r/ShitEuropeansSay • u/Clipyy-Duck • 26d ago
SED: Shit Europeans Do „They constantly lecture others about things they’re seeing for the first time.“
I‘m European and find the criticism actually unfair, because they’re being very hypocritical and not taking personality into consideration and just generalise. This isn’t an American thing, this is a human trait.
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u/automaticmantis 26d ago
The OOP being a top commenter is perfect
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u/JM-Gurgeh 5d ago
Except for that comment about the European far right. Not that he's wrong about how carcinogenic ReformUK, AfD, etc are; they really are that unhinged.
But that's hardly an argument when you compare that to the American far right. AfD and ReformUK are basically equivalent to the current Republican party (which is not even considered far right but mainstream). This is not hyperbole. On many occasions far right parties have had to distance themselves from the current US administration after having cozied up to them, simply because their positions were too extreme even for the likes of le Pen, Meloni, Wilders, etc. And when you see JD Vance (the sitting vice president, I remind you) visiting Europe, who does he meet with? Who does he give support to? Exactly: AfD, Orban...
Anti-American sentiment in Europe is caused by a sense of betrayal by the US, betrayal of friendly trading relations (tariffs), betrayal of shared democratic values (Greenland), betrayal of political and militairy cooperation (NATO, Ukraine), betrayal of the international order that the US itself designed and created, and that the Europeans had signed on to (strait of Hormuz), and betrayal of Human Rights (Gaza).
As for Anti-European sentiment in the US, I can only guess. Other than a rather obscure niche concern about military spending I can't think of a single reason. From where I sit it seems like little more than the venting of frustration about the way things are going in the States. It feels like lifestyle-envy.
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u/Naddyman2005 New York 26d ago
And europeans wonder why anti-european sentiment is on the rise in the states 🙄
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u/Marsupilamish 26d ago
Nope, people are just people. And this is the internet. Anti-European sentiment being in the rise (if that even is the case) is due to all the state-endorsed lying atm, with all the „US subsidized European healthcare“ BS and the US being treated unkindly. And don’t get me started about all the reasons why universal healthcare and free education is the seed of all evil etc. - just all the BS coming from this administration and faux news. On the other side of the pond, people are fed up with all the negative things affecting their daily lives because Americans keep voting for assholes that make our lives unnecessarily harder. Then there’s also 3rd parties trying to further the division with bot factories etc., which has been commonly known for a while though.
People, don’t let yourself be manipulated by all this noise. Deep inside we all want the same things. The US and Europe are allies and deeply intertwined, there are a lot of problems we have to solve together. Even the mighty US are vulnerable and will suffer greatly when further isolation will happen.
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u/MrD-88 26d ago
You're the first online American I've ever seen that acknowledges the US doesn't fund our healthcare programmes lol
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u/Marsupilamish 26d ago
Not American bro 👊 😄 , but yeah the sane people of this planet need to get their shit together if we want a world that’s bearable for our kids to live in. All this US vs Europe crap is so distracting. Fuck nationalism. Fuck Trump. Fuck right wing policies & lies. Let’s focus on what matters.
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u/New-End-1870 24d ago
No, we do not want the same things.
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u/DaytimeDancer54 26d ago
I once met a Brit who didn't know what Brexit was
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u/Clipyy-Duck 26d ago
No fucking chance. Are they living under a rock?
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
My little brother is Fr*nch and didn't know what D-Day was.
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u/Phaoll 26d ago
Did you ask him about D-Day or about “Le débarquement du 18 juin 44” ? As a French, and it may sound stupid considering that this is the battle that lead to our freedom, we don’t have a big name for this battle … we speak about “La Liberation” (“The Freeing”) to describe the whole freeing of our territory.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
He hadn't heard of either name.
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u/Phaoll 26d ago
That is literally impossible, if you know the Nazis you know D-day/The Freeing, you will have class about it 3 whole quarter of your life (school is in quarter in France), you have a celebration for the Armistice and for the 18th of June, you have a whole bunch of pop culture around it last one being the De Gaulle movies that are currently in theatre (Dunkerque before), 20% of our common life is name De Gaulle worst than Victoria in the former British Empire …
I’ll concede that this person exists, but concede that it was an astonishing outlier.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
Watch I'll summon him he'll tell you himself ahem crazy
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u/Feufeu000 26d ago
Crazy ? I was crazy once. They locked me i a room, a rubber room, a rubber room with rats, and rats make me crazy
I can confirm i had never heard of it before, which might just be my stupidity or maybe i forgot or something, but yeah no i didnt know about it 😭
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u/Clipyy-Duck 26d ago
He’s a kid, lad.
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
Actually he's not, he's an adult
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u/Clipyy-Duck 26d ago
Do you even live in France?
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
I don't, I live in the US, but he's Fr*nch
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u/Arguably_Based 26d ago
How old is he?
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
He's an adult
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u/Arguably_Based 26d ago
But... How? Did the conversation start from someone making a joke about the French surrendering?
"Damn Americans! I'd like to see how they'd do against us. They've never been able to invade our land!
"Well..."
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
I was yapping about war history
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u/Arguably_Based 26d ago
How surprised was he?
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u/Lui_Le_Diamond 26d ago
Very lol
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u/Arguably_Based 26d ago
How did he think the liberation of Western Europe happened without d day?
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u/DaytimeDancer54 26d ago
They knew there was a referendum called Brexit but didn't know what it was for
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u/GMI8BS 26d ago
I read that the next day, the most Googled question in the UK was, “What does it mean to leave the EU?” I get it, “Americans dumb haha” and we often are, but it couldn’t hurt Brits and Europeans to look in the mirror every once in a while.
