As a non-American, what American things do you find strange or confusing?

[ATenderLad]

OK, now it’s my turn to ask a question. Every time I’ve ever spoken to an American who grew up gaming on a PC, they were always from the Midwest. A lot of them didn’t have dedicated gaming consoles, and didn’t even know anyone who did! So, for any Americans reading this, my question to you:

In the U.S., do you feel that console gaming was more of a coastal thing up until recently? If you’re from middle America, were you and your friends predominantly playing games on PC? I’d love to hear your thoughts — I’m really curious about this!

It's funny, my first thought went to the mass rise of suburbs in new neighborhoods with power grids throughout the southwest, part of the population shift that led to the blowout for Reagan...buuuuut without going to some galaxy brain thesis, the most likely answer is simply folks in sparser areas didn't always have stores with the new toys in stock, but a PC used for work could double for gaming in a household.

 

[Momo Momomo]

OK, now it’s my turn to ask a question. Every time I’ve ever spoken to an American who grew up gaming on a PC, they were always from the Midwest. A lot of them didn’t have dedicated gaming consoles, and didn’t even know anyone who did! So, for any Americans reading this, my question to you:

In the U.S., do you feel that console gaming was more of a coastal thing up until recently? If you’re from middle America, were you and your friends predominantly playing games on PC? I’d love to hear your thoughts — I’m really curious about this!

interesting, ive never thought about it tbh. i grew up all over. but i grew up with nintendo consoles and PC gaming. my dad was into computers so we always had one. i cant think of a reason why it would have ever been regional beyond:
1. where broadband was available first in the 90s
2. in wealthier areas (pcs have always been much more expensive than consoles here)
3. areas with a lot of tech workers (washington state in particular)

as far as i can figure, the the association between midwest and pc gaming is either a coincidence, or its just that there were more people online from an earlier age in the midwest because the midwest is stupid boring, lol

Post automatically merged: Dec 9, 2024

There seems to be an aversion towards public services which seems odd. No funding for leech programs like public health! But yeah, let's give good pal Musk a few hundred million cuz why not, dude's funny. Also, the obsession with guns. And for a country that has "United" in the name... it ain't shown as quite united.

By the way, we call 'mericans "estadounidenses" so... "unitedstatians" ? Cuz America is a big place with many countries.

But going for strange and confusing.... Trump. ?

genuinely sorry to the rest of the world that we continue to be a country with global influence while fucking up so bad over and over. its honestly very embarrassing.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

By the way, we call 'mericans "estadounidenses" so... "unitedstatians" ? Cuz America is a big place with many countries.

Unistatians?

What's the issue with still calling US citizens American? Although I would agree that technically Canadians and Mexicans are also Americans since it's a continent but that's just semantics.

If we wanted to be even more pedantic the actual Americans here are the natives which are scarcely around and used to be called Indians because of a certainly confused Christopher (who seemingly never saw any actual indians before).

 

[KrossX]

I'm used to it in english but when talking about US news in spanish I often say "ameri... estadounidense" adjusting mid-word. It ends up feeling odd, strange... confusing at times, like with the billion/trillion scale.

 

[xXmayaXx]

Not having uniforms in schools, also the whole summer camp thing, i couldn't imagine a worse way to spend my vacations on

The uniforms are more of a private school/reform school thing and summer camp is for rich/middle class parents who don't want to/ can't take care of their kids so they ship em' off to daycare and camps. Some camps are cool though, I never stayed at any sleep away ones but there was this Lake camp I went to for a week as a kid and did a lot of outdoor stuff like sailing and swimming.

A lot of people in my country (including myself, lol) don't know how to drive, either. You can blame the existence of public transport for that.

If anything, I've gotten the impression that most American adults have a driving license.

We have to drive, for instance I don't live in a City. I live in a suburban town with a main road, lots of car washes and repair shops, a couple plazas and tons of neighborhoods crammed on top of each other and in each other. There is absolutely ZERO public transport, if you do not have a vehicle you are SOL. My car was totaled last week whilst sitting out front cause some woman crashed into it and I just sat in my house the whole week unable to do anything cause I had no form of transportation until her insurance finally lent me a rental.

