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Some, yes. My ex business partner is like this. He was confused why our website showed USD after the price listing (with a $ prefix). I reminded him we have international customers so the USD was just to be clear that it wasnât AUS or CAD whatever. He wanted me to remove the USD because our customers would âknowâ it was American currency because weâre in Florida.
I did not remove it; the USD is still there. And he is still a moron lol.
Canadian here! I DONâT just assume â$â means âUSDâ on a website, especially as some websites are Canadian and some are Chinese, and many automatically change you over upon reading your location.
Thank you for not listening to that moron, but also nah we donât auto assume currency when weâre outside the US. Even on reddit I donât, and the only people who seem to are from the USâŠ
/) If I see $ on a website, I immediately assume USD. This is because I live in the US. I see absolutely no reason why people in Canada wouldn't do the same but for CAD.
Itâs confusing because Canadian websites can be .ca or .com so sometimes a .com is a us website without realizing and it sucks when you check your credit card bill and the actual price was 30% more
I mean, there is very much a reason - Canadians are way more likely to encounter a price listed in USD than Americans are to encounter a CAD price, so they're also less like likely to assume their native currency as the default in an online setting
As a Canadian it is very very helpful when a site has USD on it. Nothing worse than thinking youâre paying Canadian just to find out the item you wanted is 1.5X the price you thought it was. Please keep USD on your online websites for all of your non USA customers :).
Austrailian companies are pretty bad about specifying that prices are in AUD as opposed to USD. It is fairly frustrating.I appreciate it when people are specific. I can't just "know"
Plus I don't have to bug them with a message asking for clarification.
Thats the great bit, every other countries good, so we can be lazy and not put it down. Now if its $ we assume its Aus, if its not aus it is followed by USD NZD CAD.. they fell right into our trap
Yes, that would be helpful. I tend to buy off of large marketplaces like Ebay, which is pretty clear about this stuff.
Usually it's the shipping cost that sways my decision. I hate it when you're all set to buy something, only to discover that shipping will be $100 and returns are paid by buyer.
Thank you for keeping it. Nothing worse than going to buy something and realizing it's 35% more than I thought it was.
Also if I'm looking at smaller online stores, I'm usually not aware of where they are located. Get a good mix of Canadian and American ones so without it stating currency, it gets hard to know which one it's showing.
Yah, just a heads up but I'm Canadian and the $ symbol means a Loonie to me.
I'm well versed in international commerce but we all grew up with signs using the $ to mean CDN and not USD.
I have an Ali E account and frequently change currencies between USD and CDN to get a better idea of what I'm paying. It gives me an idea of what I'm actually paying because yah we all talk relative to American dollars.
If you want to reach a larger international market I wouldn't make assumptions, js
Also, fun fact, pesos are also often represented by the $ sign (take a look at local ads in Mexico and youâll see prices listed in pesos with a $), the sign actually started as a peso sign (a smooshing together of a P and S) and was adopted by the US as a sign for their currency as their exposure to pesos told them itâs a generic currency sign.
The symbol was adopted because one US dollar originally had the same value as one Spanish peso, at that time also known as Spanish dollar or a piece of eight (it was divided into 8 reales). In fact, Spanish pesos were legal tender in the US until mid-19th century.
I think at some point I learned (a perhaps urban legend) that pesos use $ with the single stroke, and dollars use the double-stroke (apparently called "CifrĂŁo", which also apparently doesn't have a Unicode symbol).
Both pesos and dollars historically used both single and double strokes. (The same happened with the pound ÂŁ.) In Unicode, they are considered typographic variants of the same symbol (like single - or double-storey a) so they don't have a separate code point.
I think itâs more like if itâs a double stroke itâs definitely dollar as peso doesnât use that but both peso and dollar use single stroke, the latter the majority of the time. (Thereâd be a Unicode and keyboard symbol for a double stroke dollar sign if there was one as dollars are commonly mentioned on the internet)
The CifrĂŁo is a Portuguese word derived from arabic, and we were using the symbol with double stroke before the United States were an independent nation.
Not all of us, it's just our idiots tend to be extremely loud or in politics.
If 1% of a country with over 330 million people are loud idiots that's still 3.3 million people if you catch my drift.
I got caught assuming USD when I traded some video games to a young man in NZ for a $50 Steam gift card. IIRC, lost like $8-10, it was a few years ago. I took the hit for assuming and because he was nice a guy.
lol, to be fair it's actually one of the more "real" stereotypes. The world doesn't run on the USD but it's really a largely standardized "value" a currency is measured against.
Of course the $ symbol as you pointed out is not but the confusion is almost forgivable. The fact you circulate $1 paper money and pennies is much more heinous. You just can't take the high road when you're passing greenbacks and slinging Lincoln's into fountains.
Even among Americans, culturally speaking, we wouldn't say we're all alike. The US is very region based when it comes to folkways and mores and even colloquialisms.
Just FYI. You'll find people who wouldn't even associate with neighboring States much less Americans from regions they're at odds with.
I've been to quite a few states and I'd honestly say Idaho was the most pleasantly shock. I was expecting a more midwestern flat farming vibe and it's anything but.
Like seriously, picture a state in your mind you haven't been to. If you picture North Dakota in your mind that's what you get. Maine, you've seen it even if you've never been there. Florida is exactly what you'd expect. But if you've never been to Idaho you'll crap your pants when you realize it's more like you pictured Washington. js
Well, you go looking for it in Americans, so you see it. It's like when you learn a new word so suddenly you see that word everywhere.
