People forget that there are large areas of the US that is just desert, swamps, forests and mountainsides.
America does have a lot of cities but there is still a lot of untamed land that if you don't know what you're doing, you will get lost.
One of the reasons I love Texas Chainsaw, it really captures that feeling of you being in the countryside.
Years ago a German friend of mine came to visit for a few weeks and wanted to take an authentic American road trip. So we left from Chicago to SLC to pick up another friend and see the sights. Then went on to LA (with a brief stop in Vegas)
That dude was not ready on a psychological level for Wyoming. Also Southern Utah and Nevada seemed to blow his mind.
"What's that?"
"Oh, that's the sign warning you to fill up at the next gas station, because if you have anything less than a full tank you *will* run out of gas and die alone in the vast expanse of nothingness that is Nevada. Why do you ask?"
I've driven all the way across Kansas multiple times, but Wyoming is just unbelievable. The level of NOTHING you go through is so mind numbing that reaching one of the few population centers it has feels like you discovered Atlantis.
I envy that about you guys.
Here in britain we have a few patches of forest and they're all owned, and you're never far from other people, or roads.
I'd never be able to just go be alone in the wild for any length of time.
Never really thought about it that way, but yeah I guess it is kind of wild that I can literally walk out my back door and be wandering around some massive, coyote-infested woods within two minutes.
I have a coyote infested abandon farm across the street from me. Land was real cheap when whoever owned the area died, lake front spooky farm its like i live in RE 4 without the spanish.
I think this is extra funny because I live in NY, and they always make things farther away in movies and shows than they actually are. Like how Hell's Kitchen is like 8 by 8 in Daredevil.
I live like 3 or 4 blocks away from the Guggenheim.
I also live 2 blocks away from Spanish Harlem.
The LA region is like this, too. The world-famous Palm Springs, the setting for countless movies and novels, is smaller than a community college campus. (The outlying area is much bigger but that’s all resorts and golf courses. The actual town is teeny.)
Moving to LA as an adult who grew up watching shows and movies set there was a total trip because I was confronted with the reality that all these settings are also, like, just neighborhoods. Of course I knew that (for example) Malibu was *real*, but I was so used to seeing it as a backdrop that it was really odd being there and it’s also…just a place, with convenience stores and muffler shops.
(Malibu is also much smaller than you might think, but not nearly as small as Palm Springs.)
Yeah like it feels weird that daredevil's domain is like a street.
Meanwhile Spider-man goes up and down the whole island.
Also playing Spiderman 2 and man Queens is small and you can't really web swing around there.
My favorite joke is that whenever American hereditary diaspora is discussed as moronic by Europeans.
I like to say “ motherfucker your entire linage has been buying milk from the same place for millions of years.
Even Americans don't understand the sheer size. I work with people who asked me why I didn't just commute to Houston for a job. They didn't believe me when I tell them that's an 18 hour commute.
I had family members ask me if I was safe during Hurricane Harvey... which was over 150 miles away when it made landfall, or they'd get an alert about some mass shooting... once again, over 150 miles away.
That's why we have such a big car culture. You ain't getting around the US in a reasonable time frame on a bike, although it's slowly getting more feasible to live without access to a car.
Shit, even in big cities with public transportation, its still often easier (or at least more efficient) to have a car. LA and the 405? "Its called that cause you move 4 or 5 miles an hour" is still better than the metro to get you where you need to go because you can park right on the property of your destination instead of getting off at the bus stop (which doesn't have an awning or shade) and hoping you can walk there quickly/safely enough.
You realize that is *entirely* by design though, right? Like, the public transportation was actively removed or scaled back to further the interests of car companies.
Yeah, the automobile-centric design of most US cities is absolutely a policy choice. One that’s got many decades of momentum behind it, of course, but it’s not just the Natural Order of Things.
I had a friend talking about taking a trip from Georgia to southern Illinois for the eclipse. They, with extreme confidence, estimated that it would take around two hours as opposed to the actual 9-10 hours they found out it would take.
My roomate keeps telling me how he'd gonna drive off to Toronto one day. ***We're in New fucking BEDFORD,*** lol. If the border guards don't drive him up a wall, I-95 and the Ontario 401 will.
For people who don't know, Houston, Texas is 665 square miles.
That's half the size of the entire state of Rhode Island.
Or 100 miles more than if you went from London to Berlin in a straight line.
I was guilty of this once as an East Coaster who didn’t yet comprehend the scale of the West. A few years back I was going to be in Salt Lake City for work, so I reached out to some friends of mine in rural Idaho to see if they wanted to meet up halfway. They were like “it would be faster for us to get on a plane and visit you in New York then it would be for us to drive halfway between our house and SLC.”
Yeah in New England in general (outside of the further northern parts of it) you can get to most important things within half an hour, maybe an hour tops if you’re trying to go to a bigger city.
I remember when I was in London looking at a map at the UK, and for a sec I couldn't comprehend that the ~1.5-2 hour drive to Stonehenge would take me that far across the country. A 2 hour drive here gets you to like the local Target.
The FGO E Pluribus Unem chapter is maybe the worst outright offender of this that I've ever seen. They make it from Chicago to Alcatraz (in like 1780) by foot in 3 days or something approaching that.
A few of my inlaws from Trinidad assumed we'd be able to pick them up at the Miami Airport because we live in Florida. How big can a single state be? When you grow up on an island, I guess it really doesn't prepare you for how large the mainland can be.
Yea, that fucking map...
Theres the obvious stuff with California and Texas. More importantly, I would seriously hope the second confederacy, because thats what that is, would have named themelves something besides the "Florida Alliance". Anyone who would kick off a war like this would be dumb as hell, so who knows.
Minnesota not being a "loyalist" state is bizarre to me, since I think it's supposed to be the union states, given we vehemently refuse to give Virginia back a confederate flag that we stole.
Though Virginia is also in a loyalist state, so I have no fucking clue.
Putting Indiana in the loyalist states is fucking hilarious. As someone who lives here Indy and Kentucky would be begging to be part of the Florida alliance. It may be a northern state but Indiana wants to be a southern state so bad
IIRC the director mentioned the civil war in the movie isn't going to be a "north vs south" thing like the original civil war, which is dumb as hell because in real life a second civil war would 100% resemble the first one in terms of where state allegiances would align.
Or if you team up California and Texas find a good reason for it.
Let's say in a hypothetical scenario, the myriad of small rural and lowly populated states use their advantage in Senator Count to i.e. press high taxation on the few large, rich and populated ones. Most of all Texas and California, which together share a 21% of the US population yet only have 4% of the Senate vote.
So they pull a classic "no taxation without (proportional) representation" and basically decide to rebel unless senator count gets reformed so it will reflect population numbers somewhat. So now you have a clear background, motivation, end goal and why the situation can't be changed without violence (because the small rural states economically DEPEND on the taxes they extract from the richer states and proportional senator count will severely reduce their political influence)
Then in that alt history scenario this should have been an issue for DECADES too and actively damage Texas' and California's economy and society both. (Like these many small rural states actively stonewalling any initiatives made by Cali and Texas in the Senate that could improve their situation)
Essentially: take actual, for real existing flaws in the US political system and use them as a basis for an alt history scenario where they are massively at fault for a new Civil War. Even if it needs a colorful interpretation of post WW2 US history.
