What's weirdest thing about American culture?

And then Americans go "yeah so they did it back then but they wouldn't do it nowwwwww!

For me (non-American), it's the age of drinking being higher than the age to own a gun or drive a car.

Well I guess that's not really culture. Okay, maybe this: Expect smiles and the nicest service from retail/customer service workers, who's being paid the lowest and deal with the most amount of bullshit.

Around here, people sort of just expect them to be playing on their phone and not really paying attention to you.

The drinking age is due to America's astronomical rate of drunk driving fatalities. It was so high in the 60s that it was impeding the development of the national highway system, so the federal government cut a deal that if states set their drinking age to 21 they'd get highway funding. I think Louisiana was the last state to have a drinking age of 18, and they also had the reputation for the most poorly maintained roads in america
- they also had the reputation for the most poorly maintained roads in america
  they still do lol, i can be asleep on a car trip and instantly know when we've hit lousiana because of how dramatically the road goes to shit
- Huh TIL, i thought it was some law relic inherited from Brits.
  The drinking age is due to America’s astronomical rate of drunk driving fatalities
  Not surprising though

psychotic jacking off about "tha trooooooooops"
every yankee troop, past and present, should be put against the wall and shot
none of their supposed "expertise" is useful at all
their training relies on having complete logistical/aerial/etc. superiority to the point where an individual yankkkeee soldier is more useless that a random prole in a combat situation
like genuinely, any dipshit who goes to the range with their ar-15 once-a-monh will be a better shot than 90% of yankkkkee troops

there's a couple world war two vets who personally killed nazis and maybe a some "stop our ship" arsonists who can have a pass.
- doubt it.

As an American it's our advertisements for lawyers. There are lawyers who specialize in such specific disputes and become household names for it. Like a law firm in my city specializes specifically in being hit by an 18-wheeler, becoming disabled, missing work, and then your job not paying you disability.

There's one lawyer in the city near my hometown who specializes specifically in bodies from the local cemetery flooding into your front yard. America is a land of such poor maintenance that a core feature of our culture is that every large business will have years long court battles over something horrible they did, like selling food with poison in it or knocking someone's house over by accident. And private lawyers do advertisements for their services with butt rock music

90% of the billboards in my state are for lawyers or cannabis dispensaries.
- and the middle-of-nowhere gas stations have slot machines, yes I've been to Navada
- Georgia?
BIG TRUCK LAWYER
bodies from the local cemetery flooding into your front yard
Wtf... how often it happens?
- Enough that the locals have a term for it: devil's gumbo
I'm gonna be honest, this one's not so strange; the law is gigantic with many little details in it that you have to specialize. This isn't general practitioner level medicine where any dimwit yokel can be like 'hyuck, put some cream on it!'; this actually takes years of practice and learning to get every little detail of how the laws work, using precedents and fact finding. The law is vast and every area, every little detail contains a world of little laws and how they're affected, and even different states can have their own versions of those laws; this isn't just looking at someone's anus and putting on your big boy hat and saying 'hurdy hur, thar's a hemorrhoid!'
- i'm ngl i would rather have my improper burial lawyer be some random asshat i found than my doctor
- Well the legal specialization isn't that weird but advertising yourself with guitar riffs and crazy nicknames is something I've ever heard of outside of America
  A friend of mine from New Zealand was visiting once. We put on the radio and an ad for a local lawyer started playing with metal music and an aggressive dude asking if you've been injured by inhaling hydrogen sulfide. My friend was slack jawed at hearing it and I couldn't blame him. It's very weird.
- The insanely specific law is man made and part of culture. So it's still an example of weird culture. It's also specifically USian, because other countries have laws too, but not these insanely specialized lawyers to this extend nor their bizarre advertisements everywhere.

So in 2045 we'll get the documents that Epstein was murdered in his cell ordered by Trump?

Any real accounting would show a mile-long line of ghouls arguing which one gets to kill him
- there'll be a mostly redacted rock paper scissors bracket
- The redacted footage to the cell shows a queue of people with increasingly absurd weapons
cia document releases like
If there's any bureaucracy left then to release anything. I'm guessing USA will be gone by then.
British Royal Family

And then every time I point and say LOOK I TOLD YOU SO I am told "man you are living in the past this is all in our history we have to worry about TODAY"

😡😡😡

The American relationship with food. It's insanely expensive, but portion sizes are insane, the regulation of what can go into it seems to be built around shoehorning as much sugar or corn into all of it as if the health drawbacks are part of the plan, and so much gets wasted while almost the entire population is either morbidly obese or malnourished. Food deserts exist in large swaths of the country. Things are being further deregulated because conspiracy theories drive more political change to food systems than science. Grocery stores are filled with dozens of options for a narrow range of types of food. There's food dye in almost everything. There are too many preservatives in almost everything. There are non-food chemicals in almost everything.

Then there's the packaging. Bananas come in shrink wrap. Peppers come cellophaned to styrofoam planks. Cookies come with multiple layers of plastic packaging. Meat is weighed after it's packed onto waterlogged sponges on styrofoam planks, wrapped in more cellophane that's covered in stickers. Everything is partnered with toy brands, movies, games, cartoons. You can't buy a reasonable amount of anything, and the prices are still going up.

Of course it extends to TV, which other countries have, but in the US, even the food shows with the same hosts that the UK has are focused around being an asshole instead of the food itself, or it's about the contestants' personalities, drama on the set, or stoking rivalries. It's a competition instead of pursuit of better food.

