Poll of the Day > Apparently the US has no "culture" being just 200 years old

(+) Yeah! (+)

When do we suddenly join the culture club?

The US culture is so widespread and taking over other cultures around the world people refer to it as "no culture" when they actually mean it's the most influential culture in the history of the world. It's so common it has become generic.
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Dunno about culture but you guys have no history.
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Culture typically means tradition and rhetoric so really the South is real cultured.
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TreGooda posted...

The US culture is so widespread and taking over other cultures around the world people refer to it as "no culture" when they actually mean it's the most influential culture in the history of the world. It's so common it has become generic.

Pretty much this. American culture is the dominant force in the world other than maybe Japanese which we are stealing from

We eat hot dogs and apple pie while watching baseball. That's it, right?
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spooky96 posted...

Dunno about culture but you guys have no history.

Does nothing before 1776 count?
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TreGooda posted...

The US culture is so widespread and taking over other cultures around the world people refer to it as "no culture" when they actually mean it's the most influential culture in the history of the world. It's so common it has become generic.

Sort of like how when people say someone has "no accent", what they really mean is that they have an accent that is similar to the majority of the people around them, so they sound like everyone else.

But take that person with "no accent" and drop them in another country, and the people there will absolutely tell you that they have a discernible accent.



OhhhJa posted...

other than maybe Japanese which we are stealing from

Which would be appropriate, considering how much of their culture they stole from us.

Hell, most of what the average Weeaboo worships in regards to Japanese culture is their anime and manga, which were more or less created by the Japanese adapting the Disney cartoons and comic books they were exposed to via American servicemen post-WWII. Along with the entire Japanese video game industry being rooted in the original American video game industry (that really only shifted to Japan when Atari tanked). Even Sega was originally an American company until Japanese interests bought it.

It's hard to think of any aspects of Japanese culture which were explicitly Japanese that have really migrated over to the West in anything resembling mainstream acceptance (and that's even discounting how much of "traditional" Japanese culture prior to the 20th century was itself originally stolen from the Chinese or Korea).


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spooky96 posted...

Dunno about culture but you guys have no history.

I would agree with this statement. The US has very little history compared to countries in the old world.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

anime and manga, which were more or less created by the Japanese adapting the Disney cartoons and comic books they were exposed to via American servicemen post-WWII.

this is so incredibly wrong lol
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US culture is a melting pot of other cultures that later spilled all over the world.
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Kana posted...

this is so incredibly wrong lol

Except for the part where it really isn't, sure.

It's pretty universally accepted that Osamu Tezuka is more or less the "father of anime" as a medium, and he's openly admitted that he was extremely influenced by Disney.

Did animation in general exist in Japan prior to Disney's influence? Yes. But what existed prior to that isn't really what anyone today thinks of when they think "anime".

The same applies when it comes to manga. Did woodcut panel art exist in Japan prior to 1940 or so? Sure. Did they have strip art similar to the West? Yes. But manga as we currently know it owes a massive debt to Western comic art, which mostly helped shape the medium in the post-war era.

This isn't me just saying this. This is the generally accepted view of most comic historians.



fettster777 posted...

I would agree with this statement. The US has very little history compared to countries in the old world.

The problem is how you define history.

The US technically has thousands of years worth of history if you count the history of the native tribes who lived here before Europeans showed up and moved in (even if a lot of it was lost when we killed them and eradicated their culture, and most people today outside of archeologists and anthropologists don't really care about it). Euro-centric American history only really started around 1600 or so (give or take), but in a very real sense, the history of those people prior to that point is just the history of the nations they came from (so "American History" actually incorporates English History/Spanish History/German History/etc to some degree).

The thing is, even places that define themselves by their rich past history are often just appropriating their history from someone else anyway. The "England" of 2017 is in many ways a qualitatively different place from the "England" of 1017, which in turn is extremely different from what existed on the islands in 17 (which was centuries before the term "England" could even be used), which in turn was different from what you would have found in 1000 or so BC.

Most European nations don't really have -A- history as much as they have a succession of different histories. Modern day France is very different from what it was when the Franks held the land, which was different from when the Romans held it, which was different from when it was Gaul, and so on. Often, you don't even have continuity of populace, as there are countless moments when one group of people drive off or eliminate the previous occupants to take the land for themselves (ie, Europe was doing to Europeans what it would eventually do to Native Americans a few centuries later).

Yet French identity would generally argue that "France" has existed for 1500 years (which is blatantly untrue), British national identity tends to trace back to at least 1000 years ago (which is relatively untrue) if not further (which is even more untrue), Italians often try to tie themselves back to Rome (which is extremely untrue), and so forth.

