Americans are stupid, fat, and impolite...I don't get it.

[GrimTuesday]

>LA
>Polite

Does the LA in your post stand for Los Angeles? That place is the shithole of California culture, even when compared to valley towns (some of which seceded from the Union during the Civil War!).

I don't think California was ours during the Civil War

Thanks for that pearl of wisdom. California became a state in 1850.

 

[crazypsyko666]

From San Francisco to LA, the US isn't really that awful. I can't say much for the rest of America, though.

 

[Imat]

Stay out of the south and the midwest and most of these stereotypes won't be very true.

Wait, the midwest is known for these stereotypes? Perhaps some of us are overweight, myself included, but I don't think the words stupid and rude can be applied to the midwest...At least. not with much merit.

On topic: I would've expected LA to be a little more rude, but that's just because they all have strong opinions. People with strong opinions tend to think a little more highly of themselves. I'm not saying they go around attacking other people, but I wouldn't expect them to be too polite either.

 

[Chipperz]

You probably just talked to a bunch of lying Canadian tourists. xD

HA! That got a laugh.

Fun story (got from the Metro, take from that what you will) - Apparently, while in New York, a group determining how 'polite' and 'welcoming' different cities brought a watch from a dodgy stall. While they were buying, the guy running the stall got a phone call, and still managed to make some small talk, confirm the watch was set properly and make sure he'd given them the right change. I can't be arsed to confirm it, but all my face to face dealings with Americans leads me to believe it anyway.

Still, all the time they believe all Brits are upper class tea drinkers with bad teeth or cockney scoundrels, I'll continue to believe stereotypes about them

 

[Twilight_guy]

In LA? You must have been in the really good part of LA to avoid the jerks. Still, Americans do have a pretty bad education system and lots of fat people (more in the south east then in California though). Of course we're obviously not all fat dumb slobs. I can't compare us to other countries of course (Never been outside the states) but I do know that there arew quiet a few good people here too.

 

[Queen Michael]

I'm told people in LA are better-looking than others. Maybe that's why they weren't fat. On the subject of stupidity, it's pretty hard to prove or disprove unless you get some time with somebody. And concerning politeness, it's determined by how important the country you're from considers etiquette to be. Take for instance Japan, whose inhabitants often find Americans to be... well... boisterous and not too good at proper behaviour. Swedes, on the other hand, find Americans to be very nice and pleasantly behaved. (Of course, I'm generalizing.)

 

[The Bum]

Stay out of the south and the midwest and most of these stereotypes won't be very true.

Sir i live in the south and i take offense! I don't know any REALLY fat pepole certanly some beefy ones but none of them are over weight, and as long as you stay out of the "bad" negihbourhoods most southernes are smart to. See? Now your geting into sub-sterotypes.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Honestly, the majority are not stereotypes, but the people that are, are extremely vocal so they get quite a bit of attention.

 

[Jamous]

I get stereotypes here IN AMERICA. Apparently some americans just don't like America. (THE IRONY IS STUNNING!)

Those people are kinda creepy.
"I fucking hate america!
"Uhh why?"
"Because they are stupid"
"Wait...what?"
I then walk away slowly.

Does that not just cement your belief that -they- at least are kind of stupid?
OT: I think most people will find that it's just general people, rather than specifically America... However, the fat thing is far more common in the 'west' seeing that we still have easier access to greater amounts of food and products to 'make our lives easier' than a great deal of the world. The stupid is an epidemic. The inability of some people to grasp the blindingly obvious (Especially the way that we lament these , occasionally huge, problems yet barely anyone who could do anything about it thinks of a possible solution...), is one of those things that just makes me hate the (majority of the) human race; but then I go read some Dawkins, or something, and somehow, I always get it back. Strange that...
But I digress.

 

[Shycte]

Some are, some are not I guess.

I, for example, am I viking so I guess that's true...