Bananas come in shrink wrap
The one thing the US is not guilty of. They do this in Asia all the time but the most I've ever seen with bananas is the organic ones have a small bit of cellophane wrapped around the stem only.
Peppers come cellophaned to styrofoam planks
Definitely seen this one. Though mostly with squash and similar, the excuse being oh it prevents bruising and blah, blah, blah. Ridiculous.
- You know, that bruise-resistant plastic wrap. I don't know how most people shop, but I'm just as good at getting peppers not to bruise as I am at getting eggs not to break.
Bananas come in shrink wrap
The fuck? Mine don't! never seen that before lmao why
- The weirdest one I see around me is when tomatoes on the vine are packaged in very environmentally-friendly-looking rough cardboard trays encased in plastic, as if that's somehow better than the way they come.
you're going to love Selena Gomez cross-promotional branded Oreo cookies.

The Home owner association thing is so incredibly backwards and reactionary, I get the impression Crusader Kings 3 is just a white middle class neighborhood simulator 2022 or something.

The typical white middle-high income suburban experience of living in a McMansion and having to drive 45-60 minutes on a 10 lane highway just to buy a 6-pack of beer or something. If someone told me "you can come and live here for free" I'd still reject(it would be my last choice) because it just sounds like misery. I'd prefer decent housing anywhere else.

I remember as a teen going to the states after 9/11 and tons of Americans after finding out I was from Canada grilling me on whether we were going to join them in the war or not. I wasn’t even old enough to vote. They were very aggressive about it sometimes, and at least passive aggressive at best. It was real culture shock for me.

Also what is with Americans and loving show tunes? Like I get they’re tourist areas but the show tunes thing is so fucking weird in the south.

the white south is culturally behind by 100+ years so they're still impressed by gilbert and sullivan.
that seems reasonable. just a few minutes ago i was yelling at this antisemitic baby in the grocery store. i don't know if he was palestinian but he could have been. lots of them are babies. i figure might as well play it safe.
in a very real sense, october 7th was israel's 9/11. the chickens of empire came home to roost, and you would not believe how butthurt they get about it
you can pry showtunes from my cold dead hands
Musicals are the lowest form of entertainment

Still think the water bottle thing is stranger. Why do Americans just carry around giant water bottles everywhere? They could be going to the store and they bring an enormous water bottle like they're going for a ten day trek.

Nothing free in America, not even a quick sip of water
- But that's not even true? Most businesses in the United States will just give you a free drink of tap water if asked.
What's wrong with being hydrated?
Edit: I totally do this lol. I drink ~3L of water a day and carry a (reasonably sized) water bottle everywhere. It's hot as hell and I want to be properly hydrated at all times!
- Same
The high today is 110°f (43.3c). You better believe I'm walking around with a bottle of water.
- Euros walking around in 25c weather sipping their .5 liter of water for their .5 km stroll to the cafe
  While I'm lugging 64 ounces of water in 100 f (real feel 107f) on my 5 mile hike to work
  
  Edit: brought receipts
We're a thirsty bunch.
- I'm a tiktok thot when it comes to water
Is it the carrying a water bottle at all that confuses you, or the fact that it's large?
If I wanted to bring 1 or 2 cups of water with me I would just chug it right there at the source and carry it in my body. I don't see the point of any water bottle smaller than a liter.
How much water do you drink a day?
- It's both tbh. The act of bottled water and carrying bottled water is already insane, because yes I agree I would just drink water before leaving. But it's also even more crazy how much water they carry around, because what possible reason do you have to carry around like a litre of water living in a city every day???
Thirsty
Personally, I’m very disconnected from my body and find routine a much better way to stay hydrated than waiting to be thirsty because I won’t notice until I’m super dehydrated
For their Coca Cola obvsly

Troop worship. I thought it was exaggerated until I visited a few years back and when we landed in NY the pilot thanked the troops for their service.

*not from us, not in us
I went to an airshow with my dad (I had no interest it was just something nice I just wanted to hang out with my dad), and there was a flyover of f16s or something, and at the end of the show the us airforce emcee said 'thank you for your patriotism'. I retched

and then people will promptly refuse to believe they still do it.

Even though they employ like 70% the same people as they did then, never recieved any recourse for doing it, were never so much as politely asked to tone it down, and if you ask the agency directly "are you still doing this?" they will refuse to answer (or occasionally confirm they are)

To me is the obsession with soda, I've heard americans say the don't like water because they "don't like the taste" so they have to be drinking soda. In fairness I think it was ethan klein so

A large amount of places in America have shitty tasting tap water, to be fair
I’ve seen in this thread now Americans don’t like water but also carry around large water bottles and drink too much water
- It's true though. I'm a half-gallon water bottle carrier type American, and there are people I know personally who I'm pretty sure haven't had a sip of straight water in years. A lot of people use those flavored drink powder packets just to get water down each day, because they tell me straight water makes them gag.
My dad never drank water and he was from Peru. Never ever saw him drink a glass of anything other than coke, wine, coffee or juice
Ethan klein is barely a person please don't lump us in with him

"Uhhhhh we lost the file, sorry."

What culture?

The only actual tactical ability of the average American troop is to call in an airstrike so the F/A-18s know where to shoot. That is if the fighter jet hasn't fallen off the deck of its carrier.

anyone who doesn't live in the imperial core
take a look at the people beside you
how closely do they resemble the average yankkkoid?

something to think about

More and more sadly, 50 years of yank culture invasion do that to people.

America tells you that the only things worth knowing are those that can be known. America is wrong.

Based on my experience talking to Americans, if someone knows something, they're making fun of you and knowing things is for nerds.

My interactions with AES (actually existing seppos) are blissfully few. The fake positivity is exhausting though, so I'd probably say that

Exhausting for us usains too - literally living in a fake world while things around burn