I mean, we did invent this cursed network. It’s our job to ruin it.
One day, we will shitpost our way to freedom
I completely understand the sentiment.
I also understand the sentiment that the internet is effectively a US invention dating back at least to ARPAnet.
I guess what I’m suggesting is: can’t we all just get along? At least we can now all communicate with each other.
To be fair, the US has the largest number of English-speakers of any country in the world. As a first language, it has five times as many native English speakers as second place (the UK). It also has one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the world, meaning most of those English-speakers are also Internet users.
The US is a single country that is three-quarters the population of the entire continent of Europe, and nearly all of its inhabitants speak English and use the Internet. So yes, if you pick a random user on an English social media page, odds are very good that person is an American. If you were to guess any random English-speaking Internet user’s nationality, “American” is the best possible guess. But go on a Spanish language forum or a French language forum and nobody will assume you’re American.
Consequently, Americans generate the majority of English-language Internet content.
Haha. Like anyone lives outside the US
I’m from Australia and don’t mind engagement with the (mostly) US content.
Let’s face it, the US election is the most interesting event on the planet anyway.
oh god, no
I find a squirrel climbing a tree a more interesting event
also one of the most concerning ones
My favorite answer when internet Nazis asked “How could the Nazis have won?” used to be “Be America.”
It’s not as funny anymore. They listened.
I hear you and am guilty of it myself. I feel like it’s due to the anonymous nature of the internet. I think everyone immediately falls into the category of “peer” before putting a touch more thought into who the actual person (bot/ai) is that wrote the reply. Add that to the fact that most Americans see themselves (as a country) as the king of the world.
Maybe you can try typing with an accent, but I think that’d probably just be seen as a racist American.
This is lemmy.world, you would have to join lemmy.{country} for lands beyond the fruited plains and purple mountains majesty.
As someone outside the U.S., what is your default persona for anonymous/pseudonymous users until you know more about them? Just curious. Like, if you don’t have any information about them, do you read the words in the voice of a person just like you?
I default to everyone sounding like Macho Man Randy Savage.
Not on Lemmy. Om Lemmy you’re 50% German, 50% American unless proven otherwise.
There was a fair amount of French language posts too, not sure how much quality and engagement they have.
𝕯𝖎𝖊𝖘𝖊 𝕶𝖔𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖘𝖊𝖐𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖎𝖘𝖙 𝖓𝖚𝖓 𝖟𝖚 𝕱𝖚𝖊𝖓𝖋𝖟𝖎𝖌 𝕻𝖗𝖔𝖟𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝕰𝖎𝖌𝖊𝖓𝖙𝖚𝖒 𝖉𝖊𝖗 𝕭𝖚𝖓𝖉𝖊𝖘𝖗𝖊𝖕𝖚𝖇𝖑𝖎𝖐 𝕯𝖊𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖈𝖍𝖑𝖆𝖓𝖉!
SPRICH
ESPAÑOL
ТЫ
Well, then have some proof:
G E K O L O N I S E E R D
Als een warm bad
zeg makker
I have blocked sooooo many german communities and several german instances.
I browse all to get as much new content as possible.
But I have to block a shitload of stuff I am not interested in seeing.
SPRICH DEUTSCH DU HURENSOHN
Nej, jag kan inte Tyska, men om du vill kan vi prata Svenska! (:
jach ki’imak in wóol yo’osal Google Translate
Ik versta daar dus allebij helemaal niks van. Wel leuk, zo’n internationale draad.
Fel språk är jag rädd, försök igen! (:
akkor a kurva anyád
Moerasduits. Is dat goed genoeg?
Tja, da verpasst du was…
Just learn German. Just do it
Äh, du kan väl lika gärna lära dig Svenska, det blir enklare för oss båda! (:
I was thinking of doing that if I actually move to Finland.
Having been to Finland before I know that it’s not very useful in everyday situations but it’s still useful and way easier to learn than finnish. Especially as I speak German.
There are parts on Finland where Swedish is the primary laguage even over Finnish.
Du irrst dich, Brudi - niemand spricht Deutsch hier.
Da hast du wohl recht, ich habe noch kein einziges “du hast mich” bis jetzt (Verwenden Sie für den zitierten Teil nicht Google Translate)
ich habe noch kein einziges “du hast mich” bis jetzt
Auch weil alles Liebe in Lemmy ist, ja? /witz
das oder neunundneunzig Luftballons 🎈
Yo no hablar alemàn
Se hablás castellano entonces complica, ya que no hablo. Excepto cuando borracho*. Aún asi, no es castellano, es más como portitañol…
*de veras, che. Una vodca hoy sería genial.
Ja genau.
Alter… das kann nicht sein
Ja ech waar, ik maak geen gein
Just like Geilenkirchen.
Just like Reddit was back in the day.
i live in DC and we get tagged for everything world politics.
forgive me for not caring if fvey countries get lumped into uspol.
I’ve heard it called “US Defaultism” where most Americans online seem to assume that everyone they interact with is from their country and all US news is considered significant even when it really isn’t.
Imagine if different fonts represented different accents.
𝓗𝓸𝔀 𝓭𝓸 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓭𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸𝓸?