 

[Ryan Hodros]

So I just got back from a vacation in LA and I don't understand some of the stereotypes centred around Americans. I imagine most of us have heard these stereotypes, and I myself have been guilty of making them from time to time. But in the week I was there, I didn't see an abnormally high number of fat people. I didn't think anyone I talked to was stupid. Everyone seemed polite and there were few people who were especially inconsiderate. I didn't notice a higher number of any of those types of people in the US than anywhere else.

So are these stereotypes just untrue? Because I've known people who would swear that they are, and insist that every stereotype is accurate. Did I just have an unusually pleasant experience in the States or is are people in California just a breed apart from their countrymen? Please Escapists, enlighten me.

Are any stereotypes true? I mean, 100% of the time? I can say things like "All people with black hair are illiterate." And it's right part of the time.

 

[Sonic Doctor]

So in your opinion Americans don't know a lot of trivia on history? That isn't stupid at all in my opinion, just ignorant. God damn, where do you live where mostly useless trivia means being smart?

When it's large defining moments in the history of your own country, one should be expected to know it.

That said, you're right. It is ignorance, not stupidity, regardless of its level of relevance or importance. Unfortunately, there's also a lot of stupidity. Case in point; walk through a city and ask random people when the war of 1812 started. The majority will get it correct, but I would expect easily 25% of those asked would be wrong. You can also pose simple math problems (ie, nothing more complex than 8th grade arithmetic) and a staggeringly large number simply get it wrong.

Maybe it's a problem with the schools or the culture or even the parents, I don't know, but a large portion of Americans (and probably people in general, but I have no actual experience to support that) are simply incapable of a logical thought process. It's mindboggling, but they can't seem to form a coherent thought.

There are a lot of factors that can be incorporated into this discussion. I will point out three.
1.) America was founded on freedom, different freedom than other countries. It was suppose to be a freedom of limited government run and determined by the people. Freedom to choose your path in life and nobody to tell you otherwise, if you want to drop out of school because you can make enough money doing something easy, then you can do that. If you want to be a doctor, work as hard as you cane and become one.

2.) The majority of Americans have the idea, and I am one of them, that if you know what you want to do in life(I want to be a writer/author), why do I have to learn Advanced Algebra or Foreign Languages, or in the case of other life choices, History or Geography. I personally have an interest in History and can hold my own in Geographical questions if they aren't obscure.

The part of this is that life is short, why fill it up with learning things that don't matter to your goals. I don't know if you know this but the average time it takes American college students to get a 4 year degree is 7 years. I am a part of the statistic, I started college in fall 2004 and will complete it this fall of 2010. It doesn't mean I am stupid, for me it means that I have a mind that is centered around writing creatively and that is relatively it. I do well in history, simple math, and simple science. I don't do well with advanced math with equations and advanced science which will of course involves advanced math. Since nearly 60% of my degree involves classes that are not with in my Major--English: Rhetoric and Writing Emphasis, I took things slow by usually taking the minimum number of classes to be a full time student which is 4 or 12 credit hours, I have taken 5 but those semesters were rocky, the reason being that I just can't handle have 5 or more papers due at once especially if they are in fields that I don't excel in, which when taking 5 classes 5 papers is light work, to the professors.

You see grade school systems and colleges in the US have got a bug up their butts that in order to succeed in life you must know something about everything and usually more then just something about everything. (First off, I would add that I believe people are born with certain characteristics that make them drawn to a certain field or interest. People can have more than interest but when it comes to a job or career, there always seems to be a dominant one.) This is the reason why the US educational system keeps getting worse. We don't mainly nurture the important career interests of students and put them in a focus of that area of study. I'm not talking about low grade school, but high school and onto college. We nudge students slightly in one direction, but then constantly pull them off course and tell them that they have to know who invented the light-bulb or what the capital of Iran is, because if they don't know it, they won't be a great artist, mathematician, or computer engineer.
It is because of this know-it-all attitude, that there are ridiculous things called core curriculums put in place where you have to take a certain number of classes in every major educational field, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with your Major and will not further it. It is because of the core curriculum of my university that I and many other creative writers didn't become Creative Writing Majors. Creative Writing is a BA degree, and my university has the idiot idea that all BA degrees require the taking of 4 semesters of a foreign language. I know of at least 8 other creative writers at my university that chose Rhetoric and Writing instead because there was no sense in us getting bogged down with unneeded foreign language. We decided to just take the creative writing classes that we wanted to take, as electives.