If Americans followed the same model, we'd just call dibs on the Clovis, Pueblo, Iroquois, Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, Lenape, etc etc and we'd have thousands of years worth of history.


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Wow! Someone with a real answer. Congrats ParanoidObsessive.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which would be appropriate, considering how much of their culture they stole from us.

Hell, most of what the average Weeaboo worships in regards to Japanese culture is their anime and manga, which were more or less created by the Japanese adapting the Disney cartoons and comic books they were exposed to via American servicemen post-WWII. Along with the entire Japanese video game industry being rooted in the original American video game industry (that really only shifted to Japan when Atari tanked). Even Sega was originally an American company until Japanese interests bought it.

If you're going by that logic, America stole pretty much all of its culture from Europe.
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TreGooda posted...

The US culture is so widespread and taking over other cultures around the world people refer to it as "no culture" when they actually mean it's the most influential culture in the history of the world. It's so common it has become generic.

We're the Seinfeld of culture?

darkknight109 posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which would be appropriate, considering how much of their culture they stole from us.

Hell, most of what the average Weeaboo worships in regards to Japanese culture is their anime and manga, which were more or less created by the Japanese adapting the Disney cartoons and comic books they were exposed to via American servicemen post-WWII. Along with the entire Japanese video game industry being rooted in the original American video game industry (that really only shifted to Japan when Atari tanked). Even Sega was originally an American company until Japanese interests bought it.

If you're going by that logic, America stole pretty much all of its culture from Europe.

Well, American culture as a whole is an extension of European culture, whether people like to admit it or not. It's not quite STOLEN, since European colonists brought it w/ them.

SkynyrdRocker posted...

TreGooda posted...

The US culture is so widespread and taking over other cultures around the world people refer to it as "no culture" when they actually mean it's the most influential culture in the history of the world. It's so common it has become generic.

We're the Seinfeld of culture?

Culture, whats the deal with it? *Seinfeld theme*
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Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon

It does have a culture, but it's just a terribly plain, licentious and morally bankrupt one, hence why people consider americans to be generally uncultured.
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MICHALECOLE posted...

Karma, karma, karma, karma, karma chameleon

Kramer?
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It has tons of culture, objectively. Not all positive, but to deny it is stupid.
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it's just orientalism
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DeathMagnetic80 posted...

darkknight109 posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Which would be appropriate, considering how much of their culture they stole from us.

Hell, most of what the average Weeaboo worships in regards to Japanese culture is their anime and manga, which were more or less created by the Japanese adapting the Disney cartoons and comic books they were exposed to via American servicemen post-WWII. Along with the entire Japanese video game industry being rooted in the original American video game industry (that really only shifted to Japan when Atari tanked). Even Sega was originally an American company until Japanese interests bought it.

If you're going by that logic, America stole pretty much all of its culture from Europe.

Well, American culture as a whole is an extension of European culture, whether people like to admit it or not. It's not quite STOLEN, since European colonists brought it w/ them.

Also it's not like anyone created their culture out of thin air. All cultures built on other ones.
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Hating blacks is the culture.
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JanwayDaahl posted...

It does have a culture, but it's just a terribly plain, licentious and morally bankrupt one, hence why people consider americans to be generally uncultured.

Uncultured yet many of the US's "culture" is apart of many others' these days. You're all uncultured.
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darkknight109 posted...

If you're going by that logic, America stole pretty much all of its culture from Europe.

More like American culture is a fusion of dozens of different cultures all sort of bled into each other, in a sort of gestalt synergy that creates something new out of the elements of the old (which, honestly, is how most unique world cultures form - ie, a combination of stealing stuff from other people via trade routes and conquest balanced by the odd quirks you pick up in isolation). It's the whole melting pot people used to love blathering on about before multiculturalism became the hip new trend and everybody decided they needed to keep their culture separate and scream about appropriation after taking an intro-level sociology class.

But American history is definitely "stolen" in a lot of ways. But then again, most European history is stolen from other people too, so it's hard to say that "ownership" of history actually matters at all, or that any given culture really has all that much to brag about in the first place.

Honestly, nearly all of human history from the very beginning consists of killing people, raping their wives, and adopting their land, history, and cultural identity for yourself.

The only reason the US gets shit for it is because we had the misfortune to show up late to the party, whereas everyone else got all their theft, slavery, raping, and cultural appropriation in a few centuries earlier.


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EvilMegas posted...

Hating blacks is the culture.

Someone's sure got a chip on their shoulder

JanwayDaahl posted...

It does have a culture, but it's just a terribly plain, licentious and morally bankrupt one, hence why people consider americans to be generally uncultured.