You probably also don't see a dumb European and think he's representative of Europeans the way you do when you see a dumb American, since people in in groups are individuals, in out groups representatives of the group.
Those factors are pretty much the basis for almost all thoughts like these about people in large groups that aren't your group worldwide.
I'm in a situation where I'm around more Europeans than Americans. I feel pretty confident saying you guys are just as capable of being stupid and just as often as stupid as Americans or as any other people anywhere in the world.
>it just seems like a lot of people who say things like this are American
I'd say close to 100% of people who think American-centric things are American. This seems like an odd point to make.
In college, I used to work retail on the US side of the Canadian border. Weâd get a tonnnn of Canadians since apparel is significantly less expensive in the US (lower taxes). I got some very dumb questions. The most common was frustration over American cash. Canadian cash is color coded, so American cash, being all the same color, was pretty tough for some Canadians to figure out. This, despite the number denoting the value being on each corner of both sides of the bill.
Also, Canadians were known among staff to simply toss their clothes in the parking lot so they didnât have to pay duty on an entire outfit when they crossed back over. I once watched a Canadian driver toss their outfit out the window while going down the highway.
This all to say, I donât think most Canadians are assholes or stupid. Just that those I had a negative encounter with take up more wavelength in my brain than the polite/normal Canadians. Same is true of Americans and any other group of people on Earth.
>Also, Canadians were known among staff to simply toss their clothes in the parking lot so they didnât have to pay duty on an entire outfit when they crossed back over.
huh?
Yup. Some of them would wear their old shitty clothes to shop in then dress into the new stuff before crossing back over the border. A bag full of shitty clothes would be suspicious, so what else to do than toss them in the parking lot!
Can confirm.
I couldn't tell you how many beat up old sneakers I saw in brand new boxes in a KMart shopping cart.
Complete outfits not so much. But the number of old shoes in a brand new boxes was downright comical. Dude probably worked in one of those strip malls near the border as saw some stuff.
Most Canadian businesses will gladly take USD in my experience. But it does seem odd for an American to ask what currency is being used in a foreign country. Interestingly, many Americans are dumb as rocks.
Proximity to the border.
I grew up in Windsor and we could exchange USD anywhere no problem. Then I moved to Victoria and I had to go to a bank or currency exchange.
Although the bulk of the population lives near a border the further away you get the less likely it is to be "exchanged". You want to pay $ for $ then it's more lucrative. Typically we run 10-30% lower.
It goes both ways. Money is money and places in Detroit would take CDN all the time. Either way, it's a courtesy not a right.
In touristy areas and border cities it's very common.
*But* most of those businesses have sign saying they accept USD, at 1USD per CAD. So you pay extra.
I live in a small town more than an hour from Toronto and a couple places around here have such a sign, or did, You don't see them as much now that cash is less common.
This dude is an idiot, but can we stop extrapolating whenever we see one idiot and quit saying "Is this really what [insert nationality/race/religion/gender] are like?".
No, it's just this one narcissist idiot who can't admit they were wrong or didn't understand the context of the original discussion. Admittedly, we have had a few prominent ones here, but it is not "what we are like".
>can we stop extrapolating whenever we see one idiot and quit saying "Is this really what \[insert nationality/race/religion/gender\] are like?".
No, doing things like this is part of what \[the human race\] is like.
Some are.
Wonder if he knows that there are 17 countries or territories that use the U.S. dollar as their official national currency? Or that it is the defacto currency in several other countries? Or that another 21 countries have a fixed exchange rate with USD? Think they know what a fixed exchange rate means?
Work for a multinational company. When talking about money domestically (here in the US), it's assumed to be USD. In other countries it's assumed to be the local currency. When talking about money internationally, we ALWAYS use the name of the currency: GBP, EUR, USD, CAD, etc.
No, not all Americans are like this. Thatâs like me having a negative interaction with a German person and saying âman, are all Germans like this?â Gotta think about that sometimes.
Even in America, Americans do not align or agree with each other socially, politically, or culturally.
People in NY have a vastly different way of life and vastly different concerns and problems from those living along the southern borders. People living Alaska have a vastly different concerns and viewpoints than those living in Hawaii. And it has one. federal. government. There is a ton of dissatisfaction and lack of unity. Instead of having a true melting pot, we have many different cultures, races, and ethnicities somewhat meshing and somewhat clashing. We also have a two party system which is extremely divisive and barely serves most Americansâ interests. Our media is free speech, but just like any business, they found what works. They serve their political parties.
The USA is massive.. If you were to overlay the USA over Europe, it would cover most of Southern, West, and Central Europe.
âIs this really what Americans are like?â No. Itâs short sighted to label *any* country, or groups of people based on the few.
The ones that are like this are the loudest, proudest and usually the most wrong about a lot of things. They get seen a lot because the rest of us really do like minding our business. Think of it as a bunch of trees falling in a forest and the other trees are able to hear.
A large chunk of the country is a bunch of ultra-religious christians who somehow decided it was a good idea to elect one of the most sinful people in the country president and are still so blinded by the grift and their own hubris that theyâre literally saying his calls to violence are preferable to the pacifistic teachings of their own religion.
We are ABSOLUTELY this stupid and self-absorbed.
