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Comment by jagrsw | Hacker News Reader

An obligatory reminder, esp. for US-based folks, that when creating posts/comments when writing things like 'our country', 'the president', 'here', 'in the parliament', 'the law says', 'everybody here knows', and not specifying geographical details, you're somewhat confusing and potentially irritating ~60% of HN community.

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I always found this interesting because this phenomenon exists all over the internet (there's even a dedicated subreddit for it: /r/usdefaultism). If you don't make it extremely clear where you're from, for some reason the internet just assumes you're american.

I bet that a factor is that, while not the majority, it's the largest group

> this phenomenon exists all over the internet

No, it exists all over the parts of the internet that are run by US companies, hosted in the US, and primarily popular with Americans. Nobody is going to assume you’re American on Jeuxvideo.com.

It's quite an interesting defaultism though, it gives us some insight into what people think.

There's this strange asymmetry: ask a non-American to name a US Supreme Court justice, a famous American businessman, an entertainer, a politician, and maybe some other categories that I haven't listed. We all know one, even though it might actually be hard to name the same for neighboring countries like Ireland or France.

Ask someone if they know the subdivisions of the USA, and if they know the subdivisions of their own neighbors. Do I know the mayor of anywhere in Ireland or France? I know the mayor of San Francisco.

The culture of what country is in the cinema, or the radio? Everywhere you go, it's the US, plus a little bit of the local. Check the top-10 lists of any country in Europe to see what I mean.

It's so strangely dominating.

I'm a Brit and still describe pricing when discussing online as USD because that's seemingly the "currency of the internet" that everybody seems to understand the value of.

Well put. Lines up with my comment ITT and my observations on the American side of things as well. There's a strange dynamic where a massive amount of people across the world have some cursory knowledge about the state I live in, whereas vice-versa I'd probably have to look up if their country even has states, provinces, districts, counties or what have you.

In similar vein: Using two-letter abbreviations for US states that might as well be mistaken for two-letter country codes. For a long time I assumed people talking about CA were referring to Canada...

I used to be bothered by people assuming America as a default, but I've actually changed my opinion on this after doing an online political science course through the University of Nottingham.

The thing I found shocking while attending this course, was that even in a UK university, America was still the most frequent subject of discussion and reference, with the UK playing second fiddle. And then I would read comments as a part of the course from other places in the anglosphere where for instance, they are asked to name the first things that come to mind when they think of 'banal nationalism' and you read things like America's heavy use of bald eagle imagery, the American pledge of allegiance at sporting events, etc.

I've decided that since it seems nearly universal that English speaking countries give America primacy (even in the context of a non-American university focusing on a heavily European oriented subject), that there's no point fighting it. America's cultural hegemony has complete dominance over the English language.

Personally I'm 100% fine with this. US-based company hosting this forum - US quirks (and features).

I only take issue with extrapolating US-specific things to the rest of the world. Case in point: I don't agree with around half of the statements on HN that explain something as "human nature" when in fact it's something that usually just the Americans say or do.

Also don't assume all users are on the same planet or speak English as native language.

Indeed, as a French I find many Americans are lacking basic English skills.

Ironically enough, your post is wrong English. You can’t use “French” as a noun in English. Nobody would say “as a French” rather than “as a Frenchman” or “as a French person”.

But US-based website of a US-based company, right?

I'm a Brit, so yes, the defaultism rankles, but at this point I've just learned to accept that people write from their own perspective and to not accept that is pedantry.

I try to avoid doing that, but come on, you can just choose not to be irritated by something so minor.

(Somewhat off-topic, but in case anyone cares: we in the US call it the Congress, not parliament.)

If America has taught me anything, it’s that I absolutely can choose to be irritated by something so minor. ;)

+1 for being a bit irritated when I read claims about laws and regulations without any specification of the geographic place they apply to. It happens more on reddit than over here.

Likewise when you use the word 'awesome'.

Not really. Unless specified the poster being US based is kind of assumed.

What would make you say that? IMO that's a potentially harmful assumption, I agree the demographics point to that but doesn't help when this isn't a real-time chat where things like these can be cleared up quickly

How is anyone meant to respond to this? You’re asserting it as some sort of irrefutable fact. It’s not. It’s how you’re choosing to operate. I for one find this assumption frustrating on an almost daily basis. I think less of people that do it.

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