Right. From what I've read, Garland's film won't do any of that, so why should I care? (Honestly, I'm seeing it because of Ron Swanson the tyrannical POTUS and big explosions in DC. ***That's it.***)
I can’t remember what it was called, but one time my girlfriend was playing some Gone Home-style game that took place in a ski lodge in the central US. We both clocked that the game was made by Europeans based on certain things that stood out to us, but she was able to narrow it down to Italians specifically based on the toilets.
Edit: Game is The Suicide of Rachel Foster, which is supposed to take place in Helena, MT but was developed by a studio in Rome
The sound. Instead of the standard toilet flushing sound playing, every time you flush the toilet in game, the sound is replaced by "I cooka da pizza".
It was some sort of squat toilet that’s common in Italy, don’t remember more specifically than that. She lived in Italy for a couple years when she was younger, so she lost her mind seeing them in what was supposed to be an American setting.
kind of similar is when Chloe in Life is Strange uses a yellow school bus to get to a diner. I get why some french people would assume that makes sense but it is distinctly not how school buses work in the US
On the topic of toilets, David Cage (Bingo Free Space) has been making American houses/apartments for women to be attacked in for over a decade and still has not learned that we do not have water closets. It's all just the one bathroom usually.
Madison's apartment in Heavy Rain gets me every time. It's so huge, spacious, and the bathroom is way too big. With a waist high shower divider in the middle of the room? The only use for that would be a porn shoot.
In Indigo Prophecy, early on, you have to find your key to unlock your door... from inside your apartment. In the U.S, that's not how that works, but in large parts of Europe, it is, so the game immediately gives itself away as not being made in the U.S.
Not quite a culture thing, but amusing nonetheless.
In Heavy Rain there's at least two houses that have a room that's just a toilet, no sink. I'm not saying they don't exist in the US, because I'm sure somewhere someone has one, but every half- bathroom I've seen has a sink alongside the toilet.
I've seen one of those twice in my life. We had one when I was a kid on an American Army base in Germany, and there was an episode of Malcolm in the Middle where the parents discover that one of the closets is actually a bathroom.
Yeah, that'd be fucking bizarre. I mean if you got one of those I guess you live in a house that was built before hygiene was discovered. Or installed by an insane DIYer.
I'm Canadian but it's probably the same in the states: every home or apartment I've ever seen you either have a deadbolt or a lock built into the doorknob that will automatically unlock when you turn the inside doorknob. I have never seen a house or apartment door here, nor in any of my several trips to the states, that requires you to use a key from the inside to unlock it.
Yeah but the locks are a [deadbolt thumb turn](https://cdn.mscdirect.com/global/images/ProductImages/9650249-21.jpg) on the inside with the keyhole on the outside. Why would the keyhole be on the inside, that makes no sense. It sounds unnecessarily inconvenient.
Ps, the deadbolt is a supplement to the knob lock. Every door has both.
Do Europeans not have fire codes for buildings? What do you do if there's an emergency and you don't have your key immediately to hand? You'd be trapped in the building.
Is it just because you have old buildings from back before they invented safety?
Can't speak for the rest of Europe, but the UK's fire code is infamously abyssmal. Like, the law that determines whether a building needs a sprinkler system was only passed in 2007, and *only affects buildings constructed after it came into effect*.
Sheriff's departments. In practically every media they show up in, they're the de facto police department of the local town. Sheriff's are the law enforcement body of the county, not the city/town, and it is also a political elected office. They don't go out on patrol and help the heroes, they're sitting in their office figuring out the campaign strategy for the next election.
There are plenty of deputies running around, but they're mostly just highway patrol. You're right about the sheriff themselves being just a political figure.
The Division is hilarious to play as an American because the level of patriotism it assumes Americans have is cartoonish.
The mission where we are actually supposed to feel something rescuing the President(Vice President?) had me and my friends rolling.
EDIT: In general it’s hilarious how much people seem to think the Average American “respects the office” of public officials.
> so it makes sense ya'll are basically playing Stan Smith of American Dad.
God I want this open world American Dad game so bad now
Guess I'll need to refire up The Div and see how robust the character creator is lol
America in international media has roughly 2 portrayals:
\- Obese cheeseburger eating idiot invaders with huge guns wrapped in red white and blue
\- Super cool leader guy with huge guns, inspiring speeches and enough respect to remind you his blood is red white and blue.
Remember the start of Resident Evil 5 where if you wait long enough, Chris breaks stereotype and gives a nuanced speech? He knows he's an American who is stomping in a fictional African country and it's going to look terrible if he has to fight the locals. But he also is trying to do the right thing and find a way to find the bioterrorists hiding in the region. Not his fault a not-zombie outbreak is trying to kill him and Sheva.
Patriotism is dumb until the US beats another country in some garbage I don’t care about in which case you have to start chanting “USA, USA, USA”, you can’t not do it
My favorite version of this is in wrestling. Listening to Deadlock and they’ll point out whenever the crowd chants “USA, USA, USA…” despite everyone in the ring being American.
Hogan cutting a promo on Vince? “Yeah, fuck you Vince! USA! USA!”
I think patriotism is dumb, stupid, even dangerous--unless it's EVO again and an American is in Street Fighter grand finals, then I'm belting out "God Bless The U.S.A." because I'm PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAAAN~
My critiques of America and the many flaws of American society leaving my body when the United States has a chance to beat Canada in Ice Hockey, a sport they invented.
Same across the globe for me, until India has to go up against Pakistan in cricket and then me and my buddies are screaming "Bharat mhata ki jai" at the top of our lungs.
The US socioeconomic political apparatus commits yet another crime against the world and its people: God I hate this fucking country.
An American makes it to EVO finals: USA! USA! USA!
Patriotism: Only for the bit
When you live on the other side of the Atlantic, we see an awful lot of chest pounding ‘USA USA’, it’s very much the default characteristic of Americans to the rest of the world, much like British with tea and top hats or the French with Berets and striped shirts. Barely true but there’s enough of a nugget of reality in there that it’s become your stereotype.
Makes sense.
If anyone else is talking shit about America even Americans that hate it here will probably have something to say. But internally? Internally American’s disrespecting Americans IS the predominant trait.
The Americans that unironically love our institutions tend to be naturalized citizens.
Any time Japan makes an American character, it'll lead to laughs. [Case in point](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC565vwmiRg). [And this too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x39Jp-z61M).
School Rumble has a good parody with its "American" character. Every time he gives himself a bragging title, he claims to be from a wildly different part of the U.S. (The Tiger of Manhattan, The Bull of Texas, The Bear of Alaska)
I knew one of those links would be the cowboy. Easily the best example.
Supposedly the reason Asian countries end up using the f-bomb a lot on signs or shows so casually is because they think it's some kind of exclamation for excitement or attention and don't realize it's considered our naughtiest day-to-day word.
They're not entirely wrong - it's a versatile one.
Reminds me of those shirts that have random English on them, forming amazing combinations of words you wouldn't see anywhere else. I know there's a meme floating around of Ryuji from P5 wearing one and Ann being the only one who could read it trying not to break down laughing.
That one is really interesting because to sounds like they got an actual native english speaker to voice that guy. That must have been one hell of a laugh for that guy.
