So I’m European and am aware that American culture is very different in many ways. Idk if this is just some type of thing about American culture and mentality in general that has always been there or if it is a trend that started recently in the past few years.
I don’t wanna generalize any country and know that not everyone is like this but I definitely noticed this type of pattern.
I increasingly noticed in the past years that many Americans are very hateful/cruel, are lacking empathy, become more and more aggressive and it seems like it’s becoming worse.
I’m not sure if this is maybe related to Americans needing to be “though” or something because I always hear about that the American mentality is pretty competitive and individualistic and instead of saying “we will go through this this together” they often have this mentality “it’s either me or you but it can’t be both who will win”. I mean I’m pretty sure that all these things like this biking culture, driving big “manly” pick up trucks, wrestling etc. are pretty prevalent in America compared to other countries and American culture generally seems very loud and direct. I think here in Europe people are way more reserved and I guess the strongest opposite to Americans are probably Japanese people.
But to me this seems to go to the point where many Americans seem to have this attitude and are very ignorant and arrogant and basically think they’re better than anyone else and they only care for themselves.
And it feels like it’s so extreme to the point where everyone is hating, attacking and bashing on everyone and instead of being stronger united they’re just fighting against themselves and putting each other down and they always focus on the negative.
Especially online it seems like that no matter what the topic is and independent from whether they are Democrat or Republican they’re constantly bashing on someone and baselessly calling them “weak” even though in reality they’re probably the ones who are weak and trample onto people cause they’re obviously dissatisfied with themselves and aren’t able to man-up to face the real issues. You just can’t blame everything on others and have to take responsibility for yourself!
Some stuff that I’ve seen on American news like “Fox News” just seemed crazy where the reporters personally attack and bash on people which is something that would be unthinkable in Europe.
Even though many people were saying that Americans have this “fake friendliness” I’m thinking that even that disappeared in the last few years and they’re becoming more open to show what they really think which seems to be that they “don’t give a f* about you”.
Many Americans that I encountered seem so aggressive like they always need to bash onto something in this toxic way even though they’re actually in a very good position and have a lot to be grateful for. Like in other poor countries people have real problems and are literally starving because they have no food or they have war in their country.
I’m always thinking “dude, you need to chill” cause literally no one is attacking them and they’re fully secure. But it seems like they’re always searching for a fight or something.
It seems like many of these people are so disconnected from nature and become less human and I wonder why they can’t just spend meaningful time with other people being positive and not constantly waste their time with hating or complaining about something. Because this just doesn’t work and in a society with multiple people especially in a world where everything is more connected than ever we need to hold together and have empathy for one and another. That is one of the core morals that a human needs!
It seems like many Americans generally have this “cruelness” about them cause I also heard things that many Americans are physically beating their children and even the fact that guns are popular and legal in America to the point where you can’t even safely walk alone in public during the night or safely send your kid to school and also this general mindset of America is doing everything the best and “America first”. I really don’t wanna bash on Americans at all and only want to share my experience because I just haven’t experienced this type of hate here in Europe in that extreme way and it just makes me very uncomfortable because I feel like this mood is affecting the whole world since American media and influence is prevalent everywhere.
To me it feels like this won’t end well and it feels like it’s just a matter of time until something very bad happens like the second civil war or so and the storm on the capitol might be nothing compared to that. But maybe that’s the only way they will finally learn if they’re lacking these core morals and integrity and they don’t get educated about that in school.
It also seems like they can’t handle critique and can’t admit it/stand to those things. When I once asked a similar question on Reddit the only thing I got back was bashing and personal attacks and I hope it’s not the same here, cause that is literally just proving my point. There needs to be constructive discussions.
A lot of this is explained by poor reading comprehension mixed with paranoia.
Americans will read pretty much any comment in an aggressive, hostile tone by default
Hence the popularity of in-jokes on the internet, Americans can generally only recognise jokes if they already know them, or if they’re telegraphed from a mile off (that’s around 738 washing machines)
Anything else is assumed to be a personal attack. It doesn’t help that a good chunk of them are also absolutely desperate to be offended on someone else’s behalf all the time lol
You’d have to go to fox news–the network that lies so much that even their name is a lie–and ask them why they’re doing everything they’re doing.
Short answer is, they’re the taliban.
So I’m European and am aware that American culture is very different in many ways. Idk if this is just some type of thing about American culture and mentality in general that has always been there
Observing USians and debating them on social media, I am more and more of the view that substantial proportion of them are properly, certifiably insane.
And it doesn’t apply only to MAGA nutjobs, it applies across the political divide and often starts with complete and utter contempt for facts.
