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Comment by ehnto | Hacker News Reader

It's not just who owns the sites, the majority of the English discussion on the web seems to be very US centric (of course, they are the majority of the userbase). I think that's why you get Australians who seem to care more about the US election than our own, and every second conversation seems to have an American controversy slipped into it here. To no fault of the US, it's just an interesting state of affairs.

It's a big reason why I disengaged from Reddit and read selectively on HN. I don't dislike the US at all, and it still permeats through culture here regardles. I just don't think soaking in the latest US drama is great for your mental health or a good use of your time, unless you actually live there. It's one thing to stay informed but another to let yourself get invested in the daily controversies.

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Yeah, it's a sad state of affairs honestly and I hate how the American culture wars are seeping into the mainstream here in Europe. A lot of these things are completely irrelevant to life here but it seems like a certain subset of people lap it up.

For instance, "Woke" has been a huge topic here in Norway the past ~3 months which is funny as it's close to completely irrelevant for the day to day life of 99.9% of Norwegians.

I blame the shifting media incentives and hope that some new platforms pop up, or that the mainstream audience just gets tired of it and stops using it (but due to the addictive nature of these platforms I doubt that honestly..)

It's not only EU/ANZ that's receiving them. I have seen Indians also aware of US cultural jargons like Wokeism, TRAs and what not. This is indeed a weird phase.

India's most elite have blindly imported Oxford/Cambridge culture to India for a good century. Doubly, social justice issues have been a major part of Indian political discourse for a good century too. So it's not surprising at all.

What is surprising is how anyone who doesn't use "Pure English" is seen as less than in these circles. Local Indian primary source work is underrated in favor of sweeping generalizations made at invited talks in western universities.

It is changing now, but mostly because the new 'tech money' is questioning the elite status of the previous class and soft replacing them.

> India’s elite have blindly imported Oxford/Cambridge culture…

It’s changing rapidly and BBC accent isn’t cool anymore with the rise of a new class of self made elites.

https://youtu.be/RNJ7yxJgcXo

> For instance, "Woke" has been a huge topic here in Norway the past ~3 months which is funny as it's close to completely irrelevant for the day to day life of 99.9% of Norwegians.

It gets worse when American-Left wokeism completely disregards the native culture and tries to invent racism when there was none, creating unnecessary racial conflict through their shitstorms.

E.g. the American Left is now trying to cancel "blackface" in German Christmas traditions, where the whole point was to highlight that yes, Africans were important in early Christianity and equal to other races (but there weren't enough people with the right skin colour around, so make-up had to make do). But no, black representation is, apparently, more racist than pretending everyone in the bible is white.

White people painting themselves black is not black representation regardless of the historical justification or US culture. Calling this out and asking for traditions to stop or adjust is not "woke".

> White people painting themselves black is not black representation

You have a lot of small countryside villages where no black people live. One of the three magi you need in your school play about Christmas is, by tradition, considered to be black. What other solution do you suggest to represent that?

Don't paint the kid black and leave the nativity play as-is? If the goal is to teach them that the people in the biblical stories weren't all white I'm sure there's plenty of other better ways than putting one of them in blackface. Traditions are not sacred, and can and do change over time.

> Don't paint the kid black

Why, other than because Americans have negative connotations with the practice?

> I'm sure there's plenty of other better ways

We're open for suggestions.

> Why, other than because Americans have negative connotations with the practice?

But it's not just people from the US. There are protests every year in Europe against various traditions which involve blackface (eg. Black Peter). There are plenty of people who protest and given the colonial legacies of some European countries it's pretty clear to me that this is not just invented racism/conflict from "the American left".

As a European myself I understand the complaints of US defaultism and agree with plenty of them but this simply not one of them.

From Wikipedia:

> The George Floyd protests and subsequent Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the Netherlands in 2020 appear to have had a significant effect on the acceptance of Zwarte Piet's traditional appearance among the Dutch public. A June 2020 survey saw a drop in support for leaving the character's appearance unaltered. 47 percent of those surveyed supported the traditional appearance, compared to 71 percent in a similar survey held in November 2019.