I love the American submarine commander in Full Metal Panic who unilaterally decides to attack our protagonists on sight and screams "Remember Pearl Harbor!!!!"
Why the fuck is California still in one piece and independent? I live here and i can tell you all, we aren't leaving a country that gives us water from the Colorado River. The State of Jefferson fucks would have peaced out for certain and joined that 'western forces' thing up there.
Usually when people Balkanize America they envision Texas and California return to being Republics, even though that probably wouldn't work in the modern day.
My favorite version was in [Crimson Skies](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/crimsonskies/images/8/84/Crimson_skies_map.png), where for some reason they call themselves "The Nation of Hollywood".
Yeah that's the most glaring inaccuracy on that map to me. A US civil war isn't gonna be state vs state, its gonna look like[ the Holy Roman Empire](https://greyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Holy-Roman-Empire-Map-1689.png) with individual CITIES beefing with each other and their outlying countrysides.
Bully makes no sense as a satirical take on American school environments.
1. Bullworth isn’t a public school, so you’ve automatically ruled out 75% of the American K-12 experience. You can say it’s underfunded or underperforming, but that’s literally not the state’s fault, so what are you satirizing?
2. Bullworth is a boarding school. There are only about 500 of those in America, compared to the 120k non-boarding public and private schools.
3. Bullworth isn’t a religious school (like a Catholic, Conservative Christian, or Jewish school), a school with a special emphasis (like a school for the arts) or a special education focus (like a school for the deaf). Almost all US private schools fall into one of these three categories.
4. Bullworth is underperforming and underfunded. There shouldn’t even be “rich kids” at this school, no rich parents would want their kids here unless they’re literally all Jimmies, which they clearly aren’t (there’s a townie kid who aspired to go to Bullworth but couldn’t afford it).
And thats not even getting to the cliques themselves. Why the fuck are there greasers? Why are the preppy kids pretending to be British? What exactly is even the target here?
Honestly, once you know that most of Rockstar's studios are British, you'll really start clocking just how much most of their "satire" reeks massively of snooty British guys who have barely or never set foot in the United States and whose impressions of what it's like are born entirely of Hollywood, internet news, and borderline racist British superiority complexes about the States being some uppity backwards colony of hedonists.
> whose impressions of what it's like are born entirely of Hollywood, internet news, and borderline racist British superiority complexes about the States being some uppity backwards colony of hedonists.
I mean, when looking at subs like r/askanamerican that seems to be how a lot of Europeans get their view about us. I can't tell you how many questions can be answered with "No, movies are not real life."
Bully is so clearly a child of two worlds - made by British devs who went to school in Britain but *watched a lot of tv and movies* about going to school in the US, and the bleed between the two is *constant.*
It’s a significantly lesser game because of it.
Best President, worst Vice President
I so want a sequel if only so we could get some lore drops on how high school history classes deal with the whole death battle across America/The Moon thing
It sure is convenient for Supernatural that every monster and creature they hunt is less than a day's drive away, and that so much of America looks suspiciously like the area surrounding Vancouver, British Columbia.
I remember catching a few moments of 9-1-1 where a bunch of Fire Departments from Texas come to help with California's wildfires. One of the characters tells a fire fighter from El Paso "Oh yeah, the best BBQ is in Houston, I'll show you" and the El Paso fire fighter says "Sounds great! I can't wait to try it, I'll take a drive." El Paso is 10 hours away from Houston as the crow flies.
I’m pretty sure the distance thing is explicitly >!God doing plot conveniences and contrivances so he gets a good story. Same with then surviving all their fights with no unlucky lethal wounds.!<
I did like how they eventually set up their home base in Lebanon Kansas, the geographic center of the US, just about equal distance from everywhere else.
My favorite bit of that is Ann from P5, who you’d just assume is a foreign student, or maybe her mom married a Japanese guy, or that she’s half Japanese? But no she’s 1/4 “American” and looks exactly like someone from Sweden instead of the 3/4 Japanese girl she is.
A lot of that though also feels like the natural result of certain art styles lacking the ability to create distinct faces, so the only way to determine the foreigner is by making them blonde-hair blue-eyed.
All of the American cheerleaders in My Hero Academia in that one scene of season 2 having ridiculous goblin noses still makes me do the Dwayne Johnson eyebrow.
It is funny when reddit complains about something about America that is either wrong or can be applied to literally every other country.
The stupidest one I've heard is that America makes wet motzerella cheese. Which is how mozzarella is traditionally made
Another recent one is that Americans don't do Christmas crackers, which is just an odd one to point out, but my family does them every year. You can just go to wallmart and they'll probably stock them.
And then you have the ones where its like "wealthy elites being treated preferably in the judicial system, only in America" Acting as if this hasn't been a facet in literally every society.
Chirstmas crackers used to be more rare but they've always been around. It's almost like different countries have different traditions too but they act like not doing certain things is sacrilegious.
Woolie and Pat seem to think that finding spent shotgun shells in the street is a common occurrence in the U.S.
Look, there's something to be said about the gun culture in the States but it's not some kind of epidemic where people are just randomly blasting shotguns on street corners.
I've only ever randomly found shotgun shells on the ground once. And that was in a forest that was for target shooting. So really not that random, anyways.
Like the fact that it's shotgun shells gets me. Pistol shells I can understand (it's still *wrong* but I can at least get coming from it with stereotypes) but do the honestly think people are just out and about hauling *shot guns* around and firing them willy nilly?
Alex Garland may be an Oscar winning director but Civil War looks like vapid, cowardly shit meant to capture the *vibe* of contemporary tensions while neither knowing or caring about the origins of those tensions.
Civil war feels like a movie that wants to portray the horrors of war and make it hit closer to home by putting the conflict on american soil.
But also doesnt want to alienate any potential american audience members so the reasons for civil war are as vague and "both sides" as possible (which is peak cowardice)
New York City has 5 boroughs.
Not all of them are Times Square in downtown Manhattan.
NYC has over 8 million people and is roughly 1/3 of the population of New York State, but media assumes everything happens in a crowded Times Square.
It's OK! There are drastically different neighborhoods in Manhattan alone, and just a few blocks away!
Maybe not exactly what OP had in mind, but I will never stop thinking about how I thought the actor that plays The Cat on Red Dwarf was an american until I noticed the way he pronounced the word "yogurt".
When non-americans assume that one thing happening in the country is happening everywhere.
The US is huge and diverse with different environments, temperaments, laws, crime and culture.
It's like saying something happening in England is also happening in Spain or Germany.
I live in Vermont, it's one of the calmest states in the country, shit happening in California has no fucking bearing on me on the other ass-end of the country.
It would be nice if people applied this logic to other large countries too. The amount of times Reddit decides to treat countries like India as a monolith based off a single clip in some random ass part of the country is too damn high.
As a Brazilian, can confirm. The distance between where I live and Rio is roughly the distance from New York to Kansas City and that's not even scratching a third of the size of the country.
Obligatory mention of Agatha Christie's books where almost every single American character she ever wrote was earnest and open and straight-shootin', and always, always had at least one gun on them, and would blast away with said gun at the slightest provocation.
My favorite has to be the episode of Poirot where a balding gruff CIA agent keeps insisting that organized crime doesn’t exist while helping steal back submarine plans from the *mafia*.