You’re watching the collapse of an empire. The citizens are getting desperate and scared, those of them that don’t realize or understand the situation they’re in even moreso. What you’re seeing isn’t driven by malice, it’s just too difficult to care for others now. A lotta my friends struggle to pay rent every month and keep food in their mouths. We walk around with the knowledge a stranger could freak out and gun us down at any moment. Is it any wonder that they are numb to violence, numb to threats, even numb to the fear of death?
Once you get that numb and hollow, you cut what’s extraneous away and focus on your own survival. Americans are, broadly speaking, panicked animals. The worse things get, the more panicked and desperate they’ll become, and the less they’ll care about standards and morals in the pursuit of survival.
In the old days a person with radical ideas had a hard time finding others with the same mentality. It cost money to send out letters, print stuff, etc. Now you can blast out whatever comes into your head to potentially millions of people. You can form groups with them and feed each other’s paranoia and biases. On top of it broadcasting to you has become even easier and targeted and most of what is broadcast as news online is negative and fearmongering.
Then there is the whole issue of the “anonymous asshole” online who feels disconnected to those they are communicating to and makes assumptions (usually hostile) about them and feels freer to be hostile or provocative.
Don’t believe everything you read or hear is what it amounts to. You’re getting highly selective, heavily filtered news, not the lives of actual people.
i only believe even numbered things i hear; so a full half of things I hear I don’t believe.
Thing 73012: Baby gorilla rescued from hold of Turkish Airlines plane ✅
Thing 73013: The deadliest beings on the planet: can the bacteriophage help in our fight against superbugs? ❌
Thing 73014: Taliban ‘do not see women as human’, says Malala in Pakistan ✅
Thing 73015: Zelenskyy offers Ukraine’s help to fight California wildfires after Trump Jr post ❌
Yeah, that was simple and fun.
That’s odd
No, it’s even.
I don’t believe it, though they would
Propaganda. Mostly funded by the rich, in order to, of course, stay on the top of the class hierarchy. Easier to be a filthy evil oligarch when the “rabble” just fight each other and don’t pay any attention to you, or worse, kiss your boots.
After Occupy movement was gutted by the media and police… The owner class got us fighting culture wars so we don’t gain class consciousness for the class war.
And it’s an ongoing class war that the rich have been fighting and winning my entire life while the donkey-brained, temporarily embarrassed millionaire set keep handing them hand grenades to lob at us (and themselves).
fear leads to anger
anger leads to hate
(its not just the US, every human is like that)
hate leads to suffering
(as much pseudo-philosophical as Yoda is, here we really have to do something before it breaks so many people)
The short answer is that we haven’t really become any more hateful or cruel, however a VERY vocal minority of Americans have lost they’re goddamned minds and want to drag the rest of us down with them. Those are the people you’re hearing from and they make the rest of us look awful
And that minority gets an outsized place at the media table due to billionaire oligarchs who want total control.
Actuay a great summation in another post around the same time:
dont forget the raging propaganda preventing the silent majority from believing they can affect change. ~40% of people who are eligible to vote never do.
I hope it is just a minority. I remember when I once asked on Reddit why so many Americans like Donald Trump considering all the things he has done and said and they were saying it’s just a very small minority and that they personally don’t know any one who likes him. Turns out he got the popular vote making him president again. So that seemed quite detached from reality.
Here’s your answer on Trump.
How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind
Still as true in 2025 as it was in 2016. If you truly want to understand, read it. I read it a couple of times a year to retain my sanity, get some understanding of the seeming anarchy.
the majority of people voted for him
Eh… That’s not quite accurate. Current estimates are that 77,301,997 people voted for Trump, which is less than 50% of the 155,211,283 total votes cast. (But Kamala, the second-most-voted-for candidate got less than that at 75,017,626.)
But only about 64% of those eligible to vote voted.
So, not even half of those who did vote in the 2024 presidential election voted for Trump, let alone those who were eligible to voted, let alone all “people” in the U.S… But the ones who voted for Trump composed many more than the number of people who voted for any other candidate.
But isn’t that kind of putting lipstick on a pig? I mean got elected to become president. And 77 million is a lot of people… And I’m not sure if that’s going to change policies and society. It’s kind of accepted now to be a biggot and do harmful things. And I’m really not sure if it’s acceptable under these circumstances to be a “silent majority” anyways. I mean it’s not exactly like watching the nazis take over a country. But I think there are parallels. And I don’t think it’s ethically alright to just watch. At some point if you don’t do anything, you become part of the problem. IMO.
