What the...

[azekeil]

Right.

Please. I mean, seriously. I said as a joke when the first person made a dumb comment on kissycat1000's post in the adayinmylife community, "I bet they're American."

Needless to say, I was right. Now, remembering the numbers of American people online to English people online, you'd expect there to be a number of dumb commenters, some of which were from America. But seriously.

This one talks about the price of petrol (gas) in DOLLARS PER GALLON, AND THEN IN THE SAME COMMENT TALKS ABOUT DIFFERENT COUNTRIES!!!!!1111oneoneelevenWTFBBQZOMG!

Then as if you needed further evidence, look no further than this comment, in response to this thread.

Erm.

America, in this instance, I'm sorry you bothered getting out of bed this morning :/

Comments

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

None of the links to comments work

[ev1ldonut.livejournal.com]

Errrr...
They all work just fine for me...

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

each one just sends me to the middle of the post not a comment

[ev1ldonut.livejournal.com]

For me they show a particular thread. It is a different comment at the start each time (apart from the link that says 'post' which shows all the comments).

Are you sure it's showing you the same thing each time?

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

yes, it jumps me to the picture on the bridge each time

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the problem was that FireFox wasn't caching the images, so it jumped to the right point, then loaded the images, which shoved the right point down and left you staring at the photos...

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

Its working now. Must have been my end.

[ev1ldonut.livejournal.com]

How odd... :/

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

I restarted Firefox and it worked.

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

Don't you think you're over reacting a tad?
Intollerance isn't like you.

I do think the whole sticky paper thing was a bit confusing as why would anyone think that you would fold the paper over and throw away a live mouse? I know I wouldn't.
Just because the other guy said he liked hearing about other countries doesn't necessarily mean he knows anything about them. Thinking gas would ever cost less than a dollar a gallon in this country shows a certain lack of any interest in global politics but its hardly criminal and he's now learnt something.
And as for the Top Gun thing, the statement was "how much does it look like Tom Cruise is jerking off the guy who went on to be the doctor in ER?" as in it looks like that is whats happening but its actually not. Ok so it was meant that the jerking off was the thing that was not true but it could have been read in many different ways, especially if you'd not seen Top Gun (and why would you want to frankly?).

This comment was brought to you be the ever tollerant Sepheri ;)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Heh. I posted when I was drunk. I'm normally tolerant except of stupid people. Combine me being drunk and.. voila.

[easternpromise.livejournal.com]

My favourite one was an analyst I met when I was in the States. We were both on an Arabic course, and the teacher was talking about shopping in the Middle East and going to different stalls in a market and asking for different foodstuffs (the teacher was Sudanese). The analyst sat there and said: "Well, why don't they just go to Wal-mart?"

*face-palm*

Mind you, it still makes me giggle even now, so at least she did _something_ right. :)

[gerald_duck]

I think mock_the_stupid might like that little tale.

They should, anyway. Though their moderator's tastes seem to run a little askew from mine.

[sepheri.livejournal.com]

Aww, I'm sure you can be let off.
They were a bit dumb admittedly

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

My first thought when I saw that post was 'should have pointed out that those prices are pence per litre' :)

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Why? I don't assume that fuel prices are in pence per litre when the post announces the country of the poster...

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I tend to forget initially that americans quote their prices in gallons, although obviously I do remember that they have a different currency :) Also, their gallons are different to ours, just to add to the confusion.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

I had actually forgotten their gallons are different to ours :)

[gerald_duck]

To be fair to the Americans, part of the problem is that a PC and Internet connection are far more affordable and ubiquitous there than here. We have plenty of idiots in the UK, too, just fewer of them are on the net.

Even so, it's my experience that many people in the USA are very parochial, possibly dangerously so. The situation's bad enough in major cities and along the coast; out in the boondocks it gets quite scary.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

I realised all this when I made the post, but even so, the post seemed to be literally bogged down with having to explain to the stupid people, at which point I decided to rant about it because I could hardly believe my eyes.

[poesraven05.livejournal.com]

The USA is so large and so...separate..from other countries that a good lot of us have not had the opportunity to go abroad. It isn't stupidity, and perhaps it is ignorance...but I really don't see how how it implies the stupidity of Americans in general, aside from the comment on gas. It just says that they made a mistake regarding mice and have obviously never had them in their house, or if so didn't use that type of trap. If I were to say I didn't get it at first either, I suppose it would just be chalked up to me being American and therefore stupid, as well. And with the Tom Cruise thing...I agree with Sepheri...it wasn't necessarily clear. And frankly...I wouldn't expect anyone from the UK to know that we sell gas by the gallon here. I didn't know until I'd been over there.

So yes, perhaps Americans don't know as much as they should about other countries. With the gas comment, I suppose you are right....but really, who cares? I do, however, dislike the association that British people seem to make between Americans and stupidity. While we have our generalizations about people from the UK over here...I have never heard anyone call a British tourist stupid because of where they were from.

And finally, why would you bother writing an entire entry devoted to it? I don't know you, or your friends, in person, but I like reading all of you primarily because of your openmindedness and the interesting comments that you usually have to make. This was disappointing, even if it was a joke.

I hate to think that, in moving to the UK in five weeks, I'm going to be automatically assumed to be unintelligent just because I am from the US. I've been stereotyped before, however, and will just have to prove people wrong once again.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

No, don't worry. It was a rather tongue-in-cheek observation (while drunk) about the fact that it just so happened that all the dumb comments on that particular post at the time were made by Americans. I realise it was somewhat inflammatory, but after the third such comment it was becoming somewhat unbelievable even to me.

[poesraven05.livejournal.com]

Sorry for such a long response...I just woke up and this really got to me :)

[dylan.livejournal.com]

Some of those posts appear to be from a lack of focus/concentration, like they skim read the posts and didn't take the details in. When I was in the US last week I found that on days when I had a typically sugar-rich lunch I couldn't concentrate at all and couldn't work out how to do the practical examples on the training course I was attending. Nothing was making sense. After that I was back to salads.

I do agree that you can generally tell the nationality from how dumb the comments are which is worrying.