3.)Finally, there are family professions or businesses. The children are told that history and complex math isn't important to being a farmer, than the child will usually listen to his or her parents and not see the knowledge as important and forget about it. But then there is also an opposite of the spectrum. A child is brought up to be a doctor, and the family tries to only expose the child to only things that pertain to that, but some how the child grows up to be an artist and forgets everything about being a doctor. (And a "Doctor" becomes a renegade and runs away, but then becomes the President of his people, and then runs off again.....no wait....that is an entirely different topic.)

Okay, anyway, I have definitely said enough for now. I really don't feel like taking the record for longest post. But I do think I will copy most of what I said and start making a book of all my rants in coherent form. If there are misspellings and such, bah! I'm too tired to care.

 

[thedeathscythe]

It's a stereotype, it's probably not true. I wouldn't invite black people over and order KFC and some purple drank. You're surprised a stereotype isn't true? Guess you believe most other ones.

 

[Cat Cloud]

First off, let me welcome you to the Escapist! And a very well done first post, as most of us here just do the simple 2-3 sentence posts to slide by (guilty as charged for me as well), and well thought out.

I agree completely with your post (except for the bush part, but that's the great thing about our country is that we can disagree with anything, including our government's censorship laws, and be left alone), and must reinforce this point for anyone who believes in the stereotypes: Every nation, every group in the world has bad apples, we just have more than most other nations because we allow anyone into our borders. We have large numbers of immigrants from every other country in the world and they refuse to use our education system or our education system fails them.

America has bad apples, and we definite are not that great of a country as we used to be, but we do not deserve so many of the stereotypes that we continue to get. After all, most of the people that post those YouTube comments are morons who abuse their rights of freedom of speech and refusing school, while usually the more intelligent users either stay at respectable websites such as The Escapist where we're open with every culture, or stay off the internet and refuse to accept harmful sites, knowing they're going to possibly affect them.

Oh well, I'm about to go to bed and believe I've probably annoyed at least someone in the world by refusing to accept the stereotypes of my country. Oh well, I hope I at least opened someone's eyes or contributed appropriately to the thread.

Thank you for the welcome. I must say, the escapist seems to me one of the more civilized sites I've been on... Plus I just have long posts because I'm a long winded person I'm much more impressed by concise but informative comments.

For the Bush comment I should probably explain(well, it' more of a theory-ish with evidence thing). Have you ever wondered why Americans often seem to be represented by a cowboy hat as well as New York or LA? Well, Bush had a Texan/Southernish accent which did affect other countries perception of us. Whether or not you think Bush was stupid and/or a failure, people in other countries saw him this way. And then some Americans go around bragging about how wonderful our government system is and how we can elect our own president and they wonder if our country is as stupid as the person incharge to elect him. Their media plays into this as well.

I do agree that we have many, many stereotypes. This is partly because we seem to be so prominent as a country and our government has done various things to upset people worldwide. It does bother me when people say just get over caring about stereotypes, especially when they make a joke that's really badly done. Everyone makes fun of the Americans (a fact which by its self is rather amusing) but you never see Brazilians making fun of the Dutch.
Do we deserve them? No country really deserves stereotypes pushed on them, just as no individual really deserves to be stereotyped, but it happens. I just wish they weren't always so harsh.

I agree that every nation has bad apples, but I don't think our problem is necissarily immigrants. Part of the problem we have with stereotypes has more to do with the people here in general than when people come here. With school systems, people that come from very to moderately broken households, are struggleing to learn english, or have some other issue are ones that the education system fails.

