Nacirema

https://youtu.be/6C72u3v-Y-Y (No English subtitles unfortunately!)

Also, this nugget: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCb49OOCGqA

> Unfortunately the rac breed is not very healthy and usually does not live more than five to seven years.

That's a gross misunderstanding of the topic! A Rac's natural lifespan is easily in the twenties, it's just that they're a display of status and virility, so those 5-7 years are actually the time after the original owner sells of the Rac to the less fortunate.

It's quite the irony. An animal held at such high esteem, but only as long as its young and fit, even though its ability to serve its purpose does not diminish significantly after the aforementioned time.

EDIT: regarding lifespan: I have a Japanese Crowned Rac which fell seriously ill at the age of 15 - mostly due to the first owner's mishandling. I can't bring myself to euthanise it though, as in its time it has been a loyal steed.

This becomes funnier when you consider the brethren of the Asu must be the Asurs because they specialize in forging.

I think the whole point of the original article is that those are not satirical examples, they are examples were the same anthropological practices used to describe "foreign" cultures were used to describe US American culture. The idea is that if you want to dismiss this examples as satirical, then you will also need to dismiss a huge chunk of all anthropological body of knowledge ever written as satirical. It is a tool for anthropologists to clearly visualize their bias, a more objective introspection, and hopefully start working to minimize the impact of said bias in their work.

> The article sets out to explain the use of the term to allow more objective introspection but then only gives satirical examples. That's a bit disappointing.

The quotes in the article don't strike me as inherently satirical. They are an attempt to write in a completely distant fashion, applying the same anthropological rules to US culture from outside as they would any other strange culture.

It's just that modern media has so many examples of satirically exploring our own culture in this way that they inevitably read that way.

For example, in Bones, though Bones herself does not usually do it satirically, she does it earnestly; the satire emerges from the disconnect between her and her colleagues.

It may not be possible to do this sort of thing without evoking satire, but there are many attempts lately to encourage US readers to consider how, for example, the Trump era would have been described by US foreign correspondents if it was happening in another nation.

But then, almost anything reads like satire if you choose to read it as satire. Food packaging for example. "Serving suggestion"

Are you disappointed by the original paper, or the Wikipedia article about it?

There very well may be, but like many other things someone may have to attempt to discover it, and I see no initiatives underway, or even substantial discussion of the idea. It's very weird that known problems that people complain about constantly do not generate initiatives to improve the situation, perhaps because the problem is not materialistic we have no intuition to try to solve it?

As an American, I've actually already experienced this, sort of.

I grew up in the Midwestern US, on a farm, miles from the closest town and miles more from the closest city, the name of which would probably only register with people in a 2-5 State radius.

When I moved to New York City after college, I realized I could already name more streets and places in NYC than I could from my childhood. I knew the museums and the bridges, the boroughs, the landmarks; Battery Park and Castle Clinton were right out of Deus Ex. My "home town" didn't have a mayor; I couldn't name one of the nearby city, but I knew LaGuardia and Giuliani.

I'm not actually sure if NYC and LA are overrepresented in American media -- the NYC metro area is something like 8% of the US population, after all -- but because a half dozen cities are the backdrop of so much of American culture even the people who live in one have all the rest, thousands of miles away, to develop that distant familiarity with.

(On the topic of brands, the biggest question New Yorkers had for me, coming from the Midwest, was whether Long John Silver's really existed; the ads saturated New York advertising despite not having any locations within a state or three. Likewise, I'd never encountered a Dunkin Donuts prior to moving to the coast.)

> I know more US supreme court justices than combined from all other countries

The hegemony of coverage of the US legal system and politics causes all sorts of weird effects. You get Canadian protestors invoking the First Amendment .. to the US constitution. (The first amendment to the Canadian constitution seems to be the accession of Manitoba?)

Just as you get people wearing NY Yankees baseball caps everywhere, people outwith the US claim allegiance to one of the US political factions, follow along with the games, and get into fights with supporters of the opposing team.

When someone who's native English complains about my English (and I've been complimented about it throughout my life, it being the only secondary language I more or less (feel like) I can control), I say: how's the quality of your secondary language? My primary language is Dutch, not English.

Same with anyone in Europe I meet who speaks English (except for Ireland and UK): its their secondary language. So when I hear someone who's native Spanish speak English, I have compassion and appreciate their effort. For Dutch not so much. Its a relatively small and nowadays insignificant language. We grow up with English, its normal to speak, read, and comprehend English.

