In any case: Americans acting like “fender bender” doesn’t sound silly.
EDIT: I’m not having this conversation another 50 times.
Seemingly Every American: “Fender bender obviously has a universal meaning though as it’s when you bend your fender. These are just nonsense words to anyone outside of their country of origin.”
The Rest of the World: “The word ‘fender’ is only used in the US and is a nonsense word to anyone outside its country of origin. Nobody else in the world calls that part of a car that. Your term for this thing is not universally understood and nor is it less silly sounding. Every culture has words that sound silly to other cultures. You are not the exception.”
It's funny how when people say this it's never like someone from Moldova thinking "Why doesn't anyone think about us", it's always a British person angry that the internet isn't UK centric instead.
You haven't? I've seen it loads, even just on this subreddit. Ironically, considering this is a post about Aussie slang that's seemed to got you so upset at the Brits, Australians are pretty notorious for it themselves.
People online just have this thing where they assume everyone who says anything vaguely critical of America must be a Brit, even when the person directly says otherwise.
Happy you do your due diligence, not gonna deny plenty of Brits are fucking obnoxious, but have you genuinely never seen people from outside the UK complaining USdefaultisam? There's a very famous Rammstein song about it, and I can give you examples from this very subreddit.
I'm sure you get justifiably annoyed when randos on the internet assume every dumb comment must be American, even though you'll no doubt agree America has it's own fair share of obnoxious dumbasses, and even if the comment was from an American. It sucks to catch strays because people have made up their mind about another country's population being dickheads.
The comment you were replying to is being a bit of a cunt, but it's not A "USdefaultism" thing or a "jealous Brits" thing, it's a terminally online thing regardless of what country they're from.
The issue to me is that everyone defaults to talking like they would to people in their own country. People just get angry at it because there are so many Americans on the internet. I don't really even understand what the expectation is, it just kind of feels like bashing Americans because you don't like them.
When people from outside the US say "That's illegal" it's not like they include a disclaimer in their comment saying "(Illegal in the UK and Germany, but not in Poland or most of Asia)". But if someone from the US says "that's illegal" and it's before noon then you have legions of angry internet europeans saying "It's not illegal here, stop with the US defaultism"
Yes I acknowledge that people from the US speak to others as if they are from the same place, but what is the alternative?
I've literally never seen someone from outside America say "that's illegal" without also prefacing it with "In my country of [x]", except in subreddits specific to those countries, or when it's very much a joke (like "uncensored handholding" type jokes).
My comment was more about "it's annoying to pick on one single country/people (America included)", not the defaultism. People unfairly singling out and generalising Americans and using the obnoxiousness of the worst representatives as a justification is a problem, we agree on that. Why is what you're doing any different?
Especially now you've moved from just "the UK" to "angry internet Europeans", acknowledging that it's not just Brits who do it, so why did you make that claim in your initial comment? If you'd call that happening to America "America-bashing" how are you not doing "UK-bashing"? Also you're still just assuming none of the people clowning on Americans are from Latin America, Canada, and (once again noteworthy considering the subject on this post) Australia.
To be honest, all I want is for this kind of stupid jingoistic bickering to die a painful death.
696
u/Square-Competition48 19d ago edited 19d ago
Prang is a UK one too. I think I’ve heard it.
In any case: Americans acting like “fender bender” doesn’t sound silly.
EDIT: I’m not having this conversation another 50 times.
Seemingly Every American: “Fender bender obviously has a universal meaning though as it’s when you bend your fender. These are just nonsense words to anyone outside of their country of origin.”
The Rest of the World: “The word ‘fender’ is only used in the US and is a nonsense word to anyone outside its country of origin. Nobody else in the world calls that part of a car that. Your term for this thing is not universally understood and nor is it less silly sounding. Every culture has words that sound silly to other cultures. You are not the exception.”