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Is US defaultism real or a farce? (nord.pub)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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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.

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[โ€“] 7 points 3 days ago*

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.

I think 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.

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