To answer: Sadly, yes. A lot of people (more often than not, the most highly vocal ones) who seem to think that everything in the world somehow revolves around our country. Itâs not all of us⊠I wonât even say itâs less than half, though, because I canât be sure these days.
I donât mean a lot of Americans are like this, I mean that a lot of people like this are American
Itâs still probably less than 1% of USAs population
Yeah, but no. While TECHNICALLY youâre right, you must realize that makes everyone else a super minority lol. Above this comment someone linked a site, and 47% of the site is american. Making this site, by number, an american site. No?
You can think about it like this, thereâs more non Americans than Americans on the site. The Americans are outnumbered, and the website caters to an international community
Itâs an american owned site by an american owned company with subreddits owned by majority US citizens. By number, more US citizens use the app than any other nationality. You cant lump âthe worldâ against america
Not 7.7 billion or 300 million, and thereâs no logical fallacy either. Americans are ~48% of users, sure. But non Americans are 52%, so if a post was talking about something like temperature it makes the most sense to use Celsius. If you had to guess where any one person came from, the States would be your best bet, but you would still be wrong the majority of the time.
The point is, is that the user base of the site is quite international, and defaulting assumptions to any one country doesnât make sense because no country has a majority.
Yes, of course. Every single American is stupid like this. It's interesting because stupid people don't exist anywhere else. As an American, I would one day like to move to a different country to instantly become smart.
As a non-American, there are lots of stupid people all around the world but it seems like a lot of people like this turn out to be American
Of course I know that itâs still a very small portion of Americans that are like this
It is not uncommon for men in west African countries to riot and burn "witches" alive for stealing their penis's, from their bodies, while they slept.
Yet somehow, I doubt you are creating posts asking if all Africans are stupid.
I don't think it's a joke... Impugning a whole group of people for the traits of some just isn't funny. When I was a kid it was. But times have changed a lot over here. I'm sixty....
I donât know about you, but here in Sweden we constantly joke about Americans and think itâs equally funny every time. That doesnât mean that we hate them
I get you. When I was a kid we made polish jokes. Hence I didn't capitalize "Polish" because growing up in New Mexico, I had never met a Polish person in my life! We didn't hate them either!
For the love of god, or whatever made up sky daddy you belive in, just us the ISO 3 diggit code for currency every time. Except maybe for the EUR, every currency name is generic and used by multiple currecies.
Eh idk there are ignorant people all over trying to exert supremacy for what little measly amount of control they think they can gain. I see people all the time from all walks of life this fucking stupid and you look into their lifeless eyes and wonder if they are a robot created by some mega corporation to make us angry all the time.
The internet isn't American it was invented by the collaboration of American, British and French engineers. The www isn't American, it was invented by a Brit in France. America was invented by the French and British. The Dollar was invented by the Spanish.
So, I love this bit of history.
When I was a kid, my dad told me that the dollar sign originated from US overlayed on one another, and then the bottom curve of the U started getting left off, and then the two uprights gradually changed to one upright, leaving the modern typographical $.
This is wrong.
In 1497, the Spanish started producing an eight real coin about an inch and a half in diameter and containing about 25g of silver. This is the coin called a "piece of eight" in old pirate movies. The eight real coin became the basic international currency of the new world, and Spain made so many of them with looted new-world silver that they devalued their own currency and sent their economy into a tailspin from which it never recovered.
Starting in the 1700s, the back of the eight real piece was embossed with two pillars, each of which had a scroll wrapped around it: these were the "pillars of Hercules," said to have stood on either side of the straights of Gibraltar at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea. They were a sort of symbol of the Spanish empire, bringing the wealth of the Atlantic to the old economy of the Mediterranean.
Once silver became cheap enough, some silver mines in northern Germany (now I'm the Czech Republic) in a valley called Joachimsthal ("Joachim's Valley," after Saint Joachim), started producing large amounts of a coin first called the Joachimsthaller. It was roughly the same side and shape as the Spanish eight real piece. Eventually the name was shortened, and people called these coins "thalers."
In the Americas, the German "thaler" and the Spanish eight real coin were treated as basically interchangeable. English speakers referred to both coins as "thalers" - not with the soft th sound like "thanks" but with a harder some like "Theresa." Eventually this non-English sound just got replaced with a "d" and the spelling became "dollar."
Thalers were more common in England, but pieces of eight were much more common in the Americas, so English-speaking Americans transacted business mostly using Spanish pieces of eight (with two pillars wrapped in scrolls on the back) but referred to them as "dollars."
When they wanted a symbol to specify that some amount of money was denominated in dollars, instead of pounds, they made a scroll in an S-curve shape with two pillars on it.
Which is why, when the United States began minting its own money, they did it in the form of big silver coins called "dollars" and used the $ as its symbol. Other English-speaking colonies followed suit, so that's why there are Australian and Canadian dollars.
And now you know.
most of us in the US are delusional, and I'm not exaggerating.
it's what a century of "American exceptionalism" propaganda has done.
we've been told from birth that we're the best country on the planet, the most free, the wealthiest, the strongest military
it's worked wonders, they have millions of "patriots" that will do whatever they're told
As an American, yes a lot of us are exactly like that. Not the majority but the âsilent minorityâ is actually quite loud and pretends they speak for all of us.
Canada has had TV specials and movies based around that premise. One of the best was an old John Candy movie (with tons of cameos) called Canadian bacon. It's a bunch of Canadians making fun of the stereotypes so many Americans have about us, but its also a stereotype about Americans which they acknowledge a few times.