 

[ObscureJigglypuff]

I don't know, everything and everyone seems confusing to me no matter the place they are from.
Nothingness and existence are really strange things.
At least i can laugh at it until i vomit profusely.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I still remember when a woman told she was from York and they got confused because she didn't have a New York accent.


It was the Old York in UK.

 

[Antilocal123]

Jimmy Fallon.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

Jimmy Fallon.

This is confusing for us too, don't worry.

 

[MasterEn]

One thing I found weird while I was little was the seasons being reversed

Like when it's winter and freezing there, my country's on fire from the summer heat

that's the result of the earth being tilted. the side that's closer to the sun has it's heat more focused on it; similar to the holding a magnifying glass and focusing the light into a beam. the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun during the later half of the year, so it's hotter there. in contrast, the northern hemisphere is tilted away, and despite the fact that the earth is not only closer to the sun during the beginning of the year, the tilt spreads out the heat from the sun; causing the weather to be cooler and chillier for several months.

 

[Xdqwerty Xdqwerty]

Boy scouts, schools having lockers, prom nights, choosing what school classes to go and school clubs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and houses having floors beyond the ground floor, and also a basement and an attic. Oh and elevator music

 

[Bakuma1997]

They almost never use the ¿ Symbol, ¿How you define where the question begin when you do it in the middle of your text?

 

[bjork]

Public transport is pretty great, but I never encountered a good version of it until I came to Seattle. The bus on Maui was also pretty good, now that I think about it. But in Southern California, everything is so spread out and already so built without a good rail system in mind, that the ones we do have there are kind of an afterthought. I think there's a general attitude of car ownership being tied to independence, and so maybe a majority of people wouldn't use public transport if they have the option not to? It was weird to me to ride a bus that wasn't going to a school at first, but now I like Seattle's transit options a lot.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

The whole "We only speak English here". One of the few countries that deliberately tries to be monolingual, despite half of their country formerly being part of Mexico. Puerto Rico tries to embrace the English/Spanish bilingualism, Canada embraces English/French bilingualism, Europe also has many multilingual countries. It feels like sometimes the USA embraces their ignorance as a point of national pride.

 

[Deleted member 420614]

So many things I could do a top 100. But I just chalk it up to yeah they are Americans that explains most things.

 

[ThatOneLum]

For me its the dominance of Nintendo back in the 80s/90s.

While there was that brief spot where the genesis held its own in the US, in Europe the split was a lot less one-sided throughout both decades.

E.g. People actually owned Master Systems here, and everyone's grandmothers' didn't call every console a 'Nintendo'.

Sometimes when talking with US-based friends, they have a bit of a blind spot towards it and sort of assume Nintendo's dominance was global.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

Public transport is pretty great, but I never encountered a good version of it until I came to Seattle. The bus on Maui was also pretty good, now that I think about it. But in Southern California, everything is so spread out and already so built without a good rail system in mind, that the ones we do have there are kind of an afterthought. I think there's a general attitude of car ownership being tied to independence, and so maybe a majority of people wouldn't use public transport if they have the option not to? It was weird to me to ride a bus that wasn't going to a school at first, but now I like Seattle's transit options a lot.

The logistics of building a public transport network as in Europe and Japan is almost impossible due to the size of the US. But a lot of large cities have decent public transport. The ones I've been to that have good subway train systems are New York City, Washington DC/Virginia/Maryland area, Seattle metro and San Francisco Bay area.

 

[Tonberry]

Oh there are lots, the most innocuous one probably being the weird combo of both wearing shoes indoors AND covering all your floors in that disgusting carpet-floor. It just feels counter-intuitive both ways.

Also, their national anthem. I don’t get why they just don’t use ”America the Beautiful” instead because it’s a much better composition. It seems like they use it as a stand-in often enough.

