I’ve seen posts online or memes about it, mainly discussing American people who think the internet as a whole is US-centric despite the topic at hand taking place in another country (nothing to do with America), for example: someone wrote the date format as 30/10/2020 (using the EU format) but some American was like “THE CORRECT WAY IS 10/30/2020” when they fail to realize that user is not American at all.
Is US defaultism real when they travel abroad? They assume the $ is legal tender worldwide in countries where their own currency is used more (the only thing that’ll work is exchanging it but not for direct transactions). I’ve heard an American woman went on a tirade whilst in France as the cashier refused a $20 bill when the prices are in EUROS (WTF?) or being like “SPEAK ENGLISH!” in non-English speaking countries.
Know what a country code top level domain is?
Ever notice anything about American URLs compared to URLs from other countries?
It’s a real phenomenon I’ve only observed online, luckily not in person as usually people who travel here care about learning about the world. It’s not a top 10 tourist spot.
Online examples I’ve seen plenty of:
- Assuming someone is from the same jurisdiction, especially in legal matters, or asking “which state are you in”?
- Going into a non-US national instance and making one-sentence replies about Democrats and Republicans on irrelevant political matters (most countries like their self-identified republicans)
- Going into a non-US national site and assuming a company name is an American company with a similar name (reasonable, but still an example). For example, we have an NBC, and it’s very different.
The “Speak English!” example isn’t defaultism as much as it’s chauvinism. Defaultism seems more like telling them to leave if they don’t speak English.
I tried to change pounds to dollars in Florida in the 1990s. The lady read the conversion details backwards (it was probably 1.25 dollars to the pound at the time) and gave me the opposite ratio (works out at 0.80).
When I pointed out the error, she said “The US dollar is the strongest currency in the world, sir! It’s always point-something” and refused to believe me.
This was at a bank. The manager had to be called. Neither of them were happy to discover the truth and both resented having to eventually give me the correct exchange!
This confirms the other stereotype, that they’re a country of morons
I’ve always felt like as long as you’re in English speaking places in the web, you’ll get mostly Americans anyway as they have the largest English speaking population.
Like when I see family members or friends with a different native language online, they are always usually following people and pages in their own language.
Nobody defaults to Americanism in Arabic spaces for example.
So there will always be a majority of Americans on English language websites, and that’s why it always be American centric.
i’m not from the US and i feel it all the time here on the threadiverse. in most cases i don’t feel there is any malicious intent so i don’t nitpick(?) about it though
I feel it whenever the discussion on football comes up. They get so fucking triggered when we call football football and not soccer. Even more when we correct them when they mistakenly call it soccer. Then they pull out their go-to cope about britain calling it soccer back in the jurassic period and I’m over here like: okay, but britain is one small country and the world is vast and literally everywhere else, we call it football. They always get so fucking triggered.
That and the gun control debate makes Americans go completely apeshit.
i fucking hate this so much. i’ve heard that brits started calling futbol football instead of soccer because of like a disdain against usonians, although unsure how true that is, lol.
I heard the opposite, that they supposedly began calling it soccer as a posh thing but every brit I know of, calls it football. Personally, I don’t care how it happened, I just find it weird how americans seem to cling to the word soccer and bring up goofy ancient history between them and britain as a defence. I have taken to calling their game, American rugby and will continue to do so for as long as they call football, soccer.
The only weird thing I sometimes witnessed was that, when I waited tables, Americans paid in Euro or via credit card and then proceeded to leave me a tip in US Dollar. Surely this poor European must crave the strong currency of the US over his weird colorful banknotes.
Oh, and in northern European countries they stick out enormously on account of their loudness when just speaking amongst themselves.
Someone from the states told me that canada needs its own banking system urgently because of trump tarrifs. Comrade, we were able to pay at stores directly from our bank accounts decades before you could (i.e., it was instant, no pending debit transactions).
The US owns about half Canada’s banks. Canadian banking is extremely tightly integrated in the US banking system and Canada holds a lot of their assets in the US . The US can debank anyone from Canada easily just like they did in Europe.
Sure, there is no doubt they are tightly integrated. But this person thought we didn’t have any banks that were not US companies, or means of transferring money between people in canada without using US infrastructure. I asked, because I was so confused about what they were implying.
I think that was me. I’m Indian, but I was talking based on what I knew about the US banking system and assuming it would be similar for Canada.
I apologize about my assumption.
No problem. Hope your financial independence efforts succeed.
The US invented the internet (and the UK invented the world wide web), so English is the lingua franca of the internet for better or worse. Most people on the internet who speak English as a first language are from the US, and with the algorithmic nature of most of our online interactions being borderless, people in the US get fed non-US content all the time. If there’s not anything obvious signifying that they are seeing content from another country, confirmation bias will lead them to think it is US-relevant content.
