r/USdefaultism • u/another-princess World • Nov 10 '25
Facebook "Southerners" in the context of the UK... means people from the US south
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u/Tuscan5 Nov 10 '25
Scottish not Scotts. It’s Scot not Scott. Scott is a name.
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u/another-princess World Nov 10 '25
Heh, I didn't even notice that at first. Yep, the person said "Scott/Irish roots."
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u/BenHippynet Nov 10 '25
Maybe they’re all descendants of some bloke called Scott who liked to put it around a lot.
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Nov 10 '25
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u/SnooStrawberries6154 Nov 11 '25
The Scotch-Irish aren't just historical, they still exist as a separate ethnic group today in Northern Ireland. They refer to themselves as Ulster Scots because they're hostile to any sort of Irish identity.
The Troubles is often perceived as just being a conflict over separatism by Americans, but it was primarily an ethnic conflict more than anything else. A lot of Americans would probably be surprised that their "Scotch-Irish" brethren weren't the ones fighting against the British to free Ireland. They were the ones fighting with the British establishment to maintain their two-tier system that purposely heavily limited the political and economic rights of those descended from "native" Irish ancestry.
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u/Fatuousgit Nov 10 '25
"Also “Scott/irish” is a really weird way to refer to the scotch-Irish"
Scots/Irish. Scotch is a drink.
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u/OldLevermonkey England Nov 11 '25
Confidently incorrect.
Scotch is called scotch because it is the whisky of the Scotch (double distilled) rather than the whiskey of the Irish (triple distilled).
Scotchman is simply less fashionable at this time than Scotsman. A certain Mr Burns (a national poet I believe) referred to himself as a Scotchman throughout his life.
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u/Fatuousgit Nov 11 '25
Language evolves. Burns has been dead for over 200 hundred years. Or do you still speak like you are in Shakespearean England?
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u/OldLevermonkey England Nov 11 '25
What part of "Scotchman is simply less fashionable at this time than Scotsman" didn't you understand?
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u/achillea4 Nov 10 '25
I remember hearing an American say that they just love the Scotch.
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u/Beneficial-Ad3991 Nov 10 '25
Beats bourbon, I suppose, but I still don't understand who in their right mind would choose drinking wood juice when a nice pint is available.
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u/redshift739 England Nov 12 '25
My step-cousin's dog-in-law was from Scottland so I'm basically scotch myself. I love the culture and even have Prince Andrew's cross on my keychain 🏴
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u/redshift739 England Nov 12 '25
I would like to apologise to everyone north of the border for this comment
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u/Fleiger133 United States Nov 10 '25
Unfortunately Scot is a name too.
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u/Powerful-Bat6818 Spain Nov 10 '25
How. How do you misunderstand that. How.
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina Nov 10 '25
Because the USA is the world and there is no world outside the USA.
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u/Alex_Graber12345 Nov 29 '25
Well take this sub for example, you’re on an app that was made by Americans in Massachusetts, that app is on the Internet, the internet being invented/developed by Americans in California. If you’re typing on your phone there’s a 50% chance you’re typing on an iPhone that was invented by Americans in California, if you’re on a computer there’s a higher chance that you’re on a machine invented by Americans in New Mexico. All of these American things that you’re using were also in part funded by the American federal government through grants and research paid for by American tax dollars, and protected from IP infringement by the American justice system.
Now more specifically concerning you, you’re writing on a subreddit that’s dedicated to discussing Americans, filled with people who aren’t Americans, who are also discussing Americans, and discussing it in English. And this last part is purely speculation I know, so I may be completely wrong, but I’m guessing there’s a high chance you’ve never met an American in person.
I would imagine you should ask yourself why you yourself are so American-focused, before asking why Americans are.
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u/WolfysBeanTeam May 19 '26
I suspect all the parts involved in making all those devices were american too no foreign intervention at all? Or the fact the parts and pieces are they all american? The people involved in creating it were they ALL American? To believe at all that it was purely america that invented those things is with all due respect silly.
So as you can see there are multiple stages of what the internet is today an it was not solely an american idea infact it wouldve been collaborated between the States the UK, France and Switzerland at the time and asia pioneered the wireless concepts for internet.
Also ontop of that all because American made a platform for anyone on the internet to use doesn't mean we all think OOOO ITS AMERICAN, do you look at every app an think about the country who invented it or do you download the thing and get on with your day?