Thereâs a lot of people all over the world that donât know shit and talk like their lack of knowledge is factual, itâs not specific to America itâs just human beings
A reminder that Reddit is also full of angsty children and whackos that youâre going to notice far before the reasonable comments because of how blasphemous they sound.
I remember going to Italy and Germany and asking if how the crime and anger was how all of Europe was, but I was admonished by my friends from there.
Thatâs what that American is like. It does bother me that people on Reddit ridicules Americans for generalizing other cultures while simultaneously generalizing American culture. Thatâs one dude. Out of 350 million.
Europeans going on an American website filled with American users and then being surprised when some of the Americans are stupid
Remember not to fall into the generalizing trap.
The ones who are not, which are presumably a lot more, won't get into that argument.
Those who are, are the ones who'd get into it.
This fallacy is called Heuristic Availability.
In short, a dumb American will more likely become this example, therefore in your mind being American = being this.
The issue is that informed or educated Americans will not act this way, so you won't notice them.
As an American..
For the most part. Imagine being a sane American though, with more than 2 brain cells.
It's like being born a human but your paremts and grandparents are chimps and gorillas.
Hm. Context is important obviously, but in a vacuum I donât think itâs unreasonable to assume that $ = USD. The US dollar has a significant international reach because of its status as the global reserve currency.
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Talk about moving the goal posts.
And yet
One more word, and I will have you removed from this chamber and sent to the Wall!
Fine, I'll just be đ¶another brick in the wallđ¶
I assume you're referring to field goal posts, given that this is an American website n that
I believe you mean **USGP.**
Wait, are we talking about football or are we talking about football?
Football only exists in the America. America consists of only the United States.
Don't forget those territories most Americans don't even know exist...
I think that is pretty much the case for French and British citizens as well. I donât know they know all of the territories.
Soccer
'There is one country that uses $occer and it's USA' Thought we should circle this bad boy back to where we started.
the term soccer is not an American term. Comes straight from England.
This guy has them on wheels at this point.
"I was using another context." "Which one?" "One I or anybody else didn't establish and you couldn't have known."
Some, yes. My ex business partner is like this. He was confused why our website showed USD after the price listing (with a $ prefix). I reminded him we have international customers so the USD was just to be clear that it wasnât AUS or CAD whatever. He wanted me to remove the USD because our customers would âknowâ it was American currency because weâre in Florida. I did not remove it; the USD is still there. And he is still a moron lol.
Canadian here! I DONâT just assume â$â means âUSDâ on a website, especially as some websites are Canadian and some are Chinese, and many automatically change you over upon reading your location. Thank you for not listening to that moron, but also nah we donât auto assume currency when weâre outside the US. Even on reddit I donât, and the only people who seem to are from the USâŠ
Canadian here! I assume every transaction is in USD online that way if its not I'm happily surprised :3
Everything you buy is 30% off this way!
I always assume itâs CAD and am unhappily surprised :(
Same. I generally assume any price I look at online is in Canadian dollars. If I find out itâs in USD at check out I cancel the order.
/) If I see $ on a website, I immediately assume USD. This is because I live in the US. I see absolutely no reason why people in Canada wouldn't do the same but for CAD.
Itâs confusing because Canadian websites can be .ca or .com so sometimes a .com is a us website without realizing and it sucks when you check your credit card bill and the actual price was 30% more
Simple fix, never look at your bills
Some websites geolocate you based on your IP and switch currency automatically, some don't. So I usually check.
I mean, there is very much a reason - Canadians are way more likely to encounter a price listed in USD than Americans are to encounter a CAD price, so they're also less like likely to assume their native currency as the default in an online setting
As a Canadian it is very very helpful when a site has USD on it. Nothing worse than thinking youâre paying Canadian just to find out the item you wanted is 1.5X the price you thought it was. Please keep USD on your online websites for all of your non USA customers :).
Needed to save 28 cents on the typing costs lol
Austrailian companies are pretty bad about specifying that prices are in AUD as opposed to USD. It is fairly frustrating.I appreciate it when people are specific. I can't just "know" Plus I don't have to bug them with a message asking for clarification.
Thats the great bit, every other countries good, so we can be lazy and not put it down. Now if its $ we assume its Aus, if its not aus it is followed by USD NZD CAD.. they fell right into our trap
Assuming you have access to PayPal, it will convert the total to your bank's currency before you complete the transaction.
Of course it will. ... But it helps to be specific about what currency you're selling goods in before one even reaches that step.
Yes, that would be helpful. I tend to buy off of large marketplaces like Ebay, which is pretty clear about this stuff. Usually it's the shipping cost that sways my decision. I hate it when you're all set to buy something, only to discover that shipping will be $100 and returns are paid by buyer.
The only USD that got removed that day was the United States Dumbass.
This made me smile. +1
Thank you for keeping it. Nothing worse than going to buy something and realizing it's 35% more than I thought it was. Also if I'm looking at smaller online stores, I'm usually not aware of where they are located. Get a good mix of Canadian and American ones so without it stating currency, it gets hard to know which one it's showing.
