Month: August 2017

amurderof:

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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!”

Exactly. What you have to understand is that to us, saying that we’re from the USA would be like you saying you’re from the EU. Like – ok, Maurice, that’s nice, care to say which part? In fact, saying we’re from America is… kind of incredibly deceptive because whatever anyone says, we’re not properly one country. Look at the degree of control that individual states still have over what the law is in any one part of the country and then tell me that we’re one country that has any kind of idea of what the hell we’re doing. Like – you lot overseas have hundreds or thousands of years worth of tradition and we have all of those traditions transplanted because the only centuries-old culture that existed over here and was unique to this half of the world was destroyed almost utterly by your ancestors and ours, so to the degree that you’re divided between countries, that’s the degree to which we’re divided amongst ourselves.

This is cracking me up because the people I’ve heard talk about ‘Europe’ as if it is a united cultural anything are invariably American. Somebody talked about ‘European standards of hygiene’ to me a while ago. That seriously means… nothing at all

I think it’s also worth saying, also, that this country is fucking massive. saying you’re from the USA is a pretty damn vague statement. that’s five time zones. It’s not even geographically helpful. The customs are different, the cultures are different, our ways of speaking are different. We don’t even share all of the same laws. really the only big similarities are a) dollars, b) our president is a terrifying humiliation, and c) we’re clinging to this useless, nonsensical system of measurement for ??? reasons

and like, you don’t have to know where the states in question are. I sure as hell can’t name every country or significant region in the world, can you? it doesn’t mean that those locations are less relevant identity-wise to the people living or from there.

I’ve also been what I thought was polite while in Europe and, when asked where I was from and I replied with “the US”, received a glare and an, “Obviously, where are you from?” So I went with, “Uh, Seattle, in Washington?” and got an, “I know where Seattle is, I’m not stupid,” with an eyeroll so uh. YMMV, my dudes.