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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3070 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 26, 2026

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?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I was rather surprised to see how outright hostile the sentiment was towards Americans, while attending a reasonably high profile comedy show in Edinburgh tonight. Even directed at the poor sods who responded when the MC/individual comedians asked if there were Americans in the crowd. Apparently "I didn't vote for him" is no defense.

I ran into a very nice gentleman from Washington state while sheltering from the rain under the alcove of his building, next to the venue. I told him that while the show was nice enough, he's better off pretending to be Canadian. He was a tad bit strange, since, as he explained and then demonstrated, he'd stepped out to get soaked in the rain in lieu of a shower. That is probably whimsy and not pathology, but I opted to stay dry.

To be fair, I was sampling from the most vocally leftist/progressive strata of Scottish society. The average Scot seems to be much less deranged, and outright welcoming of the odd American tourist. Anyone else notice such obvious hostility in other countries?

I am Jewish, so, you know... But in general, I find normal people very rarely have adverse reaction to admitting one is American, or even Jewish or Israeli. Obvious exception are obvious, but in general case if I feel there could be such a reaction, it probably means I am in a wrong place and need to minimize my presence there.

I’ve said this before, but I think there is something uniquely fake and soulless about contemporary American culture that makes many people from other places feel an aversion to America and Americans, even compared to people who are culturally and linguistically much further away.

It is difficult to describe without sounding unfair, but as an outsider you can sense it, it's like you can smell out a visiting American from across the street. Nothing feels entirely real. Not people’s identities, not their opinions, not their interests, and often not even their relationships. It feels like everyone is constantly at a trade show, promoting themselves and trying to make the right impression, even to themselves. Americans have become uniquely insincere, not necessarily because they are consciously lying, but because so much of ordinary social life has become a performance.

People increasingly behave like influencers even when they are not influencers, have never been influencers, and have no intention of becoming influencers. They present their tastes, relationships, politics and personal problems as though they are creating content or curating a brand. The imagined audience has become permanent, even when no real audience exists, or when it consists only of people with whom they would normally have been genuinely sincere. Even among friends, family and partners, people often seem to be managing how they come across rather than simply being present.

America has always been commercial and self-promotional, but it did not always feel this hollow. Regional cultures used to give the country more substance. Different places had their own accents, habits, loyalties and social types. They could be provincial or unpleasant, but they at least felt real. Over the last 20-30 years, much of that has eroded. People move around more, spend more of their lives online and increasingly speak in the same phrases, hold the same packaged opinions and consume the same national culture, paradoxically even more so than when there were fewer TV channels (and sources of entertainment), because that was at least limited to a fairly small part of people's lives.

Social media is obviously part of it, but I think the problem is broader. America now seems to be developing into a kind of anti-culture. It does not merely lack a strong common culture. It actively dissolves the conditions from which culture normally grows: continuity, inheritance, local attachment, privacy and a sense that some things should exist without being explained, displayed or monetized.

What replaces them is a culture of "self-invention", consumption and signaling. You are expected to construct an identity, advertise it and constantly update it. Nothing is simply inherited or taken for granted. Everything has to be chosen, announced and turned into a statement about who you are. This makes the culture exhausting and unpleasant to almost everyone outside it, and probably to many Americans themselves.

The recession of woke culture has not improved this, in many ways it has made things worse. Woke culture was extremely performative, but it at least provided a fairly clear set of approved signals, that people knew didn't necessarily mean anything. Now that its dominance has weakened, the habit of signaling remains, but the cultural landscape is more fragmented and competitive. People have to signal constantly and compete in their signaling.

Everyone now has to prove that they are more authentic, more radical, more normal, more masculine, more compassionate, more anti-establishment or less easily offended than everyone else. Even rejecting performative culture becomes another performance. The result is not greater sincerity but a louder and more desperate struggle to project a recognizable identity, rather than being something.  People often talk about wanting to see "the real" 'place' when they're going on vacation somewhere but in America it feels like the real place has disappeared.

