I'm always amazed and disturbed by how much USA trivia, cultural artifacts and idioms i know and recognize. I know what a keg stand is, i know what the "freshman fifteens" are, i know what a freshman is and what AP classes are. I know what AAVE means, i know you can get pancakes at an "IHOP", i know what the US supreme court does and who AOC is. I know what Stonewall was and the Montgomery bus boycotts were, i know what "drinking the kool-aid" and what SoCal means, i know the "Florida man" meme and several thousand other details.
And like, on one hand i'm proud of myself, because all of this i had to learn and remember, without ever encountering it in my daily life. And it's fun to master a foreign language, it's fun to be knowledgeable in another culture. I like to watch a US movie or TV show and go "hey, i know what this reference means".
On the other hand, the USA are not a country i intend on visiting, to be honest it's not even a culture i particularly like or admire. I'll never set foot in an IHOP. And yet i know so, so much more about the USA, US politics and US culture than i know about my neighbouring countries, let alone countries in other parts of the world. If I'm honest with myself, i probably even know more about US culture and politics than about my own two countries, which is kinda shameful.
And it's partly my fault for using tumblr so heavily for the last 8 years, a social media platform dominated by USAmericans, and for not taking more care in watching TV shows, political shows and movies from other countries (or from my own countries). I should do more, take more care, not always chose the easy, default route.
But in wide parts of the internet (our global "home"), where we interact via the "global language" english, there's such an implicit understanding that you have to be fluent in US culture in order to keep up. We want to be able to partake, to exchange, to fangirl about the same TV shows or understand discussions about politics. And US media dominates the planet by such a wide, wide margin - it's a common ground.
No USAmerican is ever surprised by how well i know US culture. It's a matter of course. It's expected. A majority of non-USAmerican here on this platform has put the same work in as i have and are very knowledgeable of US stuff as a result. That's just the default. The labor that goes into learning all of those US cultural artifacts is rendered widely invisible as a result.
And honestly, how are we to fight back against a cultural imperialism that is so deeply entrenched... I wouldn't know where to even start. I like being able to exchange with so many people without being divided by language barriers, I feel no patriotic pride in watching movies from my own countries. But i hate and resent that extreme power imbalance, those implicit expectations, the lack of acknowledgment or even awareness about the work people from other countries put into learning and understanding US culture.
Fucking IHOP, man. Why do i even know what an IHOP is. Why do so many of us know what an IHOP is.