It's considered plain because it literally is the lense that the rest of the world (or at least how America looks at other places). That says a lot about us too.

Remember, vanila is a flavor.

OhhhJa posted...

TreGooda posted...

The US culture is so widespread and taking over other cultures around the world people refer to it as "no culture" when they actually mean it's the most influential culture in the history of the world. It's so common it has become generic.

Pretty much this. American culture is the dominant force in the world other than maybe Japanese which we are stealing from

yeah

America is the modern day rome. What sets america apart from every other nation though, is it's melting pot. The great thing about america is we are extremely diverse and multi culturaled. The american culture is it's constitution. It is what separates us from a lot of nations.
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KevinceKostner posted...

When do we suddenly join the culture club?

When you have a culture that is more refined and nuanced than "Make it supersized/deep fried in coke and add guns."

It's relatively simple actually, just purge everything about your country as it is now and wait a another 500 years or so and it'll be better before you know it.

yutterh posted...

America is the modern day rome. What sets america apart from every other nation though, is it's melting pot. The great thing about america is we are extremely diverse and multi culturaled. The american culture is it's constitution. It is what separates us from a lot of nations.

So you're saying the culture is great because you just stole all the fun bits of everyone else's and ironically ignore all the refinements and cultural struggles that created those facets over time? Better than nothing I guess, but not by much.

OhhhJa posted...

EvilMegas posted...

Hating blacks is the culture.

Someone's sure got a chip on their shoulder

But they're not entirely wrong.

Syntheticon posted...

yutterh posted...

America is the modern day rome. What sets america apart from every other nation though, is it's melting pot. The great thing about america is we are extremely diverse and multi culturaled. The american culture is it's constitution. It is what separates us from a lot of nations.

So you're saying the culture is great because you just stole all the fun bits of everyone else's and ironically ignore all the refinements and cultural struggles that created those facets over time? Better than nothing I guess, but not by much.

Well that's how rome did it. They are considered one of the most cultured nations. Rome just had longer to get it together. We in the culture preteens right now.
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TheCyborgNinja posted...

It has tons of culture, objectively. Not all positive, but to deny it is stupid.

That's actually a very good point. I've always found the important thing is to recognize the parts of your culture that aren't favorable and try to better yourselves as a nation-this is where America fails quite badly.

Syntheticon posted...

KevinceKostner posted...

When do we suddenly join the culture club?

When you have a culture that is more refined and nuanced than "Make it supersized/deep fried in coke and add guns."

It's relatively simple actually, just purge everything about your country as it is now and wait a another 500 years or so and it'll be better before you know it.

OhhhJa posted...

Someone's sure got a chip on their shoulder

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TallTamryu posted...

JanwayDaahl posted...

It does have a culture, but it's just a terribly plain, licentious and morally bankrupt one, hence why people consider americans to be generally uncultured.

Uncultured yet many of the US's "culture" is apart of many others' these days. You're all uncultured.

Found a trump voter; the US's "culture" isn't a part of many others'; it is the most powerful nation in the world, currently, and it naturally controls the flow of information and products, which give you the illusion that its culture is widespread.

shadowsword87 posted...

JanwayDaahl posted...

It does have a culture, but it's just a terribly plain, licentious and morally bankrupt one, hence why people consider americans to be generally uncultured.

It's considered plain because it literally is the lense that the rest of the world (or at least how America looks at other places). That says a lot about us too.

Remember, vanila is a flavor.

What "lens" are you even talking about here? I feel that you're conflating the aspects of first world countries with the culture of the United States.
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JanwayDaahl posted...

Found a trump voter

Wrong.
JanwayDaahl posted...

the US's "culture" isn't a part of many others'; it is the most powerful nation in the world, currently, and it naturally controls the flow of information and products, which give you the illusion that its culture is widespread.

Denial!
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Syntheticon posted...

KevinceKostner posted...

When do we suddenly join the culture club?

When you have a culture that is more refined and nuanced than "Make it supersized/deep fried in coke and add guns."

To be fair, nearly every nation on Earth can have its culture reduced to similar levels of simplicity.

In fact, Americans doing exactly that is one of the complaints dirty furriners have about Americans. But apparently it's perfectly acceptable when the door swings the other way.


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PO spitting fire. It's been a long time since I've seen a post on that level of quality around here.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

Syntheticon posted...

KevinceKostner posted...

When do we suddenly join the culture club?

When you have a culture that is more refined and nuanced than "Make it supersized/deep fried in coke and add guns."

To be fair, nearly every nation on Earth can have its culture reduced to similar levels of simplicity.

In fact, Americans doing exactly that is one of the complaints dirty furriners have about Americans. But apparently it's perfectly acceptable when the door swings the other way.

