Sometimes I wonder how much the average human is prepared to answer questions about the culture of their birth region, though.
The USA is huge and comprises at least 11 drastically different cultures. I know other countries also have similar "yeah, same country, different culture" circumstances. I'm not sure how many people realize this.
One thing that strikes me travelling in America is the homogeneity. I'm from the England and I've been to places in England where I genuinely couldn't understand the accents (I used to find the Geordie accent the hardest until I lived up north for awhile). But I took a road trip from Michigan down to Florida (through the 'deep south') and then back up to New York and although accents changed, I never had the same kind of communication problems. And that's without counting the places in the UK where they natively speak Welsh or Scottish. The dialects (which is a massive part of culture) are mutually intelligible without a huge struggle.
I'm however broadly aware that there are many Spanish speakers in the US, and that in parts of Louisiana they speak Louisiana French...
Relatively (geographically) small countries with (effectively) a single native language tend to develop the most extreme range of dialects as groups seek to differentiate themselves. The UK is a particularly extreme example of this (but not unique).
I am also from the UK, but have lived in the USA for 34 years. When I first came here for a visit, I remember thinking there was more cultural variation between shellfish fisherman in Louisiana and Maine than there was across all of Europe, even though they had very similar jobs, spoke the same language, drove the same cars, watched the same TV shows (back then, at least). 34 years later, I stand by that assessment, though it has become a lot more nuanced.
People don't just decide to speak differently to feel different from their neighbors. The reason why the British English is more diverse is very simple: they have been speaking English for much longer than Americans, so they had more time to diversify.
Go a little back more in time, and the daughter languages become diverse enough that they get their own names, like English, Dutch, or German.
Give America a thousand years and chances are that some people will end up speaking something completely unintelligible to others.
> People don't just decide to speak differently to feel different from their neighbors.
Actually, it seems that they do, when they don't get on with their neighbors for one reason or another. And this seems to be accelerated when they are geographically close to the neighbors they don't get on with.
So yeah, in 1000 years the US will likely have more diverse dialects (and actually, a very different form of english (or spanish). But that doesn't eliminate the cause for the highly variegated dialects in small regions like the UK. Time has something to do with it, but not everything.
> [Brits] have been speaking English for much longer than Americans
The English spoken in America is from immigrants from the UK. American English was not suddenly invented out of whole cloth in 1783.
> Give America a thousand years and chances are that some people will end up speaking something completely unintelligible to others.
It doesn't really work that way now. The US has only had a relatively unified spoken language with the advent of national radio and television networks. Regions largely lost their dialects once everyone started consuming the same media.
> The English spoken in America is from immigrants from the UK.
Yes, but immigration involved language mixing. It's not like a remote village in Scotland could elect two hundred people to hop on a ship, cross the sea, and settle down in another remote village in Montana. For their kids born in America, they would have been lucky to find one other family that spoke the same dialect.
So the differences averaged out, in the same way kids growing up in London speak London's dialect regardless of where their ancestors came from.
> Give America a thousand years and chances are that some people will end up speaking something completely unintelligible to others.
I wonder how much some simple tech by today’s standards will alter this course. Given media and mass communication it’s in our interests to reduce variation to increase our communication capabilities which hasn’t been the case for as long but I can see in the US anyways we’ve become more similar than we once were when we had stronger geographical anchors in our speech or culture.
These 2 papers are more at the language level rather than the dialect level, but acts as a good jumping-off point for research and ideas about how social structure affects the development/evolution of language:
Neither specifically address the development of dialects as a reinforcement of social subgroup differentiation, and right now I can't find the original place where I read about this idea.
> I remember thinking there was more cultural variation between shellfish fisherman in Louisiana and Maine than there was across all of Europe, even though they had very similar jobs, spoke the same language, drove the same cars, watched the same TV shows (back then, at least). 34 years later, I stand by that assessment, though it has become a lot more nuanced.
There is a reason New Yorkers want to vacation in London and not Dallas.