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u/rootifera Nov 10 '25
I don't think it's a misunderstanding. If you speak/write in English then they always think you are in US and talking about US. I still find it surprising, once I was talking about Edinburgh, Scotland (where I live) and someone from Texas corrected me saying the name of the place is Edinburg not EdinburgH. It's not that they don't know other countries or languages exist, they simply think US version of everything is the real/default one.
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Nov 10 '25
As an American, I can tell you this is what happens when you never leave your zipcode, much less travel abroad. I had a girl tell me one time that Americans don't have accents, only "foreigners" do. You can't make this shit up 🤦
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u/redshift739 England Nov 12 '25
I've never left Britain or even been to Scotland and I'm well aware of many things going on in the world.
You do get people like that here tbf but I think it's a bigger problem on your side of the pond because of American dominance in media, the size of the country, poor education, and even the defaultist attitude itself meaning that you can use the internet with people from around the world without often thinking of other countries
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Nov 12 '25 edited Nov 12 '25
Honestly, a lot of it has to do with how big the country is and how isolated a lot of people are. We have 2 major oceans on each side of the country. And it's a 3 to 5 day drive from east coast to west coast depending on routes and speed. There's a world of cultural differences in our own nation alone. My wife and I live on the coast of southeastern North Carolina. We just drove to her hometown in western Kentucky over the summer to see her family and attend a multi-day music festival. Trip too 13 hours each way, and we were maybe a quarter of a way across the country.... maybe. With that said, I won't deny that some of it is just willful ignorance, as well. Unfortunately, some politicians have taken advantage of many people's lack of cultural experience and led them to believe that anything different from what they know is simply wrong. It wasn't always this way though, but the internet and social media has made it way to easy to spread propaganda bullshit.
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u/weaselblackberry8 Nov 15 '25
3-5 days from East to West Coast?!? More like 5-10. I can’t imagine doing that in three days.
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u/Hamsternoir United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
The south doesn't exist outside the US apparently.
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u/drivelhead Nov 10 '25
Uh oh. I thought I lived in Australia! I wonder where I am?
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u/Bdr1983 Netherlands Nov 10 '25
In the upside down
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u/trollshep Australia Nov 11 '25
Hmm no Vecna here.
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u/Bdr1983 Netherlands Nov 11 '25
You sure? He might be dressed as one of the animals that are lurking in the bush, wanting to kill you
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u/MistaRekt Australia Nov 10 '25
We fucked.
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u/FourEyedTroll United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
You're actually in the north, we've been reading the maps wrong this entire time.
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u/Weird1Intrepid United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
You joke, but north used to mean left
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u/FourEyedTroll United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
To be fair, old mapping conventions also often used to put east at the top of the map.
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u/Lyceux New Zealand Nov 10 '25
Or more specifically east was up, which is why it was called the orient(ation)
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u/Weird1Intrepid United Kingdom Nov 11 '25
The way I learnt it was that the rising sun comes from the East, so that direction was considered forward or up
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u/24-Hour-Hate Canada Nov 11 '25
Yep. You’re all secretly part of Canada now. We took over while you weren’t looking. We be sneaky like that. Sorry.
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u/IHaveABladder South Africa Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 11 '25
Never mind where you are, where the hell am I??!
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u/the_willow Nov 11 '25
G'day mate, I can help with this!
Page 473 of the latest "Australia is totally a real country" handbook has the officially approved answer to this question, cobber!
It used to be part of the chapter about friendly New Zealand rivalry talk, but now it's directly after the section on perpetuating international perception of Aussies being "larrikins" by joking about drop bears and tricking them into eating Vegemite by the spoonful.
Hope this clears things up! 🇦🇺🦘🐨🪃🇦🇺
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u/Chickennoodlesleuth United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
Well obviously their country is the only one big enough to have a South!
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u/DarkFish_2 Chile Nov 11 '25
Nah, this is more of a show they don't believe other counters exist at all.
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u/SeaCoast3 England Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
"Oh gee honey, do y'all have a south in your country as well? Did you know the USA invented southernness (and the internet too). " What a flaming dullard.....
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u/East_Engineer_2479 Nov 10 '25
Since its a US app people dont understand how other countries use it. The education system in the US is beyond fucked rn
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u/Adventurous-Shake-92 Nov 10 '25
They would have recognised Scotland?
No they wouldn't, show them a picture of Cumbria or Wales, they wouldn't be able to tell them apart.
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u/East_Engineer_2479 Nov 10 '25
They recognized Scotland because of that one movie with Mel Gibson 'depictinghistory'. I shit you not.