What you shouldn't forget is that you're generalizing. Americans refers to people of USA in this context, and USA is a large country, with a lot of cultural backgrounds, and various levels of intelligence. That goes for any country, but this country specifically has over 200 million people, and last 20 years it has become polarized as hell.

As an immigrant from the US to Finland, it's such an overwhelming advantage that it actually interferes with my engaging with Finns on their own terms and in their own language. Almost everyone is delighted to switch to English and discuss all things America, to the point that I really do not have immediate, external pressures to level up my Finnish. Nearly everyone finds my grumpiness about this baffling, so I just have to choose cheerfulness. But holy shit I wish English were not my native language, sometimes.

> I've often wondered how Americans see the world.

Many are mesmerized by it and lots want to travel, but are prohibited due to costs or time from doing so. Other countries are seen as exotic, my wife can probably name a dozen fashion companies from Europe and requests gifts from them for holidays. Going to most places outside of the Caribbean islands, Central and South America, or Canada is outside the limits of many people. Taking a vacation to Europe is often seen as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The language barrier is big, there's usually little need in many states to learn a second language, though in parts of California and Texas that being English/Spanish bilingual is becoming much more commonplace.

I've lived in, and visited many regions on America, and it is not homogeneous. The US is geographically large (many of our states are bigger than most European countries) but relatively sparse with often many different subcultures inside the same state. One place I lived was 1,000 km to the nearest foreign country. Accents in the various parts of the country used to be a lot more distinguishable but that seems to be evening out a little. It can still be difficult for some Americans to understand other Americans.

While many forms of media are commonly consumed by America, a lot of American subcultures are heavily and incorrectly stereotyped in media or ignored altogether. Most of the media comes out of very small regions of New York and California, with most of the details described being at a federal (national) level, which doesn't affect our day-to-day activities very much. Europeans may know a lot about America, but very little about the things which affect you. Most Americans also don't even know much about the rest of America, and many people can't even remember the state I live in, which is quite different from the other states nearby.

The problem is a fan-in vs fan-out problem. It's easy for many countries to look at the heavily broadcasted messages of America, but very difficult for Americans to become intimately familiar with details of other countries especially due to the language barriers. Modern technology has simplified this quite a bit, and hopefully Americans are becoming better informed travelers.

I solo backpacked Europe in the mid 2000s and found that telling people you were American was decidedly uncool. I’m sure the dislike of W Bush abroad had something do with it, but it was also partly because of what you are describing. Everyone already knew a lot about America. It wasn’t interesting to then.

I remember staying at a hostel in Croatia with a diverse group. At breakfast we went around the room saying our names and home countries. There were Germans, Australians, Koreans, French, Brits, Brazilians… and then it got to me and people practically rolled their eyes when I said I was from the states.

There is somewhat of an unconscious assumption from us Americans that the rest of the world is aware of the events of our country… Language, current events, or even geography.

For example, when I visit Europeans, it always throws me off a little when someone doesn’t know where my home state is. “Georgia? Is that near New York? Or is it near California?”

There is never the reverse expectation. I have never felt that a European was surprised that I didn’t know a particular state, political party, or news event going on. In fact, I have seen them impressed when I happen to know anything about their home country.

Interesting to note that only ~44% of U.S. citizens have a passport[0] and most haven't ever left the country. My American parents got their passports at age 50 or thereabouts. The U.S. is big. The only other countries you can get to by land are Canada and Mexico, and only Mexico is meaningfully different culturally (sorry Canada). Everywhere else that's different is a long, pretty expensive plane flight away. If you're in the center, you're far from basically everything that isn't America. Some villages in Europe may have similar provincial people, but I get the sense they are a lot rarer.

The U.S. is probably better compared to the E.U., or maybe Europe as a whole, in most contexts. It has centralized federal power for some things (like external affairs: diplomacy, war), but its power internally is quite weak sometimes (e.g., domestic enforcement of drug law). It's more like a loose grouping of countries than many people believe.

0:https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-... divide # of passports in circulation by population (~332M). Probably a slight under-estimate because some people counted in "population" might not be eligible for a passport.

It's definitely odd. I find, though, that the average European overestimates their knowledge and understanding of America. There are so many misconceptions I hear whenever I talk to a European about the US that it's literally impossible to correct them all; most of them seem to be stereotypes from TV or news. It leads to a lot of unnecessary confusion, and the particularly frustrating part is that they are often unwilling to accept that their preconceptions about America are wrong when corrected on them.

I have personally found that the western european countries are not surprised and tend to talk like you're on the same base line. I suppose it comes off as "you know a lot about my country like everyone else from my country."

The exception is anywhere east of Poland. Then they're shocked I know anything at all.

No, it's intentional.