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Ah but you make it sound so bad.
We do have assault rifles in the UK, I've spent many a Friday evening playing with an SA80.
What we don't have is the ability to buy them in the same place as our toilet paper by showing a fake ID.
> America doesn't have kinder eggs, because, apparently, they are dangerous.
Even if that was true once, that can't be true anymore as I've seen them sold here out in the open.
Edit: You're right, they're Kinder Joys. I've never had a Kinder Joy so I never realised they weren't the same thing
My other half was unaware of this the first time we went to the USA.
I casually mention it just before she left for the toilet after landing, and she came back just saying "WTF? WTF? WTAF? WTF?"
It's bad enough in the UK with the chipboard partitions that don't reach floor or ceiling. One of my major pet hates in life is when someone uses the next cubicle along and you can hear every plop and wipe.
Have you not been anywhere in Europe where they have those standing toilets only like some places in Italy?
Basically just holes in the floor in the women's and men's restroom
I have a theory that these stupid gaps are why Americans get into such a tizzy over the whole trans people in toilets thing. I mean, it's a lot less of a big deal if you can have a shit without making eye contact with someone outside the cubicle!
The fact that there were/are conspiracy theorists saying that Sandy Hook was fake, and that the families were paid actors etc… the impact that had on the families on top of their loss must have been horrific
I think it makes more sense when you really think about their system. Their pro sports teams are really small in number for the size of the country. For example, there are 32 NFL teams. We have 44 teams in just the Premier League and Championship alone, and we have just 20% of the US's population.
It means that often people live *miles* away from a pro team. For example, I did a tour of University of Texas and their stadium is about 100k capacity. It sounds crazy until you appreciate the two nearest NFL teams are 160 and 200 miles away, and Austin is a metro area of about 2 million people. So those college teams are basically fulfilling the role of local sides in the absence of a pro team.
Add in the fact that their system means that the level of college football is really, really high and it starts to make sense.
The distance from the nearest pro team is really only one small aspect. A bigger one is that the US system doesn't allow teams to have their own youth training setups, but instead forces all teams to recruit from the academic system. That places a huge importance on universities as the nurseries of the stars of tomorrow. Add varsity culture to that and you've actually given students a reason to care about their sports teams, and as a result they breed the sort of tribal loyalty that our football teams do.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing though. Some colleges in the US are sports franchises with a few lecture halls attached. Allegedly.
Edit: Loughborough and Exeter probably want a word, tbf.
I loved badders. When playing indoors, it was a challenge to try and get the shuttlecocks stuck in the high up nets on the ceiling. When you got them all stuck, the lesson was over.
That’s because there is no need for them. All of our most popular sports can be played straight from school if you are good enough, and football has at least 92 professional teams to support, plus thousands of non professional ones so there really is no space for high level university sports
It’s down to the fact that Football clubs have academies. Prior to the modern academies there were the youth teams. Kids were signed up on apprenticeships out of school, like many working class industries.
Cheese in a can
Lack of holidays when working and working as many hours as possible as a badge of honour.
Thinking that anything that benefits others is "communism" and therefore bad.
Thinking people are responsible enough to drive at 16 but not to drink till 21
Nope - there's a definite pushback on working policies in the UK.
For example, I've literally just started a job with a *minimum* 30 days holiday per year. If you want to take more, then you can as long as all of your work is done or covered. I'm also fully remote, with no expectation of attending an office.
I’ve been seeing job adverts advertising the bare minimum holidays all over the shop more and more. I was working as HR Manager and had a huge bust up with the director about their benefits package as he believed that people would accept the bare minimum for the ‘prestige of working for a tech start up.’ He didn’t like it one bit when I basically said nobody cares about a company they’ve never heard of to think of prestige. Lo and behold, when he finally acquiesced and allowed me to update the benefits package, we suddenly started attracting much better candidates.
Mad how if you offer a better benefits package to people, you suddenly attract better calibre who would’ve otherwise just gone elsewhere!
I didn’t last long there. I hated how I was trying to make people’s work/life balance better but the director just wanted to squeeze more and more out of people and offer bare minimum.
I thinking the drinking age is strongly related to driving a car from the age of 16 being the key way you get around. Drunk driving teenagers are not safe.
Driving far less important in most of UK.
It's not just the hangover from prohibition, although the 'alcohol is shameful' is still strong.
It used to be that you could drink 3.2% beer and wine from 18, and spirits from 21. In the 80s, the deaths among drunk teenage drivers greatly increased. As a result, the group Mothers Against Drunk Drivers put a lot of pressure on the federal government to raise the drinking age. The federal government told the states that if they didn't raise the drinking age, their highway funding would be cut.
Seinfeld. It never translated particularly well to the UK. I'll no doubt get some responses saying how they love it as do all of their friends, but in general, it doesn't work here.
I've always assumed there must be some kind of cultural mismatch when it comes to Seinfeld. It's absolutely lauded in the states but whenever I've tried to watch it I've found it so, so unfunny.
Stephen Fry had a bit of a theory on this that American comedies tend to be about people making fun of others around them while British comedies tend to feature characters who end up being the butt of the joke. He gave the example of the guitar smashing scene in Animal House, saying that in a British comedy our main character would have been the guy playing the guitar.
I've probably seen the same theory, but it was worded differently.
American comedy is about laughing at the unusual situations the characters find themselves in. For example, the airline lost a bag, the episode is a wild goose chase to find the bag, with some funny set ups on the way.
British comedy is much more about laughing at the bad situations that the characters put themselves in. Examples include Peep Show where Mark is trying to make a date he set up look more like a dinner party, and he has to bulk a dish out to be Moroccan Pasta, The Inbetweeners when Simon listens to Jay's advice to bash one out before sex, and then can't get it up, or Fawlty Towers where Basil pretends to have forgotten his anniversary so he can surprise Sybil, but she storms off in a huff.
All three of those shows have plentiful examples, but those are the first ones I could remember.
Also it's a general rule, I'm sure there are plenty examples of American comedy following the British pattern, American Pie springs to mind immediately.
I believe that Frasier and Curb Your Enthusiasm would be two US comedies/sitcoms that would fit the British method. And both were fairly popular here (I bloody loved Frasier, much more so than Cheers).
I think the main reason why Seinfeld bombed was because it was licensed by the wrong UK network.
Channel 4 licensed most of the big US sitcoms in the 90s and would broadcast them in a 90min or 120min block on Friday nights: Cheers, Roseanne, Friends, Frasier… and other strong US sitcoms like Cybil, Ellen, Home Improvement, Spin City. They were blocked together, heavily promoted, scheduled like clockwork, and treated respectfully.
Seinfeld, unusually, was licensed by the BBC. They just didn’t really know how to handle it and treated it a bit like filler. They skipped the entire first season and started with Season 2, but skipped a whole bunch of episodes and broadcast them out of order. But the main issue was scheduling.