I will say, on the money thing, there are a lot of countries that use USD from an official (or unofficial) capacity. The US is also pretty cashless at this point, so it’s possible that people have used their card overseas no problem, and not realized that their bank was doing an exchange in the background. Then they get to somewhere cash-only that doesnt also take USD, and suddenly experience their money is not good. Still stupid to be a dick about it when it’s your own fault, but idiots all around the world respond poorly when subject the the consequences of their own mistakes.
I notice this often in comments of political topics. Even if not involving the US, positions are often labeled very bipolar, e.g. as “liberal” or “conservative”. But they don’t seem to realize that those terms describe totally different political standpoints in different countries. Not sure tho if this bipolar thinking can be considered US-centric or if it’s just how they are raised to think.
I see it all the time even here on Lemmy. Americans love to wade into international communities and act like the US perspective always applies.
A recent example would be a discussion in a UK community about upgrading ANPR cameras to catch ghost plates, but a couple of yanks decided to pop in and get angry about Flock cameras, despite the fact that ANPR tech has been around without controversy for decades here.
It’s not ALL Americans, obviously, but it’s enough of them that it’s a known issue.
Regarding travel, it isn’t typical for US defaultism for Americans traveling abroad. However, not typical doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen in some forms.
Regarding currency, a lot of countries and regions will take American currency. Some smaller Caribbean countries peg their dollars to the American dollar 1:1. Some touristy regions around the world will also take American currency, usually at inflated prices. Or, you may have a tourist who has run out of the local currency and only has American cash on hand. It isn’t typical, but it likely happens and everyone remembers the few idiots who don’t know that France uses Euros.
Regarding language, it can be stressful for some to be in an area where people are speaking in a language you don’t understand, especially if you are used to people only speaking your language. Yelling “Speak English” could be someone having a panic attack or just expressing frustration that they can’t interact with society like they could at home. Sure, there is likely some racism and ignorance wrapped up in that. However, I’m providing an explanation, not an excuse.
Because VISA and Mastercard are the worldwide banking standards and the US empire has made itself the global reserve currency (eliminating anyone who didn’t play along) you can pay virtually everywhere with dollars and it’s kinda strange when you can’t unless you’re in a nation revolting against US oppression
But is that REALLY “paying with dollars”, or is that more like the payment provider just doing the currency conversion for you on the fly?
I can use my VISA card around the world and my bank account gets deducted in €. I wouldn’t say that I’m able to pay with € everywhere, though.
But this only works if the shop accepts cards, right? Smaller shops in India have almost all dropped card readers for UPI QR codes.
What is UPI?
Yes India is part of BRICS and UPI is one of the (few) good things the Indian government has done. But interfacing Visa and Mastercard with UPI is very easy so once again for Americans are catered to as are most people whose banking system is based on that.
at least in argentina, an economy that’s pegged to the dollar and where we kind of not use the peso as the real currency you cannot pay with dollars if you go to the kiosk. maybe if you go to some rich place they do, or if you pay with virtual dollars.
Many card readers worldwide accept Mastercard and Visa. We recently had the Jolani meme. https://x.com/ShaykhSulaiman/status/2092868388171190518/video/1
BRICS is of course the major counter player to this and works outside of US control which is why the US hates it so much.
yeh, yeh, you can with cards, but i mean with a bill. if i were to buy a beer and i’d give the cashier a 5usd bill they wouldn’t accept it, look weird at you, or accept it but not give you change or some shit.
That’s true the direct dollar bill usually isn’t accepted but it often can get converted in local currency through card payment. That’s their benefit of the US owning Visa and everyone using dollars as the reserve currency
A combination of defaultism and exceptionalism happens very often. An American I knew got surprised we weren’t celebrating Thanksgiving… he had to think it through to figure it out. Another asked me if in Europe there is AC. Many are surprised that not everyone knows fluent English. Here on Lemmy many times statements are made assuming that everyone lives like in US… I sometimes get annoyed at that - my bad.
Oh its real. In communities where there is an explicit rule about only being for local things will always have a post somewhere about the numpties and the poster always says something along the lines of “This non us place is mentioned in the US article so its OK to post.”
Look at any help community, the numpties will post about a hyper specific problem but not where they are, or just an abbreviation expecting everyone to know what MS or OK is.
Regarding your comment regarding the Internet, US defaultism generally happens as Americans are a plurality of English speaking people on several major platforms and a lot of news in non-English speaking countries is usually written in the local language and discussed in the local language. So, the assumption is generally that the person is American, especially if they are taking a point of view somewhat in line with American politics.
I’ve seen a lot of angry comments from too online leftists on Lemmy telling the person they are talking with that they hope the other person dies in a fire as America falls, with the response being “I’m not American”.
A lot of people understand American politics because it is written in the language in which the Internet was developed and so much is written. Without other context clues, people may not see that someone within the boundaries of American politics may be from another country.