Perfectly organic local protests and totally not fuelled by US activism, indeed.

Never saw it that way, but you have a point!

Which prominent figures on the American left have commented on German Christmas traditions?

Meh.

Part of the problem with American righties and lefties is that they tend to make stuff up. The comment you're responding to is very likely an example of that, but in its own way it illustrates how they insert their talking points into even HN threads created to discuss how to get away from their talking points.

Viewed from that perspective, it's insidious even if it is completely fabricated.

I don't think it's necessarily "making things up". I believe that these people legitimately believe their stances but they are based on wrong, incomplete or outright fabricated evidence. Usually of a potent emotional nature. Which makes them care too much about trying to convince other people to their viewpoint.

If you read about "woke leftists cancelling [my tradition/Christmas]" day in and day out you start believing this stuff, even if it just started out as hanging out on certain subreddits for fun.

I don't believe everyone is as susceptible to this "convincing emotional content built on fear and rage" but it absolutely seems like a decent amount of people are. Especially considering these are usually the loudest voices in any debate.

That's the worst part about the American internet being so prolific in Europe. I don't think Americans understand how much their internet impacts Europe. I can only really speak for Northern Europe. But the impact is massive there, most content we consume after we learn english in our teens is American/English content.

This is a poor example of Americans deliberately influencing culture overseas.

On the topic of the historical wise men who are said to have visited Jesus - they came from the east (Asia), not the west (Africa). While it is true that in some parts of Europe one of the wise men has come to be portrayed as black, it's absurd to say that blackface must be applied in order to preserve the authenticity of the portrayal. If historical authenticity was the goal, the entire nativity should be portrayed by people with Middle Eastern features. And if the goal is merely symbolic - a way of showing that Christianity can appeal to people from all over the world - that can easily be communicated through dialog.

Zwarte Piet has a different history and has nothing to do with early Christianity. If anything it has to do with pagan traditions around winter demons that relatively recently morphed into a black sidekick for Sinterklaas, coincidentally exactly around the time that blackface minstrel shows and human zoos were popular.

But I suspect you know this, and are trying to loop in American "culture wars" as a way of not dealing with something that Afro-Europeans find at least racially insensitive if not outright offensive. This, in fact, is exactly how Americans end up getting shoehorned into every topic everywhere in the world, because even when people claim to want to discuss topics in the local context, they tend to spend more time derailing the conversation into some whining about American cultural hegemony instead.

> And if the goal is merely symbolic - a way of showing that Christianity can appeal to people from all over the world

It's not just that it could appeal to the whole world, but that early Christianity was not just an European affair.

> that can easily be communicated through dialog.

All the counter suggestions so far have been vague and ineffectual. If racism could be solved through dialog, we wouldn't even be here.

> But I suspect you know this, and are trying to loop in American "culture wars" as a way of not dealing with something that Afro-Europeans find at least racially insensitive if not outright offensive.

I would suspect that Afro-Germans rather find it offensive that Germany keeps dodging its responsibility for its colonial war crimes and tries to silence critics of its incredibly dubious 2021 "settlement", after 70+ years of attempts to solve this situation.

But Americanisms are dominating the public discourse so hard that these topics aren't even on the radar. (Similarly, we can get massive Floyd protests country-wide on a moment's notice, but none against Germany's police giving guns to and covering for Nazi terrorists shooting Turkish migrants.)

So, sorry, I'm not some insidious white supremacist trying to silence critics, I'm just extremely disappointed in our local problems being ignored in favour of doing whatever the Americans are doing.

The point about early Christianity is just silly. When Jesus was born, Christianity did not yet exist. If it is historically accurate that wise men actually did visit Bethlehem bearing gifts (which many scholars don't believe is the case), they were not on a Christian pilgrimage, or any kind of pilgrimage related to Abrahamic religion. There is no evidence or scripture implying thus.

Certainly, early Christianity arrived in North Africa around the same time it arrived in Eastern Europe, but that's hardly controversial. It's not only geographically and politically obvious, but also a well-documented history, literally going back to the time that the New Testament was canonized - in Roman Africa, no less! There is no need to have 21st century children in Germany apply blackface during the nativity play to show that Christianity existed in Africa several hundred years after Jesus died.