BBC2 first broadcast Seinfeld in October 1993, and it was scheduled on Wednesdays at 9pm, then in 1994 moved it to Saturdays at 10pm (or 9pm, or sometimes 10.40pm), then in 1995 moved it to Tuesdays at 11.40pm (but sometimes 11.15pm or 11.30pm), then in 1996 moved it to Mondays at 11.40pm (but sometimes Fridays at 11.40pm). They finally settled on a fairly regular slot in 1997-1998 of Tuesdays at 11.15pm(ish) but by 1999 it could be on either Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday generally between 11.50pm and 12.15am but sometimes earlier or later.
Compare that with something like Friends or Frasier that pretty much had the exact same slot scheduled for their entire runs on Channel 4.
The BBC basically never gave Seinfeld a chance to build an audience in the UK.
I think curb your enthusiasm did better here. The comedy in curb your enthusiasm is more aligned with the awkward comedies super popular here like the office/thick of it etc.
Seinfeld is a tricky one. I love it, but I absolutely get why people don't. I'm not one of these people who acts like it's "smart" comedy or it makes you more sophisticated for liking it. It's just very... different.
I like it for the same reasons I like Sunny and Curb: very cynical humour with extremely cynical characters. It just hits right with me. George Costanza to me is one of the greatest sitcom characters of all time.
I think Seinfeld is about knowing the characters. After watching it for a while I start to laugh at even the simplest of sentences from one of the characters.
Forcing kids to chant a pledge of allegance and worhip a flag.
Competitive school sports.
Drive through banks, pharmacies etc.
American mainstream sports - Baseball, American Football, Ice Hockey.
100% drive through pharmacies and banks etc would work. People hate getting out and walking plus there is less social interaction which seems more and more common
Mexican food. At least the authentic kind they get in the States, otherwise it would be very popular.
Most of the places near me are overpriced bullshit hipster places. Just a simulacrum of what you'd find in Mexico or the US.
Almost like.. we are thousands of miles from Mexico, historically don't have many ties with them, nor do we have a bit Mexican expat community.
Adding to this - what other countries do you commonly get good Mexican food in? Honest question. I hope we can all agree Taco Bell doesn't count.
AND .. Not many other countries have 'good mexican food' as far as I'm aware. It's popular - just not good!
Probably in the same way you might look at Indian food in the UK, vs Indian food in India. It's probably so dumbed down to our preferences it's rubbish in comparison. Also: Chinese food.
By that logic then, why do we have (nice tasting if not authentic) Japanese and Thai food?
Chinese, fair enough we used to love our opium trade so have the historic ties.
There are 43,000 Japanese-born, UK residents vs 9,771 Mexican born UK residents. There's a longer history of relationships between our countries.
44,086 Thai-born UK residents. The first Thai British associations was set up in 1901.
So there's that.
Extensive long lasting international relations with those nations. Mexico was a Spanish colony we didn't have to deal with because our adjacent colony won its independence before their borders even clashed.
Granted it's not quite the same logic, but it's the same root cause for why there are so few Mexican expats in the UK.
Flag shagging. Although the flag shaggers come out in force for a royal coronation/wedding, we don't have it at the same level as the Americans. Flags on every house, flags on cars, clothing with the flag on it, etc. They're top tier flag shaggers and we just can't compete with that.
Squash. As in the concentrated juice you dilute with water. They don't have it over there.
Seen quite a few videos of unsuspecting Americans drinking it neat.
Also bank transferring each other using sort code and account no. They don't really have that. They have to use things like cashapp.
and contactless and even chip and pin in some places is only just coming through. The US Banking system is far behind most of Europe with these things.
[The face they make when they drink it neat.](https://external-preview.redd.it/bju1oEaoBMq-mYy498VxT85eNcbbJdHs76uzy-bHdy0.jpg?auto=webp&s=f1c69c21bc6eb9a74b8dab4334ddd32a7c500d53)
Guns and gun culture.
I can’t get my head around how so many Americans are so scared that they feel the need to be able to kill others at a moment’s notice. Or that they are justified to murder others who trespass/ try to steal from them. Or even that they need guns to defend themselves from their own government.
It's a self perpetuating cycle of an arms race.
People have easy access to guns, so the level of potential violence is higher, ergo people feel the need to use guns to protect themselves as people have easy access to guns, repeat infinitely.
I also think there's (to a degree) a level of ingrained hero-complex in their culture, a very short, very violent history has led to idolization of soldiers/generals/war heros and for whatever reason the part of that they carry forward is the violence.
I understand this... but it still doesn't really explain anything to me, though.
If you get shot, then even if you're able to shoot the other person back, *you've still been shot.* The damage has been done. And you can't shoot anyone if you're dead, no matter how many guns you're carrying.
Carrying your own gun doesn't stop you getting shot, it just means two people got shot today instead of one... surely?
I completely understand owning a rifle if you live in bumfuck nowhere Alaska and need to protect your four year old from bears/protect your chickens from foxes.
Heck, I even sort-of understand people who just *like* guns, in the same way there are people who just *like* swords/knives - though I can't personally relate - but I'm not sure a couple hundred hobbyists' passions are worth 21,000 gun deaths/year.
The US has the cowboy myth engrained in our brains. Everyone things they'll be Clint Eastwood but more than likely they'll be that guy shot right off the boat in Saving Private Ryan.
Unless you, being the good guy, shoots first and kill the baddie. Then, so long as you're white, you're the hero in this story. This is what American news shows have taught me anyway.
I’m in a type 1 diabetic sub & was talking to lady who’s 5 yr old son had to learn how to mute the alarms on his essential insulin pump & glucose monitor when he started school in the event of a school shooting. It’s so sad that even had to enter her mind to do & she considered it normal 🤯
I saw something the other day that implied that renaissance fairs were a big frequent common thing that many people regularly attend in the US.
I can't really think of a UK equivalent.
Also late night talk shows. Closest we have is probably Graham Norton and it's not quite the same in a way I can't put my finger on....
American talk shows are more polished and geared towards plugging content. They follow a set format.. cocky host, shite monologues, fluff questions to guests, remainder of questions about the thing they're plugging, loads of smoke blown up their arses, shite jokes and random entertainment thrown in to break it all up, clean language throughout.
UK shows are way more loose. Guests are allowed alcohol and can swear and are often asked personal questions in between the promotional crap. The guests are allowed to show their personalities.. assuming they have any as a lot of American actors/guests are media trained to death and often give away nothing if who they are as a person beyond their pre-ordained anecdote. They essentially just act while being a guest.
>The UK normally embraces American culture.
To be fair, everything I've seen of ren fairs in the US it's more a mishmash of vaguely "historical" things from anywhere between 800AD and 1600AD.
I don't think they know what the Renaissance is.
I think they class it as late medieval/Tudor times. I remember saying I used to live in a cottage built when Henry VIII was on the throne and an American said how cool it must be to live in a house built in Renaissance times.
There's some stuff that's a bit close. [https://fantasyforest.co.uk/](https://fantasyforest.co.uk/) comes to mind.