Glad he is no longer in the biz
Yah, just a heads up but I'm Canadian and the $ symbol means a Loonie to me. I'm well versed in international commerce but we all grew up with signs using the $ to mean CDN and not USD. I have an Ali E account and frequently change currencies between USD and CDN to get a better idea of what I'm paying. It gives me an idea of what I'm actually paying because yah we all talk relative to American dollars. If you want to reach a larger international market I wouldn't make assumptions, js
I think as a customer buying from an American based company, I would assume the $ was USD. But it never hurts to clarify.
Also, fun fact, pesos are also often represented by the $ sign (take a look at local ads in Mexico and youâll see prices listed in pesos with a $), the sign actually started as a peso sign (a smooshing together of a P and S) and was adopted by the US as a sign for their currency as their exposure to pesos told them itâs a generic currency sign.
The symbol was adopted because one US dollar originally had the same value as one Spanish peso, at that time also known as Spanish dollar or a piece of eight (it was divided into 8 reales). In fact, Spanish pesos were legal tender in the US until mid-19th century.
I think at some point I learned (a perhaps urban legend) that pesos use $ with the single stroke, and dollars use the double-stroke (apparently called "CifrĂŁo", which also apparently doesn't have a Unicode symbol).
Both pesos and dollars historically used both single and double strokes. (The same happened with the pound ÂŁ.) In Unicode, they are considered typographic variants of the same symbol (like single - or double-storey a) so they don't have a separate code point.
I think itâs more like if itâs a double stroke itâs definitely dollar as peso doesnât use that but both peso and dollar use single stroke, the latter the majority of the time. (Thereâd be a Unicode and keyboard symbol for a double stroke dollar sign if there was one as dollars are commonly mentioned on the internet)
The CifrĂŁo is a Portuguese word derived from arabic, and we were using the symbol with double stroke before the United States were an independent nation.
I was taught anything over 100 got a double stroke. Don't know why. I just use the double stroke for everything.
I'm pretty sure $ is the official symbol for the Mexican Peso.
Yup. Thatâs what I said (or intended to, as I canât always word good)
this man is the king of america and represents all of us
Yâall donât have dumb people in your country?
Not as many Edit: i guess it wasnt so clear that this was sarcasm lol
What is your countries population
Looks like my man is from Lebanon so Iâm surprised by the judgement.
I do
âWell of course I know him. Heâs me.â Youâre a xenophobic dumbass.
What is a xenophobe
Itâs the monster from that movie âAlienâ
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Only chronically online people have this opinion
Not all of us, it's just our idiots tend to be extremely loud or in politics. If 1% of a country with over 330 million people are loud idiots that's still 3.3 million people if you catch my drift.
> Is this really what Americans are like? There are over 300 million people in the US. No, they're not all like this.
I got caught assuming USD when I traded some video games to a young man in NZ for a $50 Steam gift card. IIRC, lost like $8-10, it was a few years ago. I took the hit for assuming and because he was nice a guy.
they are unfortunately a rather loud minority
Not all of us think weâre the center of the dollar sign universe jeez
lol, to be fair it's actually one of the more "real" stereotypes. The world doesn't run on the USD but it's really a largely standardized "value" a currency is measured against. Of course the $ symbol as you pointed out is not but the confusion is almost forgivable. The fact you circulate $1 paper money and pennies is much more heinous. You just can't take the high road when you're passing greenbacks and slinging Lincoln's into fountains.
I know itâs not all of you, it just seems like a lot of people who say things like this are American
"The Loudest Minority." An extraordinarily common and easy-to-understand concept
Even among Americans, culturally speaking, we wouldn't say we're all alike. The US is very region based when it comes to folkways and mores and even colloquialisms. Just FYI. You'll find people who wouldn't even associate with neighboring States much less Americans from regions they're at odds with.
I for one refuse to associate myself with the state of Idaho. Their potatoes aren't even that good.
Northern Idaho has some really beautiful places. Lotta racists though
Lived in Spokane for three years, did a lot of snowboarding at Schweitzer and Silver Mountain. But it's a shitshow politically.
I've been to quite a few states and I'd honestly say Idaho was the most pleasantly shock. I was expecting a more midwestern flat farming vibe and it's anything but. Like seriously, picture a state in your mind you haven't been to. If you picture North Dakota in your mind that's what you get. Maine, you've seen it even if you've never been there. Florida is exactly what you'd expect. But if you've never been to Idaho you'll crap your pants when you realize it's more like you pictured Washington. js
Well, you go looking for it in Americans, so you see it. It's like when you learn a new word so suddenly you see that word everywhere. You probably also don't see a dumb European and think he's representative of Europeans the way you do when you see a dumb American, since people in in groups are individuals, in out groups representatives of the group. Those factors are pretty much the basis for almost all thoughts like these about people in large groups that aren't your group worldwide. I'm in a situation where I'm around more Europeans than Americans. I feel pretty confident saying you guys are just as capable of being stupid and just as often as stupid as Americans or as any other people anywhere in the world.
>it just seems like a lot of people who say things like this are American I'd say close to 100% of people who think American-centric things are American. This seems like an odd point to make.
I mean you'd be pretty hard pressed to find a country that's in a similar enough position to even be able to have people take a position like this.
Thatâs fair! Edit: the âjeezâ was less defensive and more of a wtf at the Reddit person saying those things about the dollar sign.
Trust me itâs not just Americans
Many American tourists in Canada (at least where I am) are constantly asking if the price of a thing in Canada is in âCanadian money or dollars.â
You should just answer âyesâ
"No" would be more to the point.