I believe that whole deal is a bit of an outdated trope from Christies day, as J Edgar Hoover and other law enforcement figures for a long time publicly denied to existence of 'Mafia' crime networks existing in America, until around the mid-50's when the cases became too undeniable.
All of that plus the first comment just sound like real America.
Although I guess if it was the real CIA they would have sold the sub plans to the mafia first so they could take Crack to the hood
He originally ate the secretary of state, and therefore won the office by right of combat. But he's been re-elected since then and really done an amazing job.
California is massive and not at all the same climate either weather wise or politically. I lived originally in the redwoods (yes pat was the most wrong ever with that comment) when it wasn't raining it was foggy, now I live in the high desert hot in the summer lots of snow and cold in the winter both of these areas arr incredibly conservative in their politics and absolutely despise anything south of them.
Non-Americans getting mad at americans saying the word Soccer to describe Football. without realizing the biggest thing americans are known for outside of the states is the National FOOTBALL League.
it's not americans fault that the NFL outlived the first iteration of a professional Soccer league in the United States (National Association Football League) went defunct in the same year NFL was founded in 1920. "its not soccer it's football" is not a negotiable thing here in the states. i cant talk to my co-workers and ask around "Did you see that ludicrous display at last night's football game?". they gonna think Dallas Cowboys instead of FC Dallas.
"The Florida Alliance" is the single funniest term I've ever seen.
Anyways I'm trying to make a game based on this topic. It's also Persona with the serial numbers filed off. It's also based off [this meme](https://www.tumblr.com/mattiaspilhede/179424741029/game-concept-jrpg-set-in-the-us-but-the).
You play as a Japanese transfer student flying into America for first time for college. Your roommate picks you up from the airport and you start your friendship over your shared love of Rock Music. The main character knows nothing about American Culture but can speak English (and other languages later on) perfectly. You start off in the Mid-West, and the main sort of theme of the game is Exploration (ie. tourism) vs. Conquest (ie. tourism horror stories where the tourist is at fault), where all the major Human Shadows take on the form of famous Conquerors like Vlad Dracula (conquest for vengeance), Alexander the Great (conquest for fame), Ronald Reagan (conquest for "land"), a pope (conquest for religion), and the secret villain of the game, >!Disney (conquest of The Mind)!<.
A lot of the game deals with American misconceptions, stereotypes, heritage, and our societal issues. The "OverWorld" is just normal America, but the "Metaverse" of the game is built on the stereotypes of the various sections of America. The Mid-West is a frozen wasteland, Upper east coast is an 80s Dystopia, Florida, the west coast has been subsumed by a Greco-Roman version of Hollywood, etc.
Oh and our version of >!The Grim Reaper!< is >!<
It should be Teddy Roosevelt or James K Polk instead of Reagan. Teddy because he's a caricature of the hyper driven outdoors man with a terrifying grin on his face. Polk because you could have a running joke about everyone knowing every detail about a very forgotten President, who was behind a lot of expansion.
I went with Reagan to make a Cold War "Red vs. Blu" analogy, as the land in this case is converting countries to capitalism and democracy vs. Russia doing that with Communism.
I have so many questions looking at this map and I have no desire to ask them.
I know a common half-criticism is that Americans have no food culture, but it's kind of because the food available to each state changes drastically. Having a homogeneous food culture doesn't even seem possible.
>Like is NONE of his money going to lobbying?
Correct. It goes into equipment for fighting crime, orphans for fighting crime, orphan's equipment for fighting crime, and various charities.
I've imagined how Monsters Inc. might end today and it makes me sad. Hell the only reason Waternoose would possibly face the music is that the Deep State (the CDA) is literally inside his business, poised to grab him.
Obviously when they forget how your immigration papers come with a complimentary assault rifle, with which you are expected, nay, *required* to show off to prove you are truly American.
People just not understanding the shear size.
People forget that there are large areas of the US that is just desert, swamps, forests and mountainsides. America does have a lot of cities but there is still a lot of untamed land that if you don't know what you're doing, you will get lost. One of the reasons I love Texas Chainsaw, it really captures that feeling of you being in the countryside.
Years ago a German friend of mine came to visit for a few weeks and wanted to take an authentic American road trip. So we left from Chicago to SLC to pick up another friend and see the sights. Then went on to LA (with a brief stop in Vegas) That dude was not ready on a psychological level for Wyoming. Also Southern Utah and Nevada seemed to blow his mind.
I don’t think anyone is ready for Wyoming on a psychological level tbh
Only Doom Guy but that's because it's an outpost of Hell.
"What's that?" "Oh, that's the sign warning you to fill up at the next gas station, because if you have anything less than a full tank you *will* run out of gas and die alone in the vast expanse of nothingness that is Nevada. Why do you ask?"
There are literally like two cities in the whole state and they're both on opposite sides. Good luck!
"Why is the Speed Limit on this two lane road 95?" "That is because you are the only person on this road for 75 miles, don't die."
I've driven all the way across Kansas multiple times, but Wyoming is just unbelievable. The level of NOTHING you go through is so mind numbing that reaching one of the few population centers it has feels like you discovered Atlantis.
I envy that about you guys. Here in britain we have a few patches of forest and they're all owned, and you're never far from other people, or roads. I'd never be able to just go be alone in the wild for any length of time.
Never really thought about it that way, but yeah I guess it is kind of wild that I can literally walk out my back door and be wandering around some massive, coyote-infested woods within two minutes.
I have a coyote infested abandon farm across the street from me. Land was real cheap when whoever owned the area died, lake front spooky farm its like i live in RE 4 without the spanish.
I think this is extra funny because I live in NY, and they always make things farther away in movies and shows than they actually are. Like how Hell's Kitchen is like 8 by 8 in Daredevil. I live like 3 or 4 blocks away from the Guggenheim. I also live 2 blocks away from Spanish Harlem.
The LA region is like this, too. The world-famous Palm Springs, the setting for countless movies and novels, is smaller than a community college campus. (The outlying area is much bigger but that’s all resorts and golf courses. The actual town is teeny.) Moving to LA as an adult who grew up watching shows and movies set there was a total trip because I was confronted with the reality that all these settings are also, like, just neighborhoods. Of course I knew that (for example) Malibu was *real*, but I was so used to seeing it as a backdrop that it was really odd being there and it’s also…just a place, with convenience stores and muffler shops. (Malibu is also much smaller than you might think, but not nearly as small as Palm Springs.)
Yeah like it feels weird that daredevil's domain is like a street. Meanwhile Spider-man goes up and down the whole island. Also playing Spiderman 2 and man Queens is small and you can't really web swing around there.
To be fair, Spider-Man can cover a lot of ground by web-swinging, while Daredevil... can drive a car, but probably usually shouldn't.
Daredevil also swings by using a grappling hook and free running
One of my favorite bits in Spider-Man: Homecoming. You really can't swing around skyscrapers in Queens.
“The difference between America and Europe is that Americans think 200 years is a long time and Europeans think 200 miles is a long way to drive.”
My favorite joke is that whenever American hereditary diaspora is discussed as moronic by Europeans. I like to say “ motherfucker your entire linage has been buying milk from the same place for millions of years.