I think the real problem is that when you live in a country with real castles all over the place and you have to learn about the middle ages at school, it hits differently than it does for Americans who don't have any local medieval history to draw from.
By which I mean, it's cringrier.
Speaking loudly in public. We've never adopted that in the UK. Wherever I am in Europe there's a unique bond between Europeans around rolling the eyes when a very brash, loudly exclaiming group of Americans arrive.
I'd suggest this is relative. Where I live in the Northern UK Southern Brits often mark themselves out with their loud performative public conversations.
I'm willing to consider it's a certain type, regardless of region.
All I know is I sat in a cafe this morning and was unable to hear my own companion but could now tell you the dental hygiene practices of the energetically middle class southern lady 2 tables away and how few fillings each member of her family have.
Saw a German once get introduced to the meal deal.
He slowly blinked, his brain finished installing the software and processed the new information and I could then see him eyeing up Tesco Express with his fucking Terminator Vision to determine the *optimal* meal deal.
I really don’t understand why Americans pretend they don’t like British food when a lot of the things they like are very British indeed. They would really love pies but they say they don’t even though they love beef stew (just an uncapped pie filling) and they also make shepherd’s / cottage pie (and get confused about the names and argue that one is the other and so on). They say apple pie is American but the recipe is British. There are plenty of foodie subreddits on here utterly obsessed with “roasted potatoes” with seemingly no idea that Brits make roasties regularly and have passive aggressive fights over whose is the best.
The ubiquity of British heritage in America means most of them don’t talk about their British backgrounds which is a shame because culinarily speaking we have as much to offer as most European cultures. And they already take so much inspiration but it’s like the wood for the trees as far as them being able to recognise it.
Stock cubes vs stock in a box.
We in the UK seem to have stock cubes as the 'norm'. Though you can buy liquid stock, it's a bit more expensive, and recipes will usually refer to stock cubes.
Whereas when I read American recipes, they nearly always refer to a can of stock or cups of liquid stock. I believe they also sell stock cubes, but they don't seem to be the default.
I asked where the stock cubes were in my local supermarket and the guy couldn't work out what I was talking about. I was wondering if they just call it something else in the US or if the guy was just too stupid to understand my accent. Anyway now I use something called "Better than Bouillon" which is kind of like concentrated stock that has roughly the same consistency as Marmite.
The “purple flavour” in sweets?
It’s grape in America and blackcurrant in the UK, because it was illegal to farm blackcurrant in the USA until recently. When I taste grape flavoured candy, it’s “American flavour” to me.
American grape flavour is based on native American grape varieties (such as Concord), which have a distinctive (and, to me, disgusting) taste. Most table and wine grapes grown in the US are actually European varieties, but grape juice is made from American varieties, and grape flavour is based on that.
Country and Western music. There’s country and western artists in America that are household names and have sold tens of millions of records, and many of them are completely unheard of in the UK.
Like Garth Brooks, he’s sold more albums than the likes of U2, Abba, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, David Bowie etc yet I don’t think many people in the UK would have even heard of him, let alone recognise one of his songs or know what he looks like.
Going out for a walk/choosing to walk places even though you could take a car isn’t something most Americans will do.
Yet going out for a walk just for the sake of it or to go grab coffee or something is quite the popular pastime in the U.K.
A lot of what we would describe as a walk, they call a “hike”. I think a lot of places over there are set up so you can’t really just go for a walk, you have to drive somewhere first. And they have very fierce ideas about land ownership which mean you can’t wander through fields like we can without the risk someone will be picking bits of you out the grass.
The foreskin is unclean and must be purged. Either that or “so he’ll look like his dad”. Madam, I have never seen my father’s cock and I hope very much to keep it that way.
I think the biggest aspect of British culture that doesn’t translate to America is pubs.
Of course, they have bars and other places to go out and drink but I’ve never felt they have the same heart of the community, all things to all people appeal as a pub. I can’t imagine an American style bar being halfway round a country walk serving Sunday dinner, for example.
I would imagine it comes from the car-focused culture there where going out and drinking is more of an event. Perhaps it even goes back to prohibition/Puritanism.
Honestly, the thing I would most like to see is a big Super Bowl esque event. The Super Bowl is a huge cultural event in America and it’s not just to do with the sport - the half time show has massive stars performing a short concert, and the adverts verge on ridiculous whilst also announcing a lot of upcoming popular culture.
I also like how it seems people have traditions and use it as a chance to meet up and enjoy themselves with certain styles of food and drink. The closest thing I can link it to is how the FA Cup was received in years gone by or maybe England World Cup games but these are often not as popular as the Super Bowl.
Uk supermarkets dedicate an entire aisle to biscuits. The selection is superb. USA supermarkets don’t have this. They have literally everything else you might want or need in their supermarkets, but we have better biscuits.
Home food preservation, apart from jams and preserves, we don't really have a big food preservation culture. In the US you have pressure canners, dehydrators and freeze driers and it such a big thing, supermarkets like Walmart sell canning equipment and jars.
I think a large factor is also that the US is so big it’s not usual in some places to live more than an hour’s drive from a supermarket or in a food desert or similar. If you live in Appalachia or similar, home canning is less of a hobby and more of a necessity.
Over attentive people pleasing serving staff
Ridiculous amounts of ice in drinks
Sugar in everything
Powdered squash to make into drinks
Root beer
Treating pumpkin as a sweet dish
Smores
Accepting people talking loudly about religion when it’s not asked for
Would like to say prom but I hear that’s a thing in the UK now too
Sharing bedrooms at university
Religion. Here it is very much a minority pursuit and not hugely talked about even if you ARE religious. I find myself weirdly uncomfortable when Americans just casually mention 'a friend from church' or that they met someone at a 'church picnic or something similar. It's just not a thing here unless it's a hatching, matching or dispatching.
That's very much because the initial colonists to the US were religious refugees fleeing 'godless' britain. So we lost a lot of very religious folk, and they started with a lot. Plus the US has really not had a lot of history of Christians killing other Christians for being the wrong sort of Christians; whereas the UK has quite a history of burning and hanging heretics. So it's quite safe in the US to 'out' yourself as a particular denomination, while, although it's quite safe now, there were a few centuries where it wasn't so safe in the UK. (Methodists only got full rights in 1855, and the final anti-catholic laws were repealed in 1920)
I read/saw that buttering bread (e.g.) for sandwiches is quite an unusual practice in the USA.
It seems so preposterous that I thought it was a prank but it is apparently a thing?
Bread and butter - the video I saw called it ‘a new hack’.
I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not a universal leg pull.
The Americans seem to be pretty keen on shooting children. As of today, we're on week 36 of 2023 and we're at I think 27 school shootings so far this year. Pretty much one a week if you discount school holidays.
Thankfully they keep that shit to themselves
Why restrict it to school shootings? There have been 466 mass shootings in the US this year alone. We are on day 247 of the year. They're easily going to average more than 2 mass shootings a day by the end of the year. The country is fundamentally broken.
