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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   4782 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 26, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Are Brits on average more intelligent than Americans, at least verbally (restricting both sets to college-educated people, say)? As an American I know I might be conditioned by silly tropes of British sophistication but I feel like there's something here.

  • Based on what Youtube serves up to me occasionally, British talk shows seem more clever
  • Prime Minister's Questions, despite being nonsense, seem to require more quick-wittedness than any comparable American political event I can think of
  • Social customs seem to require saying lots of things in subtler, more roundabout ways, which is simply more mentally taxing for both the speaker and listener

Not that any of these are amazing displays of intelligence. There just seems to be a greater demand on one's verbal faculties in everyday life.

A big difference between Americans and Europeans is how we view Brits. If your image of Brits is upper class posh people you are American.

If you associate Brits with obese football hooligans causing a scene at a McDonalds at 3 am you are European.

I couldn't put it better. There is a ton of videos and memes mocking the dullness, meaninglessness, and poor quality of life of British lower classes.

On the other hand, Brits seem to me to have many of the smartest white people, with exemplars like Paul Dirac, Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Roger Penrose or Timothy Gowers, so the differences are indeed significant.

Calling those video's is generous. I must ask, how does one find such things or become aware of youtube slideshows mocking lower class brits? I stumble across weird shit all the time and I am often asked how I found it when I share it to a group chat. I'm honestly just curious how this discovery happened.

Two of the videos were riding the "Deano" wave as re-popularised by semi-obscure esoteric RW anons on twitter (e.g. https://x.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1572994810499432448 )- which is sort of a British archetypal "working class lad done well" but with the modern consumer culture modernity dialled up to 11. The other two both fall more into the "Gammon" genre, popularised during Brexit and also Euro 2020. They often feature Tango (this chap: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11486337/England-superfan-Tango-Man-apologises-going-topless-Qatar.html) or other Brexit/Nationalistic discussion. These things come and go in waves, TiKTok seems to play a large part, but they're always getting shared by slightly elderly relatives a couple of years after they did the rounds the first time. It mostly seems to be middle class white Brits laughing at their lower class brethren, rather than inter ethnic or anything, and Americans sometimes get involved as well.

The poking fun between classes genre has always existed, but the underlying "Gammon" concept can be traced back at least as far as Enfield's Self-Righteous brothers sketches: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CvbXwwob8Kw.

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