I don't know why you are bringing up being an "insidious white supremacist" (an Americanism you imply other people are using, and yet nobody on this thread is). The issue is that this whole argument that blackface is an earnest celebration of African Christianity is totally contrived, based not on fact, but on the unwillingness to acknowledge that in the modern world doing caricatures of other races is generally seen as culturally insensitive. Majority of Europeans are not crying "racism" (once again - your words), but they still appreciate that this sort of stuff does offend some people and is not something that is a big enough deal to be worth clinging onto. There is no cultural heritage being lost by letting kids perform the nativity play without blackface.

And no need to whatabout back around to colonial history in Namibia as if that's some kind of gotcha. Sure, that's bad too. But once again, nobody was saying to ignore the genocide of the Herero and Nama. There can be two bad things at the same time. The current German government refusing to take responsibility for crimes that happened during colonial times, and also individuals in present-day Germany not wanting to give up a "tradition" that has no educational benefit, no historical accuracy and really does bother some individuals of the minority it allegedly is honoring.

You want to be careful about that. The last time a Norwegian got radicalized by US anti-woke discourse it ended extremely badly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Behring_Breivik (77 killed, 319 injured!)

His manifesto cited and occasionally simply plagiarized various anti-muslim UK and US sources. Even apparently the Unabomber.

A similar situation applied to the New Zealand mosque shooter.

It's an impossible counter-factual to run, but if he had never been exposed to US discourse and we remove all the US sources from the manifesto .. would his terrorist attack have happened?

Fascism and Nazism weren't invented in the US, and they're still in Europe, albeit under different names.

In the broader sense this reactionary stance is the same as the Jihad types in the middle east, albeit with less overly Muslim and more overtly Christian takes. Jihad vs. McWorld covered it decades ago.

> the majority of the English discussion on the web seems to be very US centric

This is one of my two pain points on Quora: not even trying to split among US-related content and international content. Reading all those question where "we" implies US residents is as annoying as those US citizens not understanding that calling themselves American/Italian/Irish in an international discussion can lead to some light backlash.

> This is one of my two pain points on Quora

I thought Quora was overrun by Indians?

Not in my experience.

Yeah, once you think of "politics" as an entertainment product, like US-style professional wrestling, a lot becomes clearer. The US style just has heightened emotions: everything is the potential end of the world. The problem is that some of it really does have impacts on real humans, and potentially in non-US countries. US support for European security is pretty important, for example. As are US central bank rates. And if the Republicans ever win their debt ceiling stalemate and get a default, that would immediately blow up the global banking system far worse than 2008.

There is also US "dark money" in UK politics (e.g. Turning Point and the various Tufton Street orgs). And some UK politicians have "made it" in the US market, such as Facebook VP Nick Clegg.

I just don't think soaking in the latest US drama is great for your mental health or a good use of your time, unless you actually live there.

It's not good if you live here either.

Wow, I basically came here to say this.

Heck, me and my Dad can't even talk politics because of how toxic it is. The worst part is that, if you live here, you need to pay attention for economic reasons.

As much as fund managers tell you to 'not time the market'. It seems obvious to pay attention to things like interest rates, stock market prices, etc... before making major purchasing decisions. If I ignored the news, I'd be buying a lake front property at 8% interest rate, instead I'll wait for a collapse. (Did it with COVID in April 2020 and got ~30% off on my indexes)

> instead I'll wait for a collapse

I've been waiting for the housing market in my country to go bust since 2008. Any day now.

Oh man, you missed the 2020 collapse. It was only a blip.

We got our real estate absurdly cheap at 3.1% interest rate.

Makes it really hard to find a bigger place when everything is 3x more expensive now. We tell our real estate agents how much we pay now, and they are mind boggled.

> instead I'll wait for a collapse. (Did it with COVID in April 2020 and got ~30% off on my indexes)

What does this mean? You were invested in equities before Jan 2017, then sold them, then held cash between Jan 2017 and Mar 2020, and then bought equities again precisely at the bottom in mid Mar 2020?

Does the 30% off factor in missed dividends?

