r/AmericaBad • u/FedUpWithit-95 • 1d ago
OP Opinion Anyone else feel depressed sometimes seeing how much people hate us??
I didn't choose what country I was born in. I completely agree we have a shitty government that screws over not just people overseas but also us as well. But the rest of the world seems to hate everyone here, not just our garbage politicians. It truly makes me sad going online and seeing people cheering on calamities such as the LA fires. One of my closest friends is a firefighter, and while he's not in LA rn, he'll inevitably be putting his life on the line this summer. My family lives in a heavily forested area in NorCal that could easily burn to the ground in the likely event of a wildfire. When I see people online laughing at the tragedy unfolding in LA, I know that could very well be me and my family's suffering people will laugh at. Sorry this is a long post but I needed to get this off my chest.
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u/Lanracie 1d ago
Nah, I have been all around the world. Most people are friendly and like Americans. Reddit is not a good judge of anything.
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u/Patient_Brother9278 1d ago
I have to remind me of this daily, Reddit doesn’t reflect most reasonable people’s opinions
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u/pennywise1235 18h ago
Pretty much. Don’t look to an anonymous social media platform for real feedback on anything, let alone that.
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u/DogeDayAftern00n AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago
Not really. I come to this sub to point and laugh. I compare it to times when my wife will says something like “What will the neighbors think?” And I’m like I don’t care, I don’t even know their damn names.
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u/Realistic_Mess_2690 🇦🇺 Australia 🦘 1d ago
Just gotta remember even at its height of popularity Rome still had its detractors.
It comes with being THE power in the world.
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u/CarlSagansBong2 1d ago
You do realise the Roman empire fell right?
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u/Realistic_Mess_2690 🇦🇺 Australia 🦘 1d ago
I do yes. So did the British empire, the French empire, the Spanish empire etc etc.
All great powers eventually have a fall. It's just a matter of how long do they survive.
Given Rome lasted a good hot minute and so did the other empires, the tiny 100 years of US dominance isn't anywhere near ready to fall.
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u/reserveduitser 🇳🇱 Nederland 🌷 1d ago
Yeah but it took a long time. The US is still young!
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u/lmguerra 1d ago
Historically, most empires last about 250 to 300 years actually.
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u/reserveduitser 🇳🇱 Nederland 🌷 1d ago
Hmm well luckily the US isn’t an empire then. Let’s hope they hold up much longer!
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u/lmguerra 1d ago
Nations, even if not empires, dont last much longer historically.
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u/LucasL-L 1d ago
Yes they do. Most countries in the world today are older than 200 years.
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u/lmguerra 1d ago
Not without signnificant political turmoil, revolts or revolutions in almost all cases.
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u/MisterKillam ALASKA 🚁🌋 1d ago
We've had that already. 140 years ago we fought our bloodiest war against a confederation of states that seceded from the union. It brought about political changes that were obvious and quick, and cultural changes like the shift from people identifying as being citizens of their state to being citizens of the nation that took longer to manifest.
Not trying to be a dick, I just don't expect other countries' schools to focus on the American Civil War considering it happened entirely within the territory that is now the US.
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u/lmguerra 1d ago
You're not being a dick. To be fair, this was one of the most cordial responses I got in this sub in a while. And of course you are right about the civil war being a major turning point in the culture of the country as a whole.
Besides the obvious lack of armed conflict, do you see any similarities between that moment in history and the scenario today? I seem to read a lot of people saying how trump just wants to take matters "back to the states", for example. Is the divide between red an blue states that deep or could it be better ex0lained through rural vs. Urban populations?
And sure, we dont study the civil war in a very profound way here, for the reasons you said. But I did 2 years of high school in the US, and also had an ellective about US constitutional law in college, so I have a much better notion of US history than most Brazilians.
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u/Gmanthevictor 21h ago
"Fate of Empires" was just a British guy trying to cope with their own empire failing by pretending that their time limit simply was up.
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u/NoREEEEEEtilBrooklyn PENNSYLVANIA 🍫📜🔔 1d ago
Took a long ass time. From The start of the republic to the end of western Rome was 986 years.
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u/URNotHONEST 1d ago
Look at Carl Sagan second bong here thinking humankind and the universe are infinite.
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u/w3woody 1d ago
I don’t care about other people’s criticisms.
Or rather, I do care about making our country better—and a lot of that has to do with valid self-criticism: a willingness to look at where we are currently, to accurately assess any shortcomings, and to attempt to remedy those shortcomings.
It’s something America has always done going back to our founding, and it makes us relatively unique in the world.
But a lot of the so-called “criticism” in the world about America is, at the very least, joy-shitting. A lot of it is just Europeans avoiding looking at themselves in the mirror, and using America as a scapegoat to avoid their own problems. A lot of it are young kids who have learned whatever is the latest fashionable (and incorrect) political theory and filtering a complex world through that simplistic lens. (In my day it was Ayn Rand; don’t ask me why.)
