Disclaimer: This is not meant to be a bait or any kind of bad-faith devaluing or stereotyping. This is only based on my experience, hearing similar stories from others and wanting to understand. I’m aware that there are good and bad people everywhere.
So I’m European and starting on a good note I always admired America for many things like the freedom, diversity and cool movies.
But after more experience with meeting real Americans I noticed this personality type that I and I think many other non-Americans would describe as arrogant.
Like I stated before I’m not saying every American is like that and I know there are many very nice Americans. But I often saw that some Americans seem to only be nice on the surface (if at all) but actually seem to have this attitude of “I don’t give a f about you”. And I know that America is a very individualistic culture that focuses on the self and the belief that everyone can achieve anything on their own.
But I still think having a sense of empathy and sensitivity towards others is a very important core human quality that everyone should have. And from personal experience and also from a very prevalent notion of others both in every day life and when looking it up online it’s clear that many non-Americans perceive many Americans to cross a line there.
For example there’s a prevalent observation of Americans visiting other countries and acting like they own the place by being very loud, demanding and not accepting if things aren’t the same way as they are in America.
We know that Americans have very big issues with divisiveness and social injustice and it seams like there’s also this sort of “ghetto” personality including trash-talking, lots of vulgar slang and slurs and bragging.
And a general perception of money playing a big role as if many Americans judge someone’s worth by money and this attitude of not feeling like needing to help someone. I think there’s this famous description of a person lying in the middle of the ground in a public city and people just walk around the person not feeling the need to help.
It almost feels like they’re very entitled and put their ego up way higher than it actually is and lacking the quality of making themselves smaller/putting themselves second to treat others with more dignity.
US citizen here, sounds like you have already figured it out:
This goes deep into the heart of the matter. A good portion of the population has been propagandized for literally decades that every man is an island and reliance on others is “pussy shit.” There is no conception of society. No one wants to fix society, they all want to become rich so the rules of society just stop applying to them.
Temporarily embarrassed
millionairesbillionaires and all that.For those of us with empathy and understanding of how economics and international relations actually function, let me tell you, it is a nightmare on our mental health. It has been that way long before Trump, too, I remember how viciously we wasted the world’s outpouring of compassion after 9/11. In response to that compassion we went and swung around our big military dick in the middle east and wrecked millions upon millions of lives. It is a daily endless gaslighting by society that caring about people makes us weak. We often are literally denied opportunities to thrive because we aren’t following the right “script.” We will be passed over for jobs in favor of nepotism and social connections.
Like literally the entire fraternity/sorority culture in the US is and always was for forging early business connections so you can be a useless fucking loser but still rise to the top.
That culture has lead to the worst, dumbest, and least competent running the entire fucking country.
A lot of days it really feels like it would just be easier to let this system fucking kill me and let it win just to get it over with.
Somehow, though, people like me continue living out of spite for what America is and what it represents.
I have a soft center and part of me wants things to slow down and be more inclusive and understanding and to have time for more connection… and generally shift our culture away from survival of the fittest.
That didnt get me anywhere and i was poor as shit and was taken advantage of by employers and the system constantly.
Now i say fuck everyone else im getting mine and relish getting ahead. Its a learned behavior that i want to shed when i have financial independence. It is what it is.
It’s seems like USA’s culture rewards individual success above all else, hence successful people behaving like main protagonists, or even as if others were NPCs.
To be fair, other comments that speak about selection bias are also spot on: not all people there do commercial tourism, even domestically. The ones that do are successful enough to have that disposable income.