This changed through television and an intensive effort in schools to standardize spoken English, including speech therapy for people that had accents too far outside the prescribed American access. Even people learning English as another language often undergo accent remediation lessons (my wife is from Thailand and had to take accent improvement lessons as part of her TOEFL and ESL studies). Growing up the variation was extreme - there was a “middle” dialect that span the Midwest and western, but the north east, south, and various regions like the dakotas and others had very distinct dialects that were often unintelligible. This also ignores Ebonics, or urban black dialects, as well as other sub dialects.
As others point out TV and Hollywood also played a huge influencing factor here, but TV and Hollywood also existed before the convergence of dialect happened and were just as if not more important. It really came to a head in the 1980’s through 1990’s with the mandatory educational standardization of language and dialect, partly exemplified by no child left behind and related standardization efforts.
But I think culturally there are hundreds of cultures in the US, not just by region, but my demographics within a region. Black culture in Atlanta is very different than black culture in rural Georgia, is very different than Vietnamese American culture in Atlanta, etc. People from Europe are always looking at their monoculture and it’s internal variance and looking for a similar single dimensional variation. But America is culturally extraordinarily varied along many dimensions owing to its enormous communities of minorities from every other culture on earth, adapted over generations into something unique in the world to that geography plus ethnicity plus other dimensions. I’d almost say it’s so varied that it’s easy to overlook and just focus on the Generica experience presented by mass retailers and franchises.
I think television has had a massive effect on the overall, "average" American accent. The stereotypical Boston accent can still be found in Massachusetts, but it isn't nearly as common as you might think.
Similarly, the thick Southern drawl is still a thing in some places, but when I travel it seems that a light twang is more common.
This might also be due to geographic mobility, but I think media is a more likely culprit.
Broadcast TV continued that, but cable meant TV no longer controlled by local folks with their local accents and opinions.
TV anchors all learn to spike with a bland accent. And now Sinclair's "local" stations have tightly scripted news, so local news is becoming more of a simulacrum of national news.
Last time I visited San Antonio (20 years ago), I had trouble understanding the server asking me if I wanted a coke with my food. The drawl was just too strong for me, it wasn’t as neutral as (relatively) next door Austin at all.
I’ve always found even the strongest Texas or Arkansas accents intelligible, unlike some regional UK accents. The US used to be more varied but being one national market for media and immigration has had a homogenizing influence. It’s not simply a question of age, some parts of the US are 500 years old, and in some ways it’s British English that has drifted, not the other way round.
I think this is relatively new phenomena. Most people have seemed to have converged upon the West Coast accent. The same you'd see from Hollywood. I think there are a lot of reasons for this, but one being that if you speak with other accents you may come off as dumb. Same thing seems to happen with Canadians. But when you get the people drunk, they'll tend to slip back into their native accents.
I am able to understand these people but for others it is unintelligible. I think America is such a melting pot that it also affects our accents. People travel all across the country and thus those accents converge. But certain regions tend to have much thicker ones than others.
West coast accents are actually just a slight variation on Midwest accents, so most people these days are speaking closely like they are from Wisconsin or Ohio.
Neutral American broadcast English is basically a midwest accent.
Sure but I'm not sure how this is helpful. I think most people are very familiar with the standard west coast accent given it's prevalence in Hollywood. But the are even regional accents. PNW is different from NorCal which is different from SoCal. Rural Oregon and Washington are different from Portland and Seattle. Sure. Tbh most of the difference wouldn't even be noticed unless one listens carefully, especially because there's such a mixing.
> Neutral American broadcast English is basically a midwest accent.
Are you referring to the North Atlantic Accent? This is an entirely fictional accent the was created for radio and not born from an evolution of social speaking behaviors. This is the accent you hear in "old timey radio" (Legend of Korra is a good example). Pretty cool accent if we're being honest though.
> I think most people are very familiar with the standard west coast accent given it's prevalence in Hollywood.
Hollywood doesn't use a west coast accent (which isn't even one thing, a Calfifornia accent is distinct from an Oregon accent), they use a midwestern accent to be as easily understood as possible to international audiences.
Actors take classes on this, it very specifically is not a west coast accent that Hollywood uses.