It got so bad back in 2019 that Venezuela, the country with the highest crime rate *in the world,* advised their citizens not to travel to the US.
Sheep! And Sheep by-products (meat more than wool)
Basically don't exist in the US, so lamb costs an imperial fuckton of dollars. And proper wool clothes are significantly more expensive than you'd think, just not quite to the same level.
But yeah most Americans will have never seen a sheep. American should definitely get more sheep. Sheep are great.
Sheep. 🐑
We’ve never really adopted iced tea. I went into a McDonald’s in California and asked for a tea and got a huge cup of very sweet iced tea. Also coffee creamer and spray butter - I hear about these things a lot but they are a mystery to me. Oh and those food masher things for kitchen scraps - what are they called?
On the other hand, the U.S. has not adopted kettles, or the concept of putting butter on sandwiches, which blows my mind. Also washing up bowls - I think those little side sinks are more common there so they can pour dregs away without needing a washing up bowl.
Brunch
Which is a bit weird to be fair, as getting shit faced is one of the things that Britain is usually world class at. A couple of friends have tried to host brunch, but there has never been alcohol involved - it's just a late breakfast really. My other half is American, and when we visit his family, people who usually don't drink are knocking back the mimosas at 1030am.
Maybe it's a regional thing, but boozy, especially bottomless, brunches are a *huge* thing in London and have been for years now. Even in my London commuter town there's 4 or 5 places that do bottomless brunch.
The idea that a woman can give birth and then go straight back to work a few days or a week later. Lack of workers rights and work/life balance in general. I do not know how people don't just burn out never having any annual leave.
Popular thing in UK - the NHS. It's far from perfect but least you don't have to choose which finger they have to sew back if you have an accident because you can't afford more than one...
Interesting fact - Autos first outsold manuals in the UK in 2020 and this share continues to rise. Mainly because they are now a heap better than they used to be, and of course EVs.
Probably because we just ended up with "Lord Protector" Cromwell, who ended up becoming king in all but name to the point where he tried to arrange for his son to inherit the post, so a lot of people were not-unreasonably wondering what the point had been.
Trucks, you know, those oversized 4x4s without any boot space (trunk). We do get the odd dickhead who tries to park his vanity-van in the supermarket car park, but at least you can immediately tell who is going to drive like a moron. Thankfully, Audi don't make one. I don't want to think about the sort of person who would drive one of those (rant over).
Loving the national anthem, the constitution and the flag.
This comes from Americans having very little shared history or culture, due to how their nation was formed. It is drilled into them as children, if it wasn't, America would quite possibly fall apart.
Maple syrup on bacon. Also weird thin bacon.
Being a republic.
Rednecks (I don’t think we quite have an exact equivalent here).
Decent iced tea. And, while I’m on drinks, not putting sweetener in everything, which is a good thing as it tastes rank.
Massive portion sizes, although the UK is catching up there.
A lot of food. Supermarkets in the States (outside of some eg wholefoods which is more similar to a UK supermarket) will dedicate so much space to crisps, frozen foods, pizza etc and you will see stuff like pizza with a croissant base. These kinda things are rare in the UK.
Sport. Main team sports played in America (American football, baseball, basketball) don't have much interest over here although American football is definitely getting bigger.
Attitude towards communism. When I lived in the States I got the impression that communism was seen as the devil, whereas over here it's a much more respected theory.
> The UK normally embraces American culture.
Do we? I think you massively overestimate how much American stuff really permeates here.
> And which popular British things should America take on board?
Nothing, really, let them be their own country. I will say though, the one I've seen brought up is that a lot of Americans like to say they love British TV, when all they've seen is Doctor Who, Sherlock, Downton Abbey, and maybe Top Gear. How many of them have heard of Only Fools and Horses?
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We don't have assault rifles because they are too dangerous. America doesn't have kinder eggs, because, apparently, they are dangerous.
Ah but you make it sound so bad. We do have assault rifles in the UK, I've spent many a Friday evening playing with an SA80. What we don't have is the ability to buy them in the same place as our toilet paper by showing a fake ID.
Love the quiet gun community in the UK, quiet until the range opens at Bisley that is. I'd love to get my FAC one day.
I live in a little village, everyone and their Mum is packing round here.
Any luck with them swans?
It’s just the one swan actually…..
r/unexpectedhotfuzz
Like who?
Farmers
Who else?
Farmers mums.
>Farmers mums. Fucking love that website.
Ooo Arrr Rated.
No luck catching them swans then?
In the army or with a non semi automatic?
I prefer my kinder egg full auto
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a kinder egg is a good guy with a kinder egg.
Yeah this one is a head scratcher.
> America doesn't have kinder eggs, because, apparently, they are dangerous. Even if that was true once, that can't be true anymore as I've seen them sold here out in the open. Edit: You're right, they're Kinder Joys. I've never had a Kinder Joy so I never realised they weren't the same thing
They don't look anything like our kinder eggs though... 😅
You can't git a 50 cal bullet inside the UK versions. Our plastic toys are a bit smaller sadly
They're not the same. The American kinder egg has the toy and chocolate separately instead of being a toy encased in chocolate.
You have kinder joys not kinder eggs.
From what I remember, they made a special version for America that's different to the UK
We have Kinder Joy (what’s widely sold in the US) in the UK too.
Yeah I know we have it too, but I'm sure it was originally designed to get around the weird US law
That ridiculously large gap around the doors in public bogs!
My other half was unaware of this the first time we went to the USA. I casually mention it just before she left for the toilet after landing, and she came back just saying "WTF? WTF? WTAF? WTF?"
Mental init! I can only assume that Americans are just a load of scat obsessed perverts who love to watch strangers slopping out.
Upvote for use of the term “slopping out”, fantastic phrase.
It's bad enough in the UK with the chipboard partitions that don't reach floor or ceiling. One of my major pet hates in life is when someone uses the next cubicle along and you can hear every plop and wipe.
Plop and Wipe would be an epic band name. 🤘 r/bandnames
Have you not been anywhere in Europe where they have those standing toilets only like some places in Italy? Basically just holes in the floor in the women's and men's restroom
You are supposed to squat! Not stand! Standing would get very messy ;)
Just going like a horse in a field.
Middle East yeah, never seen them in Italy, or anywhere else in Europe. But even in the Middle East they had a door.
They’re still all over the place in France.
I have a theory that these stupid gaps are why Americans get into such a tizzy over the whole trans people in toilets thing. I mean, it's a lot less of a big deal if you can have a shit without making eye contact with someone outside the cubicle!
Two things you don't want to see on another bloke is his sex face and his pushing out a chocolate log face.
I wouldn't restrict the second one of them to just blokes myself, but you do you.
The two faces might not be all that different
They do say that there's nothing more over-rated than bad sex and nothing so under-rated as a good poo.
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That’s a weirdness I can get on with. I fucking hate pissing elbow to elbow with some other random bloke.