Immigration may also play some role. Continuous demographic change makes social cohesion harder, especially in a country whose shared identity was already fairly thin. America no longer seems confident enough to assimilate people into anything substantial and the people immigrating seem less interested in integration. What America offers instead is consumerism, work, legal citizenship and the freedom to assemble a personal identity from whatever is available. It's not offering an attractive cultural value proposition, it's deconstructing their own and other people's culture into something empty. This isn't a new critique but it has become more true over time.

This may be why American culture feels increasingly alien. It is not simply foreign. Foreign cultures can still feel human because they are rooted in a place, history or shared way of life. For example, I intensely dislike Islam and to some extent Arab culture in general, but when I go to say Jordan, the culture at least feels real. I get the sense that contemporary American culture often feels rootless even to Americans. It is less a culture than a system for stripping existing cultures down, commercializing their most visible features and "selling" them back as lifestyle choices and branding. It's not just that there is increased hostility but that all human interactions feel less genuine and real.

Of course there are still genuine people and communities in America. But they increasingly seem like exceptions that survive in spite of the dominant (anti)culture. What outsiders encounter most often is something synthetic, restless and spiritually vacant. America feels like a preview of what happens when social life is completely absorbed by markets, media (legacy or social) and personal branding.

That is probably part of why the hostility is getting worse. People do not only resent American power or arrogance like they did during the early war on terror. They sense that American culture is becoming an anti-culture, one that makes everything more artificial wherever it spreads. They dislike it partly because it is unpleasant, and partly because they are afraid their own societies are heading in a similar direction, and to push back against that is to push back against americanism in a way.

Another thing I wanted to comment on:

promoting themselves and trying to make the right impression, even to themselves.

"even to themselves" - This is not unusual or controversial. The human mind has always done this, cultivating and presenting its 'avatar' to itself. The PR department of the mind does not just work in relation to the external world, but in relation to the internal world as well. This fiction, the self, is covering up a committee. It will lie constantly and produce a 'person' who is supposed to be competent and reliable and 'in control'. To be able to convincingly lie in this manner to the rest of the tribe, it must convince itself first.

I believe this is all complicated and put into overdrive by the internet life we are all now living, and by the mass surveillance state. People's minds construct an "always on", always watching, always judging, always performing world, because that is how the external world now exists. The most effective prison constructed by a surveillance state is the one built up and reinforced daily inside each human head.

It used to be just individuals with social anxiety, and in a more extreme form, schizophrenia (I'm not saying schizophrenia is simply extreme social anxiety, but this seems to be one part of the disorder), who constantly felt watched and judged due to an overly intense activation of this 'world inside the mind.' Now it's almost everyone. This is in part due to the extreme dominance by the left brain hemisphere in modern people. McGilchrist writes convincingly about this, at length, in his books.

What replaces them is a culture of "self-invention", consumption and signaling. You are expected to construct an identity, advertise it and constantly update it. Nothing is simply inherited or taken for granted. Everything has to be chosen, announced and turned into a statement about who you are. This makes the culture exhausting and unpleasant to almost everyone outside it, and probably to many Americans themselves.

Maybe this is, in part, due to how the labor market developed. We (I'm not American, but everything you describe is pretty similar in my country) are expected to offer up and advertise ourselves and all our real and ostensible qualities, to employers and others we need attention from. The societal group as a whole is not working towards any common improved future. It does not seek out the talent. The talent is supposed to discover itself, advertise itself, show up to each of the countless buyers of labor themselves. Most Americans are not unionized, which probably contributes to atomization and individualism. The self-invention and embroidered resumé culture fits into a mostly automated sorting mechanism for hiring.

I think Americans are less “real” in part because of history. America was born in the newspaper age, came of age in the radio age, matured in the TV age, and now the internet age. If you compare that to places like Britain or Germany or India or China or Japan, the reason seems pretty clear. The idea of being a Brit or a German or Indian includes lots of history and culture and folkways that existed hundreds or even thousands of years before printing presses to say nothing of the internet. Brits go to pubs and get drunk because that’s just what they do, they have for centuries. Japanese have their culture going back thousands of years.