I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying here. Yes, even though the pro-Trump folks don’t comprise a majority of Americans, it’s exceedingly concerning that they’re as close to 50% of the U.S. population as they are. I don’t think I said otherwise, though. I also didn’t say anything about whether the anti-Trump majority (if indeed it is a majority) is/isn’t/was/wasn’t/should be/shouldn’t be “silent.”
Were the anti-Trump folks really “silent” before the election? Was there something they weren’t saying that they should have? 'Cuz it’s not like there wasn’t anybody campaigning against him.
I wasn’t even implying that. I think it’s more nuanced. And I don’t think America is as democratic as it should be. So I’m not sure if I’m even blaming the people. For a lot of things there are exactly zero solutions available, disregarding how/whom you vote. I mean I’m kind of with OP here. I’m not from the US and I can’t really relate. We just hear very different takes from overseas. Some people believe the country is turning into an authoritarian system soon, some think we’re painting an overly dark image. And I, too, wouldn’t know how to vote if you always get only 2 (fake) choices who both don’t really care for the people… So I can somehow relate to people just not taking part in voting. It’s just a bad situation. And I wish for the best. Though, I think at least 50% of the citizens have lost track on what America is about… And politics is more entertainment than solving any of the big issues. And you people in the US really have some big (societal) issues to tackle.
Let’s remember the large amount of people who couldn’t be bothered to vote.
Americans have always been hateful and destructive. We’ve just recently been given permission to do those things out loud, with impunity.
It’s a deliberate push by the elites. They don’t want us cooperating, because that would lead to revolt. They fill our media with identity politics, fear and hatred so that we’re too bitter to work together. It works beautifully for them.
I decided to scroll through the replies to see if anyone already said what I was going to, and you did.
Everyone thinks that irrelevant culture wars are more important than things that actually affect them directly, and our REAL enemies love it.
For some reason – likely because it’s propaganda – people get caught up with groups of annoying people and totally blow past the fucks destroying the planet, siphoning off all of the government money, and generally fucking over the country, and the world for their own gains.
Like I understand that you find some of our many varieties of annoying Americans annoying…like our purple haired Disney women, or flamboyant gays, or what the fuck ever…but that’s enough to base your vote on? Nuts.
They’re are too many annoying types of people in America for me to even select a grouping to hate – I lie actually, I fucking hate narcissistic billionaires that can’t stop posting – and many of the people in media are annoying as hell themselves and act as if they aren’t when discussing the random (though I know it’s not really random, it’s “LiBEraLs!”) groups they’ve selected to “destroy” with their donkey-brained podcasts.
The problem is that the “irrelevant” culture wars (identity politics, wedge issues) that don’t affect any given individuals directly are about important issues, and they’re being used by the rich as hostages. We can’t help but care about those issues, even if they don’t impact us directly, and the rich are using them as human shields while they take our watches and wallets and force us to sign over our properties
Let’s be cynicism buddies maybe we’ll get buried in the same mass grave
Sounds good to me!
Because our empire is dying
This is factually untrue. At the end of the Trump era, China had thought they had the upper hand on the global stage, but we have put into place more stoppages around the world. So much so that Blinken said on The Interview the other day that whenever he and the Chinese ambassador meet, the ambassador starts off by complaining for 30 minutes on how the West has railroaded their plans.
He also put it eloquently, that whenever parties from other nations come together, there’s always a seat at the table available for America. They want to know our position.
Just like our union of states, it is essential that the West remain a union of nations. If we do not, then divide and conquer could absolutely mean our decline.
The west already lost the US now with dickhead’s first electoral victory leading to his second term.
You mean you haven’t noticed the clear degradation of culture?
I wish I was as ignorant as you
Keep trying to will those thoughts into existence…may work out for you and your party one day.
There’s war in Europe. Climate change is fucking up the world faster than we can respond, and America is burning to the ground physically and metaphorically as we speak.
Tensions are a bit high.
HATEFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE??? HATEFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE??? FUCK YOU ASSHOLE!!!
sets your car on fire
HOW COULD YOU CALL ME HATEFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE???
😂
There are still a lot of us around these parts that strive to be kind and generous, it’s just that kindness and generosity doesn’t sell a lot of newspapers.
Actually, print media is basically dead. It’s all about clickbait these days!!!
Where’s my million dollars?
Those are the best people though and they should make the newspaper imo. Life is too short and valuable to deal with hate, we should embrace being kind to each other more. Nothing better than having a smile because some random stranger did something kind. That is what makes it worth living for me!
Coincidentally, I was on my bike the other day in just kind of a funk. And I was sitting there with a sourpuss mug thinking how no one ever smiles on the greenway anymore, particularly in bigger cities.
And then just like clockwork, as soon as I finished my thought, a guy who I never would have predicted looked over at me with a beaming bright smile. It changed my whole day.