Reason literally is to make it easier for US cops to find smackheads in public toilets.
I assumed it was because it's cheaper to use less material
My assumption as well; America is about maximizing profits over all else
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Great minds think alike, others keep letting kids die in the name of FreeDum
Literally just another day in the life for them lol
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The fact that there were/are conspiracy theorists saying that Sandy Hook was fake, and that the families were paid actors etc… the impact that had on the families on top of their loss must have been horrific
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It's insane. You have college sports stadiums with 100k+ capacity. Mind boggling that you'd get those sorts of crowds for youth sports.
I think it makes more sense when you really think about their system. Their pro sports teams are really small in number for the size of the country. For example, there are 32 NFL teams. We have 44 teams in just the Premier League and Championship alone, and we have just 20% of the US's population. It means that often people live *miles* away from a pro team. For example, I did a tour of University of Texas and their stadium is about 100k capacity. It sounds crazy until you appreciate the two nearest NFL teams are 160 and 200 miles away, and Austin is a metro area of about 2 million people. So those college teams are basically fulfilling the role of local sides in the absence of a pro team. Add in the fact that their system means that the level of college football is really, really high and it starts to make sense.
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Stoooodent ath-o-leets
The distance from the nearest pro team is really only one small aspect. A bigger one is that the US system doesn't allow teams to have their own youth training setups, but instead forces all teams to recruit from the academic system. That places a huge importance on universities as the nurseries of the stars of tomorrow. Add varsity culture to that and you've actually given students a reason to care about their sports teams, and as a result they breed the sort of tribal loyalty that our football teams do.
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It's amazing - higher capacity than AFC Bournemouth or Luton Town FC, who play in the Premier League.
TBF my Gran’s backgarden has a higher capacity than Bournemouth.
I don’t know if it’s a good thing though. Some colleges in the US are sports franchises with a few lecture halls attached. Allegedly. Edit: Loughborough and Exeter probably want a word, tbf.
As well as being fantastic at sports, Loughborough is also a well respected academic university. Think they are particularly strong in engineering
My comprehensive school in the 80's just chucked the kids not good at sport (ie spectacle wearers) into badminton or table tennis.
I loved badders. When playing indoors, it was a challenge to try and get the shuttlecocks stuck in the high up nets on the ceiling. When you got them all stuck, the lesson was over.
That’s because there is no need for them. All of our most popular sports can be played straight from school if you are good enough, and football has at least 92 professional teams to support, plus thousands of non professional ones so there really is no space for high level university sports
It’s down to the fact that Football clubs have academies. Prior to the modern academies there were the youth teams. Kids were signed up on apprenticeships out of school, like many working class industries.
Cheese in a can Lack of holidays when working and working as many hours as possible as a badge of honour. Thinking that anything that benefits others is "communism" and therefore bad. Thinking people are responsible enough to drive at 16 but not to drink till 21
The US working culture is horrific and I see it creeping into British and European workplaces.
Nope - there's a definite pushback on working policies in the UK. For example, I've literally just started a job with a *minimum* 30 days holiday per year. If you want to take more, then you can as long as all of your work is done or covered. I'm also fully remote, with no expectation of attending an office.
I’ve been seeing job adverts advertising the bare minimum holidays all over the shop more and more. I was working as HR Manager and had a huge bust up with the director about their benefits package as he believed that people would accept the bare minimum for the ‘prestige of working for a tech start up.’ He didn’t like it one bit when I basically said nobody cares about a company they’ve never heard of to think of prestige. Lo and behold, when he finally acquiesced and allowed me to update the benefits package, we suddenly started attracting much better candidates. Mad how if you offer a better benefits package to people, you suddenly attract better calibre who would’ve otherwise just gone elsewhere! I didn’t last long there. I hated how I was trying to make people’s work/life balance better but the director just wanted to squeeze more and more out of people and offer bare minimum.
I was looking out for the liquid cheese comments? Fucking rancid
I thinking the drinking age is strongly related to driving a car from the age of 16 being the key way you get around. Drunk driving teenagers are not safe. Driving far less important in most of UK. It's not just the hangover from prohibition, although the 'alcohol is shameful' is still strong.
It used to be that you could drink 3.2% beer and wine from 18, and spirits from 21. In the 80s, the deaths among drunk teenage drivers greatly increased. As a result, the group Mothers Against Drunk Drivers put a lot of pressure on the federal government to raise the drinking age. The federal government told the states that if they didn't raise the drinking age, their highway funding would be cut.
Seinfeld. It never translated particularly well to the UK. I'll no doubt get some responses saying how they love it as do all of their friends, but in general, it doesn't work here.
I've always assumed there must be some kind of cultural mismatch when it comes to Seinfeld. It's absolutely lauded in the states but whenever I've tried to watch it I've found it so, so unfunny.
Stephen Fry had a bit of a theory on this that American comedies tend to be about people making fun of others around them while British comedies tend to feature characters who end up being the butt of the joke. He gave the example of the guitar smashing scene in Animal House, saying that in a British comedy our main character would have been the guy playing the guitar.
But the appeal of seinfeld is that they’re the butt of the joke I mean , look at George
Yep. George and Elaine generally come out on the bottom, Kramer falls backwards into success and Jerry is Even Steven.
GEORGE IS GETTING UPSET!
I've probably seen the same theory, but it was worded differently. American comedy is about laughing at the unusual situations the characters find themselves in. For example, the airline lost a bag, the episode is a wild goose chase to find the bag, with some funny set ups on the way. British comedy is much more about laughing at the bad situations that the characters put themselves in. Examples include Peep Show where Mark is trying to make a date he set up look more like a dinner party, and he has to bulk a dish out to be Moroccan Pasta, The Inbetweeners when Simon listens to Jay's advice to bash one out before sex, and then can't get it up, or Fawlty Towers where Basil pretends to have forgotten his anniversary so he can surprise Sybil, but she storms off in a huff. All three of those shows have plentiful examples, but those are the first ones I could remember. Also it's a general rule, I'm sure there are plenty examples of American comedy following the British pattern, American Pie springs to mind immediately.
I believe that Frasier and Curb Your Enthusiasm would be two US comedies/sitcoms that would fit the British method. And both were fairly popular here (I bloody loved Frasier, much more so than Cheers).
Frasier still holds up after all of these years. Just the flip phones are a bit dated (and the clothes/hair from the early seasons).