Immigrants tend to live in the cities, and I don't mean suburbia (usually, I think... correct me if I'm wrong) since cars are expensive and a variety of other reasons. As I'm sure you know, inner city schools, like rural schools, are some of the worst in the nation (I'm not saying they all are. There are tons of exceptional school in cities.) The poor status of inner cities areas existed before many of the immigrants came here in the first place.

Most of immigrants we get aren't from english speaking countries and therefore will have an obstical to overcome (learning english) to acheive when assimilating (sp) into our culture. Also, our culture is forign to them at first. This makes things harder for them in school, the workplace, and basically everywhere.

I haven't really heard of anyone refusing the education system except for the increase in the number of people now homeschooling their children for this one christion talk radio guy that was encouraging people to take thier kids out of school because apparently the government is brainwashing them.

To be honest, I'm kind of confused by your comments about immigrants in general. Are you refering to Mexican/Latino immigrants, legal or otherwise? From what I've heard about the illegal ones, some disrespect our culture and some don't, some engage in suspicious or unlawful behavior and some don't. I've heard of wives who have husbands shot in areas near the border and I've heard of illegals who break into peoples' houses, steal food, then leave notes of apology. It seems that some people are decent but desperate to come here, while others are distructive.
Why can't they (the decent ones) come here legally? Because its a difficult and long process. If we make it easier for these people who would be a positive contribution to our country to come here there might not be as big of a problem with illegal immigrants. The drug gang wars are anouther story. To be honest, my state is on the opposite side of the country, so I don't really feel effect of illegal immigrants as strongly and the drug gangs at all (comparitavely).

Or are you referring to immigrants in general? I hate to say it, but you seem to be stereotyping. Some of them are decent people, some aren't. They're human, just like the rest of us. Personally, I like immigrants. They add some variety to our country (in thought and culture and so on) and it's cool to meet someone from a different culture and talk to them about it. Some of my closest friends are immigrants.

Anyways, I apperciated your post. It's nice to know I didn't bore everyone with my huge text block and bad spelling. And I should really go to bed now...

 

[Cat Cloud]

Every nation has its own stereo type becouse that is what it looks from the outside looking in. Yes, I belive that there is some truth behind stereo types, e.g. the Aussie Bogan there are plenty where i live, but there are also others that don't fit that stero type, but there are also lies behind them as well, like when one of the people from my school went to America and he repoted that not many Americans say "y'all" even if that its the stereo typical thing that us Aussie would belive and i also belive americans would also have some wrong stereo types for Australians.

What ever nation you come from, I garante you that there is a stereo type about your people and your ways

Interesting that you think we all say y'all. That's what southerners/texans say. In real life and stereotypically.

 

[MrBirdy]

Well people world wide are fat, and Frnce is a very impolite place ya know. And we aren't the stupidest we have the what 2nd highest educational system?

I'd say you'd be around the 20th best education system... Mostly all of Europes school systems are better then the american ones...

 

[C95J]

I'm English, and as far as I know I think there may be more stupid, fat and impolite people in our country.


And most of them are running the country...

 

[sketch_zeppelin]

well we do have our share of really fat asses but no all and all us Yanks aren't that bad. Now when we gather in groups we can get a little stupid...though no more so then any other country.

 

[Zeema]

well there was a American who went to my school and he called me 'A #$@@ing Commie Pig' because i was russian but his brother and sister are really nice and polite.

in my head i think everybody is different and they are allowed to have there own views on life and chose to be nice or bad people.

 

[The_Echo]

I s'pose you didn't go to the right places, then. There's an ungodly amount of large folk where I live. In fact, I'm surprised the foundation one which my school is built hasn't cracked or collapsed yet. There was one kid in my freshman year that literally took up half of the hallway (Width, not length, silly.) all on his own. We have wide hallways.

But I suppose that's what you get for living in a restaurant town. A lot of chains that are just starting out use us to see if they're worth investing in or something.