I basically held cash from 2018 to 2020. Prior to that, all of my money went into my wife's doctorate degree.

Supposed you had had cash to invest in early 2013, at what point would you have invested it in equities?

Immediately.

I'd probably start pulling back about 10 years after 2008. Basically, when times are too good, that is when to sell.

Although, selling means you have to pay tax, so I'd probably just horde cash more than selling.

I've only played the market on a few different 'news' things that I'm an expert in, put like 2k in, stock price goes up 10%, make $200... Too high risk for $200.

Right now I'm dumping everything I have into stocks and resource based trusts. (and as mentioned, looking for more real estate)

> Basically, when times are too good, that is when to sell.

And your metric for this is what? An even sounding number in base 10 after an arbitrarily chosen dip?

> Although, selling means you have to pay tax, so I'd probably just horde cash more than selling.

So you would bet the drop in prices will be less than the 20% tax on the capital gains just before the drop in prices?

> I've only played the market on a few different 'news' things that I'm an expert in, put like 2k in, stock price goes up 10%, make $200... Too high risk for $200.

I do not understand. If it was too high risk, why did you do it?

>And your metric for this is what? An even sounding number in base 10 after an arbitrarily chosen dip?

Read Tao Te Ching(I liked Stephen Mitchel Translation, its only 80 pages, its the first book of Taoism, 2nd favorite book of all time). I'm a numbers guy, but I can't deny that you can 'feel'/'see' the Tao. When your redneck neighbor buys a gigantic boat and has a 7 year car loan, its something you notice.

>So you would bet the drop in prices will be less than the 20% tax on the capital gains just before the drop in prices?

This ignores risk too.

>I do not understand. If it was too high risk, why did you do it?

It was a good stock in general, I was 100% certain the market made a mistake on the news, $2000 dollars is nothing, if I lost it, my life wouldn't have changed at all.

Of course they say that, they make a percentage on the money you invest with them. But it feels like a really obvious piece of any risk assessment. And your risk tolerance heavily depends on how much you can afford to lose. But I guess that’s the idea. You never bet more than you can afford to lose (stocks are gambling, idc if anyone disagrees). So it’s hard for a lot of people to consider entering right now when they’re sure they have very little they can afford to lose, and the probably of total loss seems exponentially higher now than two years ago, and it’ll likely be exponentially lower in a few years. OTOH, you might be wrong, and you might miss the best opportunity of your life.

Usually said the loudest by people that refuse to leave for countries they claim are better.

I don't claim any countries are better. I'm saying an addiction to spending all your time following current events is unhealthy.

Partially it's the dramas, but for me it's that people get the idea that U.S law is the way the law works in their country, it's very tiring when the subject is a complicated one - for example every time there is copyright discussion, the perception seems to be that the purpose of copyright is "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts" because that is the American (and I guess also English) purpose.

I feel like a lot of non-Americans also seem to think that "fair use" is an international copyright doctrine.

Also "public domain"

What is the purpose of copyright in other countries?

French style systems are more focused around the "moral right" of the author. Some of the "moral right" rights are inalienable and cannot be sold (e.g. right to be identified as the author).

In fairness, most of this stuff is globally harmonised, such as by the Berne convention.

To add to the other comment, the concept of copyright _does not exist_ in France, and is purely a common law concept. Author rights, our equivalent, are justified so:

L'auteur d'une oeuvre de l'esprit jouit sur cette oeuvre, du seul fait de sa création, d'un droit de propriété incorporelle exclusif et opposable à tous. Ce droit comporte des attributs d'ordre intellectuel et moral ainsi que des attributs d'ordre patrimonial, qui sont déterminés par les livres Ier et III du présent code. L'existence ou la conclusion d'un contrat de louage d'ouvrage ou de service par l'auteur d'une oeuvre de l'esprit n'emporte aucune dérogation à la jouissance du droit reconnu par l'alinéa 1er.

tl;dr: you're allowed to make money off of it because you created it. You cannot give away those author rights. They include moral rights and intellectual rights (intellectual rights are your IP, which can be sold. Moral rights are and will always be yours.)

most European countries have some variation of the French model discussed below as opposed to the English/American model.