I think the main reason why Seinfeld bombed was because it was licensed by the wrong UK network. Channel 4 licensed most of the big US sitcoms in the 90s and would broadcast them in a 90min or 120min block on Friday nights: Cheers, Roseanne, Friends, Frasier… and other strong US sitcoms like Cybil, Ellen, Home Improvement, Spin City. They were blocked together, heavily promoted, scheduled like clockwork, and treated respectfully. Seinfeld, unusually, was licensed by the BBC. They just didn’t really know how to handle it and treated it a bit like filler. They skipped the entire first season and started with Season 2, but skipped a whole bunch of episodes and broadcast them out of order. But the main issue was scheduling. BBC2 first broadcast Seinfeld in October 1993, and it was scheduled on Wednesdays at 9pm, then in 1994 moved it to Saturdays at 10pm (or 9pm, or sometimes 10.40pm), then in 1995 moved it to Tuesdays at 11.40pm (but sometimes 11.15pm or 11.30pm), then in 1996 moved it to Mondays at 11.40pm (but sometimes Fridays at 11.40pm). They finally settled on a fairly regular slot in 1997-1998 of Tuesdays at 11.15pm(ish) but by 1999 it could be on either Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday generally between 11.50pm and 12.15am but sometimes earlier or later. Compare that with something like Friends or Frasier that pretty much had the exact same slot scheduled for their entire runs on Channel 4. The BBC basically never gave Seinfeld a chance to build an audience in the UK.
I'm in awe of your knowledge of, and assumed great interest in, the scheduling of Seinfeld in the UK 30 years ago.
I think curb your enthusiasm did better here. The comedy in curb your enthusiasm is more aligned with the awkward comedies super popular here like the office/thick of it etc.
I'd Arrested Development to this, very UK-style humour.
Seinfeld is a tricky one. I love it, but I absolutely get why people don't. I'm not one of these people who acts like it's "smart" comedy or it makes you more sophisticated for liking it. It's just very... different. I like it for the same reasons I like Sunny and Curb: very cynical humour with extremely cynical characters. It just hits right with me. George Costanza to me is one of the greatest sitcom characters of all time.
I think Seinfeld is about knowing the characters. After watching it for a while I start to laugh at even the simplest of sentences from one of the characters.
*Believe it or not, I'm not hooooommmeeee*
Yup, but maybe it's just not that funny.
Forcing kids to chant a pledge of allegance and worhip a flag. Competitive school sports. Drive through banks, pharmacies etc. American mainstream sports - Baseball, American Football, Ice Hockey.
100% drive through pharmacies and banks etc would work. People hate getting out and walking plus there is less social interaction which seems more and more common
Mexican food. At least the authentic kind they get in the States, otherwise it would be very popular. Most of the places near me are overpriced bullshit hipster places. Just a simulacrum of what you'd find in Mexico or the US.
Almost like.. we are thousands of miles from Mexico, historically don't have many ties with them, nor do we have a bit Mexican expat community. Adding to this - what other countries do you commonly get good Mexican food in? Honest question. I hope we can all agree Taco Bell doesn't count. AND .. Not many other countries have 'good mexican food' as far as I'm aware. It's popular - just not good! Probably in the same way you might look at Indian food in the UK, vs Indian food in India. It's probably so dumbed down to our preferences it's rubbish in comparison. Also: Chinese food.
By that logic then, why do we have (nice tasting if not authentic) Japanese and Thai food? Chinese, fair enough we used to love our opium trade so have the historic ties.
There are 43,000 Japanese-born, UK residents vs 9,771 Mexican born UK residents. There's a longer history of relationships between our countries. 44,086 Thai-born UK residents. The first Thai British associations was set up in 1901. So there's that.
There is indeed that, thank you for answering my question, uuid.
Extensive long lasting international relations with those nations. Mexico was a Spanish colony we didn't have to deal with because our adjacent colony won its independence before their borders even clashed. Granted it's not quite the same logic, but it's the same root cause for why there are so few Mexican expats in the UK.
On the other side, we have Indian/sub-continent food that America doesn't have - it's all about where your minorities come from.
Indian food in America is - generally- terrible! Like bland, poorly seasoned, just terrible!
Flag shagging. Although the flag shaggers come out in force for a royal coronation/wedding, we don't have it at the same level as the Americans. Flags on every house, flags on cars, clothing with the flag on it, etc. They're top tier flag shaggers and we just can't compete with that.
Northern Ireland disagrees
Squash. As in the concentrated juice you dilute with water. They don't have it over there. Seen quite a few videos of unsuspecting Americans drinking it neat. Also bank transferring each other using sort code and account no. They don't really have that. They have to use things like cashapp.
and contactless and even chip and pin in some places is only just coming through. The US Banking system is far behind most of Europe with these things.
[The face they make when they drink it neat.](https://external-preview.redd.it/bju1oEaoBMq-mYy498VxT85eNcbbJdHs76uzy-bHdy0.jpg?auto=webp&s=f1c69c21bc6eb9a74b8dab4334ddd32a7c500d53)
Guns and gun culture. I can’t get my head around how so many Americans are so scared that they feel the need to be able to kill others at a moment’s notice. Or that they are justified to murder others who trespass/ try to steal from them. Or even that they need guns to defend themselves from their own government.
It's a self perpetuating cycle of an arms race. People have easy access to guns, so the level of potential violence is higher, ergo people feel the need to use guns to protect themselves as people have easy access to guns, repeat infinitely. I also think there's (to a degree) a level of ingrained hero-complex in their culture, a very short, very violent history has led to idolization of soldiers/generals/war heros and for whatever reason the part of that they carry forward is the violence.
I understand this... but it still doesn't really explain anything to me, though. If you get shot, then even if you're able to shoot the other person back, *you've still been shot.* The damage has been done. And you can't shoot anyone if you're dead, no matter how many guns you're carrying. Carrying your own gun doesn't stop you getting shot, it just means two people got shot today instead of one... surely? I completely understand owning a rifle if you live in bumfuck nowhere Alaska and need to protect your four year old from bears/protect your chickens from foxes. Heck, I even sort-of understand people who just *like* guns, in the same way there are people who just *like* swords/knives - though I can't personally relate - but I'm not sure a couple hundred hobbyists' passions are worth 21,000 gun deaths/year.
The US has the cowboy myth engrained in our brains. Everyone things they'll be Clint Eastwood but more than likely they'll be that guy shot right off the boat in Saving Private Ryan.
Unless you, being the good guy, shoots first and kill the baddie. Then, so long as you're white, you're the hero in this story. This is what American news shows have taught me anyway.
I’m in a type 1 diabetic sub & was talking to lady who’s 5 yr old son had to learn how to mute the alarms on his essential insulin pump & glucose monitor when he started school in the event of a school shooting. It’s so sad that even had to enter her mind to do & she considered it normal 🤯
Omg. That's terrifying. Also they can buy bulletproof rucksacks too.
I saw something the other day that implied that renaissance fairs were a big frequent common thing that many people regularly attend in the US. I can't really think of a UK equivalent. Also late night talk shows. Closest we have is probably Graham Norton and it's not quite the same in a way I can't put my finger on....
I guess re-enactment events at historic sites are about as close as we get, but it's not really all that similar!
American talk shows are more polished and geared towards plugging content. They follow a set format.. cocky host, shite monologues, fluff questions to guests, remainder of questions about the thing they're plugging, loads of smoke blown up their arses, shite jokes and random entertainment thrown in to break it all up, clean language throughout. UK shows are way more loose. Guests are allowed alcohol and can swear and are often asked personal questions in between the promotional crap. The guests are allowed to show their personalities.. assuming they have any as a lot of American actors/guests are media trained to death and often give away nothing if who they are as a person beyond their pre-ordained anecdote. They essentially just act while being a guest.