> which isn't even one thing, a Calfifornia accent is distinct from an Oregon accent
Quick question. Did you read my comment in full or just a few lines? Because I can't make sense of you disagreeing by stating the same thing I did. There's are hierarchical classifications/categories. I feel like you're being overly pedantic and thus it's not an honest conversation. Is this a conversation or you telling me I'm wrong and nothing I say matters?
> Quick question. Did you read my comment in full or just a few lines? Because I can't make sense of you disagreeing by stating the same thing I did.
You seem to imply there is an overall westcoast accent with minor reigonal variations. I'm saying that isn't the case at all.
> I feel like you're being overly pedantic and thus it's not an honest conversation. Is this a conversation or you telling me I'm wrong and nothing I say matters?
I'm not being overly pedantic, this is an honest conversation, it's not that I think nothing you say matters, but I absolutely think you were wrong with what you said. I think I made my point in a civil way. I wasn't trying to start a fight.
> Actors take classes on lots of accents.
Of course. Most will be more specific. Most actors will be taught the midwestern accent to be as clear as possible to the largest audience. That isn't true for other accent classes. It's funny you accuse me of being pedantic and not engaging in good faith when I feel this point was very obviously implicit in what I said.
What is a west coast accent? Most of our ancestors moved in from the west coast (my great great grandfather was a farmer in Wisconsin before moving to Spokane). The only thing I can think of is the valley girl accent that was briefly popular in the 80s.
First, there's a lot more to culture than accent. The cultures of the states you passed through are radically different, in ways that wouldn't be obvious to someone passing through.
And even if we take accent alone as evidence of cultural homogeneity, your road trip would likely have only passed through relatively highly populated areas if you stuck to the highways. Feel free to correct me if I'm, but I imagine you didn't take detours out into Appalachia, or head out into the swamps in Florida. Assuming you stuck to the interstate, it's not surprising that you wouldn't have encountered much diversity of accent, because the thick accents tend to reside in isolated areas. Population centers homogenize much faster.
And one more note: Michigan to Florida may sound like a large cross-section of the United States, but you really only passed through what we in the US would consider two distinct regions: the Midwest and the South. You missed New England, which is a hot spot of linguistic diversity in the US, with as many dialects in that small region as in the rest of the country combined.
Accents won't change to the point where you would have trouble understanding them, but cultures and values can be radically different. Living in NYC for example, I would consider many bible belt sates to almost be a different country.
> I know other countries also have similar "yeah, same country, different culture" circumstances
I'd argue most countries fall into that description. It would need to be either extremely small (Luxembourg, Andora, Iceland ?), have a very strong drive towards unity (South Arabia, North Korea ?) or be so poor/inhabitable that not much people movement ever happens.
Otherwise any viable country that's not trying to kill anyone different from them will see a vast number of drastically different cultures coming in and staying for the long run.
Why did you pick the number 11? I don’t disagree but I could see it being a lot more. Just wondering if that’s some sort of agreed upon number or something.
Honestly it's probably more evenly distributed than you may think. I grew up in one state in the North East, currently living in another, and I've been to two states in the South East, South mid, South west, North West, and every single time has been a very noticeable difference in culture.
I'm sure it's different, but is it as different as say, Italy is to Germany? or Portugal to England? or Estonia to France? I have no trouble believing that American states have noticeably different cultures, but drastically?
What would you say is drastic? In each of these regions, I've noticed different architecture, different cuisine, different accents, different social expectations, different political values that are widely accepted, different popular activities for leisure, different distributions of spoken languages...
I haven't actual been outside of the US myself so I don't have a frame of reference for that, but different regions in the US really are quite different from my limited perspective.
Interesting that the chickens have come home to roost long and loud enough for the government itself to assist with damage control. The political instability of the United States causes real anxiety in other countries. While both the major political parties are significantly ignorant of the impact of the United States upon other countries, some people are clearly more ignorant than others. A very timely and tragi-comical guide from the State Department indeed.
This material dates back at least to September 2020, before the 2020 election and the craziness that followed. It's not a reaction to any specific event or series of events, more to the general sense that Americans abroad have always been asked to account for the weirdly specific ideas that people have about what America is like.
> Interesting that the chickens have come home to roost long and loud enough for the government itself to assist with damage control.