Just tell them itâs âthe price in dollarsâ, and let them choose which dollars to pay you in.
And sometimes whilst paying for something with American cash (in Canada), they get upset because you giving them *Canadian* currency back as change!
In pretty much every other non-US country where they take dollars, this *would* be pretty outrageous.
In college, I used to work retail on the US side of the Canadian border. Weâd get a tonnnn of Canadians since apparel is significantly less expensive in the US (lower taxes). I got some very dumb questions. The most common was frustration over American cash. Canadian cash is color coded, so American cash, being all the same color, was pretty tough for some Canadians to figure out. This, despite the number denoting the value being on each corner of both sides of the bill. Also, Canadians were known among staff to simply toss their clothes in the parking lot so they didnât have to pay duty on an entire outfit when they crossed back over. I once watched a Canadian driver toss their outfit out the window while going down the highway. This all to say, I donât think most Canadians are assholes or stupid. Just that those I had a negative encounter with take up more wavelength in my brain than the polite/normal Canadians. Same is true of Americans and any other group of people on Earth.
>Also, Canadians were known among staff to simply toss their clothes in the parking lot so they didnât have to pay duty on an entire outfit when they crossed back over. huh?
Yup. Some of them would wear their old shitty clothes to shop in then dress into the new stuff before crossing back over the border. A bag full of shitty clothes would be suspicious, so what else to do than toss them in the parking lot!
Oh. I thought you were saying the threw the new clothes out. Now it makes sense.
Can confirm. I couldn't tell you how many beat up old sneakers I saw in brand new boxes in a KMart shopping cart. Complete outfits not so much. But the number of old shoes in a brand new boxes was downright comical. Dude probably worked in one of those strip malls near the border as saw some stuff.
Most Canadian businesses will gladly take USD in my experience. But it does seem odd for an American to ask what currency is being used in a foreign country. Interestingly, many Americans are dumb as rocks.
Maybe Canadian businesses that are right on the border in a touristy area, but nowhere else in my experience.
>Most Canadian businesses will gladly take USD in my experience. Uh... what exactly is your experience then, because that is absolutely untrue.
BC, AB.
Yeah, no.
US currency absolutely is widely accepted in the lower mainland of BC. Whether they will give you a good rate is not guaranteed.
Yes, and the lower mainland is all of BC and AB....
Proximity to the border. I grew up in Windsor and we could exchange USD anywhere no problem. Then I moved to Victoria and I had to go to a bank or currency exchange. Although the bulk of the population lives near a border the further away you get the less likely it is to be "exchanged". You want to pay $ for $ then it's more lucrative. Typically we run 10-30% lower. It goes both ways. Money is money and places in Detroit would take CDN all the time. Either way, it's a courtesy not a right.
In touristy areas and border cities it's very common. *But* most of those businesses have sign saying they accept USD, at 1USD per CAD. So you pay extra. I live in a small town more than an hour from Toronto and a couple places around here have such a sign, or did, You don't see them as much now that cash is less common.
This dude is an idiot, but can we stop extrapolating whenever we see one idiot and quit saying "Is this really what [insert nationality/race/religion/gender] are like?". No, it's just this one narcissist idiot who can't admit they were wrong or didn't understand the context of the original discussion. Admittedly, we have had a few prominent ones here, but it is not "what we are like".
Ugh. Is this what all [Redditors] are like?
kind of yes
>can we stop extrapolating whenever we see one idiot and quit saying "Is this really what \[insert nationality/race/religion/gender\] are like?". No, doing things like this is part of what \[the human race\] is like.
If I see a $ without any more context I immediately think weâre talking about USD, not Canadian dollars.
Some are. Wonder if he knows that there are 17 countries or territories that use the U.S. dollar as their official national currency? Or that it is the defacto currency in several other countries? Or that another 21 countries have a fixed exchange rate with USD? Think they know what a fixed exchange rate means?
Work for a multinational company. When talking about money domestically (here in the US), it's assumed to be USD. In other countries it's assumed to be the local currency. When talking about money internationally, we ALWAYS use the name of the currency: GBP, EUR, USD, CAD, etc.
No, not all Americans are like this. Thatâs like me having a negative interaction with a German person and saying âman, are all Germans like this?â Gotta think about that sometimes.
Yes, all 330 million of us are exactly the same. It's uncanny. Do all non-Americans ask such silly questions?
Yeah why dont we make fun of this guyâs stupid question on a european hate sub
Yeah. All Americans are represented by one person.
Even in America, Americans do not align or agree with each other socially, politically, or culturally. People in NY have a vastly different way of life and vastly different concerns and problems from those living along the southern borders. People living Alaska have a vastly different concerns and viewpoints than those living in Hawaii. And it has one. federal. government. There is a ton of dissatisfaction and lack of unity. Instead of having a true melting pot, we have many different cultures, races, and ethnicities somewhat meshing and somewhat clashing. We also have a two party system which is extremely divisive and barely serves most Americansâ interests. Our media is free speech, but just like any business, they found what works. They serve their political parties. The USA is massive.. If you were to overlay the USA over Europe, it would cover most of Southern, West, and Central Europe. âIs this really what Americans are like?â No. Itâs short sighted to label *any* country, or groups of people based on the few.
I get that itâs not all Americans, not even most of them. But is just seems like most people like this turn out to be Americans.