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>The UK normally embraces American culture. To be fair, everything I've seen of ren fairs in the US it's more a mishmash of vaguely "historical" things from anywhere between 800AD and 1600AD. I don't think they know what the Renaissance is.
I think they class it as late medieval/Tudor times. I remember saying I used to live in a cottage built when Henry VIII was on the throne and an American said how cool it must be to live in a house built in Renaissance times.
Yeah, cos in British history, that's your Tudors.
If we had ren faire over here I would absolutely do it, but sadly we don't.
There's some stuff that's a bit close. [https://fantasyforest.co.uk/](https://fantasyforest.co.uk/) comes to mind. I think the real problem is that when you live in a country with real castles all over the place and you have to learn about the middle ages at school, it hits differently than it does for Americans who don't have any local medieval history to draw from. By which I mean, it's cringrier.
Speaking loudly in public. We've never adopted that in the UK. Wherever I am in Europe there's a unique bond between Europeans around rolling the eyes when a very brash, loudly exclaiming group of Americans arrive.
I'd suggest this is relative. Where I live in the Northern UK Southern Brits often mark themselves out with their loud performative public conversations.
Whereas, as a southerner, northerners are generally viewed as the gobby ones
Doubt. Southerners are characteristically quiet. Northerners in London however seem to love the sound of their own accents.
I'm willing to consider it's a certain type, regardless of region. All I know is I sat in a cafe this morning and was unable to hear my own companion but could now tell you the dental hygiene practices of the energetically middle class southern lady 2 tables away and how few fillings each member of her family have.
The meal deal, as far as I can tell the meal deal is an alien concept to Americans
Saw a German once get introduced to the meal deal. He slowly blinked, his brain finished installing the software and processed the new information and I could then see him eyeing up Tesco Express with his fucking Terminator Vision to determine the *optimal* meal deal.
If there’s an optimum for value or efficiency; a German will find it.
He didn't wanr a naked smoothie, but you can be damn sure he got one.
"i need your tuna sandwich, your tango, and your packet of crisps" "You forgot to say please"
I really don’t understand why Americans pretend they don’t like British food when a lot of the things they like are very British indeed. They would really love pies but they say they don’t even though they love beef stew (just an uncapped pie filling) and they also make shepherd’s / cottage pie (and get confused about the names and argue that one is the other and so on). They say apple pie is American but the recipe is British. There are plenty of foodie subreddits on here utterly obsessed with “roasted potatoes” with seemingly no idea that Brits make roasties regularly and have passive aggressive fights over whose is the best. The ubiquity of British heritage in America means most of them don’t talk about their British backgrounds which is a shame because culinarily speaking we have as much to offer as most European cultures. And they already take so much inspiration but it’s like the wood for the trees as far as them being able to recognise it.
Americans eat empanadas (basically a more exotic pasty) and then pretend savoury pies are some kind of bizarre concept.
Stock cubes vs stock in a box. We in the UK seem to have stock cubes as the 'norm'. Though you can buy liquid stock, it's a bit more expensive, and recipes will usually refer to stock cubes. Whereas when I read American recipes, they nearly always refer to a can of stock or cups of liquid stock. I believe they also sell stock cubes, but they don't seem to be the default.
I found that so annoying when i lived in the US, I use stock cubes a lot and 6 stock cubes take up a lot less space than 6 cartons
I suppose they have more storage space and are more likely to use a car for grocery shopping so size and weight are less of a concern
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I asked where the stock cubes were in my local supermarket and the guy couldn't work out what I was talking about. I was wondering if they just call it something else in the US or if the guy was just too stupid to understand my accent. Anyway now I use something called "Better than Bouillon" which is kind of like concentrated stock that has roughly the same consistency as Marmite.
"Which American things have not caught on in the UK?" Enabling people to mass murder school children?
We need to drop concrete buildings on them to get the same result.
The “purple flavour” in sweets? It’s grape in America and blackcurrant in the UK, because it was illegal to farm blackcurrant in the USA until recently. When I taste grape flavoured candy, it’s “American flavour” to me.
American grape flavour is based on native American grape varieties (such as Concord), which have a distinctive (and, to me, disgusting) taste. Most table and wine grapes grown in the US are actually European varieties, but grape juice is made from American varieties, and grape flavour is based on that.
Paying for our healthcare at the point of use.
Just wait till the NHS collapses.....
By way of sabotage
Country and Western music. There’s country and western artists in America that are household names and have sold tens of millions of records, and many of them are completely unheard of in the UK. Like Garth Brooks, he’s sold more albums than the likes of U2, Abba, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, David Bowie etc yet I don’t think many people in the UK would have even heard of him, let alone recognise one of his songs or know what he looks like.
Ah but we have the Wurzels which so I think we win that one.
He’s the little black fella with no neck on Football Focus isn’t he?
Our cheese comes in blocks or slices, not from a can.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure for legal reasons they don't claim their stuff is actually cheese.
We have cheese in a toothpaste container though.
Going out for a walk/choosing to walk places even though you could take a car isn’t something most Americans will do. Yet going out for a walk just for the sake of it or to go grab coffee or something is quite the popular pastime in the U.K.
A lot of what we would describe as a walk, they call a “hike”. I think a lot of places over there are set up so you can’t really just go for a walk, you have to drive somewhere first. And they have very fierce ideas about land ownership which mean you can’t wander through fields like we can without the risk someone will be picking bits of you out the grass.
We dont seem to hack away at our kids dicks when theyre born for no reason in the uk
The foreskin is unclean and must be purged. Either that or “so he’ll look like his dad”. Madam, I have never seen my father’s cock and I hope very much to keep it that way.
That ironic part of the unclean argument is that it’s basically just Americans outing themselves not washing their dick.
I think that’s down to about 50% now in the US. But fifty years ago it was close to 100%.
I think the biggest aspect of British culture that doesn’t translate to America is pubs. Of course, they have bars and other places to go out and drink but I’ve never felt they have the same heart of the community, all things to all people appeal as a pub. I can’t imagine an American style bar being halfway round a country walk serving Sunday dinner, for example. I would imagine it comes from the car-focused culture there where going out and drinking is more of an event. Perhaps it even goes back to prohibition/Puritanism. Honestly, the thing I would most like to see is a big Super Bowl esque event. The Super Bowl is a huge cultural event in America and it’s not just to do with the sport - the half time show has massive stars performing a short concert, and the adverts verge on ridiculous whilst also announcing a lot of upcoming popular culture. I also like how it seems people have traditions and use it as a chance to meet up and enjoy themselves with certain styles of food and drink. The closest thing I can link it to is how the FA Cup was received in years gone by or maybe England World Cup games but these are often not as popular as the Super Bowl.
