11
The US is the largest English-speaking country by far and this post is in English. Switch to another language and you'll see less US stuff.
There are 27 countries in the EU, there is only one USA. Most people don't seem to care about each other's national happenings.
That's so fascinating.
As an American, only peak news from Mexico and Canada gets on my radar. I don't know shit about Brazil, Cuba, etc. and with my shit American education system, I can't even name the South American countries.
So if you're in Italy, you don't give a shit about Austria, Switzerland, or France and their big news?
I remember in primary school that we were tasked with learning the names and capitals of all countries on the planet, continent for continent, so there is an early taught awareness of all countries, as well as a culture for backpacking, experiencing and adapting to other cultures. As a Norwegian, most news here are about here, and only major headlines from other countries are mentioned in the news, like the upcoming doctors strike in France in the news today or the power outage in Spain a while back. Some more news from Sweden though, as it is our closest neighbour and the country we visit the most.
Have you seen the shitstorm we're (U.S.) in? We're like the worst car crash you've ever seen and then the ambulance also crashes then the fire truck blows up and then aliens come down and start attacking...kinda hard to look away.
I thought I understood US politics...even if it was by osmosis given the sheer volume we're exposed to...but lately I felt like I only understood the dem half...after the election I'm not sure and by now I have this "there is no hope of understanding this mess, different culture, different values" that I get from trying to understand Indian politics.
I mean honestly this is the most deranged and worst it's been in my ... at least adult lifetime. I think a lot of the political mess we're in is tied into our appetite for some pretty terrible pop culture. Yes, yes, we have moral and intelligent and sane people here too, but the way that we have leaned in so hard to trashy reality television, infuencers, anything to grab your attention and reward it monetarily...hell we have a reality tv president. It's not the only reason I think we're in the mess, but I think we've been primed to accept more and more outrageous behavior cause we've always been over the top and big and loud. I always assumed I'd live in a democracy, it was just a given. This is the first time I'm doubting it.
In pretty sure my instance is based in Germany, or somewhere in Europe at least. That doesn't really matter. You can belong to an instance hosted anywhere, and also I don't trust data privacy at all in the US so I'd rather not have my home instance be hosted here.
Presumably somewhere close enough that they don't want to risk breaking UK law as it's blocked here. Not sure if any other instances will follow. I think all of lemmy is probably against UK law now. Hope we will always have some instances or its small enough to get ignored.
The US population is grouped together in one giant pool instead of spread out by state like Europe is grouped by individual country. We focus on national news that affects the large population, and stuff that happens on other states becsuse of the shared identity, while European countries don't have the same kind of European Union shenanigans that affect all of Europe and mostly post about country level stuff. Communities in languages other than English also tend to be posted in separate communites further separating their discussions from the general purpose communities.
We are also louder, which also contributes, but that is not as big of a deal as the sheer numbers.
plus, you know, inheritors of the British empire - practically an unbroken chain of hegemonic anglophones who refuse to learn another language
While a huge portion of the population chooses not to become fluent in a language, because nearly everything within hundreds of miles of where they live uses the same language by default, we still provide opportunities to learn languages and in some areas people are commonly bilingual.
It can be hard to maintain a language without frequent exposure. I had some classes in Spanish and French, but without a large population that speaks either language in my area I just forgot it over time. Moved tons place where we do have a lot of people who speak Spanish and English, but since I'm not part of their community my exposure is limited to the occasional festival or signage as nobody needs me to impose my attempt to learn their language on them.
It isn't all about refusal, it is mostly lack of exposure.
Everyone slows down to watch the car wreck.
Presumably you're browsing english-language Lemmy
Most people are going to want to converse in their native/primary language, and by numbers that means a lot of Americans who are, of course, primarily concerned with American issues
There's also the fact that America is a huge player on the international stage, so American issues can have a lot of repercussions in other countries
And if you haven't noticed, America has kind of a lot of shit going on and there is a lot to talk about there.
Is it? Or is it a question of which communities you're looking at? Because mine isn't.
Yes, you can set that up. But most news communities such as /world, /worldnews, /news, and others are very US-centric. I wonder why that has to be the case when it should be clear to everyone by now that the White House is employing troll tactics.
