#leave it to me to overanalyse sth that is not that deep

[kikishead]

I can't just leave it at this I need to rant a little.

Like this discussion is so black and white, and everyone completely ignores the fact that the others' experiences may be just as valid. This is my personal view on it from my personal experience.

As a European, I get that it is frustrating to constantly be bombarded with American things. Like American movies, songs, books, political discussions, and news. And America has so much power over other countries, including European ones. Our lifes are often centred around America, especially when you're on english speaking social media. And American imperialism is a very real thing. The US is almost the only country that has actual cultural power over Europe.

So europeans, especially those who are not used to another country having cultural power over them, will feel threatened. And that's one reason why europeans hate on Americans so much. Because they treat us the way we treat other countries.

And americans saying "Oh you want to be us so bad, and that's why you're hating" is kinda stupid. Like, no, we just get America shoved down our throats.

But another reason for europeans hating on America is that europeans tend to think that we're better and more humane than everyone else. (I know very ironic considering what we did and still do to the rest of the world) When we hate on America, we can openly show this false belief of superiority without being called out for being racist/xenophobic/just straight up assholes bc "look at America with all of their problems and their whole "America first" spiel ofc you're not a dick for making fun of them". Ofc that does not apply to all europeans but to some.

But to be honest, we're often not any better than Americans. Racism is just as big of an issue in europe as it is in America, the way we treat people trying to find refuge in europe is just as bad as the way America treats Mexican people on their border and we suck at geography just as much with the only exception that we know Europe's and northamericas geography (not even the whole of europe). (I mean, it is a stereotype that Americans can't even point out the continents, and I guess most europeans can do that, but still). Europeans like to complain that Americans treat europe as a playground or that they generalise us, but we do the same thing to Africa and asia. And quite a lot of Americans seem to be ignorant of how much power their country has over other countries and stuff, but I can't really blame them. I mean europeans are often ignorant of how much influence europe has. If Americans only saw the stupid and entitled europeans, they would think that we're fcking idiots too. (And there are a lot of Americans who think that about Europeans, which is fair tbh)

Like I mentioned in the beginning, there is a very strong focus on America in europe. And this is one of the reasons why europeans hate on Americans so much.

However hating on America won't divert that focus back to our own countries. If anything, it will make our focus on America way stronger, and we often ignore the problems in our own countries bc of that. An example of that is when the black lives matter movement became very big in 2020. I saw so many comments of european people who were like, "Oh yeah racism in America is such a big issue, but why are there black lives matter protests here in Germany? Like we're not as racist as racist as them." And there are so many things to criticise about comments like that, but I won't get into that right now. They just show how the focus on American society and politics makes us blind to our own. But also europeans use that. When they support the black lives matter movement in America, they can label themselves as antiracist, without actually doing the same amount of work a white American antiracist has to do bc they don't have to question their own society and culture as long as they focus on racism in America. This is not necessarily something europeans do consciously bc as I mentioned before , we often get introduced to blm and other social justice movements by Americans on social media, so we automatically get a very American perspective on these things. meaning we know how racism is part of the dominant American culture but if we don't do the work to research on the history in our own countries ( or find creators from our own countries who talk about racism in our country) we are ignorant to how racism is part of the culture of our country. But a lot of europeans choose to be ignorant of racism in europe in the same way a lot of white Americans choose to be ignorant of racism in America. But this is just one example.

Like I said before, the focus on American issues leads to (sometimes willful) ignorance towards the issues that are going on in ones own country. But it also leads to people automatically applying American social issues (and their complex cultural details) to their own country. For example, when I look at discussions about feminism in Germany, a lot of times, American statistics are used. Meaning they take a study that was conducted in America with American test subjects and apply it to Germany. There are some studies that were made in Germany (I guess) but they are not well known and not used a lot in discussions about sexism and other social and cultural issues. While the dominant American and dominant German culture have some similarities they are not the same. The same study may have different results in Germany than in America. And we need studies that have been done in Germany to get an idea of problems in Germany. Also there may be some problems in Germany that don't exist in America or that don't exist in the same way in America.

So to summarize: America has power over Europe (American imperialism). Europeans hate on and make fun of Americans bc we constantly get American stuff showed down our throats, we get to feel superior to them without being called out for being racist/xenophobic. Europe is not that much better than America. We're lowkey just pissed bc America treats us the way we treat other countries and continents. The focus on America does not get less from us hating on and making fun of them. The focus on America leads to ignorance regarding social issues in europe.

Some last notes: I probably overanalysed this, but it lowkey got from making fun of one another to straight-up fighting, so maybe it's warranted. We should just start being able to recognise that both Europe and America are shit in a lot of ways and allow ourselves to laugh at jokes about our countries that are not crossing a line (like making fun of mass shootings and stuff like that will never sit right for me). English is obviously my second language, and I have not written a text this long in English since I graduated high school, which was last year, so if this is a complete mess, I am sorry. I tried to organise my thoughts a little bit and tumblr corrected some grammar mistakes and stuff, but idk how well that worked out.

Honestly this whole thing of europeans hating on Americans and Americans hating on Europeans and getting mad about Europeans hating on Americans and then Europeans being pissed that Americans are mad about them hating on America is so weird to me.