America no longer seems confident enough to assimilate people

That's not about confidence, that's a deliberate act. Woke ideology rejects assimilation and considers it essentially soft genocide. Thus, saying "American no longer seems confident to assimilate" is like describing a mugging as "This guy no longer felt confident in keeping his wallet".

It's why I never understood the fuss about White Lotus -- I finally watched the first season awhile ago, after hearing real-life people going on about how great and profound it was -- and I was like, "American tourists are shallow and annoying, often selfish and high-maintenance too!" doesn't really seem that insightful to me... much less something I want to watch on TV!

Quality post, may Allah curse Universal Culture. However, I have become painfully aware that this process is happening almost everywhere, at different rates; America is just ground zero for postmodernity. America has lost much of its Americanness, but Britain has lost an awful lot of its Britishness, Turkey has lost some of its Turkishness, even Africa has lost a bit of its character. I look forward to revisiting Ukraine sometime, to see if the antidote to postmodernity is in fact brutal trench warfare.

I look forward to revisiting Ukraine sometime, to see if the antidote to postmodernity is in fact brutal trench warfare.

Spoiler: it is not.

I rather doubt it as well, given the effects of the original trench warfare, but given that it's a common talking point I'd like to disprove the theory for myself.

Britain has lost an awful lot of its Britishness

In Britain, raising a national flag is a subversive act. In the US, it is still largely not so, though in certain places it already is.

State repression of culture is not the same as the loss of culture. Imagine if in just about every place you find yourself in America, that isn't reserved to some newcoming minority or the hipsteriest of hipsters, there's still at least a drawlin' fella wearing a cowboy hat and spurs, a Southie with the broadest Bawston accent, and a Southern gentleman who says "huwhat" and "huwhy", and they all basically act as you expect. Britain's still got a fair bit of that.

I don't know about every place, but there are certainly places where you still can get that. Maybe not spurs, but otherwise I think it's still around.

You could visit the Balkans to check that right now.

I would say in my experience they are significantly less postmodernized, especially Albanians, though it's hard to connect that directly to the 1990s (I think the basic function is how rich a country is) and it's now been a long time since the war. Hungary is billed as reactionary, but it's actually well ahead of the rest of the Balkans in the process.

Hungary, thé one without the brutal civil war, checks out.

Also the focus of the tender embraces of its richest native son. One could also chart the rise of right-populism in Eastern Europe as a metric of the advances of a hostile postmodernity to which they're reacting.

Yes this exactly captures my discomfort with America (as a lifelong American, although with dual citizenship in the UK, I have always felt a little out of place). I just spent two weeks in the UK followed by a week in Germany, and both places felt just incredibly more real than America, even though they undoubtedly both have been infected by the consumerism and striving (especially. the UK). I think a lot of it has to do with the structure of cities, which are thousands of years old and build for people rather than cars, and also with a sense of belonging and place that definitionally cannot exist in the United States because we haven't been around for long enough and our national mythos is built on conquest, immigration, and progress, which makes it inherently unstable.

Interestingly enough, I feel like Europeans use social media way more than Americans. I post something on instagram maybe once a month, but my Italian lab partner for this course in Bath was posting constantly. This paradoxically actually seemed to make her social media use more authentic: she was just posting everything that came into her mind to share with her family/friends (I also noticed that these Europeans tended to have very few followers, maybe 100-200, within Dunbar number range) rather than curating to cultivate a certain image of oneself.

Pretty much everyone in my course (I was the only American) admitted that they had negative stereotypes of Americans and that I managed to break out of the mold by the end of the course. I've heard similar things from my sister, who moved to London in 2021 and had a rough first 6 months at her job where no one respected her. I find the reflexive dismissal of this stereotype by posters downthread to be a bit unhelpful. Pretty much all stereotypes have at least a kernel of truth to them, and rather than dismiss this one as Eurotrash bigotry, I think it is more helpful to examine why Europeans might feel this way. I think you capture that why incredibly well.