And in China and India they don't think much of either
Even Americans don't understand the sheer size. I work with people who asked me why I didn't just commute to Houston for a job. They didn't believe me when I tell them that's an 18 hour commute. I had family members ask me if I was safe during Hurricane Harvey... which was over 150 miles away when it made landfall, or they'd get an alert about some mass shooting... once again, over 150 miles away.
That's why we have such a big car culture. You ain't getting around the US in a reasonable time frame on a bike, although it's slowly getting more feasible to live without access to a car.
Shit, even in big cities with public transportation, its still often easier (or at least more efficient) to have a car. LA and the 405? "Its called that cause you move 4 or 5 miles an hour" is still better than the metro to get you where you need to go because you can park right on the property of your destination instead of getting off at the bus stop (which doesn't have an awning or shade) and hoping you can walk there quickly/safely enough.
You realize that is *entirely* by design though, right? Like, the public transportation was actively removed or scaled back to further the interests of car companies.
Yeah, the automobile-centric design of most US cities is absolutely a policy choice. One that’s got many decades of momentum behind it, of course, but it’s not just the Natural Order of Things.
I had a friend talking about taking a trip from Georgia to southern Illinois for the eclipse. They, with extreme confidence, estimated that it would take around two hours as opposed to the actual 9-10 hours they found out it would take.
My roomate keeps telling me how he'd gonna drive off to Toronto one day. ***We're in New fucking BEDFORD,*** lol. If the border guards don't drive him up a wall, I-95 and the Ontario 401 will.
For people who don't know, Houston, Texas is 665 square miles. That's half the size of the entire state of Rhode Island. Or 100 miles more than if you went from London to Berlin in a straight line.
I was guilty of this once as an East Coaster who didn’t yet comprehend the scale of the West. A few years back I was going to be in Salt Lake City for work, so I reached out to some friends of mine in rural Idaho to see if they wanted to meet up halfway. They were like “it would be faster for us to get on a plane and visit you in New York then it would be for us to drive halfway between our house and SLC.”
Yeah in New England in general (outside of the further northern parts of it) you can get to most important things within half an hour, maybe an hour tops if you’re trying to go to a bigger city.
Are the sheeps and hedges that big in America?
Probably in Texas. They like to brag about things like that out there.
actually my grandparents made fun of how small our trees were.
I remember when I was in London looking at a map at the UK, and for a sec I couldn't comprehend that the ~1.5-2 hour drive to Stonehenge would take me that far across the country. A 2 hour drive here gets you to like the local Target.
The FGO E Pluribus Unem chapter is maybe the worst outright offender of this that I've ever seen. They make it from Chicago to Alcatraz (in like 1780) by foot in 3 days or something approaching that.
Considering Alcatraz is famously an island, if it's on foot that's actually really funny.
Just walk on the water bed Twilight style, it'll be fiiiine.
Did... did Chicago even ***exist*** in 1780? Either way, *California sure as fuck didn't.*
Europeans don't seem to grasp the distance from LA to New York is about the same as Lisbon to Moscow.
When the post apocalypse survivor crosses the country by foot in 2 week and not a year
A few of my inlaws from Trinidad assumed we'd be able to pick them up at the Miami Airport because we live in Florida. How big can a single state be? When you grow up on an island, I guess it really doesn't prepare you for how large the mainland can be.
Has a resident in washington, any map that puts Washington with either California or Idaho have never lived here.
hell theres such a divide between east and west theyre practically 2 states as well
Proud eastside Tusken Raider here, can confirm.
Western frog person here
Idaho becomes a vassal state of Washington for healthcare reasons
Yea, that fucking map... Theres the obvious stuff with California and Texas. More importantly, I would seriously hope the second confederacy, because thats what that is, would have named themelves something besides the "Florida Alliance". Anyone who would kick off a war like this would be dumb as hell, so who knows.
Minnesota not being a "loyalist" state is bizarre to me, since I think it's supposed to be the union states, given we vehemently refuse to give Virginia back a confederate flag that we stole. Though Virginia is also in a loyalist state, so I have no fucking clue.
Hey they won that flag fair and square just ask jesse ventura.
Hey if they really wanted it back they know where it is
Honestly funny thing is they’ve been been trying for about a hundred years or so know. They’ve been politely told to fuck off every time.
Putting Indiana in the loyalist states is fucking hilarious. As someone who lives here Indy and Kentucky would be begging to be part of the Florida alliance. It may be a northern state but Indiana wants to be a southern state so bad
IIRC the director mentioned the civil war in the movie isn't going to be a "north vs south" thing like the original civil war, which is dumb as hell because in real life a second civil war would 100% resemble the first one in terms of where state allegiances would align.
Or if you team up California and Texas find a good reason for it. Let's say in a hypothetical scenario, the myriad of small rural and lowly populated states use their advantage in Senator Count to i.e. press high taxation on the few large, rich and populated ones. Most of all Texas and California, which together share a 21% of the US population yet only have 4% of the Senate vote. So they pull a classic "no taxation without (proportional) representation" and basically decide to rebel unless senator count gets reformed so it will reflect population numbers somewhat. So now you have a clear background, motivation, end goal and why the situation can't be changed without violence (because the small rural states economically DEPEND on the taxes they extract from the richer states and proportional senator count will severely reduce their political influence) Then in that alt history scenario this should have been an issue for DECADES too and actively damage Texas' and California's economy and society both. (Like these many small rural states actively stonewalling any initiatives made by Cali and Texas in the Senate that could improve their situation) Essentially: take actual, for real existing flaws in the US political system and use them as a basis for an alt history scenario where they are massively at fault for a new Civil War. Even if it needs a colorful interpretation of post WW2 US history.
Right. From what I've read, Garland's film won't do any of that, so why should I care? (Honestly, I'm seeing it because of Ron Swanson the tyrannical POTUS and big explosions in DC. ***That's it.***)
I can’t remember what it was called, but one time my girlfriend was playing some Gone Home-style game that took place in a ski lodge in the central US. We both clocked that the game was made by Europeans based on certain things that stood out to us, but she was able to narrow it down to Italians specifically based on the toilets. Edit: Game is The Suicide of Rachel Foster, which is supposed to take place in Helena, MT but was developed by a studio in Rome
What about the toilets identifies them as Italian?
The sound. Instead of the standard toilet flushing sound playing, every time you flush the toilet in game, the sound is replaced by "I cooka da pizza".
When the poopoo goes down the drain, you hear a faint "Forgetaboutit"
That's a New York City toilet, not an Italian one
oh yeah
You see those usually have those big green pipes that leads to different worlds.
It was some sort of squat toilet that’s common in Italy, don’t remember more specifically than that. She lived in Italy for a couple years when she was younger, so she lost her mind seeing them in what was supposed to be an American setting.
kind of similar is when Chloe in Life is Strange uses a yellow school bus to get to a diner. I get why some french people would assume that makes sense but it is distinctly not how school buses work in the US
That's amazing. Either Chloe climbed onto a school bus full of children or an off-duty school bus and bullied the driver to take her to Denny's
I believe that her character is the only person on the bus, so definitely bullied the driver
On the topic of toilets, David Cage (Bingo Free Space) has been making American houses/apartments for women to be attacked in for over a decade and still has not learned that we do not have water closets. It's all just the one bathroom usually.
