• AlyxMS [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    13 days ago

    For me (non-American), it’s the age of drinking being higher than the age to own a gun or drive a car.

    Well I guess that’s not really culture. Okay, maybe this: Expect smiles and the nicest service from retail/customer service workers, who’s being paid the lowest and deal with the most amount of bullshit.

    Around here, people sort of just expect them to be playing on their phone and not really paying attention to you.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      13 days ago

      The drinking age is due to America’s astronomical rate of drunk driving fatalities. It was so high in the 60s that it was impeding the development of the national highway system, so the federal government cut a deal that if states set their drinking age to 21 they’d get highway funding. I think Louisiana was the last state to have a drinking age of 18, and they also had the reputation for the most poorly maintained roads in america

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        13 days ago

        Huh TIL, i thought it was some law relic inherited from Brits.

        The drinking age is due to America’s astronomical rate of drunk driving fatalities

        Not surprising though

      • RedSailsFan [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        10 days ago

        they also had the reputation for the most poorly maintained roads in america

        they still do lol, i can be asleep on a car trip and instantly know when we’ve hit lousiana because of how dramatically the road goes to shit

  • Horse {they/them}@lemmygrad.ml
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    12 days ago

    psychotic jacking off about “tha trooooooooops”
    every yankee troop, past and present, should be put against the wall and shot
    none of their supposed “expertise” is useful at all
    their training relies on having complete logistical/aerial/etc. superiority to the point where an individual yankkkeee soldier is more useless that a random prole in a combat situation
    like genuinely, any dipshit who goes to the range with their ar-15 once-a-monh will be a better shot than 90% of yankkkkee troops

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    13 days ago

    As an American it’s our advertisements for lawyers. There are lawyers who specialize in such specific disputes and become household names for it. Like a law firm in my city specializes specifically in being hit by an 18-wheeler, becoming disabled, missing work, and then your job not paying you disability.

    There’s one lawyer in the city near my hometown who specializes specifically in bodies from the local cemetery flooding into your front yard. America is a land of such poor maintenance that a core feature of our culture is that every large business will have years long court battles over something horrible they did, like selling food with poison in it or knocking someone’s house over by accident. And private lawyers do advertisements for their services with butt rock music

    • Evilsandwichman [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      13 days ago

      I’m gonna be honest, this one’s not so strange; the law is gigantic with many little details in it that you have to specialize. This isn’t general practitioner level medicine where any dimwit yokel can be like ‘hyuck, put some cream on it!’; this actually takes years of practice and learning to get every little detail of how the laws work, using precedents and fact finding. The law is vast and every area, every little detail contains a world of little laws and how they’re affected, and even different states can have their own versions of those laws; this isn’t just looking at someone’s anus and putting on your big boy hat and saying ‘hurdy hur, thar’s a hemorrhoid!’

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        Well the legal specialization isn’t that weird but advertising yourself with guitar riffs and crazy nicknames is something I’ve ever heard of outside of America

        A friend of mine from New Zealand was visiting once. We put on the radio and an ad for a local lawyer started playing with metal music and an aggressive dude asking if you’ve been injured by inhaling hydrogen sulfide. My friend was slack jawed at hearing it and I couldn’t blame him. It’s very weird.

      • woodenghost [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        The insanely specific law is man made and part of culture. So it’s still an example of weird culture. It’s also specifically USian, because other countries have laws too, but not these insanely specialized lawyers to this extend nor their bizarre advertisements everywhere.

  • krolden@lemmy.ml
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    13 days ago

    And then every time I point and say LOOK I TOLD YOU SO I am told “man you are living in the past this is all in our history we have to worry about TODAY”

    😡😡😡

  • ClassIsOver [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    13 days ago

    The American relationship with food. It’s insanely expensive, but portion sizes are insane, the regulation of what can go into it seems to be built around shoehorning as much sugar or corn into all of it as if the health drawbacks are part of the plan, and so much gets wasted while almost the entire population is either morbidly obese or malnourished. Food deserts exist in large swaths of the country. Things are being further deregulated because conspiracy theories drive more political change to food systems than science. Grocery stores are filled with dozens of options for a narrow range of types of food. There’s food dye in almost everything. There are too many preservatives in almost everything. There are non-food chemicals in almost everything.

    Then there’s the packaging. Bananas come in shrink wrap. Peppers come cellophaned to styrofoam planks. Cookies come with multiple layers of plastic packaging. Meat is weighed after it’s packed onto waterlogged sponges on styrofoam planks, wrapped in more cellophane that’s covered in stickers. Everything is partnered with toy brands, movies, games, cartoons. You can’t buy a reasonable amount of anything, and the prices are still going up.

    Of course it extends to TV, which other countries have, but in the US, even the food shows with the same hosts that the UK has are focused around being an asshole instead of the food itself, or it’s about the contestants’ personalities, drama on the set, or stoking rivalries. It’s a competition instead of pursuit of better food.

    • darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      12 days ago

      Bananas come in shrink wrap

      The one thing the US is not guilty of. They do this in Asia all the time but the most I’ve ever seen with bananas is the organic ones have a small bit of cellophane wrapped around the stem only.

      Peppers come cellophaned to styrofoam planks

      Definitely seen this one. Though mostly with squash and similar, the excuse being oh it prevents bruising and blah, blah, blah. Ridiculous.

      • ClassIsOver [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        You know, that bruise-resistant plastic wrap. I don’t know how most people shop, but I’m just as good at getting peppers not to bruise as I am at getting eggs not to break.

      • ClassIsOver [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        12 days ago

        The weirdest one I see around me is when tomatoes on the vine are packaged in very environmentally-friendly-looking rough cardboard trays encased in plastic, as if that’s somehow better than the way they come.

  • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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    13 days ago

    The Home owner association thing is so incredibly backwards and reactionary, I get the impression Crusader Kings 3 is just a white middle class neighborhood simulator 2022 or something.

    The typical white middle-high income suburban experience of living in a McMansion and having to drive 45-60 minutes on a 10 lane highway just to buy a 6-pack of beer or something. If someone told me “you can come and live here for free” I’d still reject(it would be my last choice) because it just sounds like misery. I’d prefer decent housing anywhere else.

  • Cruxifux@feddit.nl
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    13 days ago

    I remember as a teen going to the states after 9/11 and tons of Americans after finding out I was from Canada grilling me on whether we were going to join them in the war or not. I wasn’t even old enough to vote. They were very aggressive about it sometimes, and at least passive aggressive at best. It was real culture shock for me.

    Also what is with Americans and loving show tunes? Like I get they’re tourist areas but the show tunes thing is so fucking weird in the south.

  • thethirdgracchi [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    13 days ago

    Still think the water bottle thing is stranger. Why do Americans just carry around giant water bottles everywhere? They could be going to the store and they bring an enormous water bottle like they’re going for a ten day trek.

    • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      13 days ago

      *not from us, not in us

      I went to an airshow with my dad (I had no interest it was just something nice I just wanted to hang out with my dad), and there was a flyover of f16s or something, and at the end of the show the us airforce emcee said ‘thank you for your patriotism’. I retched

    • The_Grinch [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      13 days ago

      Even though they employ like 70% the same people as they did then, never recieved any recourse for doing it, were never so much as politely asked to tone it down, and if you ask the agency directly “are you still doing this?” they will refuse to answer (or occasionally confirm they are)

  • grandepequeno [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    13 days ago

    To me is the obsession with soda, I’ve heard americans say the don’t like water because they “don’t like the taste” so they have to be drinking soda. In fairness I think it was ethan klein so