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Not the weirdest, but I didn't realize this until it was pointed out.
The fascination with work, and how one's employment or career is tied to personal identity. It's a basic conversation starter, "What do you do for work?" Not "What do you enjoy doing?" or "Do you have any hobbies?" or "Where do you go to relax?" Nope.
What to you do for work.
It's a weird question that is tied up in judgement and classism. And it's so normal here
Trevor Noah has a section about this in a recent standup. Something likei if you ask a European what they do they answer with hobbies, americans answer with their job title.
Just my experience from germany but when people ask what you do, you usually say what Job you have and where the Company is.
Why are you typing comments when you should be earning money for your boss?
I've found this only to be true in white collar professions. Hanging out with blue collar people, your job rarely comes up, but it's one of the first questions with white collar people.
Good god, yes. This is something I had to break myself from. It is so insidious and pervasive in our culture that I don’t think most of us realize it’s even a thing.
I’ve been to a lot of outdoor birthday parties this summer, and there are so many boring dads who I will hear strike up a conversation about what’s going on at work. I usually make sure to wander in the opposite direction.
And I like my job! But the “talk about work” is usually less about interesting projects or creations and more about what has been going on with that individual’s status. Like yeah Kevin I want you to do well at work and enjoy it, but if it’s all the same to you I’m going to go get chased by kids with squirt guns instead of pretending I care about how your manager is impressed by your team’s metrics.
From my outside perspective, it's the pledge of allegiance.
Do you really have your kids stand up every morning and swear an oath to your flag? That's some real cult shit.
Nothing could be more American than that pledge: it was something that was first propagated by a flag company that was trying to sell more flags.
And then berate them for thinking that the ideals espoused in that pledge are real in any way.
I had a teacher in elementary school that taught us that when a flag falls on the floor, you’re supposed to kiss it.
Yes, seriously.
It was just part of the normal flag-worship we were ~~taught~~ brainwashed with.
I was taught that if a flag falls on the floor you are supposed to burn it.
That is "flag law" but you also aren't allowed to display the flag on a T-shirts, in any disrespectful manner, or a fuckin pick up truck and yet. here we are...
The apparent obsession with money. Some people claim to be religious but it's clear the Almighty Dollar is their God. I know we make jokes about needing a "profit motive", but there is a grounding in reality. It's truly bizarre, from an outside perspective, just what lengths and depths people will sink to in order to increase profit. I'm not saying this is an American Only thing, but it's VERY apparent in the USA just how far people will go.
I stopped talking politics with my FIL when I realized money was his singular driving force. He really believes, and IDK where he got this, that capitalism is itself a perfect system, and that any regulation on it breaks the system. Basically laissez faire libertarianism, wrapped in a flag and wearing a cross. Considering it's a well understood concept, in the rest of the world (and US history) that capitalism requires regulation to work safely, it's maddening to argue anything when we can't agree on basics.
All people with money = inherently good. All brown people = inherently bad. This is the driving socioeconomic philosophy among conservatives.
Where I live almost everyone assumes you are a right wing Christian. They don't even take into consideration that you're not and if they figure out you aren't they stop talking to you in most cases. I've never had anyone straight up call me an idiot but I've had good friends freeze up when they found out and then start avoiding me afterwards. You get looked at like a lizard in human skin.
To add to this, I've heard the talk that gets passed around before they found out that I wasnt. If you are a woman they will straught up call you a witch
I’m a passing trans guy, and where I live is like this.
It’s just fucked walking around and know that if they knew, I would essentially lose all humanity to them. It happened with my divorce lawyer, it happens with doctors. I’m like an alien hiding in the place I was born.
I’m like an alien hiding in the place I was born.
That's so messed up. As a southerner: sorry. I would not, and I have a lot of family that wouldn't either, though TBH they left Mississippi...
Christianity (and all religions imo) are a fucking stain on humanity, they bring so much more harm than good upon us.
First thing that comes to mind for me is the huge number of people who are religious fanatics here, which is unusual for a Western country. This is also a big part of what led us to the fascist government we have today.
I think you’ve kinda missed the lede - religious fanatics. We’ve got plenty of those. Other western countries have quite a few religious people, but they aren’t often in-your-face cross wearing, “I’m a Christian”, openly judgy Karens like they are here.
I specified religious fanatics because they're the problem, not religious people in general.
in Europe, someone tells me their are Christian or are wearing a cross, it's no big deal.
in the US, it's a massive red flag
for me it's the whole "don't tread on me" and gun culture rhetoric. Americans seem to be "don't push me" but when they actually get pushed they're all "uWu please more daddy" it's odd.
I can explain this one. Growing up in America, you're constantly told that you're a patriot simply because you were born here—like just existing in the same country where Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington lived 250 years ago somehow makes you part of their legacy. It's pushed on you so early and so hard that you don't even question it. You just go to school, and the first thing you do is stand and pledge allegiance to the state—together, as a group. It’s ritualistic. It functions like a cult mechanism. That’s how it gets ingrained.
Most Americans do not have an understanding that they are being tread on.
World Champions in sports that only the US participates in. I am not a fan of football, both the "footy" version or the "NFL" but it's always been odd to me that winners of the Super Bowl, or equivalent event, are often declared "World Champions" of their own league in an event exclusively hosted in the US.
Making houses out of wood.
This is fine. Lumber was historically plentiful in North America, and lumber houses last just as long as stone or brick.
Lumber has several advantages over stone/concrete/brick:
Some Northern European and North American builders are developing large scale timber buildings, including timber skyscrapers. The structural engineers and safety engineers have mostly figured out how to engineer those buildings to be safe against fire and tornadoes.
It's not inherently better or worse. It's just different.
A brick home wouldn’t withstand a tornado either. Like if a tree hits a brick house it would do significant damage to the house. And most brick houses still have a timber roof under the roof tiles so even a small tornado could lift the roof off the house.
Here is a brick house hit by a small tornado in England
Reinforced concrete is a much better material for a hurricane and tornado resistant building. Also shape of the house is important. A dome would be the best.
Houses of woods aren't really bad or the problem, but houses of wood that are held together by osb and cardboard is odd.
A wood-framed house isn't necessarily weaker than a brick house.
Wood is pliable and doesn't suddenly crumble and collapse when it's stressed. And it weighs WAY less when it does fail.
If you're in a tornado or earthquake, would you rather be trapped beneath 120 pounds of sheetrock, insulation, and shingles or a 2 tons of broken, jagged rock?
Living here, I will tell you that the insistence on building houses in a neo-colonial style in tornado alley, hurricane prone areas, or in a middle of a yearly flood plane, baffles me. We should have completely different architectural styles adpated to withstand the elements at this point. You know, what housing is supposed to be for in the first place? /rant
Mine is that every 20 years or so, America picks a country or region to decimate, colonize, pillage and take over. They treat the people in that country like refuse. Then 20 years later they move on to the next country. Throughout all this they moralize to you and police the world and try to tell other countries to stop their wars, while they enjoy the benefits of their own invasions.
That we dont want to be trailer trash, but a good 95 percent of us are.
MKULTA and COINTELPRO were pretty wild. Operation Northwoods as well. And the FBI basically admitted to assassinating Dr King. By the 1990s they learned to eliminate the paper trails, so probably no telling who actually knew what regarding 9/11 or the 20 trillion dollars that vanished into thin air during Iraq and Afghanistan
American exceptionalism, especially lately.
And then get weirdly surprised and entitled about it when someone does do something about it.