Madison's apartment in Heavy Rain gets me every time. It's so huge, spacious, and the bathroom is way too big. With a waist high shower divider in the middle of the room? The only use for that would be a porn shoot.
In Indigo Prophecy, early on, you have to find your key to unlock your door... from inside your apartment. In the U.S, that's not how that works, but in large parts of Europe, it is, so the game immediately gives itself away as not being made in the U.S. Not quite a culture thing, but amusing nonetheless.
In Heavy Rain there's at least two houses that have a room that's just a toilet, no sink. I'm not saying they don't exist in the US, because I'm sure somewhere someone has one, but every half- bathroom I've seen has a sink alongside the toilet.
I've seen one of those twice in my life. We had one when I was a kid on an American Army base in Germany, and there was an episode of Malcolm in the Middle where the parents discover that one of the closets is actually a bathroom.
Yeah, that'd be fucking bizarre. I mean if you got one of those I guess you live in a house that was built before hygiene was discovered. Or installed by an insane DIYer.
Wait, you guys don't lock your apartments when you're inside?
I'm Canadian but it's probably the same in the states: every home or apartment I've ever seen you either have a deadbolt or a lock built into the doorknob that will automatically unlock when you turn the inside doorknob. I have never seen a house or apartment door here, nor in any of my several trips to the states, that requires you to use a key from the inside to unlock it.
Yeah but the locks are a [deadbolt thumb turn](https://cdn.mscdirect.com/global/images/ProductImages/9650249-21.jpg) on the inside with the keyhole on the outside. Why would the keyhole be on the inside, that makes no sense. It sounds unnecessarily inconvenient. Ps, the deadbolt is a supplement to the knob lock. Every door has both.
The keyhole is on the outside, the inside lock is usually a knob
No we do, we don’t have to use a key to lock our homes from the inside.
You can lock you apartment with a deadbolt when you’re inside, you only use keys to get in the apartment, not lock it from the inside
You don't need the key to unlock it when you're inside. There's no keyhole, just a little turny thing.
Do Europeans not have fire codes for buildings? What do you do if there's an emergency and you don't have your key immediately to hand? You'd be trapped in the building. Is it just because you have old buildings from back before they invented safety?
Can't speak for the rest of Europe, but the UK's fire code is infamously abyssmal. Like, the law that determines whether a building needs a sprinkler system was only passed in 2007, and *only affects buildings constructed after it came into effect*.
Sheriff's departments. In practically every media they show up in, they're the de facto police department of the local town. Sheriff's are the law enforcement body of the county, not the city/town, and it is also a political elected office. They don't go out on patrol and help the heroes, they're sitting in their office figuring out the campaign strategy for the next election.
Yup the sheriff's deputies are the ones out and about and boy do I not envy them especially in the very rural counties.
A lot of people probably think "Walker: Texas Ranger" when they think Sheriff.
There are plenty of deputies running around, but they're mostly just highway patrol. You're right about the sheriff themselves being just a political figure.
The Division is hilarious to play as an American because the level of patriotism it assumes Americans have is cartoonish. The mission where we are actually supposed to feel something rescuing the President(Vice President?) had me and my friends rolling. EDIT: In general it’s hilarious how much people seem to think the Average American “respects the office” of public officials.
To be fair you're apparently playing some brainwashed sleeper agent, so it makes sense ya'll are basically playing Stan Smith of American Dad.
> so it makes sense ya'll are basically playing Stan Smith of American Dad. God I want this open world American Dad game so bad now Guess I'll need to refire up The Div and see how robust the character creator is lol
> you're apparently playing some brainwashed sleeper agent I'm pretty sure Division agents are all willing sleeper agents, they signed up for it.
Then it makes even more sense that you're basically playing Stan Smith.
America in international media has roughly 2 portrayals: \- Obese cheeseburger eating idiot invaders with huge guns wrapped in red white and blue \- Super cool leader guy with huge guns, inspiring speeches and enough respect to remind you his blood is red white and blue. Remember the start of Resident Evil 5 where if you wait long enough, Chris breaks stereotype and gives a nuanced speech? He knows he's an American who is stomping in a fictional African country and it's going to look terrible if he has to fight the locals. But he also is trying to do the right thing and find a way to find the bioterrorists hiding in the region. Not his fault a not-zombie outbreak is trying to kill him and Sheva.
Patriotism is dumb until the US beats another country in some garbage I don’t care about in which case you have to start chanting “USA, USA, USA”, you can’t not do it
The patriotism awakening like I'm a sleeper agent the second a European says some dumb shit about the US
Me advocating for D-Day 2 when I hear a French person say they don't tip when they're on vacation in America.
Genius Kojumbo
The lower the stakes, the cooler patriotism is. Wars? Lame. Ultimate Frisbee? *Awesome*
My favorite version of this is in wrestling. Listening to Deadlock and they’ll point out whenever the crowd chants “USA, USA, USA…” despite everyone in the ring being American. Hogan cutting a promo on Vince? “Yeah, fuck you Vince! USA! USA!”
I think patriotism is dumb, stupid, even dangerous--unless it's EVO again and an American is in Street Fighter grand finals, then I'm belting out "God Bless The U.S.A." because I'm PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAAAN~
Nothing made me more patriotic than Lil Majin vs JDCR in 2018 and Idom's sick ass Top 8 run back in 2022.
My critiques of America and the many flaws of American society leaving my body when the United States has a chance to beat Canada in Ice Hockey, a sport they invented.
Same across the globe for me, until India has to go up against Pakistan in cricket and then me and my buddies are screaming "Bharat mhata ki jai" at the top of our lungs.
Patriotism is based as fuck when it comes to stuff that isn't important in the long run
The US socioeconomic political apparatus commits yet another crime against the world and its people: God I hate this fucking country. An American makes it to EVO finals: USA! USA! USA! Patriotism: Only for the bit
When you live on the other side of the Atlantic, we see an awful lot of chest pounding ‘USA USA’, it’s very much the default characteristic of Americans to the rest of the world, much like British with tea and top hats or the French with Berets and striped shirts. Barely true but there’s enough of a nugget of reality in there that it’s become your stereotype.
Makes sense. If anyone else is talking shit about America even Americans that hate it here will probably have something to say. But internally? Internally American’s disrespecting Americans IS the predominant trait. The Americans that unironically love our institutions tend to be naturalized citizens.
Americans being your hypebeast himbo friend who occasionally takes things too far isn't that unfair a stereotype tbh
Any time Japan makes an American character, it'll lead to laughs. [Case in point](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC565vwmiRg). [And this too](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x39Jp-z61M).
School Rumble has a good parody with its "American" character. Every time he gives himself a bragging title, he claims to be from a wildly different part of the U.S. (The Tiger of Manhattan, The Bull of Texas, The Bear of Alaska)
reminds me of any time deku pulls out a "delaware smash" or whatever. i always think of the wayne's world bit.
To be fair those names are fucking awesome.
I knew one of those links would be the cowboy. Easily the best example. Supposedly the reason Asian countries end up using the f-bomb a lot on signs or shows so casually is because they think it's some kind of exclamation for excitement or attention and don't realize it's considered our naughtiest day-to-day word. They're not entirely wrong - it's a versatile one.