The government has been doing this kind of image management targeting foreign audiences (and, through them, the policy stances of foreign governments) as part of public diplomacy for generations; the new thing isn’t realizing it is necessary and “trying to help”, its reframing what it has been doing for generations and providing resources to train and encourage individual Americans to act as agents of the government’s public diplomacy efforts.
It is an ostrich reaction to deny that sentiment toward Americans even among our closer allies in the West has been eroding. These efforts made by the State Department are indeed timely, regardless of any historic precedence. In very recent news, we see these perceptions discussed openly in US media: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/24/world/europe/brics-expans...
> It is an ostrich reaction to deny that sentiment toward Americans even among our closer allies in the West has been eroding.
I didn’t deny that, what I denied is the claim that the recognition by the government that it is valuable to address various negative perceptions is a reaction to any recent change in overall perception, since they’ve literally been actively doing it for generations; what is new is the approach.
> It is an ostrich reaction to deny that sentiment toward Americans even among our closer allies in the West has been eroding.
I'm not American, but I'm white and speak English. When I was backpacking Europe and Asia almost 20 years ago, I would often get insulted just for being assumed to be American. Of course that was when Bush was in power which probably had something to do with it.
> to assist with damage control........ The political instability of the United States causes real anxiety in other countries.
>In the article: People outside of the United States are often curious about American culture, its politics, and the general way of life.
Worth pointing out, 60%+ of HN audiences are from US, roughly ~20% from UK.
I dont think most people are actually interested, but in English speaking countries we are constantly bombarded with US news, US politics, and worst, US culture war. This is further amplified by Internet and Tech.
Before the mid 00s, Modern Tech wasn't a common industry for front page news. New product announcement didn't show up in local front page until iPhone ( At least outside US ). But we now live in an age where a 5 years old kid in developed world would have played with a Smartphone, watched TikTok or YouTube. And Tech, which is 90% concentrated in Silicon valley has their own culture bias to export. As much as we the rest of the world would like to ignore it, it has its influence to the outside world. Look at Twitter for example.
It's opinions like this that prompt me to tell others I'm Canadian when I'm a foreigner in their country. I'm not here to represent the U.S. government or enter debates about the shittiness of our culture, and in fact I very much enjoy leaving those subjects at home when I am abroad.
That's perfectly fine. I just want to enjoy myself instead of engaging with the negativity of others. I try to hold my elected representatives accountable for what I can, and that's about all I can reasonably control.
I have traveled and lived abroad full time for almost a decade. I have never encountered anyone who attacked me or expected me to defend the United States because I was born there. Not once. I’m pretty sure most people around the world understand I don’t represent all Americans, or the actions of my government.
I have several times encountered other Americans pretending they come from Canada, or complaining constantly about the USA. And I have witnessed Americans abroad starting arguments about politics or guns or something about another country or culture they know nothing about.
If you need to pretend you come from Canada to feel comfortable traveling maybe look at yourself. I don’t have any shame about my nationality. And I don’t feel any need to defend my country or engage in comparisons or criticisms that would lead to that kind of talk.
I haven't travelled overseas for a half a decade, but I used to get ahead of some questions by introducing myself with "I'm from California" rather than "I'm from America".
I suppose people know California. But I wouldn't expect people to know many other states and suspect it might be interpreted as self-centered ("everyone must know where Missouri is").
I would say "I live in New Mexico, which is in the southwest US between Texas and Arizona."
It helped that I lived in Santa Fe which, (unlike where your bio implies you live), is a pretty-well recognized US place name in Europe.
One Swedish taxi driver was a fan of Louis L'Amour, and many others know about it through other westerns. An English hotel clerk, base on its reputation, guessed the population was 200K-300K (it was 65K then, 90K now).
I wouldn't try it for most other states, but in my experience they usually know California, and if they do know it, they tend to have positive feelings towards it.
Usually I tell people Im proud of being American without being an ass about it. Sometimes people are asses about it but usually there is some good natured prodding. Sometimes people from Europe even express some jealousy and lament that people arent proud of being English, German, etc. They’re usually surprised to hear its the same story in America but just look at this thread.
