Do the well-known stereotypes associated with people from your country actually apply to you?

Good taste! :D I've tried the normal one, the lemon one, and the raspberry one so far but not that. Do you use flavored sparkling water when you mix it?

Salmiakki/licorice and similar things like star anise taste the best in liquid form imo. Like in the Koskenkorva liqueur you mentioned and things like sambuca, ouzo, and absinthe. I don't mind salmiakki candy, both the regular and salty ones are fine, but it's not something that I like enough that I'd buy it myself

No, definitely not. I don't just eat beer and pretzels. Believe me, I'm funny. I don't walk around in socks and sandals. I don't like hiking.

Well.

I am an American.

I grew up lower–middle class, but my parents were frugal so we were never in need of anything. I went to one of the best colleges in the country (regularly in the top 10 of the U.S News & World Report, though in the tier that regularly gets tied with a bunch of others and thus sometimes is actually like 11th or something) thanks to some pretty good financial aid (though naturally, these top colleges started providing full tuition to people in my parents' income bracket soon after I graduated) and I stayed there for grad school in physics (though didn't get a PhD, mostly because my advisors kept leaving, and I finally followed one after he left for Israel, and that was awful).

I give this background because it allows me to say the following: Being at a good college, especially for grad school, meant I met a lot of people from other countries, both students and professors. I've also lived in a foreign country (Israel) for a number of years, and made even more international connections and relationships. So I can say this:

America owns all of you. We are better. We are better people. We are more honorable—and we are definitely smarter than you.

We are definitely the least racist of peoples in the world. And because our universities still insist on distributional requirements (meaning you have to spend at least a little time on subjects outside your major), those of us who actually try, who care about our educations, end up with much broader understandings of reality. Thus, among the graduate students at least, it was clear that the Americans were the most sophisticated, and everyone else tended to be much more one-dimensional. (The Canadians I met were self-righteous, snobbish bullies who were particularly Neanderthal, having chosen astrophysics as their subfield.)

So I suppose I am not like the standard American stereotype. But I think I do fit the American stereotype as far as academia goes: That of the military-industrial complex that dominates the planet.

the pure amount of autism on this website is unbelievable, I thought it was a joke made to fit the stereotype, especially with this one but judging from the fact I've seen this rant about homework and Peloponnesian War before, I am starting to think this is serious. I think this might be one of my favorite posts of all time, this is literally MAL in a nutshell

cinema. This should be a quote in Avengers or Call of Duty or American Sniper

There's a difference between spending a week (at most!) on ancient Greece in a high school world history class and being given (at most!) a week to read Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War in a college international relations class. And note, that particular class I took (and I did indeed read the Peloponnesian War in a week, though I rather doubt most students actually did this) was a huge introductory lecture course, not an advanced class; hundreds of students took it to help satisfy their humanities distributional requirements.

Well, primarily I was giving an example of college being all-around more advanced than high school. History of the Peloponnesian War is a historical account of a war that happened in ancient Greece, one of the first historical accounts of its kind. A high schooler could of course read it, but it's generally not the kind of thing assigned in a high school class.

A little bit, but not always. I think my ethnicity and the related upbringing has a bit of impact on this kind of thing.

@fleurbleue Do you feel like you relate to any stereotypes about Québécois specifically?


I don't think that's true, you sound very much like the standard American to me! This whole post was very burgercoded.

I'm not entirely convinced it isn't parody, though you assured Commit_Crime it wasn't. This is just you committing to the bit, right?

Uh, probably not a representative figure, but when I think of Québécois I think about this guy who couldn't say "it looks like shit" in his own native tongue and had to switch back to English LOL. I am sorry in advance for your experience :d

---

OT:

I'm quite atypical to my nationality's stereotypes, let's say. But I mean I do like our national dishes, if that counts haha

Let's America this shit:



I inevitably have to give this same spiel every once and a while about what I'm doing. It seems to me that you're actually asking me this sincerely, CC, as opposed to @Commit_Crime, who, though regularly funny, seems still to be on the magic end of Clarke's third law. I do think I sufficiently explained myself in my response to LoveYourSmile, but I can make it clearer since I know he's fairly perceptive:

The crass America chauvinism thing is indeed a joke, yes, although as I explained there is actual meaning to what I am actually trying to say (countering the superficial left that's only in it for status). Performative America-bashing is low-level, not at all clever (e.g. bashing "maga tards"; this is usually indicative of being at that same level); I tend to be against the other stances of those who indulge in it; and a section of MAL seems to hew to it. Also I know @fleurbleue has at times appreciated my efforts at making things lively (this is not a claim that they endorse what I have to say, of course), so I figured I'd write something funny.