Oh almost forgot, we’ve talked about this before but I’ve always been perplexed at how breakfast looks like either candy or a full-ass meal in comparison to what is common here much of the time.

I’d really like to visit one day. Catch a Broadway show and see an NBA game.

 

[GardeniaSky's icon GardeniaSky GardeniaSky]

US born and raised here. I don't drive because of invisible medical reasons and people always make fun of me for it. It's just a 'given' here.

 

[bjork]

Sometimes when talking with US-based friends, they have a bit of a blind spot towards it and sort of assume Nintendo's dominance was global.

Same thing with people in the US who didn't live through the crash, perpetuating the story about how the entire industry crashed globally because of ET. That wasn't so much the case elsewhere, and even in the US, a lot of people simply moved to computers anyway during that down period. Console market took a beating for sure, but that's usually not how it's framed. I guess it's less interesting if it isn't sensationalized.

 

[ThatOneLum]

Same thing with people in the US who didn't live through the crash, perpetuating the story about how the entire industry crashed globally because of ET. That wasn't so much the case elsewhere, and even in the US, a lot of people simply moved to computers anyway during that down period. Console market took a beating for sure, but that's usually not how it's framed. I guess it's less interesting if it isn't sensationalized.

Yeah I think that the narrative which happens afterwards when people are discussing these things tend to skew what actually happened. If 90% of people making gaming history content are saying something is the case, most people accept it uncritically.

I still remember Jeff Grubb causing a fracas on twitter recently ish over this stuff and struggling to accept that the narrative he was familiar with might not be 100% accurate.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

Americans have a very American-centric view of history in general, not only when it pertains to video games, but all sorts of topics. They get taught American exceptionalism early on, that America leads the world in every possible facet of human endeavor. That breeds a mentality of "if it didn't happen over here, it doesn't matter".

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

The whole "We only speak English here". One of the few countries that deliberately tries to be monolingual, despite half of their country formerly being part of Mexico. Puerto Rico tries to embrace the English/Spanish bilingualism, Canada embraces English/French bilingualism, Europe also has many multilingual countries. It feels like sometimes the USA embraces their ignorance as a point of national pride.

NGL, the first time I got to be on the receiving end of some targeted racism was because SOME (but by no means all) Americans on a room decided that me being unable to speak properly was a serious crime. It was pretty jarring, especially considering that a lot of other people were quick to commend me for even trying at such young age (I must have been around 15 at the time, so eleven years before I considered myself a good enough speaker).

 

[MasterEn]

NGL, the first time I got to be on the receiving end of some targeted racism was because SOME (but by no means all) Americans on a room decided that me being unable to speak properly was a serious crime. It was pretty jarring, especially considering that a lot of other people were quick to commend me for even trying at such young age (I must have been around 15 at the time, so eleven years before I considered myself a good enough speaker).

some people are just jackasses who lack self-awareness and can't comprehend most things outside of their own existence. i can probably guarantee you that those people probably suck at everything and seeing someone who's learning another language probably made them feel insecure and worthless because they lack the ability to improve themselves.
people with an iq higher than an ice cube are usually very supportive of others learning and improving their own skill sets. if that happens again, just ignore those people. they don't deserve the attention.
and for a side note on your english skills; i forgot most of the time that english isn't your first language. that's how good you have gotten at it.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

The whole "We only speak English here". One of the few countries that deliberately tries to be monolingual, despite half of their country formerly being part of Mexico. Puerto Rico tries to embrace the English/Spanish bilingualism, Canada embraces English/French bilingualism, Europe also has many multilingual countries. It feels like sometimes the USA embraces their ignorance as a point of national pride.

Although I'd say that an unified language helps a lot. English is talked by many when it comes to international businesses and trading.

Europe having different languages, money and even within the European Union the Shengen and Euro zones aren't always the same so it makes it less unified than the United States.

At least we still have translators.

Post automatically merged: May 11, 2025

US born and raised here. I don't drive because of invisible medical reasons and people always make fun of me for it. It's just a 'given' here.

Isn't it scary to be "given" a license? I mean accidents are no jokes.