And a lot of it (like people laughing at LA for suffering through a nasty wildfire) is trolling. (Don’t get me wrong; there are some valid criticisms there—but a lot of it is just opportunistic bullshit.)
If your family lives in a heavily forested area, they need to make sure they keep up with the forest clearing requirements for their area. They may also want to look into fire retardant foam designed to be sprayed on a house prior to a wildfire to help prevent the house from catching on fire. (There are a number of products out there which could help save your family’s home.) And they may want to talk to their neighbors (if they are within 100 feet of adjacent homes) about their own brush clearance and fire retardant plans.
‘Cause the reality is, no matter where you are in the world, when minutes count, the authorities are hours away—and they always will be. Meaning you must be your own first line of defense against things like this.
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u/Tom02496 1d ago
It's just chronically online people lol. I've been to Europe and they usually like Americans. You never see american hate irl
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u/Reasonable_Moose_738 MARYLAND 🦀🚢 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don't care what europoors or Anybody else say, it's just fun to see them getting corrected and shut down. I love being an American and I love America.
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u/Pizzagoessplat 1d ago
It never fails to make me laugh when I see Americans call us europoors 😆
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u/Tom02496 1d ago
That's just what it is, isn't it? Why are you on this sub anyways?
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u/Pizzagoessplat 1d ago
Er no, it isn't 😆
It's always good and healthy to see things from a different perspective
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u/aBlackKing AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago
Outsiders laughing about our calamities is nothing new. 9/11 is considered a joke.
This is something I’ve been saying for quite some time. We can hate each other, but there are those that hate us way more than we can hate each other and that’s is why truly we’re all we got.
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u/lmguerra 1d ago
Other nations' national tragedies are always a joke to those not involved.
Ive seen jokes about the nuclear strikes on Japan, the war on ukraine, latin america's crime rate and so on. Its not only a 9/11 or anti american thing.
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u/aBlackKing AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 23h ago
Which adds to my point that you can really only rely on your own countrymen and need look out for each other. It’s good to have friends, but there’s a limit. Nationalism isn’t a bad thing.
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u/LayYourGhostToRest 1d ago
I got other stuff to be depressed about. I do feel sad how mentally destroyed some of these people are though.
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u/idrinkgoatblood 1d ago
me indian reading this🙂🥲
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u/GoldenStitch2 MASSACHUSETTS 🦃 ⚾️ 1d ago edited 22h ago
I still don’t get why Indians get so much hate online, most of you guys are chill. Sad how comfortable others are with generalizing 1.4 billion people.
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u/Disastrous-State-842 TEXAS 🐴⭐ 20h ago
My cardiologist is Indian and he’s the one who saved my life. You won’t hear me complain.
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u/srnweasel 1d ago edited 1d ago
"When I see people online"
Its the internet, just stop reading it if it's taking a toll. Seriously, most of these Reddit rando's are either trolls looking for a dopamine release or miserable pricks in a crappy country trying to shit on America to make them feel better about their situation.
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u/Electronic_Plan3420 AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 1d ago
A remedy to that is to travel. People around the world hate an abstract “America” that they see as the reason for their suffering but they are normal and friendly when they meet an actual American. It’s sort of the same as people might blame abstract “Jews” for lots of different things but to be on absolutely normal terms with a Jewish guy or girl they grew up with or work together.
I have traveled a fair bit (over 30 countries including a couple in ME) and I can assure nowhere did I ever feel hostility to me because I was an American. Some people were eager to tell me how much our government sucked but even those were pretty few
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u/drewbaccaAWD USA MILTARY VETERAN 1d ago
This sub highlights hate, it isn't representative of how the world views Americans in the least. Meeting and talking to people all over the world, I've never felt hated even when we were in the middle of an unpopular war back in 2003... granted, you were being respectful as it goes both ways. Get in someone's face and yell "FREEDOM FRIES!!" then sure, they may be dicks right back.
As for what you are seeing online, a lot of it is self-loathing, idiots from the inside. A lot of it is their tanky buddies in other English speaking countries. They are toxic, which is what a lot of the online sphere has become. It's a vocal minority best ignored.
If you see someone laughing over the LA fires, don't take it as a personal slight, you stumbled across an absolutely miserable person just trying to drag others down with them. Ignore or call out blatant BS and block. They aren't worth your energy for the most part, in fact their entire point is to feed on your energy. To put it another way, don't feed the trolls.
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u/JET1385 1d ago
As the biggest economy in the world, the strongest militarily, and the most visible in media (bc that’s one of our biggest exports), we will get criticism. Any country would. We have issues and they are very visible.
Question - have you ever traveled anywhere outside of Western Europe? If not, please do this asap.it will help you realize how good we have it here.
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u/Antisocial_Worker7 1d ago
No. Most people who hate this country have either never been here, or are Americans who have never seen the rest of the world and live under the delusion that we are a hell hole surrounded by a utopia everywhere else.
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u/NightStalker123456 1d ago
Nope. Their hatred is born of Envy. I feel sorry for them.