I still don't understand how you can be "proud" to have been randomly born in a specific country.
You can be happy to be an American, or you can feel a deep connection to your country, you can proudly defend certain values, but being proud of having "won" the birth lottery? I don't get it.
> I still don't understand how you can be "proud" to have been randomly born in a specific country.
I never said that
Being proud of being a certain nationality is a function of many things. Your ancestors migrating, or staying in the same place, founding values, current and past culture etc.
Following your reasoning, one could say “I don't understand how you can be ‘embarrassed’ to have been randomly born in a specific country.” I think your frame misses whats actually being said. We agree no one should place the value or fault on random birth origin.
There's an important element of cultural context. In England if you say you're proud of being English that might sometimes be associated with nationalism, which in turn sometimes is associated with racist parties and groups. Flying the St George's Cross (outside big international sporting events) can sometimes have this connotation. As far as I understand it there's no such connotation for flying the American flag
Bear in mind how England and Germany also have a history of national pride connected with imperialism and the killing and subjugation of other peoples. Unfortunately, in the present-day the ones who voice their national pride most loudly tend to connected it to historic supremacy, as with far-right English nationalists using the English flag.
This makes it hard for people who do feel pride for the modern country to express that pride.
> "America, love it or leave it" was tired even in the 1970s.
> If you are ashamed of something, you should be free to fix it, not obliged to leave.
Should immigrants not come to America and instead fix their own country? I don’t think that way but that seems to follow from your suggestion.
There are plenty of people embarrassed of America who aren’t trying to fix it or arent affecting any change. Wanting it to be different is neither of these things.
> I don’t think that way but that seems to follow from your suggestion.
You should re-study classical logic.
You turned the proposition "If you are ashamed of something, you should not be obliged to leave" into "You have left therefore you must be ashamed of something".
This is a fallacy. I wrote "if P then Q or not Q" (if ashamed you are free to stay and you are free to not stay), which you turned into "if not Q then P" ("you did not stay therefore you must be ashamed).
Similarly, turning "If you are ashamed of something you should be free to fix it" into "If you are ashamed of something you are obliged to fix it" is another logical fallacy.
Just because someone is free to do something does not make them obligated to do it.
Very detailed and well researched site. I found the context-based vs direct communication fairly accurate.
It also made me appreciate what American culture is all about. It has its pros and cons but it is very uniquely American.
One thing to keep in mind for all travellers is that every single country is different. So even if you learn the norms in Vietnam, you will need to relearn everything next time you go to Brazil.
> Americans love to own things. They value material wealth. The primary symbols of the American Dream are a home and a car, followed by electronics, clothing, sneakers, and other items. Downtown areas and shopping centers are filled with people browsing and walking away with their purchases. This consumption fuels the American economy, and the wide range of consumables, from clothing to toys and gourmet coffee to home décor, offers infinite variety.
Consuming at this volume, however, has a profound impact on the environment and can be perceived as greedy and careless in other cultures.
People in Germany and France buy about as much cheap junk and have about as much attachment to material belongings. Which I don't blame them for, but it's remarkable that in both countries, it's fashionable to pooh-pooh the "dumb Americans" for that.
"When your data doesn't align with the anecdotes, suspect the data" - paraphrase of one of the world's richest people, possibly being correct for once.
I have taught in 26 countries, over 20 years. I had a total of two conversations relating to someone who wanted to complain about America. Both were taxi drivers. I enjoyed both occasions. I’m always ready to tell folks that they can take their complaints to me and I will listen. If they make a good case, I’ll go home and fix the problem
The intent is good, but the govt doing it kinda gives me the Soviet vibe. Someone in my family told me that, before they were able to go abroad as a tourist (to a Warsaw pact country), as part of the exit visa process they were quizzed on all kinds of Soviet trivia and political stuff. Cause, like, what if someone in Slobodia asks you who the culture minister is or what the Soviet position on Cameroon is, and you don't know?!! You have to know the right government facts to talk to the locals.
Given US geography, it is both very expensive and not very advantageous to travel abroad. Its worth it if you enjoy it a lot but its not fair to denigrate people who dont care to or cant take trips across the world.