What you identify as "American" is really just modern globalized, atomized, urbanized, online culture. It's not just Americans who consume too much influencer content and monkey-see-monkey-do influencer behavior themselves. Germans, the French, Venezuelans, Chinese, whoever - if it lives in a city and consumes online content, it's suspectible to the same trends as our American trailblazers.

But I'm detecting it from Americans in real life, both in America and elsewhere, in a distinct way from other people, regardless of how online or cosmopolitan they are.

Are you tho?

Or are you being influenced by your own perceptions?

I’ve worked retail for 24 years - we’re all the same stupid cunts we’ve always been.

Honestly, people seem a tad smarter more than anything. Maybe a bit more histrionic.

There’s definitely been a shift post Covid of a kind that seems more lawless (tho I don’t literally mean law abiding) but the one you’re describing I only get a sense of online.

But also there’s now over 50 million more of us than when I started working so I don’t know - ask me in 19 years and 6 months when I retire I guess.

Yes?

Lots of people outside America don't like America and it's not about US strength or wealth, it's not envy but genuine distaste. They just do not like US culture or lifestyle or demeanour. They think that its weird to swear allegiance to the flag in schools, they think it's weird to have all these guns and fireworks and huge cars. They think Americans are crass and stupid and unwise. They go to America and find it really weird and hostile, all these drug adverts on TV, all these homeless people about, people actually approaching you and trying to make conversation on the street. Tipping. It's all weird. They aren't going to America again and will openly tell others not to go to America either. These are wealthy people who go to Europe just about every year on holidays, or boomers that go on cruises and tell me in detail how much they dislike Americans on cruises.

I was talking with a student from the US and I was trying to make the point (albeit in a more polite and appropriate way) that if it weren't for US power Australia would probably have been raped to death by Japan in WW2 so there are pluses as well as minuses about American militarism. But she was going on about how the pledge of allegiance was weird and just innately unacceptable. She was feeling the same kind of laboured 'you're obviously wrong, why do I even have to defend this' that I was feeling.

I make points in a separate conversation with an Australian professor about how the US economy is growing a lot faster than the Australian economy despite the US making a mess with tarriffs so they're doing some things right that we should emulate but even fairly sophisticated people like her say 'no, it's too unequal, there's too much extreme wealth and poverty and that's bad for democracy'. Or they regurgitate an Economist article about how the US is 'islands of affluence' in a sea of relative poverty. It's like saying that 'maybe we should build infrastructure in a more efficient way' and this reflexive answer pops up 'well China can only do that because they have slaves, there's probably a good reason that for HS2 they're building tunnels in open countryside.' Try saying anything positive about China to the average educated person in the West and they will probably refuse or deflect or mitigate. Well it's the same with America.

It's like the mirror image of Americans being super gung ho about America:

You're from the global military and economic hegemon that composes more than 60% of the world stock market cap.; no need to be embarrassed by it. Normies need a lesson in yes_chadding.

Normies overseas are no_chadding. No matter the GDP or the stock markets they don't give a damn, America sucks. Not to mention the wars and tariffs that keep dragging in or imposing costs on US allies. Americans could say 'We're so rich' and that wouldn't matter, it only confirms disgust that is rooted in culture, not wealth.

I make points in a separate conversation with an Australian professor about how the US economy is growing a lot faster than the Australian economy despite the US making a mess with tarriffs so they're doing some things right that we should emulate but even fairly sophisticated people like her say 'no, it's too unequal, there's too much extreme wealth and poverty and that's bad for democracy'.

There is nothing in human history that is more successful than hooking up the economy to the engine of personal self interest. It says something about the over-socialisation of Western children that they are unable to grok this by the time they reach the age of majority.

Arent the poor parts of America still a lot richer than their Australian equivalents?