Because the USA has so much military and economic power that it is the axis about which the English-speaking world turns. And it is making wildly stupid choices in its foreign and domestic policies, which gets peoples attention from both potential impacts to their own countries and out of sheer horror and exasperation. Finally, it has a huge population relative to any other english speaking nation, and its citizens will tend to vote as a bloc about things they find interesting. And the things they find interesting will typically involve their own nation. Germans, for example, will do this too - but there are far fewer germans than americans, so in an open market, American news gets the most votes from its citizens and ends up on top of the stack.
This is what I wanted to suggest. There's just a lot of news happening in America right now, and because of America's position in the western world that news has widespread implications.
Politics in America are also very dramatic, so the stories might drive more engagement from people into that sort of thing.
Greatest show on earth, bby!
Because the Europeans post in their weirdo languages.
Waar heb je het over?
I assume its because people love watching train wrecks.
Can confirm. Season 5 is off to a great start. 🍿
I heard a rumor that half way through season 5 there is going to be a surprise change in cast.
Because Americans are louder and tend not to confine their activities to the country-specific forums
As an American, I can say one of our defining characteristics is we believe we belong everywhere on the Internet. There is no space that we are embarrassed to enter. Reminds me of the Americans showing up on Chinese social media and acting like they owned the place.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I think only Americans like announcing they are Americans. Working with tourists in Europe spotting Americans was easy because the first thing they would say is "hello, I'm from America", or "I'm from Califooornia"
Never had this happen with any other nationality.
I need to change that. From now on I'll loudly announce I'm from Earth
or, you know, keep it to yourself unless asked? No one needs to know which planet you come from, why does it matter if I'm from Mars? Will you see me as inferior because I didn't have a good atmosphere or liquid water in my childhood and my favorite color is red because that's what we had?
Or whisper it like a secret for extra lols.
Whispers are you from Earth too?
which planet are you from?
Most of us came from Reddit, and Reddit is predominantly Americans.
and unfortunately a lot of people don't want to leave the reddit behind
If they’re that addicted to reddit’s way of doing things they can stay.
Because it's the most newsworthy country at the moment. The most powerful country in the world is crashing before your eyes, whilst the rest of the world mostly continues on as it was. Yeah, some noteworthy things are happening all over the world, but that's not as dramatic as the fall of arguably the most hated country in the world. And everything from genocide to climate change, disease and general suffering can be at least tangentially related to the disaster that is the US and it's administration. I mean, what noteworthy things are there to chide Sweden for? Anything? Is it comparible to the horrors and despair that the US is causing? There's your answer.
I checked the news in the biggest newspaper in sweden, and there's this story about a bus that scraped the roof while driving under a bridge. Must have been scary for the passengers. Luckily it wasn't going that fast. And there's a list of schools where you actually get paid to study so you don't need student loans.
For Norway a good chunk of the news on our state-run newspaper is related to the US as well. Especially the recent Epstein stuff
Other than that it's Israel/Palestine, Ukraine/Russia, some other international news, sports, the current heatwave, a little about nature, a little about new infrastructure projects, a news story about hate speech, and a couple other misc stories
... but that's not as dramatic as the fall of arguably the most hated country in the world
Easy there, lets not forget Israel. America is maybe right behind them though.
That's why that key word, "arguably" is there. Russia is also working for that title.
Israel wouldn't be high on that list without the sweetheart funding it gets from the United States to wage its atrocities.
It's good if you filter out that shit based in keyword. I've had so much less stress by filtering out any posts with the words {"Trump","Vance", "Putin", "Israel", "Republican", "Democrat", "Fart Sandwiches"}
Damn, all my Fart Sandwich memes getting blocked. 😭
Because Americans take over platforms and force them to obey American rules while pretending to be neutral. For example, LemmyWorld touts itself as an instance for everyone which is hosted in Europe.
But its /News and /Politics community discourse is forcefully limited to the USA. This is incredibly weird if you stop to think about it for a second.
Imagine if .ml had a /Politics community where the only allowed politics was China. And an unreliable biased Chinese website was to grade sources a credible, instead of the unreliable American MBFC website. Nobody would think that would be normal. But do the same thing for America and everything is fine.
I see German content here all the time, even though I don't understand it or follow it.
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2025
11 points (92.3% liked)
Ask Lemmy
33733 readers
280 users here now
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS