Why is Lemmy so US-centric? The largest instances are in Europe, aren't they? So why does it have to be US news trolling as if it were Reddit?
-
Yeah, the geography certainly plays a role - much like it does for Britain having ~30 miles of ocean between it and the rest of Europe.
But the broad trend in the States has been a narrowing of languages. Like, a century ago there was national distribution for newspapers printed in German. Those started disappearing during WW1 and were completely gone by the end of WW2. And, of course, that is dwarfed by the number of First Nations languages that have been driven to the edge extinction, if not outright extinguished already.
I think if Lemmy wants to have less of a US bent to topics and perspectives, then they'll have to follow ich_iel's example and stubbornly commit to a language that isn't english. The way how the internet collapses geography, conversation trends toward orbiting the densest population of monoglots.
It is a self reinforcing system, and the same reason that English has become so widespread worldwide.
Increased communication across wider areas promote common languages to be more accessible to more people, so in the case of the US this means each time people communicate it is more likely to be in English. Sure, some stupid laws have helped out too but this is a trend that was going to happen in the US for the same reasons English is increasingly used worldwide, but we don't have a national language that English is being added to to promote being bilingual. Quebec has been fighting the trend though legislation since it was happening there as well.
Even regional dialects of English are being homogenized within the US. It is less likely for people traveling across many states to be unable to understand a regional dialect as was fairly common before cheap long distance communication.
-
As an American, I can say one of our defining characteristics is we believe we belong everywhere on the Internet. There is no space that we are embarrassed to enter. Reminds me of the Americans showing up on Chinese social media and acting like they owned the place.
As an american, I don't see a problem with this.
-
Indian is not a language
*any of the 10,000 or so regional dialects of india
-
But you are missing out on the Stör memes, and all the ich_iel posts.
I will confess that I don't get the ones about German politicians.
Whenever I see a meme in German, I'm sad I'll never understand it, because I'm definitely not going to the trouble of running it through a translator.
-
Maybe native speakers or English only speakers. But over a billion people speak English (approx, per Wikipedia), and US only accounts for a fraction of that.
Sure. But people upvote content about their own nation, and the US is the largest single population of english speakers. Maybe India would beat us out, but they seem to have their own internet that they stick to for the most part.
-
The weirdest part of living outside the US is the number of people who still obsess over the US.
Do you honestly find it weird that people all over the world obsess over the one country in the world that constantly sends its enormous military all over the world?
Also the country that collapsed the world economy when some guy in Florida was late on a mortgage payment.
-
Is it? Or is it a question of which communities you're looking at? Because mine isn't.
Typical dismissive answer that I see on here. You know very well US political BS has infiltrated most communities by now.
-
Yes, you can set that up. But most news communities such as /world, /worldnews, /news, and others are very US-centric. I wonder why that has to be the case when it should be clear to everyone by now that the White House is employing troll tactics.
I don’t know for other countries, but I read French news in French. So the French instance is way smaller than the English speaking ones
-
This post did not contain any content.
It would already be nice if posts specified they are about the USA instead of just blurping out something about "the civil war" for example instead of "the USA civil war".
One can dream!
-
Typical dismissive answer that I see on here. You know very well US political BS has infiltrated most communities by now.
Not in my experience. If you don't want to see politics there is a robust blocking system on Connect (and other apps I'm sure) that you can use.
-
This post did not contain any content.
The internet as a whole is pretty US centric
There are however exceptions (for example: china)
-
This post did not contain any content.
Presumably you're browsing english-language Lemmy
Most people are going to want to converse in their native/primary language, and by numbers that means a lot of Americans who are, of course, primarily concerned with American issues
There's also the fact that America is a huge player on the international stage, so American issues can have a lot of repercussions in other countries
And if you haven't noticed, America has kind of a lot of shit going on and there is a lot to talk about there.
-
This post did not contain any content.wrote last edited by [email protected]
I made my account so I could block all the "news" /politics , which are mostly US news/politics XD. There is no community for my country here as far as I know, and if there is, and it's anything like it's counterpart on reddit, then also no thanks.
-
People are drawn to trainwrecks. The weirdest part of living outside the US is the number of people who still obsess over the US.
Canadian, here. Kind of hard to ignore our giant idiot neighbour to the south.
-
This post did not contain any content.
The United States is a giant nation in the English language. It comprises of a majority of English as a first language speakers and a large percentage of English speakers overall. American media output is also going to be primarily in English, including local news.
In contrast, a nation like Germany is likely going to speak in German when possible. This likely includes media like news. So, when it comes to news articles, I don't expect English news from Germany to be written in anywhere near the quantity of English news written about California.
I feel like it would be like asking why Portuguese media focuses on Brazil.
-
*any of the 10,000 or so regional dialects of india
They know what I am saying, they just want to pull that whole smug PC thing.
-
The internet as a whole is pretty US centric
There are however exceptions (for example: china)
And I'm sure that Mandarin Internet media sites are very Sinocentric.
-
This post did not contain any content.
This is one of my main motivations to learn other languages. The internet is tedious if you only speak English.
-
And I'm sure that Mandarin Internet media sites are very Sinocentric.
English is a first language in more countries than Mandarin is, though.
Do wish Yanks would recognise the world as bigger than themselves, the PRC and the USA are shockingly similar.
-
While a huge portion of the population chooses not to become fluent in a language, because nearly everything within hundreds of miles of where they live uses the same language by default, we still provide opportunities to learn languages and in some areas people are commonly bilingual.
It can be hard to maintain a language without frequent exposure. I had some classes in Spanish and French, but without a large population that speaks either language in my area I just forgot it over time. Moved tons place where we do have a lot of people who speak Spanish and English, but since I'm not part of their community my exposure is limited to the occasional festival or signage as nobody needs me to impose my attempt to learn their language on them.
It isn't all about refusal, it is mostly lack of exposure.
I actually has another language, but kinda never used it. The Mandarin part of my brain is sort of "inactive" ever since I immigrated to the US, because I mostly like to watch western content, and Chinese drama is way too censored, cliche, and never explores new concepts Most of the stuff is WW2 drama, or its about the distsnt past like the imperial dynasties, its too much cringy romance stuff, has this weird conservative "men strong, woman weak" trope, no LGBT characters, no plot twists because every plot is follows a predictible pattern. I never once seen an accurate portrayal of child abuse. Its always the kid character being portrayed as a psycopath, and they never portray the parents with any sort of blame. So much Filial Piety propaganda in everyday media.
And ever since I had depression, I feel like none of the people in the Chinese-American community (those who were born in China) could even understand what depression is like. Whereas at least those who grew up under a western culture sort of understands what depression is.
I just don't find Mandarin to be very useful, so its kinda a repressed memory now.
I mean, what would communicating with mainland Chinese people even look like? Those nationalists are just gonna call me a "汉奸" (han traitor) merely for the fact that I'm living in the west. Hearing a Chinese language whether it be Cantonese or Mandarin give me PTSD because of how toxic the community is.
I mean, I'm cis, but imagine if I came out as trans or gay (I'm not, I'm saying hypothetically if I were), my parents would tell me to go to the 18th level of hell and my entire extended family would look at me in a weird way. I'm struggling with depression and everyone just assumes I'm being lazy. No fuck off, I don't need your stupid necklace to "protect me from evil spirits", I need my meds. I sort of just expect anyone speaking Cantonese or Mandarin to be extremely conservative.
As for other languages, they tried teaching spanish in middle school and highschool but I didn't retain and memory of most of it. Unless they were taking us on a school trip to Spain or Mexico, its very impractical to learn it. And I do not live in a hispanic nighborhood so its practically impossible to learn. I mean, I couldn't think of a scenario where I ever needed to speak another language. And I already understand enough Cantonese to understand my parents gossipping with other people, I don't really want to have a conversation with them anyways, so no need to expand my vocabulary.