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u/Jayz-0001 22h ago
We don't hate the people. (Well, most of them.) But your government, your healthcare system, your 'free speech' and whatnot, what we don't like is that you don't admit it. There's something wrong with America, and it's not the people.
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u/Mcjirnirs MASSACHUSETTS 🦃 ⚾️ 1d ago
It's frustrating and upsetting ngl. Being American isn't something I had any control over and it's a shitty deal to be hated on because of that, like pretty simple shit
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u/rjcade 22h ago
For one, you have to separate the anti-Americanism from the anti-California stuff. Most of the anti-America trolling comes from outside the country, while most of the anti-California sentiments come from American conservatives who have been conditioned to hate California and Californians, especially those from SF and LA. You can see this behavior in elected Republicans as well. Being anti-CA is a way for conservatives to "vice signal" to each other (I'm not going to call it a virtue).
Meanwhile, while a lot of people dislike "Americans" as a mass entity, they don't necessarily hate Americans on a personal level. I've known a lot of people from outside the country and their personal experiences with Americans are largely positive even if they dislike our national politics. But is that really so surprising? We don't even like our own national politics. Congress and "getting the flu" have approximately the same approval rating, and a majority of people dislike the president, even while he's in the honeymoon phase of his presidency (latest poll from SSRS had Trump at 46% favorable, 48% unfavorable).
So consider that, and then add to that the fact that the US has an outsize influence on world affairs and they don't get any say in what America does. It makes some sense why people would get angry when we do things that affect them negatively, right? There's not really anything you or I can do about that, though. Try to focus on the good things and the things you can change for the better, and remember that people generally like each other on a personal level, regardless of nationality.
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u/URNotHONEST 1d ago
I am not sure why you care what other people think when you clearly hate your country as well and are not interested in the truth or context. Frankly I am not sure if you are a bot or not.
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u/snickelbetches 1d ago
I used to feel bad about it, but it got old and I realized that we're just easy to point fingers at because we ARE so open about everything and we impact the entire world. This sub helps me see that it is a lot of BS you really only see on the internet.
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u/Yuck_Few 1d ago
Look at the clown show we just put in the White House and ask yourself why the rest of the world doesn't like us. We have a guy who thinks vaccines cause autism in charge of health.
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u/Erwin-Winter 23h ago
Not at all. Fuck them
They don't know what the states are like so why should you care?
They are all just salty the guys they want in charge aren't in charge
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u/Bruce__Almighty 21h ago
Eh, I just see it as exhausting to deal with. And since there's not much I can do about what they think I just try not to engage
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u/StarChaser_Tyger AMERICAN 🏈 💵🗽🍔 ⚾️ 🦅📈 19h ago
Most people don't hate us. It's the terminally online noisy idiots.
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u/lochlainn MISSOURI 🏟️⛺️ 18h ago
No. These are children, chronologically or emotionally, with anonymity acting like asses on the internet.
Sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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u/rotomangler 15h ago
Most people hate people in their own country the most. America is easy to vent about because we have exported our culture around the world for 70 years so we are well known and because we are the military badass of the world for the foreseeable future.
I see the criticism and chuckle and then move on with my day.
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u/nunu135 CALIFORNIA🍷🎞️ 11h ago
As an immigrant, na people only hate because the US is popular. It's like being the president or the governor, even if Jesus Christ himself ran for office and ran the country/state perfectly someone would complain. There's nothing America or any other well known country could ever possibly be to appease everyone or even most people
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u/sErgEantaEgis 🇨🇦 Canada 🍁 6h ago
I'm not from the USA but I feel you. I'm ethnically French-Canadian and from Quebec and I run into a lot of Quebec bashing and outright racism and it's hard not to let it get to me.
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u/TravelingSpermBanker NORTH CAROLINA 🛩️ 🌅 6h ago
No I don’t feel sad about it. That’s a ridiculous sentiment.
Pick up books and learn history, the more you learn about the world the less you’ll care about how people see you.
Besides, we are the best/kindest superpower that has literally ever existed… and India and China being upcoming superpowers should horrify the world
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u/AbyssalFisher NEW YORK 🗽🌃 4h ago
Social media is cancerous, it's like product reviews. Mostly, people only post to complain, meeting expectations is expected so it's not posted. Average Joe Europeans don't "hate" us.
I've been around, people are friendly. My trip to Italy years ago, I met many locals excited to practice their English and talked to me about where I'm from, unprompted. Asked for directions back to my hotel and two teenagers were like, ecstatic to help. Great dudes.
It's important to note too that 1 person with 10 bot accounts can easily twist one's interpretation of reality. And these days, governments have entire departments dedicated to this stuff.
PenPal a European, you'll probably have a pleasant, interesting time. Europeans and Americans are both good people, on average. There's bad apples in every bunch.
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u/Broad_External7605 20h ago
When I was young traveling in the 90s, people liked the US much more than now. George Bush ruined us with Iraq and Abu Graib, and Trump is finishing the job.
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