The Economist article was cope I think, US median consumption is higher than Australia's. But Australians work less, live longer and have higher median wealth. There's not a significant difference I think.

work less, live longer and have higher median wealth.

Sounds pretty good to me actually.

It’s different. The homeless psycho monster problem in America is visible even in the richest parts of rich cities like NYC and Miami. Even in LA you’ll see it when you drive to work, to many stores, or if you live in neighborhoods plagued by it that are still very expensive like Venice beach, Santa Monica, much of Hollywood. There is an idyllic, peaceful, rich and safe American suburbia and unless you have American family you’ll probably never see it as a median foreign tourist from a rich country. Why would you?

I hear this all the time from rich Europeans I work with and know socially. I’ve heard it from wealthy Australians. You go to America on business or for tourism, stay in a $800 a night hotel in San Francisco or NYC or LA, and outside feels like the worst train station neighborhood ghettos of European countries. Sure, some corner of the Paris or Malmo banlieues might be worse, but no tourist or wealthy local is ever going there.

You need distance for this but the vibe in DTLA like 2 years ago was closer to like, Cape Town or Rio, than it was to big cities in other countries in the rich world. Constantly checking the streets, are there enough people walking around, can I dodge that group of addicts in tents, is this block still safe or is it the next one where things get real bad? Even NYC, while slightly improved from Covid nadir, is still very bad, and totally different from when I was a kid and teenager.

In Australia (kind of like Canada) the really dysfunctional poor are the small aboriginal minority who largely live deep in the bush and outback in towns that are like 30-90% indigenous and have huge issues, but your average rich person there will literally never encounter them unless they go out of their way to.

The homeless psycho monster problem in America is visible even in the richest parts of rich cities like NYC and Miami.

"Even"? The highly compactized urban congregations pretty much the only place where that problem existed. I mean, sure, you can be homeless in rural Idaho, if you really try. But I don't think you'll find an establishment like Skid Row there. Megapolises are "rich" because they are concentrated, and they have burgeoning homeless population because that's where the feeding grounds are (for every possible value of "feeding").

You go to America on business or for tourism, stay in a $800 a night hotel in San Francisco or NYC or LA,

That's a relatively recent phenomenon. 20 years ago SF was very tourist-friendly and NYC had Giuliani clean it up and LA was pretty decent too. Then the Long March came to its conclusion, the wokes took power and implemented their compassionate policies. Now there's literal shit on the streets. Sigh.

kind of like Canada

I haven't been to Australia since the 80s (very nice, very safe, very distinct un-American culture), but I can assure you that the major urban centres of Canada are pretty full of addicts in tents and other screaming maniacs. StatsCan will probably say that these are disproportionally Indians, but my feeling would be that it's a lot less disproportionate than it used to be -- many many skinny white crackheads, and significant numbers of chubby white schizos.

The real problem here is that it's bleeding into the (previously) nice 30-100k population centres -- people there are pissed.

When you get super-rural there's little homelessness but a fair amount of drug-associated petty crime -- probably a little worse than the past, but people do have guns so there's a bit of a disincentive. Actual remote reservations vary wildly -- some are pretty bad, others more or less have their shit together. This probably boils down to whether the individual leadership are actually good people, or are more interested in siphoning government/resource revenue off for themselves; both are common. To be fair there's a lot of pressure from band memberships to siphon the revenue directly to the entire population of that particular reserve -- which seems less corrupt but also doesn't usually work out particularly well.

I haven't been to Australia since the 80s (very nice, very safe, very distinct un-American culture), but I can assure you that the major urban centres of Canada are pretty full of addicts in tents and other screaming maniacs. StatsCan will probably say that these are disproportionally Indians, but my feeling would be that it's a lot less disproportionate than it used to be -- many many skinny white crackheads, and significant numbers of chubby white schizos.

The people hanging around the streets of Toronto or near Union station seem to be much less Indian than I'd have assumed. See a bunch of black and white schizos and druggies though.