Embarrassing that more Americans haven’t or that more Americans can’t afford it? International Travel can be prohibitively expensive for many Americans.
The hardest thing for me to wrap my head around from this well-produced site is the idea that the cited questions are somehow "difficult".
Go ahead, ask me why there are so many violent gun deaths, why we use so much energy and carbon per capita, how someone like Trump could be elected, how many cowboys there are, do I have a gun, why are US houses so big ... happy to give my take, and it's not difficult.
The section(s) on communication styles (particularly high and low context) are a bit brief but quite effective, I felt.
No American has any obligation to answer those questions or try to explain their culture to someone intent on attacking America. If asked sincerely with curiosity, sure, but the questions listed are loaded and intended to create conflict or embarrassment.
The site assumes some of the Americans who travel may be gun or Trump supporters, which for them those questions maybe be difficult if they want to avoid a fight. But to generalize, supports of those things are not looking to avoid fights and also are less likely to travel anyway.
> But it's difficult to explain to Europeans how they're programmed as they take offence to it. So you pick your battles.
Yes, if you tell a whole continent that "they've been programmed" (but the people in your continent miraculously have not), they're going to get offended. Big surprise.
Part of the problem is people constantly comparing the US to these european countries. Even Americans are guilty of it. And often when I have brought up the fact that the US is very diverse and is more akin to 50 countries with some free trade and defense agreements in place you often get defensively told “that’s what per capita fixes”. But it doesn’t and anyone giving it an honest consideration would probably see this being true. There are some states, heck some cities with larger GDPs and populations than many EU countries.
> 50 countries with some free trade and defense agreements in place
and one common language, common media, similar political topics, shared sense of culture, no iron curtain, ...
I don't want to downplay the diversity of the USA but it's a miracle the EU exists at all given that language barriers are so huge here (and no, not "everyone" speaks English).
There are certainly sections of the US where English isn’t the main language.
There are a LOT of different cultures, from African American cultures, to southern, to French in Louisiana, to Cuban in Florida, to Mexican in the southwest, etc etc etc.
There were places in Vietnam I could communicate easier than parts of the US.
> Certainly in Europe where countries are tiny the vast distances we have here are incomprehensible to them.
Don't you just see Europe as one groupcomprised of many small countries, the same way you see the US comprised of smaller states ?
Even from your comment, stating you're from Europe is basically that. I've been to both, I'm not sure that makes such a difference except the EU doesn't have huge deserts, but I'm not sure that's a big point if we're focusing on human culture.
Europeans are "programmed by the government" (whatever that is supposed to mean) because they don't like getting shot?
There's more guns than people in the US and you also have a higher number of homicides than some war-torn African states, far higher than in Europe.
I suspect Americans are the ones being programmed by the government, considering how much people over there like to indoctrinate people into a cult of patriotism .
Everyone is programmed. I think where people go astray is not realizing that they have been programmed along with the others whose programming is more obvious.
Not a swipe at you, I'm sure you're well aware of this having lived in two or more cultures.
I feel like what we're really saying here is "everyone has a culture which colors their perspective." I think "programming" implies something more sinister and deliberate than is warranted. There certainly are people who influence culture, even to sinister ends, but no one is in the driver's seat; it's a complex, leaderless system.
Hilariously, afaik one of the only municipalities in the world to have effectively ~mandatory open carry is also in a European country. (to wit: Longyearbjen, Norway)
One could argue that Americans are programmed to be pro-gun. After all, it’s a constitutional right and a huge part of our culture. I don’t own nor have I ever owned any firearms but I am completely pro-2A and recognize the need for them, especially in certain areas of the country where law enforcement is very sparse.
> the simple response is that we see zero crime where I live
I can all but guarantee that's not true. No, statistically you're not going to get "shot in the supermarket", but violent crime in the US is, in fact, higher than western Europe basically everywhere, in essentially every community, including (in fact especially) in the ethnically uniform exurbs.
To be fair, sys_64738 did not say that there WAS zero crime, just that they SEE zero crime. Which is probably true, and is true for many people in high crime areas too. Not too many muggings in an LA gated community.