But I'm not making stuff up about myself; I did indeed live in Israel for a time during my graduate studies, though I did not like it there; what I describe as having observed in graduate school is real.

As to my goals here more generally, I have seen Commit_Crime complain about "philosophytards"; but it is fairly obvious I do not fall in this category, because I both know very well what I am talking about and have precisely the opposite goals of such people: I have a rather low forum post count, and I don't actually say much around here. This is because I don't talk here to show off, to feel good about myself, or to assuage some intellectual insecurity. Indeed, when this most recent round of my MAL activity started, I was chewing out philosophytards for wasting their actual knowledge browbeating someone just honestly asking stupid questions. If I actually want to write or talk about what I think seriously, I have serious, academic friends I share my ideas with. Rather, both they and I have for a long time found the way people think and behave on internet fora fascinating: Most people are dumb and get sucked into performative argumentative cycles, but sometimes (and even within these cycles) there are random, clever insights I would never come up with myself being of a different background (and every once and a while I do come across someone rather intelligent). If you want you can think of it as a LLM training itself on all sorts of inputs, but there's also that I care about people: They're online getting sucked into bad discursive cycles because they ultimately do want some kind of connection with others, and sometimes I, who approach internet discourse from a different modality, can dislodge them from some of these cycles. It is not rare for people who accost me as insane in online fora to turn around and like me a great deal, because I don't respond to them like anybody else would.

Finally, realistic depictions of actual academics, and how the actual knowledge and skill they possess works, are so rare that what dominates in the public perception is stuff like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory, the idiot savant in Rain Man (or much worse Cube; that is not how math works), and whatnot. As a result, people who are not at all smart but aspire to be get sucked into bad understandings of intelligence (like whining that someone is commiting the ad hominem fallacy). I think this is what has happened to thewiru (who I would tag and berate, but they don't seem capable of processing their particular problem, and I don't feel like going through a huge debate about it). And then others, who have caught on that it's easy to take apart these faux-intellectuals but have never seen the real deal, only know how to categorize actual intelligence as unreal and some kind of pose. This is only possible, though, because these others don't read. So it's fairly obvious I am not "MAL in a nutshell," particularly if one actually looks at what is statistically prevalent here.

Although the real reason I'm here is that I like spouting nonsense about anime, so I do represent the standard in a sense.

Well.

I am an American.

I grew up lower–middle class, but my parents were frugal so we were never in need of anything. I went to one of the best colleges in the country (regularly in the top 10 of the U.S News & World Report, though in the tier that regularly gets tied with a bunch of others and thus sometimes is actually like 11th or something) thanks to some pretty good financial aid (though naturally, these top colleges started providing full tuition to people in my parents' income bracket soon after I graduated) and I stayed there for grad school in physics (though didn't get a PhD, mostly because my advisors kept leaving, and I finally followed one after he left for Israel, and that was awful).

I give this background because it allows me to say the following: Being at a good college, especially for grad school, meant I met a lot of people from other countries, both students and professors. I've also lived in a foreign country (Israel) for a number of years, and made even more international connections and relationships. So I can say this:

America owns all of you. We are better. We are better people. We are more honorable—and we are definitely smarter than you.

We are definitely the least racist of peoples in the world. And because our universities still insist on distributional requirements (meaning you have to spend at least a little time on subjects outside your major), those of us who actually try, who care about our educations, end up with much broader understandings of reality. Thus, among the graduate students at least, it was clear that the Americans were the most sophisticated, and everyone else tended to be much more one-dimensional. (The Canadians I met were self-righteous, snobbish bullies who were particularly Neanderthal, having chosen astrophysics as their subfield.)