You’re talking about Europeans.

I didn’t read past the first paragraph to post this but you specifically mean Europeans and South Americans who think they are.

These are wealthy people who go to Europe just about every year on holidays

I am not in fact talking about Europeans! I'm talking/thinking about Australians, an American student in Australia, a Canadian...

That’s on me - I in fact just forgot about those people haha

So it’s not just the facade of it all? Like Australia to America is surf, barbies, kangaroos, hot women, aborigines.

But America is literally everything. Beyoncé and the nfl, Jay z and Iraq, California and guns, progressiveness and Trump. Is it not just the all encompassing everything of it all?

No, America is a very small part of these people's lives (the rich old ones that is, different for students of course). All of those things that you mention are to be looked down on. Beyonce - awful. NFL - awful. Jay Z (and rap music generally) - awful. California - awful. Iraq - awful. Guns - awful. Progressiveness - awful, especially if its something serious like pronouns being used ungrammatically or shoddy academic writing about decolonization/progressive issues (but they would not dare say that in public). Trump and anyone associated with Trump with the exception of Pence - awful awful awful and they'll say it out in public. Coca Cola - awful. Microsoft - awful (but they have to use it anyway like anyone who wants to get things done). Israel - awful.

There was never much good about America with the possible exception of Harvard and whatever judges there are that stand up to Trump. Now the whole country is descending into fascism as far as they're concerned.

Classical FM. Opera. ABC News (the Australian ABC that is, the state broadcaster). British television (Yes Minister, Would I lie to you, Top Gear, Clarkson's Farm). British youtubers. The Sydney Morning Herald. The Guardian. The Conversation. The European Union. Florence. Venice. Rome. Paris. London. Cambridge. Oxford. The Times. The Economist. Fresh food. That's where it's at.

There was never much good about America with the possible exception of Harvard and whatever judges there are that stand up to Trump. Now the whole country is descending into fascism as far as they're concerned.

Well ok but they’re stupid.

Which is a different argument - most people are just normal right so your point maybe does track more than more.

You think (they think?) the nfl is stupid but it’s legitimately fantastic. It’s more popular than anything else in the country - is soccer retarded? Why is Jay Z bad because I have zero interest in it?

Venice Rome Paris and London are now fallen cities - they’re twenty years away from being non Western majority … it makes sense people from Australia might think it’s just the bees knees … until your daughters are being stoned.

So, sure.

But it seems your argument is kind of what I brought up earlier: things in the mainstream are bad, and America is the mainstream.

I dunno I just don’t see it - if you think football is to be looked down on but soccer isn’t, Jay z bad but opera good, London good but Miami bad? These are dumb thoughts from wannabes.

Judging public opinion based on standup might not be an unbiased estimate.

I noted that the average person is far more amiable. This was distilled exposure to the leftest of the left - comedians are known to be happy and well adjusted people after all.

Also the whole Comedy Festival loop is incredibly activist and will purge you for wrong think very happily. Atleast based on being into the Melbourne Comedy Festival scene for a couple years and knowing there's a high overlap with the Edinburgh talent pool. Melbourne famously renamed their 'best act of the show' award a couple years ago from Barry Humphries (Better known as Dame Edna) to a generic one due to him making fairly milquetoast anti-trans comments.

America is clearly exerting hard and soft power over a large part of the world and have done so for generations. Its not surprise that this generates resentment, even amongst closely aligned and vassal states.

Among Anglo states (think five eyes), America has always been its own thing. They are more individualist and unique compared to the rest of us which are more closely aligned to the (traditional) UK. This cultural difference leads to natural misunderstandings.

I remember traveling to the far corners of the Earth and having much more in common with European travelers than Americans, even though there was more of a language difference.

Not sure on the latter part but I do generally agree foreigners view American in a negative light because we are the hegemon so it’s a bit rebellious to speak badly of Americans even if they can’t really do anything about it. And a second reason Americans get looked down upon is because we dominate media and foreigners have a much about to view the American lower class versus their own.