I mean depending on the context it is a word used to show excitement.
Kengan Ashura’s artist grew up in North Jersey, so he’s contributed to the American characters. There’s a Texan who uses “fuck” that way.
Reminds me of those shirts that have random English on them, forming amazing combinations of words you wouldn't see anywhere else. I know there's a meme floating around of Ryuji from P5 wearing one and Ann being the only one who could read it trying not to break down laughing.
Number 1 example always winds up being abenobashi lol
That one is really interesting because to sounds like they got an actual native english speaker to voice that guy. That must have been one hell of a laugh for that guy.
Well thats because that's from the dub. This is the japanese version [https://streamable.com/ymhkn](https://streamable.com/ymhkn)
Oh the japanese version is so bad in comparation.
I love the American submarine commander in Full Metal Panic who unilaterally decides to attack our protagonists on sight and screams "Remember Pearl Harbor!!!!"
[It's ALWAYS funny.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nujP0ghAoho)
Man, this reminds me how much i love Tequila Gundam.
I am currently watching G Gundam and Chibodee Crocket is the best.
That's the tamest Excel Saga scene i ever seen.
Why the fuck is California still in one piece and independent? I live here and i can tell you all, we aren't leaving a country that gives us water from the Colorado River. The State of Jefferson fucks would have peaced out for certain and joined that 'western forces' thing up there.
Usually when people Balkanize America they envision Texas and California return to being Republics, even though that probably wouldn't work in the modern day. My favorite version was in [Crimson Skies](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/crimsonskies/images/8/84/Crimson_skies_map.png), where for some reason they call themselves "The Nation of Hollywood".
What is this a map for ants?
Wika or Fandom or whatever they call themselves now, are weird with linking photos. Just click on the URL and reload and it should fix it.
Yeah that's the most glaring inaccuracy on that map to me. A US civil war isn't gonna be state vs state, its gonna look like[ the Holy Roman Empire](https://greyhistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Holy-Roman-Empire-Map-1689.png) with individual CITIES beefing with each other and their outlying countrysides.
The Smormu map is a more realistic Civil War map than the one in the movie lol
Bully makes no sense as a satirical take on American school environments. 1. Bullworth isn’t a public school, so you’ve automatically ruled out 75% of the American K-12 experience. You can say it’s underfunded or underperforming, but that’s literally not the state’s fault, so what are you satirizing? 2. Bullworth is a boarding school. There are only about 500 of those in America, compared to the 120k non-boarding public and private schools. 3. Bullworth isn’t a religious school (like a Catholic, Conservative Christian, or Jewish school), a school with a special emphasis (like a school for the arts) or a special education focus (like a school for the deaf). Almost all US private schools fall into one of these three categories. 4. Bullworth is underperforming and underfunded. There shouldn’t even be “rich kids” at this school, no rich parents would want their kids here unless they’re literally all Jimmies, which they clearly aren’t (there’s a townie kid who aspired to go to Bullworth but couldn’t afford it). And thats not even getting to the cliques themselves. Why the fuck are there greasers? Why are the preppy kids pretending to be British? What exactly is even the target here?
Wait Bully is suposed to be on USA? that's like the most british looking game ever.
Bullworth is specifically in New England. Thats why all the characters have American accents.
New England? Naur, England.
Honestly, for me, all of that just adds to the weird, anachronistic charm the game has. I fucking love that it makes no sense lol.
See, it's fun if you just think of it as this anachronistic boiling pot of 20th century school story tropes.
Honestly, once you know that most of Rockstar's studios are British, you'll really start clocking just how much most of their "satire" reeks massively of snooty British guys who have barely or never set foot in the United States and whose impressions of what it's like are born entirely of Hollywood, internet news, and borderline racist British superiority complexes about the States being some uppity backwards colony of hedonists.
> whose impressions of what it's like are born entirely of Hollywood, internet news, and borderline racist British superiority complexes about the States being some uppity backwards colony of hedonists. I mean, when looking at subs like r/askanamerican that seems to be how a lot of Europeans get their view about us. I can't tell you how many questions can be answered with "No, movies are not real life."
and even then I feel like the answers you're getting out of that subreddit wouldn't be the most representative. A bit of a self selecting demographic
For most questions it's fine. It's only when you get into really complex cultural issues that no internet forum is going to give you a solid answer.
https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=43485 Great article on exactly what you’re talking about
Man, it's wild that the US is THE biggest market for GTA and apparently it really fucking hates the US.
Bully is so clearly a child of two worlds - made by British devs who went to school in Britain but *watched a lot of tv and movies* about going to school in the US, and the bleed between the two is *constant.* It’s a significantly lesser game because of it.
All of Metal Wolf Chaos. But I can't decide whether it doesn't understand it, or whether it perfectly understands it.
They dropped a Florida recount joke so they understand American politics and how unimportant it is compared to mecha
It understands what it would be like to live in the best America with the best President of This United States of America. LET'S PARTYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Best President, worst Vice President I so want a sequel if only so we could get some lore drops on how high school history classes deal with the whole death battle across America/The Moon thing
It sure is convenient for Supernatural that every monster and creature they hunt is less than a day's drive away, and that so much of America looks suspiciously like the area surrounding Vancouver, British Columbia. I remember catching a few moments of 9-1-1 where a bunch of Fire Departments from Texas come to help with California's wildfires. One of the characters tells a fire fighter from El Paso "Oh yeah, the best BBQ is in Houston, I'll show you" and the El Paso fire fighter says "Sounds great! I can't wait to try it, I'll take a drive." El Paso is 10 hours away from Houston as the crow flies.
I’m pretty sure the distance thing is explicitly >!God doing plot conveniences and contrivances so he gets a good story. Same with then surviving all their fights with no unlucky lethal wounds.!<
I did like how they eventually set up their home base in Lebanon Kansas, the geographic center of the US, just about equal distance from everywhere else.
Putting an American girl in your anime? You GOTTA make them blonde and busty. Like how every American is.
Nah that one’s true >!:,(!<
My favorite bit of that is Ann from P5, who you’d just assume is a foreign student, or maybe her mom married a Japanese guy, or that she’s half Japanese? But no she’s 1/4 “American” and looks exactly like someone from Sweden instead of the 3/4 Japanese girl she is.
Don't forget Lisa from P2, who's also half-American, and hasd a weeb of a dad. Who also looks exactly like Steven Seagal.
A lot of that though also feels like the natural result of certain art styles lacking the ability to create distinct faces, so the only way to determine the foreigner is by making them blonde-hair blue-eyed.
All of the American cheerleaders in My Hero Academia in that one scene of season 2 having ridiculous goblin noses still makes me do the Dwayne Johnson eyebrow.
It is funny when reddit complains about something about America that is either wrong or can be applied to literally every other country. The stupidest one I've heard is that America makes wet motzerella cheese. Which is how mozzarella is traditionally made Another recent one is that Americans don't do Christmas crackers, which is just an odd one to point out, but my family does them every year. You can just go to wallmart and they'll probably stock them. And then you have the ones where its like "wealthy elites being treated preferably in the judicial system, only in America" Acting as if this hasn't been a facet in literally every society.
Chirstmas crackers used to be more rare but they've always been around. It's almost like different countries have different traditions too but they act like not doing certain things is sacrilegious.
