American things

1. biscuits & gravy
2. rodeo
3. smores or smore’s or smore(s)
4. “a super bowl”
5. stoops
6. speakeasy
7. “high school prom”
8. cheese in a can
9. dr pepper

smore

wtf?

Steely Dan
The Beat Generation

10. "democracy"
11. mac 'n cheese
12. sherrifs

It's s'mores and it's short for some more.

13. those varsity jackets with a big letter on the front
14. propeller beanie hats

15. grits

16. Shriners

https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/shriners-little-cars-1200x800.jpg

monster trucks

bison
bass fishing tournaments
Yellowstone Park

Looney Tunes cartoons

22. tipping

Mate,

https://i.imgur.com/kjgsMLQ.jpg

I mean, don't forget 23. Indigenous Genocide, but, you know.

if we're going down that route let's not forget 24. slavery

and of course 25. egg creams

slavery has existed everywhere for all recorded history. hardly confined to America, although we certainly embraced one of the most brutal forms of it for a couple centuries.

26 white ppl
27 mayonnaise
28 conway twitty
29 all the bad things
30 no good things

31 guns guns guns love guns need guns
32 sabermetrics
33 god

(Holland surely king of mayonnaise though, for better or for worse)

34. (With drawl) PICKUP TRUCK. GIDDY UP COWBOY.

35. 99.9% of all "cultural appropriation"

36. $$$

37. Road Trips
38. Self Help
39. Seminars on how to flip properties with no money down

40. Hawaii

41. Grand slams

42. Brian Wilson

43. drive-in cinemas

44. john cena

(19)45. the atomic bomb

(19)46. Donald John Trump

Just sayin some of these things aren't exclusively American. They're everybody's!

47. Superhero movies for "grownups"

48. jack kirby

49. jack ruby

27 mayonnaise

27 "ranch"

ranch-style houses

Ranch might be the most american word there is. The sound of it, the meaning, the house style, the dressing. It's 100% American.

https://i.imgur.com/IOlj6Lw.jpg

51. Saturday Night Live and dozens of comedy series and comedians no-one's ever heard of.

... no-one else, that is.

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

I mean there are all these british comedians called "Jimmy Pram" or "Tolliver Whelk" or whatever that the britishers on the board seem to reference a lot.

52. happy endings
53. late night shows
54. hyper-capitalism
55. "football"
56. "soccer"

Italians
Irish

57. Barack Hussein Obama
58. Velveeta

Misuse of the collective clause when referring to sports teams

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

Saturday Night Live is b-list?

'Math'

American comedy is painfully unfunny. There's no real bite, no real cynicism, it always has to be nicey nicey in the end. A or B list, SNL fits that bill surely.

today, sure. I think SNL at its best (maybe 80s-early 90s) was good exactly because it captured and spoofed that wide-eyed lack of cynicism. Kevin Nealon comes to mind, and all of the fake commercials. Since at least Will Ferrell and maybe going back to Chris Farley and Adam Sandler though the style of comedy has been very "I AM BEING FUNNY RIGHT NOW! DO YOU SEE ME BEING FUNNY!"

That’s not a fair or accurate dichotomy. You can’t tell me that someone like John Lewis is a “sketchy power hungry sociopath” and not a dedicated public servant. Just please turn down the gas on your words.

pretty strong

I fear the spirit in which this thread was begat has kind of got lost in the last dozen posts or so.

originalismism

I fear the spirit in which this thread was begat has kind of got lost in the last dozen posts or so.

10. "democracy"
11. mac 'n cheese
12. sherrifs

― Le Bateau Ivre, Monday, February 5, 2018 1:20 AM (six years ago)

12. sherrifs

Truck Nutz

History
Truck nuts began appearing in small numbers as custom-made scrotum sacks in the 1980s.

Yes, that's the true golden era of truckcicles. Back when they were lovingly custom-made. Truly artisanal scrotes, before they were popular and quality declined.

The Dollop podcast did a history of the two big rival truck nut companies, pretty good episode iirc

http://thedollop.libsyn.com/360-the-truck-nuts-war-live-in-phoenix

it taught me a lot about america

Only by holding a pair of well-crafted Nutz in your hand can you truly feel the pulse of America

the great thing about scrotums is that when you're done with them you can artisanally repurpose them into, i don't know, outer labia or something

truck labia when

I fear the spirit in which this thread was begat has kind of got lost in the last dozen posts or so.

― bae (sic)

active shooter drills

i can't believe nobody's said this before

i can't think of anything more american than active shooter drills

The word "shooter".

Corn Hole and Pickleball

knob shots

clarification: knob shots off the back of a baseball bat on the sandlot

Thing is, beanbag-toss games have been around for a long time. Only recently did people take this humble county-fair or school-field-day game and call it "cornhole." I blame 90s/00s frat culture.