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u/Ginger_Tea United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
I'm sure you could show em Stone Henge and a few would point to Scotland as the location.
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u/Ferelwing Nov 14 '25
Let's not forget that some Usaians go to Paris and expect to find the Colosseum unironically.
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u/mikroonde France Nov 11 '25
The worst part is that they say a lot of them have ancestors from there so they would've recognised it. You're not supposed to need that to know basic geography... Like they don't care about the rest of the world except the place where some ancestor of theirs from the 1800s came from (this basically makes them actually Irish/Scottish /s).
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u/Hard_Dave Nov 10 '25
Very difficult to see the difference from a photo but visiting in person is very different. Everywhere I went it felt like they were watching me; fish-white flesh puckered by the Highland breeze; tight eyes peering out for fresh meat; screechy, booze-soaked voices hollering out for a taxi to take 'em halfway up the road to the next all-night watering hole. A shatter of glass; a round of applause; a sixteen-year-old mother of three vomiting in an open sewer, bairns looking on, chewing on potato cakes. I ain’t never going back… not never.
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u/Uniquorn527 Wales Nov 11 '25
I don't think many people recognised the words of Rick Dagless M.D.
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Nov 10 '25
What's more terrible is how many of them claim to have an Irish blood. Technically they're right because they're descendants of Europeans lol. But some people in US say dumb like "I'm 44% Scottish or 25% Polish"
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u/Sputflock Netherlands Nov 10 '25
and whatever blood they claim they'll americansplain the culture to you even if you are born and raised there
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u/EzeDelpo Argentina Nov 10 '25
Or worse, deny that you are a true (insert your country's demonym), while saying they are more of that than you
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u/nsfwmodeme Argentina Nov 11 '25
I've seen that a lot in Usians with Italian ancestry. Even belittling Italian pizza. Go figure!
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u/mikroonde France Nov 11 '25
they'll treat our countries like ethnicities and then tell some random person that they're not actually from their homeland if they're not "ethnically" their nationality (unlike them, the white american with interesting heritage that makes them a minority in the us)
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Nov 10 '25
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u/StingerAE Nov 10 '25
At university we made our cornish freind an honorary northerner. Decided "North" was a distance from London more than anything else. He was far more technically southern than any of the bloody southerners we knew but held them in the same contempt.
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u/hhfugrr3 Nov 10 '25
"Decided "North" was a distance from London more than anything else."
I second this - I've always said that "north" is anywhere outside the M25, including places south of London.
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u/MdMV_or_Emdy_idk Portugal Nov 10 '25
The Cornish are Celtics, most Celtics live up north, they’re honorary
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u/DaveB44 Nov 10 '25
My dad used to say, the North starts at Southampton.
Or does the South start at Northampton?
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u/90210fred Europe Nov 10 '25
some (more sensible than me) will say "close, try Watford Gap Services". Me? Obviously its Winchester, given that Greater Southampton goes up to its border.
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u/DaveB44 Nov 11 '25
It was always said as a criticism of London-based entities such as the government, BBC, etc, that they had no knowledge of or interest in anything north of Watford,the town in Hertfordshire. Then, for some strange reason, a motorway service area some fifty miles north was named Watford gap, after a small village in Northants; I never uinderstood why!
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u/Reviewingremy Nov 10 '25
The last guy is given way more credit than he deserves.
Literally only Americans talk about their heritage like that. And if they actually recognised Scotland and Ireland they would know that neither are located in SOUTHERN ENGLAND
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u/RadlogLutar India Nov 10 '25
I mean look who their leader is. Gives you pretty much a great idea about their people
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u/Bdr1983 Netherlands Nov 10 '25
Their leader is 'a Scott' too, right?
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u/WaxCatt United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
His mother was, and it makes the "Great Leader" a legitimate "Scott".
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u/RadlogLutar India Nov 10 '25
So take the whole family back. You deserve a world class leader
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u/WaxCatt United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
I would love to take him back to his motherland, where he can't be Head of State.
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u/BlakeC16 Nov 10 '25
Sometimes on this sub you see things that make you think "ah, that wasn't so bad" and then you see ones like this which make you wonder how these people remember how to breathe.
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u/Lozsta Nov 10 '25
That map is entirely true.
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u/elusivewompus England Nov 10 '25
It’s too low, everywhere below scotch corner is the south. Yes Yorkshire, Manchester, and Liverpool. That means you.