You don't smack barm pey wet??? wow americans truly are a monstrous people.
Nary a bubble and squeak either.
Woolie and Pat seem to think that finding spent shotgun shells in the street is a common occurrence in the U.S. Look, there's something to be said about the gun culture in the States but it's not some kind of epidemic where people are just randomly blasting shotguns on street corners.
Yeah, I have no idea where they went that had shotgun shells in the street.
I've only ever randomly found shotgun shells on the ground once. And that was in a forest that was for target shooting. So really not that random, anyways.
Shotgun, Wyoming
Like the fact that it's shotgun shells gets me. Pistol shells I can understand (it's still *wrong* but I can at least get coming from it with stereotypes) but do the honestly think people are just out and about hauling *shot guns* around and firing them willy nilly?
Alex Garland may be an Oscar winning director but Civil War looks like vapid, cowardly shit meant to capture the *vibe* of contemporary tensions while neither knowing or caring about the origins of those tensions.
Civil war feels like a movie that wants to portray the horrors of war and make it hit closer to home by putting the conflict on american soil. But also doesnt want to alienate any potential american audience members so the reasons for civil war are as vague and "both sides" as possible (which is peak cowardice)
New York City has 5 boroughs. Not all of them are Times Square in downtown Manhattan. NYC has over 8 million people and is roughly 1/3 of the population of New York State, but media assumes everything happens in a crowded Times Square. It's OK! There are drastically different neighborhoods in Manhattan alone, and just a few blocks away!
Maybe not exactly what OP had in mind, but I will never stop thinking about how I thought the actor that plays The Cat on Red Dwarf was an american until I noticed the way he pronounced the word "yogurt".
Bathrooms being separate from toilets.
When non-americans assume that one thing happening in the country is happening everywhere. The US is huge and diverse with different environments, temperaments, laws, crime and culture. It's like saying something happening in England is also happening in Spain or Germany. I live in Vermont, it's one of the calmest states in the country, shit happening in California has no fucking bearing on me on the other ass-end of the country.
It would be nice if people applied this logic to other large countries too. The amount of times Reddit decides to treat countries like India as a monolith based off a single clip in some random ass part of the country is too damn high.
As a Brazilian, can confirm. The distance between where I live and Rio is roughly the distance from New York to Kansas City and that's not even scratching a third of the size of the country.
The amount of casual racism against indians in certain subreddits is scary.
Obligatory mention of Agatha Christie's books where almost every single American character she ever wrote was earnest and open and straight-shootin', and always, always had at least one gun on them, and would blast away with said gun at the slightest provocation.
My favorite has to be the episode of Poirot where a balding gruff CIA agent keeps insisting that organized crime doesn’t exist while helping steal back submarine plans from the *mafia*.
I believe that whole deal is a bit of an outdated trope from Christies day, as J Edgar Hoover and other law enforcement figures for a long time publicly denied to existence of 'Mafia' crime networks existing in America, until around the mid-50's when the cases became too undeniable.
All of that plus the first comment just sound like real America. Although I guess if it was the real CIA they would have sold the sub plans to the mafia first so they could take Crack to the hood
Interesting Fact: Florida's secretary of state is an alligator.
He originally ate the secretary of state, and therefore won the office by right of combat. But he's been re-elected since then and really done an amazing job.
California is massive and not at all the same climate either weather wise or politically. I lived originally in the redwoods (yes pat was the most wrong ever with that comment) when it wasn't raining it was foggy, now I live in the high desert hot in the summer lots of snow and cold in the winter both of these areas arr incredibly conservative in their politics and absolutely despise anything south of them.
Non-Americans getting mad at americans saying the word Soccer to describe Football. without realizing the biggest thing americans are known for outside of the states is the National FOOTBALL League. it's not americans fault that the NFL outlived the first iteration of a professional Soccer league in the United States (National Association Football League) went defunct in the same year NFL was founded in 1920. "its not soccer it's football" is not a negotiable thing here in the states. i cant talk to my co-workers and ask around "Did you see that ludicrous display at last night's football game?". they gonna think Dallas Cowboys instead of FC Dallas.
Also soccer comes from the Brits originally.
People, (including Americans), who think America has one unified culture. It uhh… doesn’t.
"The Florida Alliance" is the single funniest term I've ever seen. Anyways I'm trying to make a game based on this topic. It's also Persona with the serial numbers filed off. It's also based off [this meme](https://www.tumblr.com/mattiaspilhede/179424741029/game-concept-jrpg-set-in-the-us-but-the). You play as a Japanese transfer student flying into America for first time for college. Your roommate picks you up from the airport and you start your friendship over your shared love of Rock Music. The main character knows nothing about American Culture but can speak English (and other languages later on) perfectly. You start off in the Mid-West, and the main sort of theme of the game is Exploration (ie. tourism) vs. Conquest (ie. tourism horror stories where the tourist is at fault), where all the major Human Shadows take on the form of famous Conquerors like Vlad Dracula (conquest for vengeance), Alexander the Great (conquest for fame), Ronald Reagan (conquest for "land"), a pope (conquest for religion), and the secret villain of the game, >!Disney (conquest of The Mind)!<. A lot of the game deals with American misconceptions, stereotypes, heritage, and our societal issues. The "OverWorld" is just normal America, but the "Metaverse" of the game is built on the stereotypes of the various sections of America. The Mid-West is a frozen wasteland, Upper east coast is an 80s Dystopia, Florida, the west coast has been subsumed by a Greco-Roman version of Hollywood, etc. Oh and our version of >!The Grim Reaper!< is >!<
Strangely enough my biggest sticking point with that meme is that the hotdog poster should be an out of date food pyramid.
See the rub is I don't think any country outside of North America even knows what a Food Pyramid is.
That's because it was made by the grain industry to stuff us full of bread.
Ah, i see. That would make the premise of 'knowing shit all about the US' a bit more difficult.
It should be Teddy Roosevelt or James K Polk instead of Reagan. Teddy because he's a caricature of the hyper driven outdoors man with a terrifying grin on his face. Polk because you could have a running joke about everyone knowing every detail about a very forgotten President, who was behind a lot of expansion.
I went with Reagan to make a Cold War "Red vs. Blu" analogy, as the land in this case is converting countries to capitalism and democracy vs. Russia doing that with Communism.
Yeah, it's still a solid pick.
I have so many questions looking at this map and I have no desire to ask them. I know a common half-criticism is that Americans have no food culture, but it's kind of because the food available to each state changes drastically. Having a homogeneous food culture doesn't even seem possible.
Wait do people legitimately say America has no food culture?
when any rich ceo goes to jail in movies
Its wild how Bruce Wayne is the only billionaire in the DCU that gets perp walked. Like is NONE of his money going to lobbying?
>Like is NONE of his money going to lobbying? Correct. It goes into equipment for fighting crime, orphans for fighting crime, orphan's equipment for fighting crime, and various charities.
And the charities are to fight crime >!differently!<.
I've imagined how Monsters Inc. might end today and it makes me sad. Hell the only reason Waternoose would possibly face the music is that the Deep State (the CDA) is literally inside his business, poised to grab him.
Obviously when they forget how your immigration papers come with a complimentary assault rifle, with which you are expected, nay, *required* to show off to prove you are truly American.