This is the reason why, I believe, that European countries has had no problem at all signing up for longer copyright because it fits in with our conception that the purpose of copyright is to protect the rights of the creator.

This was normalized by Berne, but let us suppose we got a new Berne convention and the U.S said hey long copyright does not help support the promotion of science and the arts etc. and I don't think that would go over that well, because shortening the period of protection does not fit well with the EU conception of what the purpose of copyright is for.

Hence the reason lots of arguments on here where people say I think it should be 25 years probably won't fly because it seems unlikely people in power are going to want to overthrow the international order on that point.

> the U.S said hey long copyright does not help support the promotion of science and the arts etc

The US has been a big driver of extending copyright terms on behalf of US media corporations such as Disney. It became very apparent that whenever Mickey Mouse would come out of copyright, Disney would get a change in the law.

Most recently when it was about to expire this didn't happen, possibly as a result of the spat between Disney and Florida Republicans.

I agree my hypothetical is a long shot, but it is mainly just to illustrate that even if the U.S took this hypothetical road and decided to argue for cutting copyright back to something like 20 years that people on HN often seem to think is the way to go, it is unlikely that European countries would find that acceptable - which means that probably it would get dropped because it would be a pretty big issue if in Europe it was 70 years and in US it was 20.

What's more pervasive is the predominantly American views and values that get amplified through these discussion sites, HN included. Almost any discussed topic will attract a majority of US commenters, projecting their utilitarian and outwardly-expressive worldview on worldly matters.

Yeah, it's very annoying have any sort of discussion about a philosophical topic and someone comes with something like "BUT THE FOUNDING FATHERS"

This is how you end up with South Bombay folks organising a march protesting gun violence in the US.

It's more than web discussions. People only care about American politics and controversies even in places that don't speak English.

Here in Brazil the left even imported the term "Uncle Tom". Our existing term for that ("Capitão do Mato") was deemed racist - so anyone that didn't got the memo from the American left was automatically in the evil person box

This is most evident when it comes to English speaking nations that have separate internal cultures but also have an integrated American diaspora. India, Ireland, South Africa, and Philipines are some examples.

The diaspora is loud, but views their country from an entirely American perspective. At the same time, Americans uphold the diaspora as defacto representation for the natives.

Because English is an official language in these parts, the national news of these places gets cannibalized by American opinion and Americans look out for blind spots like would when talking about places that don't speak English at all.

> I think that's why you get Australians who seem to care more about the US election than our own, and every second conversation seems to have an American controversy slipped into it here.

My guess is, in that context, the US is a neutral target which everyone can have a grab without too much risk of ...say... awkwardness.

Plus, as the world's most powerful nation, the US did many talkable things. It's like a gift that keeps giving, and as soon as you think the topic is finished, the US just stands up and tosses you more.

But I don't think talk == care, though.

The US has the largest cultural blocks on the western internet, but I don't think they quite form the majority, just a plurality. There's a lot of internet out there, but usually it's easiest (for consumers, and for content creators) to focus on the overall "biggest" things, which is often-times the US-thing.

Media narratives in Pax Americana are so strongly driven by the US that most of us non-USA folks are drawn to it unwittingly. I recently had this discussion with a EU resident who was very passionate about certain US issues like Trump's indictment or some events in Florida/SF. It was weird to see them discuss it so passionately as if it's happening in a Berlin Kiez.

> ...soaking in the latest US drama is great for your mental health

Touché.

Might be controversial, but I believe that if you're not part of the USA and can't influence their political choices, it's better to ignore the chatter.

I’m in the USA and I try to ignore much of the chatter.

One rule along these lines: if a Congressperson is not in my state or district and he or she isn’t actually influencing legislation, there’s really no reason to pay attention.

Obviously politics is important, but you can’t draw a straight line from that statement to the need to keep up with the US media ecosystem.

> I think that's why you get Australians who seem to care more about the US election than our own, and every second conversation seems to have an American controversy slipped into it here.

The US for better or the worse is the 'world leader', the current big 'empire', every country in the world reports on US news.