So I suppose I am not like the standard American stereotype. But I think I do fit the American stereotype as far as academia goes: That of the military-industrial complex that dominates the planet.

@auroraloose
You answered the OP's question very well:
-Yes, you exactly reflect the stereotypes of your country;
You were born and raised in a country that owes its wealth to the exploitation of other countries and economic and social blackmail.
The biggest stereotype of Americans is their "stupidity," and you embody that stereotype exactly:
by stupidity, we don't just mean academic, but also social and cultural.
To believe that Americans are the most sophisticated is stupid; to believe that they are among the least racist is stupid; to believe that having lived in a US satellite country, like Israel, could give you something more from a socio-cultural point of view is stupid.

The only presence of culture you had in that country you annihilated and put into nature reserves.

I won't bother sharing data with you; others have done it and you'll probably ignore it.

You perfectly embody the stereotype of the American who can't see beyond their own backyard...



(just to say: the first university in Europe was founded in 1088...)

i love burger and hot dog :)

they taste very nice

@Duado those natives were just days from developing a nuclear weapon

@Auron @Duado Is this the moment I'm supposed to show you all this quote? (since you apparently didn't get to read it)

@nonliterate Almost missed this wonderful post amid all this heavy lifting. My respects!

@LoveYourSmile I almost forgot, he wanted me to tell you thanks, but he's too shy to post anything over the 30 character limit 90% of the time!

@CC Oh, you are friends, nice! No worries, it's enough for me that the message reached its recipient.

Ah, by the way, you and your friend might have overlooked another barely noticeable message, which literally had me in tears and laughing like crazy. Just in case, I'll leave the link here:

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?goto=post&topicid=2232643&id=73266048

@LoveYourSmile Sir, do you hate me? I think you must hate me.

@CC But... that's a metaphor, cmon! Well, I hope so - not sure anymore, haha.

But how in this world can I hate someone as bright as you?

https://ibb.co/album/4JPrJ6

Very sorry! I didn't mean for it to turn into what it did. I was genuinely asking, yes. I thought I had the right idea of your post initially but Commit_Crime's response (as a user more active in CD and presumed to be more familiar than I) made me doubt myself. I haven’t read many of your posts, so I didn’t feel confident in my assumption, and I was admittedly a little stunned by this new information.

With regard to your remark about the superficial left, what differentiates an anti-U.S. remark that’s performative from one that isn’t, to you? For me, any dismissive remark I make about the U.S. is a lazy manifestation of my fatigue with the country and its political exports, considering the impact it has on my own. I’m very familiar with the leftist variety of performance, and you were referring to people who are only in it for the status—of which there are many—but I’m curious where you draw the line. Does it have to be clever? Surely you understand that for some, it’s just a way of venting their discontent. The rest of the world does have to hear about the U.S. their entire lives, the giant that it is, all while still contending with the realities of their own home. If you don't feel like answering, I'll understand as there is only so much time in the day, but I'm sincerely curious!

We've not talked prior to this, so I do feel like I should clarify: I will never pretend I'm especially intelligent, certainly not in the academic sense. I would say I'm not especially dumb, at least! I try to steer clear of what our friend @LoveYourSmile described as "heavy lifting" a few posts above, as I also prefer to have those kinds of conversations in a more personal setting. I'm quite content to watch (please, no one make the obvious joke here) and exchange small little bits of enjoyment with the people I like here, but above all else, I love to shitpost. So, where I'm going with this is: I think I understand, your original post was the auroraloose equivalent of a shitpost! Do I have that right?

Oh, and, it's nice to meet you! PV, of course, mentions you a lot.

aurora-chan is too smart to be an America at this point...

@PeripheralVision Though I am rather different from the average around here, I do in fact love America. My impression is that it is the place one can reach the heights of intellectual amusement and absurdity, and where we are free to have the most interesting thoughts. I've met Peking University and Tsinghua University grads; they were brilliant, but they knew America was different from China.