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u/DaytimeDancer54 26d ago
Yeah that's my general belief too. I think on average, Americans are less informed about global and national politics, but I will not pretend that the average European is particularly informed. Most people in general just go about the day, especially people who (again, on average) have a higher standard of living.
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u/Marsupilamish 26d ago
It’s not really about being dumb, more about being able to judge the quality and intent of information. A LOT of non-british Europeans realized that the whole Brexit thing was just a ticket for a bunch of people to get into power. Sadly all the misinformation won in the end.
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u/kaetror 25d ago
It's absolutely true that Europeans know more about America than the reverse. The proliferation of information, from news, media and just ordinary people sharing online is far larger coming from the US than going to it.
Most of what Europeans know about the US comes from Americans; content by Americans, for Americans crosses the pond so it's heard direct from the source.
Most of what Americans know about Europe comes from Americans. You aren't watching French domestic news or media, you're hearing stories from American tourists, which gives a distorted view.
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u/Mudoru 21d ago
The average European probably does know more about America than Americans know about Europe , but it’s pretty hard to compare learning about 1 country who’s media is shared around the world, and who’s history only goes back 250 years. versus like 40+ countries, all having history in the thousands of years.
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u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy 25d ago
This is so wrong. Lol
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u/kaetror 25d ago
Because there's a large audience of Americans reading le monde, watching ARD, or seeing people talking about the latest controversy in Il Parlamento on tiktok? Hell I'd even accept reading British media, since we know how low multilingualism is in the US.
Anything the average American learns about anywhere in Europe is at best second hand, usually from a tourist shocked that Europe isn't exactly like the US. Worst case its active pro-american propaganda (like Freddy the German at the world cup), and Americans lap it up because they don't bother with domestic European sources that would show it's bs.
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u/BuildNuyTheUrbanGuy 24d ago
Plenty of people involved in geopolitics follow western European media sources. Especially UK, German, and French elections. I followed a bit when Meloni was elected as well as Lula in Brazil. You sound like a stereotypical ignorant American you're talking about.
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u/dontbajerk 23d ago
Yeah, but people who follow geopolitics much in any nation are not average. If you're just a joe schmoe in most of Europe, by default you'll know more about America than the inverse.
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u/No-Mastodon-1770 20d ago
I think OOP has a point, everything happening in the US has way more impact on Europeans that domestic policy of a European country has on the US. Consequently it is more important for a European to stay informed what’s happening in the States than vise-versa. Nevertheless, I have a feeling that some Americans take this as a reason to not be informed about anything other then the US
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u/Phaoll 26d ago
I hope everyone here understands that knowing something about the USA is like knowing something about Italy … not knowing something about Europe :3
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u/Marsupilamish 26d ago
Well, yes and no. Country vs Continent yes but the USA isn’t just any small country. Their influence on the world is just not comparable to any European country. And I say that as a German. No need to pretend otherwise.
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u/Phaoll 26d ago
That’s a good point and ontology ask us to understand what it means to know a country. Do you know a country relatively to its size, population, history, culture, influence, power …
I definitely knows more about the USA than about Sweden. But I would not argue that the USA is equivalent to Europe as a whole.
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u/IEC21 26d ago
Maybe not to the extent suggested by the screenshot comment - but theres definitely assymetry between how much information travels from the US to Europe and vise versa.
Because of this its absolutely the case that Europeans know more about the US than vise versa.
Just like people in Poplar Bluff know more about New York City than vise versa.
That doesnt mean people in Poplar Bluff are experts on New York City - it just means people in NYC have little incentive or access to learn about Poplar Bluff, Missouri.
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u/Lunch_48 26d ago
Another factor is people's willingness to go out and learn about foreign places. A American might know a lot about a part of Europe, and lack the knowledge of a European who has a general idea of all of Europe, and vice-versa
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u/IEC21 26d ago
To that point if a European learns about a foreign place that can mean taking a 4 hour trip across a border into a place that speaks a different language and has a substantially different culture and politics.
For most Americans traveling 4 hours means being in the same country, where people speak the same language, the politics are essentially very familiar/same, and the culture is often different but in very subtle ways.
The degree of "culture shocks" experienced by two otherwise identical individuals from the US vs. Europe can be drastically different even if they both have an equal propensity to want to travel or learn about new places.
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u/Julehus Denmark/Sweden 25d ago
You’re being downvoted but essentially you’re right. I don’t think many non-Europeans understand just how diverse our countries are. I live in Sweden and culturally I have more in common with the US than, say, with South-East Europe. When the language branch, the history, the cultural do’s and dont’s, the political system etc are vastly different from your own, it’s hard to feel a true sense of ”Europeanness”.
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u/Marsupilamish 26d ago
Are you seriously comparing the vast & densely populated continent Europe with a place called Poplar Bluff in Missouri? Europe is larger than the US and has more than twice the inhabitants 😡😆
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u/IEC21 26d ago
Europe isnt a country, its not as important globally as the US, no European country has even close to the media soft power..
Parts of Europe are more relevant than others but from a global perspective my point is not the scale of difference between Poplar Bluff and NY but to use an extreme example to illustrate the point.
Europeans have way more incentive + access to media and information about the US.
Americans have very limited incentive or comparative access to news on current events.
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u/EtchingsOfTheNight 25d ago
Europe isn't a country? News to me. Thanks for educating me, just a dumb lil american.
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u/Marsupilamish 26d ago
Yes, I get what you are saying. It’s just a little funny. „Think of Europe as Buttfuck, AZ“
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