Of course in Australia it doesn't help that you have Sky News (Fox News for Australia) riling people up over stuff that doesn't concern them at all.

Eh, it seems to me even ABC News follows it closer than necessary.

I think that's more to do with their reporting standards

It's very easy as an ABC journalist to rehash Reuters and AP without fear of incorrectly publishing something

That's why you'll often see domestic Australian stories reported in all other outlets except for the ABC - they do not trust other domestic news sources

Lots of people in this thread are discounting the importance of Pax Americana

Every country's stability, for better or for worse is at least significantly affected by US Politics and their foreign policies

In Australia it's been that way since well before LBJ. But even far flung states in different continents are directly affected by US foreign policy, perhaps even moreso than Australia

>Lots of people in this thread are discounting the importance of Pax Americana

I don't think so; what people (not necessarily in this thread) are discounting is the importance of Pax Americana coming to a close.

Like all other empires and world superpowers that came before us, the Age of America will almost certainly end, likely some time this century, whether any of us like it or not. The writing is on the wall for anyone who cares about it, and no it doesn't take a degree in geopolitics or economics to see it.

Who's going to be up next to bat? Personally I don't know, though odds seem good it's probably China. Whoever it's going to be though, we will be living our own flavor of an interesting time.

War is peace.

> Of course in Australia it doesn't help that you have Sky News (Fox News for Australia) riling people up over stuff that doesn't concern them at all.

Did the sale of Sky to Comcast cause its editorial voice to moderate at all? As an American it's easy enough to imagine what it used to be like, when it was owned by Rupert Murdoch.

I find it exhausting how much of the internet is dominated by certain aspects such as news, culture, websites, and apps that revolve around the United States.

This dominance often leads to a digital monoculture where everything seems to be interconnected with US news, pricing, and the relentless pursuit of capitalist growth, which can overshadow other perspectives and cultures.

It's important to recognise that if any other country had the same saturation on the internet, I would likely express similar concerns about its impact on our lives.

I am, of course - a hypocrite as I sit here on a US VC focused website - I guess the chairs really are where the people go.

Of course the majority of discussions are US-centric when most major websites & apps started in the US, because it is/was the largest economy, and it's the largest primary English-speaking population in the world, and has a pretty high rate of Internet access and usage of those particular kinda of sites & apps.

There's also the fact that what the US is just more important than other countries by virtue of being such a huge chunk of the global economy. What happens in the US has repercussions to people that live in other countries in a way that is much less true of almost every other country in the world.

If the US had a population of 70M and the UK had a population of 340M and the GDPs were reversed - it would be the other way around.

Not sure why this comment is downvoted. It works the same even within the United States. There are 50 of them after all despite all conversation focusing on Florida, California, and Texas. We all know San Francisco and Austin but I couldn't name much more than that with a gun to my head despite knowing there must be dozens of cities in each of those states.

Even if most major websites & apps started in the US this is a problem, because they're thinking is deeply limited, they think small, they think United States, when their reach and audience is fundamentally every country on Earth, instead of one or a small handful.

The number of times, on UK websites or US websites, something is advertised as "Coming in Spring 2024", it baffles me. What months happen to be defined as "Spring" is dependant on which hemisphere of the planet you happen to be on.

It's parochial and wierd.

But there’s no reason the rest of the world has to use the same web sites. It’s “parochial and weird” to expect that everything on the internet will be tailored for every country automatically.

The rest of the world sometimes has to use the same websites.

I live in Australia. I listen to a series of audio dramas created in the UK. They have a website, and sell and promote their releases there. This is the source of information about these items. And when they say "Coming Spring 2024" they are not thinking about their global audience, and I can't get any information about these releases from other websites.

It's parochial and wierd to use an arbitary metric based on what hemisphere you're in and assuming your entire audience is restricted to that hemisphere (or at least, not caring about the others).

It's clear and simple to say "Coming September 2024". That's not tailored for a country, it's tailored for a set of non-geographical overlapping cultures, some of whom might want to give you money.

They kinda do, because in a global market there tends to be a single global market leader. There aren't a hundred different per-country Spotify (a Swedish company!) clones, for example.

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