I don't know enough about the state department to be sure, but this just feels like politics to me, furtherance of a narrative that certain elements want to push about what they think is wrong with the US under the pretence of being "asked questions". It feels like just more partisan BS.
And regardless of what country you're from, only an asshole starts asking you pointed questions like that, this isn't a realistic scenario obviously. Imagine asking a random chinese tourist harsh questions about their country's behavior, they would hopefully and rightly tell you to fuck off.
Do you find it objectionable on is face to create such a guide, or is there something in particular?
I've only skimmed this page, but for what it's worth the state department creates educational material for travellers, issues travel advisories warning people not to travel to this or that place under exigent circumstances (eg natural disasters and rising geopolitical tensions), gets emergency passports to people who have lost theirs in a foreign country, etc.
I don't know that there wasn't an agenda here, but on it's face it seems like it's part of their duties.
I've never personally been in a situation where people asked me weird questions about my country, but I don't really talk to people much when I travel (my loss, perhaps). There's a cliche about telling people you're Canadian or putting a maple leaf on your backpack, so I imagine some people have had that experience. I did once ask some probing questions of a Chinese hostel-mate about the Great Firewall (which, fwiw, he said was to protect Chinese people from American spy agencies - not my position, just what I was told), so maybe I am "that guy."
Thanks government for your patronizing instructions and unasked for commentary on navigating international culture differences.
How do we answer the more relevant questions:
"Why does your government meddle so much in the business of other governments? Why does invoke so much death and war in the middle east? Why did you invade Iraq, again?" etc etc
Those ones I find truly difficult to navigate, since it seems like American citizens get little say in how much power is projected overseas. Wonder how the State Dept would advise?
The first rule of being an American overseas is you are not an American overseas.
You are a high priority target for robbery, kidnapping, extortion, scamming, murder, and a host of other things from the lovely locals you're mingling amongst. Stay to well lit areas, don't stay out late, don't follow anyone around, dress in a way that does not draw attention to yourself (better if you can get into local garb), and assume every single person is there to kill you. Limit your drinking, and if you do drink do so amongst expatriates and travel friends, and guard your drink at all times.
People do not like Americans. Many times their ill will has at least a logical foundation. While I certainly appreciate the state department attempting to manage image this isn't enough. Americans must be on the defense at all times. You must especially be defensive in non-western countries (where you are probably better off simply not going). While many people are easy going the mixture of zealous propaganda about Americans, and America's own negative image, will have you perceived as a target more often than a friend.
This reads as an absurdist take on travel, or one assuming the average American is blithely walking back and forth across the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. After extensive travel in many “non-Western” countries, I have essentially never felt like a target, or that I was in danger (except of perhaps being charged more than a local), and suggesting Americans avoid those countries reads, to me, as an absolutely mad-with-fear take on the world.
Colombia or Iraq, sure, but in most countries, this isn't the case.
Although the tourist is a universally-reviled species, the best tip when traveling is don't become the clueless, reckless, *sshole cliché American tourist. You can go to a hidden neighborhood brasserie in Paris, have a good time with the locals, and not be outed as an American tourist if you don't look or act the part.
Universal rule of life: be cool. (Many) problems solved.
How much traveling have you done overseas? I've been to a handful of countries and have never had reason to be afraid. No one I know who's travelled overseas has has been hurt or robbed or anything like that either. To my knowledge none of them hid their Americanness.
People told me I needed to wrap my luggage in seran wrap when I went to the Philippines so that corrupt customs officials wouldn't put contraband in my bag. The airline workers had to hold back a laugh at my naivete when they checked my wrapped luggage.
To be fair I did see political graffiti from communist rebels who occasionally kidnap people for ransom, but it was obvious on sight that I was American - which prompted people in the street to try and sell me beautiful craft work, not to kidnap me.
That's seriously not cool and we have to ban accounts that do it, so please stop. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
Sometimes I wonder how much the average human is prepared to answer questions about the culture of their birth region, though.
The USA is huge and comprises at least 11 drastically different cultures. I know other countries also have similar "yeah, same country, different culture" circumstances. I'm not sure how many people realize this.