Thursday, July 23, 2020

Non-Americans Biggest Culture Shocks When Visiting America


Someone on AskReddit got a thread going about non-Americans biggest culture shocks upon visiting America. It can be easy to forget how strange of a place America is, when you're living inside the bubble of chaos. A perspective from the outside looking in picks up on strange and normalized things like the sheer scale of food portions/drink sizes, or the over-sensationalized news, or those condescending commercials. 

1.

Text - nobody0110101 • 5h Just the scale of things. Everything seems to be super sized. Also the huge distances between places. Tucson to Las Vegas might not look so far away when looking at a map but they are over 600 km apart. That's almost equal to crossing my entire home country! Reply 493

2.

Text - AwayComparison • 3h Your news. It's over sensationalized, I couldn't believe it when I visited. Every news program seems much less like news and more like reality tv. It seems like it's very hard for you to get unbiased information and that there's an information overload. Also all the news are only about the US! There's a whole world out there. Reply 794

3.

Text - jtel21 • 6h Honestly I was shocked at the size of portions at fast food outlets. Reply 323 ...

4.

Text - MaximumCorolla • 6h I met a guy in Harlem who ask if he could borrow 50.000 dollars. Reply 149 ...

5.

Text - mijodanu • 4h Not shocking, but I found American commercials extremely condescending. Reply 340 ...

6.

Text - shakeil123 A• 5h Did a road trip from LA to San Francisco. The homelessness in California shocked me, completely shocked. When in LA our hotel was in Santa Monica and in the evening it was swamped with homeless people. Reply 202 ...

7.

Text - createdtothrowaway86 • 5h When paying cash, people scribbling on the notes with a pen to find out if it was fake or not. US must have an awful lot of fake cash, or the marketing of the cash pen company must be really good. Reply 150 ...

8.

Text - lemogera • 4h I went on a road trip with my family from San Francisco to LA last summer. It was my third trip to the US, but the first for the rest of my family. The tipping definitely threw my parents off. They did not understand it, and they did not like it. (We did still tip, though.) My dad still talks about the 12 lane highway we drove on. LA is not a very fun town to be in as a tourist, and Hollywood Boulevard isn't nice. Never in my life did I expect to be called baby and asked if

9.

Text - Morderator94•5h I was in New York, Pittsburgh and Detroit back in 2018. • The amount of overweight people Everytime you buy groceries, you get a plastic bag. Its good so you don't need to carry a bag with you but the amount of plastic waste bugs me! The sketchy alleys and the waste laying there in downtown Detroit and Pittsburgh The prices on the tags are not what you are gonna pay. Learnt it the hard way lol In hindsight I really loved it there! Everybody was so welcoming to us. When we

10.

Text - Aloise500 • 3h Medication being advertised on TV. CRAZY! Reply 129

11.

Text - Meaty_Whack_ •4h One of my friends visits florida about once a year and he says the strangest thing is that it's full of either super fat or super fit (as in healthy, muscular, etc) with little in between Reply 1 47 ...

12.

Text - Zaitek • 5h It was 2 things, 1: people sit besides each other on trains and busses (I am Swedish) and 2: the sheer amount of homeless people. Reply 83 ...

13.

Text - Onceabanana • 4h The tipping system + tax not included in the prices. Not criticizing the US system, thats their thing. Its just hard to math sometimes. Reply 349 ...

14.

Text - ThrasherHS • 4h I love Coca Cola and went to buy a bottle at a store but what I got was the most disgusting oversweetened drink ever, it's insane how sweet it tastes Reply 1 59 ...

15.

Text - Sfb208 • 4h Public toilets. Like, why is it necessary to have massive gap in your door so people can watch you pee, and why is the water level so high? Are Americans all voyeurs who get off on people's toilet habit? Reply 51 ...

16.

Text - bluewhitecup • 3h When I first arrived here, the most noticeable thing was the size of one person small pho noodle soup was the size of my whole family's dinner soup back home. Reply 10 ...

17.

White - sonofgraham • 6h Huge toilets. Reply 34

18.

Text - craycraxy • 2h 2 things that stuck with me. 1. In Chicago there was a guy panhandling with a sign saying 'need money for insulin.' He had his diabetic foot ulcers on display to prove this seemingly. 2. In New York near the bull statue in Wall Street there was a gold plated Ferrari driving down the street. A guy hawking something or other was very impressed with this Ferrari. Taking photos and such. Made me realise that in general Americans want to be the guy in the Ferrari and despise the

19.

Text - rialc40 • 4h The gap in the public toilet doors. This is so bizarre to me. And creepy. Seriously the most uncomfortable pee in my life.

20.

Text - line_4 • 2h There are vast stretches of absolutely nothing (+ cows) between major cities. Reply ...

21.

Text - Prokeran • 1h The super strict alcohol and gambling law. I've been in the states with my parents a few times. I was 20yo when we visited las Vegas and my dad wanted to gamble a little bit, I just stood behind him and watched him play when someone tapped on my shoulder. It was a security guy which asked me my age, I told him and he said "you need to get off the carpet" I looked around and there was carpet everywhere. Same year I went to a restaurant with my American cousin, I tried to orde

22.

Text - rest_in_pizz • 6h People drinking sweet tea... Why would anyone willingly drink it - and enjoy it too!

23.

Text - Cryptonomicon63 • 4h tortoises swimming in a creek in plano tx, dont have them in oz and dont bring guns into restaurants and meeting room signs .

24.

Text - MisterShine • 4h On my first trip, two things struck me as odd. The first was seeing cars being towed behind mobile homes (RVs, to you Yanks). I was wondering why so many cars were breaking down and so asked. Discovered that these were people on holiday and bringing their cars with them. "But they're driving anyway in a mobile... oh, never mind. Oh-kay." The other (this was in the pre-digital camera days) was seeing drive-by little photo processing booths in the middle of huge supermarket

25.

Text - Gway-Sahn • 3h The water level in the toilet was always disconcerting. Tipping when they circle what 15, 18 and 20 percent of the bill is at the bottom, very passive aggressive . From Ireland.

Submitted by:

No comments:

Post a Comment