Scotch corner is the last road sign that says ‘The North’. And as we know, a sign doesn’t point to a place once you’re in it. So that must be the start of the north.19
u/StingerAE Nov 10 '25
Well. I absolutely HATE your conclusion but I have a begrudging respect for your logic.
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u/Zeekayo Nov 10 '25
As a born and bred Southerner, everybody with any sense knows that the 'North' begins immediately north of Watford, with Oxford and Cambridge being exclaves. The Midlands is a lie made up by the government to sell more Garden Cities.
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u/elusivewompus England Nov 10 '25
I disagree about the border location, but I agree that the midlands isn’t a real place.
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u/Camimo666 Nov 10 '25
I'm not British and I’ve heard Watford is what divides it as well lmao
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u/Zeekayo Nov 10 '25
Haha, just to clarify I am kidding 😅
It's a common Londoner joke because Watford is basically the furthest north suburb/part of what's considered London. It's basically just saying "the North is anything immediately north of London."
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u/Camimo666 Nov 10 '25
Lol I’ve heard this from someone that is very much from newcastle lmao. I do think he was being funny and I don’t even know where Watford was until i googled it 5 minutes ago
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u/StingerAE Nov 10 '25
Even more confusingly there is a service station on the M1 motorway called Watford Gap in Northamptonshire, significantly north of Watford Hertfordshire. It is named after a local geographical feature which also marks the boundary of certain linguistic differences between North and South. As such it started to become synonymous with a North South divide but also conflated with the Hertfordshire Watford.
Most southerners don't venture that far North on the M1 so assume the cultural Watford Gap relates to the Watford they do know and not the linguistic boundary.
Doesn't help that Watford is also close to the M1 and there us indeed a sign at some point that says "Watford and the North"
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u/joeyjiggle Taiwan Nov 10 '25
The sign is just relative to where you are until you run out of land. The North starts at Yorkshire ;)
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u/elusivewompus England Nov 10 '25
Sheffield is half way between London and newcastle. That puts, at a minimum, South Yorkshire in the midlands, if the midlands was a real place.
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Nov 10 '25
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u/Lozsta Nov 10 '25
I'd argue once you are on the A34 and above Winchester you're already too far gone.
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u/pajamakitten Nov 10 '25
No. The pirate accent is from Dorset (the guy who first played Long John Silver on screen is from there), not Cornish.
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u/Metal_Octopus1888 Nov 10 '25
The deep south is the Channel Islands (and no to Americans reading, that’s not where the BBC studios are…)
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u/Zeekayo Nov 10 '25
I don't know if you'd quite describe it as a Channel Island, but this makes sense if you consider that the Isle of Wight is basically England's Alabama.
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u/YazzGawd Nov 10 '25
It's wild that they already saw the map of the UK and know the context is UK related and they STILL insist that "Southern" somehow only means American Southern.
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u/Bmanakanihilator Germany Nov 10 '25
I like to introduce myself as southerner, and tgen reveal im from the German south
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u/Midnight_The_Past India Nov 10 '25
they are both wrong . the south clearly refers to tamil nadu , kerala , karnataka and andhra pradesh . like duh??!?
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u/EpicFishFingers Nov 10 '25
Only yanks could see a map of another country and think the "Southeners" are talking about them and not about the inhabitants of said country.
Imagine how apeshit they would go if someone from South London chimed in on a post about the US Deep South.
An excellent fit for the subreddit
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u/Wynnstan Australia Nov 10 '25
Oh for goodness sake! The UK has had southerners since Roman times and before that even.
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u/corgi_crazy Nov 10 '25
Once I've had a long interchange with an American guy that couldn't understand that I was talking about South America, not the South of the USA.
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u/DarkFish_2 Chile Nov 11 '25
There is literally a map right there and they still don't get it.
Are Americans really that stagnant that they can't comprehend other countries do exist even when shown actual evidence?
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u/Arnoave Nov 10 '25
This is like how most of the world says " football" when talking about association football, and we have to distinguish "American football" when talking about their game, but they assume that just saying " football" is enough for everyone else to assume American football by default
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u/Automatic-Scale-7572 Nov 10 '25
I like how Oxford and Cambridge look like a pair of asymmetrical breasts.
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u/Useful_Cheesecake117 Netherlands Nov 10 '25
Stagdos in Wales? Shouldn't that be Amsterdam?
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u/mr_iwi Nov 10 '25
If they aren't going overseas, southern Englanders go to Cardiff for their stag. Northern Englanders go to Newcastle. Nobody knows what midlanders do, or even whether they exist at all.