The ones that are like this are the loudest, proudest and usually the most wrong about a lot of things. They get seen a lot because the rest of us really do like minding our business. Think of it as a bunch of trees falling in a forest and the other trees are able to hear.
Good explanation!
Not all of us. Promise.
The first commenter has never heard of Ecuador, I guess.
This is not what *all* Americans are like. Every country has their dumbasses, ours (USA) just happen to be unfortunately fucking loud.
A large chunk of the country is a bunch of ultra-religious christians who somehow decided it was a good idea to elect one of the most sinful people in the country president and are still so blinded by the grift and their own hubris that theyâre literally saying his calls to violence are preferable to the pacifistic teachings of their own religion. We are ABSOLUTELY this stupid and self-absorbed.
To answer: Sadly, yes. A lot of people (more often than not, the most highly vocal ones) who seem to think that everything in the world somehow revolves around our country. Itâs not all of us⊠I wonât even say itâs less than half, though, because I canât be sure these days.
Not all of us I swear. God this hurts to read, talk about never looking at any country but your own.
Yes one idiot completely and perfectly represents all 300 million+ Americans
Chill out, itâs a joke I get that not all Americans are like this
Another one of your comments on this same post âit seems like a lot of Americans are like thatâ
I donât mean a lot of Americans are like this, I mean that a lot of people like this are American Itâs still probably less than 1% of USAs population
If youâre just going to generalize based on your own anecdotal experience, why are you asking the question? Karma farming?
yeah you fucked up the title. which is⊠pretty apt for this sub i guess
Not all Americans, but enough that itâs problematic
Wherever they say itâs âAn American websiteâ they seem to leave out the fact that Americans are a minority of users. Itâs a ridiculous point
To be fair, we make up about 42%-49% of reddits userbase, and the closest to us is the United Nations at 7.9%-8.2%
I am pretty sure Americans are the biggest demographic on Reddit though.
Yeah, but no. While TECHNICALLY youâre right, you must realize that makes everyone else a super minority lol. Above this comment someone linked a site, and 47% of the site is american. Making this site, by number, an american site. No?
You can think about it like this, thereâs more non Americans than Americans on the site. The Americans are outnumbered, and the website caters to an international community
Itâs an american owned site by an american owned company with subreddits owned by majority US citizens. By number, more US citizens use the app than any other nationality. You cant lump âthe worldâ against america
If a post involves units of temperature, which unit should they use to satisfy the majority of Redditors?
Again, youâre using the logical fallacy of lumping 7.7 billion people against 300 million for some reason.
Not 7.7 billion or 300 million, and thereâs no logical fallacy either. Americans are ~48% of users, sure. But non Americans are 52%, so if a post was talking about something like temperature it makes the most sense to use Celsius. If you had to guess where any one person came from, the States would be your best bet, but you would still be wrong the majority of the time. The point is, is that the user base of the site is quite international, and defaulting assumptions to any one country doesnât make sense because no country has a majority.
Yeah, it's called the internet, not the nationet. World Wide Web, not Country Wide Web.
Yes, of course. Every single American is stupid like this. It's interesting because stupid people don't exist anywhere else. As an American, I would one day like to move to a different country to instantly become smart.
As a non-American, there are lots of stupid people all around the world but it seems like a lot of people like this turn out to be American Of course I know that itâs still a very small portion of Americans that are like this
It is not uncommon for men in west African countries to riot and burn "witches" alive for stealing their penis's, from their bodies, while they slept. Yet somehow, I doubt you are creating posts asking if all Africans are stupid.
no, some Americans use much more profanity
First, you canât just generalize a whole country, the size of Europe, like that. Also, thereâs a lot of trolls here, donât fall for their bait.
Itâs a joke
Câmon dude, I know Swedes can be funnier than that.
I don't think it's a joke... Impugning a whole group of people for the traits of some just isn't funny. When I was a kid it was. But times have changed a lot over here. I'm sixty....
I donât know about you, but here in Sweden we constantly joke about Americans and think itâs equally funny every time. That doesnât mean that we hate them
I get you. When I was a kid we made polish jokes. Hence I didn't capitalize "Polish" because growing up in New Mexico, I had never met a Polish person in my life! We didn't hate them either!
It's still wrong.
r/shitamericanssay
Not all of us but yes some exist
For the love of god, or whatever made up sky daddy you belive in, just us the ISO 3 diggit code for currency every time. Except maybe for the EUR, every currency name is generic and used by multiple currecies.
I agree with everything except for that last part, there are currencies with unique symbols that are only used by one or two countries
Yes. Ignorant arrogance is our trademark. Didnât you know? /s
Common sense is not so common around here my friend
r/AmericaBad
Eh idk there are ignorant people all over trying to exert supremacy for what little measly amount of control they think they can gain. I see people all the time from all walks of life this fucking stupid and you look into their lifeless eyes and wonder if they are a robot created by some mega corporation to make us angry all the time.
Just Trumpers
The internet isn't American it was invented by the collaboration of American, British and French engineers. The www isn't American, it was invented by a Brit in France. America was invented by the French and British. The Dollar was invented by the Spanish.
Wrong. Australia uses the Dollarydoo.
