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this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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I know everyone thinks I'm a brittle American, but I'm kind of sick of everyone blaming Americans for choices that are made by people who think poorly of Americans.
As a general rule, the people making decisions to simplify things because they think Americans can't handle a complex source ARE Americans.
@Windex007 Yeah, but they see themselves as smarter than the rest of the Americans when they are in fact, the bottom percentile.
I understand that.
My point is your original comment said you were sick of people blaming Americans for something that is literally being done by Americans.
The bland media algorithm designed to maximize profits, the "MCU formula", comes straight from the top. People who see media simply in terms of investment vehicles for thier quarterly shareholders reports are the ones who lay down this law, and those "people" are overwhelmingly American business interests.
I know what you meant. There is such a thing as self-hatred, or thinking you're the only exceptional member of a group. And there's also such a thing as don't trash the majority with the actions of a small minority, particularly a small minority that thinks they are better than the majority.
My point is that the reason this was dumbed down is that movie execs THINK Americans need that, not that Americans need that. Movie execs just think the average American is dumber than a movie exec.
I'm pretty sick of Americans feeling picked on.
You have an illiteracy rate of like 20%. Make a real public school system and then we'll talk.
@masterspace All right, so I was interested in the statistic so I looked it up and 20% of Americans are at Level 1 literacy or below according to Wikipedia... which means that actually a lower number than that is functionally illiterate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
And out of curiosity I looked up Canada. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/literacy 22% Level 1 or below.
Allowing for margin of error, your public school system sucks just as much as ours. So go milk a moose in French.
Being creepy by stalking my past conversations instead of arguing the point at hand, and ironically furthering my point by mistakenly using a study on Canada from 1989.
Our current (2013) sub-level 1 literacy rate is around 4%: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/89-555-x/2013001/t/tbl1.1-eng.htm
No, our public education systems are not equivalent even if that makes you feel bad.
Stalking your past convos? No. I saw you were from lemmy.ca and therefore Canadian. Then I did a search for the 20 percent statistic and of course Wikipedia came up.
I don't feel bad. I know our school system sucks because of a lot of systemic problems. I do think your education is not as great as you think it is if you simplify the 20% statistic to full illiteracy and if you think a random person on kbin needs to set up a new public school system before she can have an opinion.
That's before we unpack the idea that literacy=intelligence, which is not always the case.
I do feel a bit bad about the stalking accusation. I didn't realize the ability to see your server in the automatic kbin reply setup combined with the esoteric knowledge of how to use Duck Duck Go would frighten you, Mr Better Educated Than Me. We can stop if this is too much for your heart. This weather can be tough on the body and I know you guys aren't well-versed in heat safety.
You're allowed to have an opinion, if your opinion is that you feel like America is picked on for being too dumb in this context then I would suggest that you need some strong evidence to persuade people that literacy is not a proxy for education, or more specifically, the ability to hold more complicated medieval fantasy plots together.
And I am well aware of our flaws, our literacy rate is 1.25x the OECD average which is shameful. I'm just not false equivalencing that with America's 6.33x. In fact if you remove America as the outlier dragging the OECD stats down we look even worse.
@masterspace So we're helping you. I bet you feel bad about making fun of us now.
Punching down never feels good
@masterspace And there we get to why I'm such a brittle American. See, the immense privilege of the powerful in our country, our military prowess, and the export of the my of American exceptionalism have CONVINCED a lot of people across the world that if they bash Americans it is punching up.
It's not. See, we do HAVE a bad public school system and the richest in our country have spent 40 years sabotaging it in some scheme to fund private schooling. Not only that, school funding is partly by federal and state funding--which is sabotaged by those bastards--but MOSTLY by local taxes so the people in the rich areas get the good schooling with arts, extracurricular activities, foreign language studies and a pool while the people in the poor areas get a whiteboard, an untrained Army veteran as a teacher, and the requirement to buy their own school supplies.
As Americans we have to fight constantly against this sabotage, WHILE working full-time jobs with greater hours and fewer benefits than any other Western country just so we can afford to go to a doctor--as we are called by not just the privileged in our country but the entire WORLD lazy, stupid, complacent and undeserving.
So when you make fun of the average American and call them stupid because their public school system which they need to fix before they complain about people making fun of them? You're punching down.
Meanwhile, you accuse me of punching down but I have spent this thread mocking you for living in a country with a vast abundance of natural resources and wildlife, and living in a country where it's common to ACTUALLY learn a second language rather than learn some grammar rules and tick off boxes, which as I say above, is a privilege in the US afforded to the better schooling that you get by virtue of living in a rich area.
Now, if you'd say Americans are stupid because we invaded the wrong country... Well, then you'd be punching up. But instead you're making fun of something that we are actually at a disadvantage in.
Except that I didn't make fun of anything, I merely pointed out that it's plausible that Netflix felt like they had to dumb the Witcher down for American audiences.
And yeah, I recognize that sucks, but you don't have to do that because of external forces, you have to do that because many people in the group called "Americans" repeatedly vote for politicians who put those systems in place. So when people call Americans stupid, there's a reason for it. Many are stupid and vote for stupid shit that goes directly against their interest. I'm sorry if you don't like to hear that or be associated with your fellow countrypeople who do, but it's the reality of the situation when we're talking about "Americans" as a whole.
This you?
You weren't just making fun, you were saying you're sick of us being bothered when people made fun of us.
Except that the context in which I was replying was not one where someone felt picked on because they got made fun of, it was one where someone felt picked on because someone said that it's plausible they dumbed down the Witcher for Americans.
@masterspace Yeah, but YOU are the one who brought public school into it and you did it in a clever little jokey way.
If you had said "Well, that's what you get for attacking the wrong country", it would be one thing. But you went and made fun of the public school system. You punched down. And now, for your sins, you are stuck in this conversation.
Because the quality of education affects intelligence, or more specifically, the ability to hold more/less complex witcher plotlines together in your head, so it is a rationale thing to bring up when discussing whether or not Americans are actually capable of holding more/less complex witcher plotlines together in their heads.
No, I merely held up a mirror and caused you to have a temper tantrum
I'd hate to see how you'd react to an actual temper tantrum.
No, man. You're mocking people who don't have access to a high standard of learning. You're trying to rationalize that away so that you don't have to feel bad about it.
Again, didn't mock.
Did too.
Thought the thin skinned temper tantrum cry baby
@masterspace You're really so obsessed with the last word you're gonna let this dissolve into name-calling? are you still IN school?
I know you are but what am I?
@masterspace Less tired of this than me. You win this time, Canada.
@masterspace Oh go milk a moose.