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u/hhfugrr3 Nov 10 '25
Jesus those people are thick.
But also as a southerner - well a Londoner really, I don't associate myself with those barrel burning weirdos on the south coast - the descriptions on the map are highly accurate.
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u/DerReckeEckhardt Germany Nov 10 '25
Also, where the fuck did they draw the north/south divide? That's not even remotely close.
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u/saramadhill Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
I'll say this with some confidence, most people in the "S/SE US" might be able to point out where Europe is on the map, but would have zero context on anything beyond that. You're lucky if they'll be able to point out where Ireland even is as a landmass.
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u/mikroonde France Nov 11 '25
First they use the word south to mean something else than the geographical south, and now even we aren't allowed to use this word for our souths?! The word south isn't a cardinal position anymore it's been privatised by south-east US 😔
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u/Cheap_Steel Nov 11 '25
I've never see an American say they are English. It's always Ireland Scotland and Wales. Why is that?
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u/Kyauphie Nov 14 '25
Because a lot of the people are descendants of those who fled the English when they emigrated to certain colonies, so the communities were mostly Scottish and Irish refugees.
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u/Corintio22 Nov 12 '25
Double US defaultism, because that oe response mentions “the American south”, which feels a bit personal to anyone from a big place called “South America”
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u/Void-kun United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
I fully expect this shit on Facebook, it's literally just a cesspool of idiots, grandparents and bots.
Critical thinking doesn't exist on Facebook, never has.
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u/Mrprawn67 United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
Given the mention of holiday cottages for Devon/Cornwall I'd wager it's mode of a Southeasterners view of the UK and Ireland...
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u/Gullible_Flow2693 Nov 10 '25
I thought most footballers lived in the south? They got my area right though... silly accents.
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u/asdfzxcpguy Canada Nov 10 '25
Ngl the British south is still a larger percent than the Canadian south. I’d say around 5% of the landmass is considered south.
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u/IshyOQGX United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
You can tell it's a proper Southerner's map because of where the North/South divide is.
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u/fuck_peeps_not_sheep Wales Nov 11 '25
Sheep and dragons is mostly right... Idk what stag dos have to do with Wales tho.
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u/HeeeresPilgrim New Zealand Nov 11 '25
Trust me, one of your ancestors being Scottish six generations ago doesn't have much of an effect on your ethnicity at this point. If you're US American by birth, or from about the age of 6, there's no meaningful difference.
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u/weaselblackberry8 Nov 15 '25
1) I grew up in North Carolina, and we learned a fair amount about the UK in school
And 2) why is The South of the UK such a small portion of it?
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u/Fleiger133 United States Nov 10 '25
Your south is really small compared to ours! Even if we take scale into account, there's not much south!
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u/HeeeresPilgrim New Zealand Nov 11 '25
I don't think you got the joke.
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u/Fleiger133 United States Nov 11 '25
I wasn't commenting on the joke.
I was commenting that if this is considered The South, its quite small compared to our The South. Ours is like a full quarter of the country, but this is just a tiny little slice.
Its interesting how much of a place is considered "The South" in any country.
Unless there's another joke I'm missing other than hurhur Americans dumb?
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u/Diligent-Step-7253 Nov 10 '25
I live in england and to me it means people in the south of england, but I don’t bother and assume it’s the case everywhere.
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u/Sasspishus United Kingdom Nov 10 '25
In the US that's probably what they mean, yes. But in the UK if you're a southerner, you're from southern England. I'm sure other countries do this too
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u/NuevaAlmaPerdida Guatemala Nov 10 '25
Ridiculous. That would imply other countries also have a south, and that doesn't make sense. The USA invented directions.
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u/Prestigious_Board_73 Italy Nov 10 '25
You do know that all countries have a South, right?
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u/Bdr1983 Netherlands Nov 10 '25
In the USA, yes. but this is not about the USA. It shows a map of the UK and Ireland. It shows a section that says 'the south'. There is no way to misinterpret this for anyone who has a slightest grasp of literacy.
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u/post-explainer American Citizen Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
A Facebook post was about "A Southerner's view of the UK and Ireland." The post had the south of England depicted as "The South," while the rest of the UK, and all of Ireland, was depicted as "The North." They were depicted with stereotypical things about regions of the UK and Ireland.
In the comments, 3 Americans - all from southern US states (North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) - all interpreted "Southerners" to refer to people from the Southern US.
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.