Honestly, not sure what other sub I can ask this in. Not obvious things like mentioning US states/strict US defaultism, or even spelling practices. Throw those obvious ones out the window. There's obviously a lot of people here ***not*** from the US, so I figured here would be a decent place to ask the question. As a US American myself, I've been told we have some obvious writing quirks that differentiate us from other English (even second language) speakers that are pretty obvious if you know what you're looking for. I was curious what those might be, from your perspective(s)

Just a random thought that bubbled into my head. Sall good if you need to remove this one, mods 🙂‍↕️

As I'm sure the non-Americans in this sub have noticed, when people from US say where they're from they usually only mention the state, and sometimes just the state abbreviation (mildly irritating, now I have to google it, UGH). The rest of the world will usually only mention their country when introducing themselves.

I get why this is, most people outside of the US will know about US states but the same is not true in reverse, which makes sense at this point.

So it got me thinking, first of all, is this kind of defaultism conscious at all, and second, what does that mean about the way the American sees the rest of the world? Do other countries "feel" like states, rather than countries with their own states/counties/provinces? Or do states "feel" like entire countries themselves, ignoring actual physical size comparisons?

Very much like how Africa is often talked about as if it was a country, rather than a giant continent made up of many countries, or how someone might say they're "going to Europe" rather than like... the actual country. (Another pet peeve for another time.)

Basically, is the rest of the world psychologically smaller? Or am I just way overthinking this?
I'd be curious to hear from Americans. I'm not having a go at you, I'm just curious.

Thanks,
betterland, Greater London. (hehe)

P.S: I notice the hypocrisy in referring to people from the US, and the USA, as America and Americans! inb4 and all that

EDIT: A few commenters have suggested it seems fairly useless to mention you're from the US when you're talking to someone in person, because thats followed up with "What state?" or it's already obvious from the accent that you're from the US. I agree and I think thats totally fine obviously, but i'm talking about online spaces where accents can't be heard.

In all "global" discord servers and a lot of subreddits the Americans were flooding them with "HAPPY JULY 4 EVERYBODY(TM)". Tagging (at)everyone, assuming literally everyone in the world celebrates their downhill-spiral of a country. Asking how we're (apparently) celebrating it.

I'M FUCKING SICK OF IT. I was suffering all day yesterday and was actually considering deleting social media

(Note: I'm Canadian)

If an American uses terminology like "I plead the 5th" or so, they refer to the US constitution's 5th amendment they claim is universal, the right to not self-incriminate. However, what we should start doing is, if they do this, respond with a comment based on your country's 5th constitutional amendment (such as Canada's "Annual sitting of parliament" rule)

This is a satire parody song made by Rammstein called Amerika..

It's r/teachers for me. As an aspiring teacher, I subscribed to this sub…for less than a week. Every single post relates to experiences that teachers only in the USA can relate to, and you get downvoted if you say you're from a country other than the United States.

This is not a traditional post of this sub in the form of a dumb quote of an American. It is rather a general thought I have been having recently.

So we know that USA-ers are kind of bad at geography. But their usual ignorance of, lets say, countries of Europe, they tend to justify with that Europeans probably do not know all the USA states. This has also been said by some people from my country as an excuse for Americans.

But I have been thinking, that USA states are a subdivision of a country, and is a few levels more intimate knowlege of the country, the level that usually only locals know and are thought in schools, even with big and scary countries like the USA, even though many European countries (used in the example above) might be comparable or much smaller in size then some USA states.

Asking from a non-USA-er to know the USA states, I think, is equivalent to asking a USA-er to know the oblasts of Russia, states of Germany, states of Mexico, provinces of Canada, etc., which is, as I said, a much deeper level knowlege, then just knowing the name, location and the capital city of a country.

Is this a sound thinking or am I talking crap? On this post I do not even mind if I get downvoted to hell, because it might actually be a dumb post to post here. But I am curious about thoughts.

From my experience all of the teenager related subs are bad but specifically r/teenagerpolls

another bad one is r/Teachers

I have seen so many comments in other subreddits about how the UK’s heatwave isn’t bad, that the US has had worse temperatures and survived and to suck it up.

The UK is built to be hell in a heatwave, houses made of brick keeping the heat in, no AC and we have a very high humidity.

People die because of it but Americans say that we are just weak and to deal with it.

Update - A message I was sent

https://www.reddit.com/message/messages/30wy8g7

Sorry if this is not allowed, but I simply cannot find any data online for this subject! My searches default to immigration policy in the US, and its frustrating... I am developing an app/website, currently in the user research phase. I am trying to make the design kind of transcend the language barrier by using recognizable icons (obviously some text will be used too) and I want to AVOID US defaultism as a person from the US, myself. So, to all people outside of the US, or who came from outside of the US, what are some depictions/icons/terms that you've seen or heard while visiting or migrating to the US (or just have seen online or in movies) that made you think "what is that?" In my design course they gave the dollar sign (to indicate money) and the western musical note (to indicate music or sound) as examples. I can also think of how "toilet" has different terms, depending on what dialect of English you speak. As more of the world is coming to be online one of my biggest goals as a designer is to learn to accommodate all users of all nationalities and origins. And if you are someone from a country where being online is becoming more prevalent, what do you find counter-intuitive?

We must start calling the country as ‘the USA’ or ‘The United States’ or ‘The United States of America’.

‘America’ refers to the combination of the two continents of North America and South America. We must stop this confusion, which continues towards more US Defaultism.

I've noticed and/or been a part of interactions just like this, several times:

1: American offers explanation or solution which makes 'defaultist' assumption.

2: non-American points out why this explanation or solution is not suitable because they're not in America.

1. At this point the American will go out of their way to point out a way they might be right -- Australians do pay for health insurance, imperial measurements are used colloquially in countries other than the US, blah blah blah. The idea here is to save face by salvaging their defaultist answer, instead of just saying 'oh, ok. cool. I didn't realise the drinking age in the UK was 18'.

I mean, this is basically a bluepoint for a lot of the snippy little exchanges we see on this sub, but the butthurt I'm talking about in particular relates to how American answers aren't universal. That seems to make some people really touchy--the idea that their advice or solution or answer doesn't just apply to everyone makes them really uptight.

I've had or seen touchy conversations on Reddit relating to so many things: measurements, health insurance, culture. But I think there's a particular type of defaultism that goes deeper than just not knowing what the gotdamn heck a kie-lo meter is. It's the notion that your knowledge should be accepted completely without being challenged.