didn’t get a job in Germany because one member on the team objected because I didn’t speak German yet. The company is “English first” and I worked in the US division previously. So yeah, Europeans are certainly as capable of being racist. And they didn’t even try to hide it!
Yeah, it’s racist to hire another more qualified candidate that can speak multiple languages in a setting that would benefit from that skill…
Clearly you must have all the details about where I worked and applied already. What an amazing ability!
Is that racism?
Ah yes, the English language speaking race
I see you deal in absolutes. The person wanted a fluent German speaker despite being an English first company. Put it together in your head.
This is the case for every country. You just see it with the US a lot more since it of course has the biggest footprint on the English-language side of the internet.