To be fair, I was sampling from the most vocally leftist/progressive strata of Scottish society.

Mr. Human, our libtards are the same way. My only trip to Europe was during the height of Iraq War tensions. There were no issues, even when I was obviously culture shocked.

Idek but I travel all over the world and I find people who are openly hostile to me when I tell them I'm an American- and/or from a red state- is a huge red flag. This kind of bigotry is so inane and ubiquitous that I just seek out people who don't judge me no matter where I'm from. I've met people from all kinds of places that are openly hostile to Americans or the American empire and never would I consider judging them based on the country they're from rather than by the things they say or the actions they take. To treat someone poorly based on their nationality is always a bad sign no matter what part of the world you're in. (This pattern matches similarly to people in blue states who are begging to hear some trump denouncement/land acknowledgment from you as soon as you're identified as being from a red state. If you're someone who sees half of your countrymen with such contempt I'll just find somebody else to talk to rather than grovel) And this comment probably makes me sound like I am a rude person but I should specify that I am extremely polite when I sus out that someone is judging me and am tactful enough to disengage with them gracefully. I have had multiple instances where I was traveling abroad with other men- one a very liberal German, another a jew from NYC, and had locals harass and yell at them specifically while in the same breath were kind and apologetic to me. I think the defining factor is the level of respect you show toward others, which I make a habit of being conscious of, and others often are not.

We are costing other countries and their residents a lot of money with the whole Iran and tariff thing. Usually, even of Trump, the critique would be merely aesthetic. In 2026, it is in the pocketbook.

That's nonsense, Europeans sneered at Americans when Trump was a TV personality, sneer at Americans now and will sneer at Americans when only historians would remember who Trump was. That's just the way of things.

The initial comment gave me the impression that they had experienced a qualitative shift towards hostility, which I found plausible because my experiences abroad as an American have generally been fine, so I view the poster's bad experiences as something novel to explain. But maybe I just seem like a cool guy to people, you know?

I've been to Europe many times, and also regularly speak to Europeans and I haven't noticed any change to the hostility. Of course, people have different opinions about things going on in the US (just as Americans have opinions about things going on in Europe) but I didn't notice anything generalizable. That said, I try to associate with people who generally would not do such sort of thing (even among the left there are people who know how to behave properly), and if someone random hated me I probably didn't even notice it.

he's better off pretending to be Canadian

That used to be the advice for Americans travelling abroad: put a Canadian flag sticker on your luggage/backpack/laptop. This was, oh, mid-late 2000s? Early 2010s?

It's any time a Republican is President.

Even directed at the poor sods who responded when the MC/individual comedians asked if there were Americans in the crowd. Apparently "I didn't vote for him" is no defense.

If you play the "but I'm one of the good ones!" card in trying to suck up to lefty Europoors, I suppose you deserve the mockery that ensues. You're from the global military and economic hegemon that composes more than 60% of the world stock market cap.; no need to be embarrassed by it. Normies need a lesson in yes_chadding.

I don't exactly like so-called "ugly Americans" throwing their weight around, being crass and acting flabbergasted by anything that's the slightest bit different from back home (just yesterday evening I had to run over to a carload of them and politely tell them that we drive on the left here – thank Christ I noticed before they got themselves into an accident). But I will say this in their defense: at least they're being authentic. I find the "preemptively apologising for being American" oikophobia routine even more insufferable, and insincere in exactly the same way Scott described in "I Can Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup" – you're not apologising for being American, you're "apologising" for things the Red Tribe did in your name. What I find most irritating about it is that, for all their talk of how embarrassed they are by their nationality and how much they admire the European way of doing things, these people usually seem exactly as ignorant about the world beyond the stars and stripes as their "ugly American" brethren.

One may resent a loud, obnoxious, crass person who is sure the whole world was created for them. But one surely would never respect a person who apologizes for their own identity and existence, and tries their best to pass as somebody they are not.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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