Because hyuk hyuk it sounds a little juvenilishly scatalogical. Hyuk hyuk. O my sides, so funny, etc., especially on the thousandth repetition. Thanks, Beavis.

The word "shooter".

― Wee boats wobble but they don't fall down (Tom D.)

do you not have oyster shooters over there

also: root beer, apparently

y'all are missing out

in indiana _only_ potlucks are called pitch-ins

No, I meant as in active shooter. They'd be called a gunmen over here - because, let's face it, they're always men.

according to that "gender neutral language" meme the gender neutral version of that would be "gunfighter"

petition to make them play "the ballad of the last chance saloon" every time there's a mass shooting

if that doesn't fix things, well, i don't know, restricting access to firearms might do something. i guess we'll never know, though.

Jarts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D1nA7GGj_Y

they seem like they are sitting... too close

Sitting too close, an American thing.

Celebrity roasts

This is a directory for some children's rodeo in Utah and ,boy , these names are fucking AMAZING pic.twitter.com/WTFpacpl6p

— Blockhead (@BlockheadNYC) July 17, 2024

Don't forget the ladies of Utah pic.twitter.com/4aTbFADXyV

— Blockhead (@BlockheadNYC) July 17, 2024

Sure but tis no Bobson Dugnutt.

Sleve McDichael behbeh

I don't know, imagine someday meeting a real person named "Raygun Steele"

Also there's a girl there named "Remington Anderson" so if she later marries Raygun and takes his name...

stunned by the bizarre American name "Lars Christensen" wtf

Kashlee

Kashlee Osai-Howbadah

god these lists are good

one cosmic mystery among many here is the three variations on "hayes" for the boys including "haze" and .. "hayze". haze as in, what, weed smoke? hazy ipa? the effect of 20,000 dodge rams being driven every day in a utah mountain valley? 👻

and the '-lee' girls names just continue to explore new horizons and go where no redneck has gone before

These lists were killing me when I saw them last night.

I don't know, imagine someday meeting a real person named "Raygun Steele"

― silverfish, Tuesday, July 23, 2024 9:53 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I'm sorry but even though it's insane that is just the sickest name. The Haze's confused me too. It's all so Utah which is essentially it's own planet.

I mentioned Svengoolie to mark s on bluesky just now which made me wonder if ~this kind of thing~ is a definitively American thing? and if so what do non-Americans think of MST3K (do they think of MST3K)?

one cosmic mystery among many here is the three variations on "hayes" for the boys including "haze" and .. "hayze". haze as in, what, weed smoke? hazy ipa? the effect of 20,000 dodge rams being driven every day in a utah mountain valley? 👻

― he/him hoo-hah (map)

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2Ry9UZ8l5IM/maxresdefault.jpg

I mentioned Svengoolie to mark s on bluesky just now which made me wonder if ~this kind of thing~ is a definitively American thing? and if so what do non-Americans think of MST3K (do they think of MST3K)?

What is it?

... does that answer the question!

i love that shit, where you see pride colors before the flags were invented. i think sock dreams has non-binary thigh-high socks that look like what kate garner's wearing there.

I'm sorry but even though it's insane that is just the sickest name. The Haze's confused me too.

https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/783452/740full-castlevania:-portrait-of-ruin-screenshot.jpg

It's all so Utah which is essentially it's own planet.

― Benson and the Jets (ENBB)

they call it "deseret", they have their own alphabet too

https://rsc.byu.edu/sites/default/files/pub_content/image/1008/deseret_alphabet.jpg

my late wife showed me some MS3TK and tbh I didn't get it at all. basically they show some old trashy b-movie and crack really lame jokes over the top of it or just laugh at the bad special effects. I would sit there going I'd rather just watch the trashy movie on its own and laugh at it myself than listen to this rubbish

maybe a forerunner of those youtube/tiktok "some dickhead reacts to something" videos?

I'm not the best person to answer though tbf, if something's not been on terrestrial TV then I've not seen it.

Yes, MS3TK and its offshoots seem like the most bafflingly popular American things ever, and the guys who do the commentaries are like the most awful people in the world - smug, condescending, and so NOT FUNNY. The movies they talk over are invariably more interesting, strange, amusing than anything they ever have to say; they don't even seem to have any great knowledge of, or affection for, for the things they sneer at. And apparently one of them is a born again Trump supporter, just to seal the deal.

The UK has definitely never really had 'horror hosts' like Ghoulardi or Elvira; pre-movie introductions, when they existed, tended to be more sober or 'specialist' (eg Judith Williamson introducing a noir season on BBC2, or Peter Cowie curating a Bergman season for Thames TV).

bafflingly popular

? Even in the US, MST3K was only a niche thing for nerds. It was never Friends/Seinfeld popular. It wasn't even Darla popular.

(xp) Talking Pictures has Caroline Munro on Friday nights!

Good one!