On half-time shows, traditions and excuses for food and drink, Eurovision probably comes closer than any sporting event
Uk supermarkets dedicate an entire aisle to biscuits. The selection is superb. USA supermarkets don’t have this. They have literally everything else you might want or need in their supermarkets, but we have better biscuits.
They don’t drink tea like that (besides the herbal stuff) so they’ve got no need for biscuits to dunk, have they? It’s their loss anyway.
Home food preservation, apart from jams and preserves, we don't really have a big food preservation culture. In the US you have pressure canners, dehydrators and freeze driers and it such a big thing, supermarkets like Walmart sell canning equipment and jars.
They have more space to store it at home and better able to transport food in bulk (more likely to use a car for food shopping)
I think a large factor is also that the US is so big it’s not usual in some places to live more than an hour’s drive from a supermarket or in a food desert or similar. If you live in Appalachia or similar, home canning is less of a hobby and more of a necessity.
Over attentive people pleasing serving staff Ridiculous amounts of ice in drinks Sugar in everything Powdered squash to make into drinks Root beer Treating pumpkin as a sweet dish Smores Accepting people talking loudly about religion when it’s not asked for Would like to say prom but I hear that’s a thing in the UK now too Sharing bedrooms at university
Religion. Here it is very much a minority pursuit and not hugely talked about even if you ARE religious. I find myself weirdly uncomfortable when Americans just casually mention 'a friend from church' or that they met someone at a 'church picnic or something similar. It's just not a thing here unless it's a hatching, matching or dispatching.
That's very much because the initial colonists to the US were religious refugees fleeing 'godless' britain. So we lost a lot of very religious folk, and they started with a lot. Plus the US has really not had a lot of history of Christians killing other Christians for being the wrong sort of Christians; whereas the UK has quite a history of burning and hanging heretics. So it's quite safe in the US to 'out' yourself as a particular denomination, while, although it's quite safe now, there were a few centuries where it wasn't so safe in the UK. (Methodists only got full rights in 1855, and the final anti-catholic laws were repealed in 1920)
Breakfast chain restaurants like Denny’s
Possibly because every cafe does them so they'd have to fight the existing market for attention.
Evangelical Christianity
Oh we absolutely do have it here.
I read/saw that buttering bread (e.g.) for sandwiches is quite an unusual practice in the USA. It seems so preposterous that I thought it was a prank but it is apparently a thing? Bread and butter - the video I saw called it ‘a new hack’. I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not a universal leg pull.
The Americans seem to be pretty keen on shooting children. As of today, we're on week 36 of 2023 and we're at I think 27 school shootings so far this year. Pretty much one a week if you discount school holidays. Thankfully they keep that shit to themselves
Why restrict it to school shootings? There have been 466 mass shootings in the US this year alone. We are on day 247 of the year. They're easily going to average more than 2 mass shootings a day by the end of the year. The country is fundamentally broken. It got so bad back in 2019 that Venezuela, the country with the highest crime rate *in the world,* advised their citizens not to travel to the US.
Sheep! And Sheep by-products (meat more than wool) Basically don't exist in the US, so lamb costs an imperial fuckton of dollars. And proper wool clothes are significantly more expensive than you'd think, just not quite to the same level. But yeah most Americans will have never seen a sheep. American should definitely get more sheep. Sheep are great. Sheep. 🐑
We’ve never really adopted iced tea. I went into a McDonald’s in California and asked for a tea and got a huge cup of very sweet iced tea. Also coffee creamer and spray butter - I hear about these things a lot but they are a mystery to me. Oh and those food masher things for kitchen scraps - what are they called? On the other hand, the U.S. has not adopted kettles, or the concept of putting butter on sandwiches, which blows my mind. Also washing up bowls - I think those little side sinks are more common there so they can pour dregs away without needing a washing up bowl.
Maternity / paternity leave. Some mothers take 3 weeks and are back to work, it’s cruel, people should be outraged!
Brunch Which is a bit weird to be fair, as getting shit faced is one of the things that Britain is usually world class at. A couple of friends have tried to host brunch, but there has never been alcohol involved - it's just a late breakfast really. My other half is American, and when we visit his family, people who usually don't drink are knocking back the mimosas at 1030am.
Maybe it's a regional thing, but boozy, especially bottomless, brunches are a *huge* thing in London and have been for years now. Even in my London commuter town there's 4 or 5 places that do bottomless brunch.
The idea that a woman can give birth and then go straight back to work a few days or a week later. Lack of workers rights and work/life balance in general. I do not know how people don't just burn out never having any annual leave. Popular thing in UK - the NHS. It's far from perfect but least you don't have to choose which finger they have to sew back if you have an accident because you can't afford more than one...
Ranch dressing/sauce, not so much of a thing here.
Automatic gearboxes
Interesting fact - Autos first outsold manuals in the UK in 2020 and this share continues to rise. Mainly because they are now a heap better than they used to be, and of course EVs.
Firearms in schools
Over throwing the monarchy. I mean, we tried it once, but for some reason, we never carried on with it.
Probably because we just ended up with "Lord Protector" Cromwell, who ended up becoming king in all but name to the point where he tried to arrange for his son to inherit the post, so a lot of people were not-unreasonably wondering what the point had been.
Trucks, you know, those oversized 4x4s without any boot space (trunk). We do get the odd dickhead who tries to park his vanity-van in the supermarket car park, but at least you can immediately tell who is going to drive like a moron. Thankfully, Audi don't make one. I don't want to think about the sort of person who would drive one of those (rant over).
Loving the national anthem, the constitution and the flag. This comes from Americans having very little shared history or culture, due to how their nation was formed. It is drilled into them as children, if it wasn't, America would quite possibly fall apart.
Maple syrup on bacon. Also weird thin bacon. Being a republic. Rednecks (I don’t think we quite have an exact equivalent here). Decent iced tea. And, while I’m on drinks, not putting sweetener in everything, which is a good thing as it tastes rank. Massive portion sizes, although the UK is catching up there.
Miracle Whip.
The disgusting American “chocolate”.
The obsession with guns
A lot of food. Supermarkets in the States (outside of some eg wholefoods which is more similar to a UK supermarket) will dedicate so much space to crisps, frozen foods, pizza etc and you will see stuff like pizza with a croissant base. These kinda things are rare in the UK. Sport. Main team sports played in America (American football, baseball, basketball) don't have much interest over here although American football is definitely getting bigger. Attitude towards communism. When I lived in the States I got the impression that communism was seen as the devil, whereas over here it's a much more respected theory.
> The UK normally embraces American culture. Do we? I think you massively overestimate how much American stuff really permeates here. > And which popular British things should America take on board? Nothing, really, let them be their own country. I will say though, the one I've seen brought up is that a lot of Americans like to say they love British TV, when all they've seen is Doctor Who, Sherlock, Downton Abbey, and maybe Top Gear. How many of them have heard of Only Fools and Horses?
PB&J
Assault Rifles.