Counterpoint: I rarely see non-US news posted. I do from time to time here on Lemmy, but it’s very rare.
I might just be in the wrong communities though.
That’s because most of the world countries keep internal news, internal, but you’re right tho, not enough representation makes people think like that
I do this sometimes, and I hate when I catch myself doing it.
I’ve been guilty of that- commenting before checking what community the post was in. Thankfully, I’ve found that most people outside of the US prefer gentle correction. Unfortunately, I doubt the average person from the US would show the same courtesy if the roles were reversed.
I find that it correlates more with education status than nationality… but therefore it surely is more rare among the set of average Americans who have access to the internet than globally.
Maybe you should try posting more often then ;)
There are tons of tankie subs where you can masturbate to false expectations of the planet and openly hate people who you’ve never met before, check it out!
ironically, tankies usually fall very deep into US defaultism, since everything everywhere is always the fault of the US
Oh yes I forgot I blocked Lemmy.ml, no russian representation
…Anything written in English, and you can usually filter that even more by just looking for people using too many U’s.
people using too many U’s
You mean people using British spellings right?
One day if we are brave, we will get rid of the U in a lot of British words like color and armor, but by God we will keep the British U in the word glamour!
Why whateveur dou you mean?
I read this like officer crabtree from Allo Allo
Lol ngl that’s probably how a French accent would look like spelt out XD
What if i use “color”, " gouvernment", “dialogue”, " humor", “armor”, " and “honour”
I see you like to keep 'em guessing.
Finally your edumacashun is compleute, go fourth and enjouy your freedumb! 😜
I think you’ll find most of the time the British use precisely the number U’s they intend to though typos may afflict even the best.
And when you do use those ⟨U⟩ (I do), people assume that you know what’s going on in the UK (I don’t.).
Tbf it seemed to make more sense for the likes of Reddit, Facebook, etc. Similarly if I go to a Chinese forum I would not assume that everyone there was from the USA.
I’ve heard this more times, and it’s kind of baffling. The US isn’t even the biggest individual country on Facebook. What do people who assume everyone is from the US think a non-US “forum” looks like? Where do Americans think everybody else hangs out online?
Given how many people choose to speak their native language in the US (myself included), I guess they assume they post to forums that are in their language.
So like Facebook and Reddit? Social media isn’t in English specifically. People who speak other languages often post in their native language for some things and in the lingua franca for more international conversations. The Internet is the Internet regardless.
As a US citizen I think we forget how much of our shit gets out.
I’m always surprised when I go abroad and people are up to date with somewhat niche US info. I was in Hong Kong and some local dude made a reference to the fatass NJ gov who was chilling on the closed beach during lockdowns.
I do feel like I see far more people complaining about US people making assumptions than I do US people assuming. When I’m replying to someone I don’t put any thought into where they’re from unless they drop a context clue.
NOW, but when Reddit started, and therefore the now infamous subreddit names were first doled out?
I am fairly sure that the rest of the world already existed. And those formats keep being in use in newer places, too. This is not just a Reddit thing. Even you mentioned Facebook, which was instantly popular globally.
instantly popular globally
There are 8 billion people on this planet, nothing happens instantly.
Facebook took a long time to spread around the globe. Same for reddit, this is a quote from the Wikipedia article:
As of August 2024, Reddit is the 9th most-visited website in the world. According to data provided by Similarweb, 51.75% of the website traffic comes from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom at 7.15% and Canada at 7.09%.[6]
More than two thirds of reddit traffic still comes from Anglophone countries to this day, and that percentage was surely much higher back in the early days.
I think you’re severely overestimating how many people from other countries actually use Western social media. Between the language barrier and the technology barrier, most people on this planet simply don’t have any opportunity or desire to use a site like Reddit or Lemmy. Facebook has slowly but steadily made global inroads, but by the time it got popular in non-western countries, Americans had largely moved on.
… I am a non-anglophone who, at the time of Facebook’s raise to social media dominance lived in multiple non-anglophone countries. I was there.
In one of the places I lived there was briefly a popular local Facebook alternative. It lasted maybe a couple of years before entirely capitulating and getting absorbed. That place does still have a local Reddit-like alternative, and Reddit is certainly more US-centric. You are right that Facebook stayed popular much longer outside the US. It has started falling off in some of those places, but I did keep a Facebook account for work purposes for a lot longer than you’d expect because work relations in those territories would share Facebook credentials as a way to establish professional contact. Twitter may as well have been a lost ancient civilization, though.
There’s also a lot to unpack in the assumption that on a thread about “why do Americans default to assuming everyone is from the US” you’re reflexively lumping the entire anglosphere as part of the US, but honestly, I’ll let the recently annexed English-speaking countries deal with that one on their own.
I am fairly sure that the rest of the world already existed.
No way - at least not back then! Source: am American, and therefore entirely confident that no other nations existed prior to my hearing about them (Christopher Columbus told me so! 😛). And maybe even then… which reminds me, are you so sure that you are real? Maybe you too are in America and just forgot? 🫠
Also, just so we are clear, “American” = “USAian”, definitely no other nations exist on the American continent, nope, no way! (Except Canada and Mexico, and they get a pass as wannabe USA states) 😜