On that note, I think @Syntheticon should tell us which country (s)he's from.
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This is what I want to ask about the sense of American identity and heritage. For every American, there has to be a point where you if you trace your family's history in the United States back far enough, you reach Year Zero: the point when they first arrived as settlers or immigrants. For some of you, that might be half a dozen generations ago; for others, it might be only half a dozen years.

Do you feel that the whole of American history -- colonial, revolutionary, independent -- is your history? Or, if your family arrived in the US as recently as the 1930s (for example), do you feel that your "national" history as an American dates back only as far as your family's arrival and prior to that, your "national" history was not American but perhaps European?

I ask this because it's always seemed a little odd to me how people can adopt the entirety of their county's history as their own when their family arrived from a different country maybe only three or four generations ago. A sense of "roots" is a complex thing, I guess.
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I got modded for saying America hates black people. Like it's not a part of American history or something.
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Funkdamental posted...

This is what I want to ask about the sense of American identity and heritage. For every American, there has to be a point where you if you trace your family's history in the United States back far enough, you reach Year Zero: the point when they first arrived as settlers or immigrants. For some of you, that might be half a dozen generations ago; for others, it might be only half a dozen years.

Do you feel that the whole of American history -- colonial, revolutionary, independent -- is your history? Or, if your family arrived in the US as recently as the 1930s (for example), do you feel that your "national" history as an American dates back only as far as your family's arrival and prior to that, your "national" history was not American but perhaps European?

I ask this because it's always seemed a little odd to me how people can adopt the entirety of their county's history as their own when their family arrived from a different country maybe only three or four generations ago. A sense of "roots" is a complex thing, I guess.

That being the case no where has culture except Africa then.
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EvilMegas posted...

I got modded for saying America hates black people. Like it's not a part of American history or something.

Contest the moderation and tell them you're the Official King of Black People.
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EvilMegas posted...

That being the case no where has culture except Africa then.

I've no clue how you drew that inference from my post. I was simply asking Americans for their own personal perspective: their own sense of whether they felt their history could be traced all the way back to Philadelphia in 1776, or whether they felt they could instead trace it back to their immigrant ancestors' countries of origin in, say, 1776.

Let me ask you this: if you're a black American whose slave ancestors were brought on a ship to Virginia in 1825, do you see the history of the United States between 1776-1825 as your own? Or does your history between 1776-1825 lie somewhere on the coast of West Africa?
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If America had no culture, it'd be a clone of modern British, French, Mexican, and German ones depending what part you lived in.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

More like American culture is a fusion of dozens of different cultures all sort of bled into each other, in a sort of gestalt synergy that creates something new out of the elements of the old (which, honestly, is how most unique world cultures form - ie, a combination of stealing stuff from other people via trade routes and conquest balanced by the odd quirks you pick up in isolation).

And in what way has Japan not done the exact same thing?

You can't say "Japan stole their culture from the US", then use the exact same logic to say that the US didn't steal theirs, mostly from Europe, in the exact same way.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

It's the whole melting pot people used to love blathering on about before multiculturalism became the hip new trend and everybody decided they needed to keep their culture separate and scream about appropriation after taking an intro-level sociology class.

What you're describing here is not multiculturalism; what you're describing is one of the two twin threats to multiculturalism coming from each fringe of the spectrum (the far right thinks foreigners should stay the hell out and not pollute our sacred culture, while the far left thinks that partaking in, celebrating, or basically anything other than polite acknowledgement of another culture constitutes "appropriation" and thus should be avoided).

shadowsword87 posted...

It's considered plain because it literally is the lense that the rest of the world (or at least how America looks at other places). That says a lot about us too.

Yes - it says, as PO already pointed out, that the US is the most powerful nation in the world with the most developed media conglomerates. That doesn't prove that the culture is good or bad (or bland, as some have stated); simply that it is the most widespread by dint of its country's position atop the global power structure.
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Sarcasthma posted...

EvilMegas posted...

I got modded for saying America hates black people. Like it's not a part of American history or something.

Contest the moderation and tell them you're the Official King of Black People.

The dispute said you're generalizing the whole culture. And I'm being antagonizing by bring it up lol.

These motherfuckers are acting like Slavery didn't happen.
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EvilMegas posted...

Sarcasthma posted...

EvilMegas posted...

I got modded for saying America hates black people. Like it's not a part of American history or something.

Contest the moderation and tell them you're the Official King of Black People.

The dispute said you're generalizing the whole culture. And I'm being antagonizing by bring it up lol.

These motherfuckers are acting like Slavery didn't happen.

Are you gonna pretend you didn't put it in the most offensive way possible? And no I didn't report you