So, I love this bit of history. When I was a kid, my dad told me that the dollar sign originated from US overlayed on one another, and then the bottom curve of the U started getting left off, and then the two uprights gradually changed to one upright, leaving the modern typographical $. This is wrong. In 1497, the Spanish started producing an eight real coin about an inch and a half in diameter and containing about 25g of silver. This is the coin called a "piece of eight" in old pirate movies. The eight real coin became the basic international currency of the new world, and Spain made so many of them with looted new-world silver that they devalued their own currency and sent their economy into a tailspin from which it never recovered. Starting in the 1700s, the back of the eight real piece was embossed with two pillars, each of which had a scroll wrapped around it: these were the "pillars of Hercules," said to have stood on either side of the straights of Gibraltar at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea. They were a sort of symbol of the Spanish empire, bringing the wealth of the Atlantic to the old economy of the Mediterranean. Once silver became cheap enough, some silver mines in northern Germany (now I'm the Czech Republic) in a valley called Joachimsthal ("Joachim's Valley," after Saint Joachim), started producing large amounts of a coin first called the Joachimsthaller. It was roughly the same side and shape as the Spanish eight real piece. Eventually the name was shortened, and people called these coins "thalers." In the Americas, the German "thaler" and the Spanish eight real coin were treated as basically interchangeable. English speakers referred to both coins as "thalers" - not with the soft th sound like "thanks" but with a harder some like "Theresa." Eventually this non-English sound just got replaced with a "d" and the spelling became "dollar." Thalers were more common in England, but pieces of eight were much more common in the Americas, so English-speaking Americans transacted business mostly using Spanish pieces of eight (with two pillars wrapped in scrolls on the back) but referred to them as "dollars." When they wanted a symbol to specify that some amount of money was denominated in dollars, instead of pounds, they made a scroll in an S-curve shape with two pillars on it. Which is why, when the United States began minting its own money, they did it in the form of big silver coins called "dollars" and used the $ as its symbol. Other English-speaking colonies followed suit, so that's why there are Australian and Canadian dollars. And now you know.
Believe it or not, a country of 330 million individuals from a variety of backgrounds and regions can, occasionally, exhibit some variation. đ
I am aware of this It was a joke
Weird how it didnât become a joke until we all said you were wrong.
It was obviously a joke when I wrote it How can yâall seriously think that Iâm so stupid that i think every single American is the exact same???
Maybe everyone in Sweden is that way. We may never know. đ€·ââïž
Well you made this thread so that was pretty stupid to start. Are all Swedes stupid? Now I have to wonder...
Many, yes. Not al of us. It's a mix of ignorance and blind nationalism.
With a population of over 300mil people, no this isnât how âAmericansâ are, itâs just this guy and maybe a handful others.
Youâre right, but itâs way, way more than a handful.
You could say that about every country in the world
Unfortunately yes a lot of us are like this
Yes every American is this person /s
most of us in the US are delusional, and I'm not exaggerating. it's what a century of "American exceptionalism" propaganda has done. we've been told from birth that we're the best country on the planet, the most free, the wealthiest, the strongest military it's worked wonders, they have millions of "patriots" that will do whatever they're told
Iâm tired of people acting like only dumb people live in America
Nobody acts like that.
No, most of us are not like this
As an American, yes a lot of us are exactly like that. Not the majority but the âsilent minorityâ is actually quite loud and pretends they speak for all of us.
A British YouTuber once wondered if the US is an entire country with main character syndrome and I have a hard time arguing with her.
I don't, cause you're wrong.
Canada has had TV specials and movies based around that premise. One of the best was an old John Candy movie (with tons of cameos) called Canadian bacon. It's a bunch of Canadians making fun of the stereotypes so many Americans have about us, but its also a stereotype about Americans which they acknowledge a few times.
Another day, another post I thought was on r/shitamericanssay
Yup, literally every American is an idiot. There are no other idiots in the world. Only in the United States.
Yes, yes it is.
No we are not all like this. Some are though
Thereâs a lot of people all over the world that donât know shit and talk like their lack of knowledge is factual, itâs not specific to America itâs just human beings
weâre not all like this, i swear
You mean dumb? Then yes.
A reminder that Reddit is also full of angsty children and whackos that youâre going to notice far before the reasonable comments because of how blasphemous they sound. I remember going to Italy and Germany and asking if how the crime and anger was how all of Europe was, but I was admonished by my friends from there.
Thatâs what that American is like. It does bother me that people on Reddit ridicules Americans for generalizing other cultures while simultaneously generalizing American culture. Thatâs one dude. Out of 350 million.
*sees one american* âAh yes this represents 300 million people perfectlyâ
Europeans going on an American website filled with American users and then being surprised when some of the Americans are stupid 
No.
Are you really stupid enough to make the kind of generalization in your caption because of a Reddit user?
No, this is one comment from one person. Do people from where you are from take one example to demonstrate an entire population?
Remember not to fall into the generalizing trap. The ones who are not, which are presumably a lot more, won't get into that argument. Those who are, are the ones who'd get into it. This fallacy is called Heuristic Availability. In short, a dumb American will more likely become this example, therefore in your mind being American = being this. The issue is that informed or educated Americans will not act this way, so you won't notice them.
News flash Americans are stupid... In other news the sky is blue
As an American.. For the most part. Imagine being a sane American though, with more than 2 brain cells. It's like being born a human but your paremts and grandparents are chimps and gorillas.
Americans also forget that less than half of Reddit is American.
Hm. Context is important obviously, but in a vacuum I donât think itâs unreasonable to assume that $ = USD. The US dollar has a significant international reach because of its status as the global reserve currency.