CAPTCHAs don’t prove you’re human – they prove you’re American (2017)

Yes American people tend to be very unaware of which cultural things are universal and which things are specifically American. Everyone probably has that problem to some extent but people who come from countries that depend less on other countries have it more.

It ranges from totally harmless things to more serious things. E.g. virtually everyone I've ever met thinks there's something peculiar about the weather where they're from, and the way people drive when they're from. It's almost always not the case.

Towards the more serious end of the scale I have a friend who belongs to a minority that is considered somewhat marginalized in America. He told me that he visited my country once (Ireland) and people were giving him weird looks "because, you know, brown guy over here haha". But no one in Ireland would have a clue where this guy was from, or care, because he looks generically European. He thinks the whole world looks at him differently and I can't convince him otherwise.

We all hate Americans projecting American biases onto the world, but how are they supposed to know? It's genuinely harder to be worldly when you come from the worlds more influential country.

Whether you figure it's narrow-minded test-writers, or an evil conspiracy to make sure that only the "right" people score well - this kinda crap is far older than CAPTCHA's. And older than the internet. And older than radio. And...

Probably older than stick-on-wet-clay-tablet writing, for that matter.