I hope I didn't imply otherwise.

loogs i was just kidding with that wise crack. i dont have a major problem with the south - i just saw some shit down there that shocked me. i agree i probably paint with too broad of a brush. i admit it was a small sample size. i will try to add an asterisk to all my comments about the south that says "based on my own personal observations of a very small sample size" it is just very frustrating that every time i go down there i hear the word nigger or some other outrageously racist crap about 50 times. this type of crap coming out of otherwise nice/supposedly christian people is pretty upsetting. i will restrain myself from any more comments about it until 2007.

i think some of that is more urban vs. rural than north vs. south. i heard the same shit every time i went to my roommate's tiny hometown in michigan's upper peninsula. any further north and i would have been in canada.

Point taken, man. You can get a quite jaundiced view of anywhere like that, I believe.

Like, say, if I went to Portland and hung out with street kids and meth freaks.

And I know you were needling, so I needled back. No hard feelins or anything, mang.

np: The Replacements: Tim

Get a room you faggots

My point exactly. They wear hats, they get in trouble. So they've just sworn off them.

i was just hanging out with middle/lower middle class people in a suburb and they were taking like something out of 1950...not some billy joes in a shack somewhere. maybe my wife's family is just more fucked up than normal...which is TOTALLY possible.

and druucifer - that is a very valid point. when i go to nc and just hang out in chapel hill i have no problem. there are some really racist bastards here in the west - even more extreme than anywhere else probably...the whole aryan nation shit. even the middle class people in rural nw are probably racist as hell they just aren't as open and willing to spout off about it as i saw when i was in nc. maybe being overt is actually better because at least you know what you are dealing with.

I wanna saw Colorado has the worst white power problem of any state in the us? Something along those lines.

I'll agree with that and also bring up the issue of why? with regards to racism.

Sometimes its a lack of understanding (id say people in the west are more likely to fall into this since there arent any black people out there)

should this thread and the bombing one be combined because im starting to lose track?

You could safely throw 'em both in the American Culture thread.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp

It's surprisingly "friday" today.

true - i think soem of this would go away if ppl actually met a black person. the really weird thing about someone like my father in law is that he hangs out with black guys all time, goes hunting, etc. but then spouts off around his family...some kind of macho thing maybe.

Yeh man. Goddammit. A guy lets his senility show for a second and his whole world blows up in his face.

maybe... but in my experience, people who know better, do better. I wouldn't adopt a racist attitude around my uncle just because he is and I need his acceptance. And if that sort of conversation came up, I'd most likely walk away.

they pretty much all hate me because i have told them shut the f up 2 or 3 times. i have given up now and just walk away. i did tell them a couple years ago that when we have kids i am never bringing them around to hear their racist b.s. that got their attention.

while i agree that it's a lot easier to demonize a class of people you have no exposure to, there' still tons of racism in areas where there's tons of exposure. there's a hell of a lot of racial tension in the detroit area. and people i've spoken to that live around there that harbor racist attitudes feel even more justified about it--they believe it's a valid reaction to their own experiences.

And surprisingly kids, we are still on topic here because the dealings between the races is most definitely a part of American culture.

Nice work.

the problem there is that the races might "know" each other, but they don't go to each others homes and share meals. they only know each other enough to inforce their stereotypes.

They are one in the same. Hipster culture is the same in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as it is in Atlanta, GA. It's based on non-conformists wanting to conform with other artistic/nerdy types with taste being a common thread. I would include socializing w/ like-minded "individuals", but a lot of people that like this type of music are complete shut-ins as shown in that social anxiety thread.

From the outside, as Rodney has already brought up, I think people view us as fat, arrogant dumbasses. Sad but true.

As far as technology goes, we are behind a lot of peer countries as far as widespread USE of this technology goes. Wouldn't most of America be lumped into the "Late Majority" of the marketing curve?

Fu's right.

The diversity of choices that's arrived with technology has lessened the ties that bind us. People don't stand around the water color talking about last night's ed sullivan show anymore. Still its just false to say that there is no american culture. What about the Simpsons or Seinfeld? Not only are those popular shows that create a common bond, but they are/were all about American Culture. What about all the reality tv shows. And you guys can't tell me that you've never gone to movies not because you were all that personally interested, but because everyone was talking about them.

I've actually never heard a cultural argument against allowing immigration. So I have no idea what you're talking about.

Some of this isn't directly the fault of the consumer. Wireless, for example. Europe standardized their wireless telco systems from day 1. They went from AMPS (analog) to TDMA, then GSM. That's one of the two tech paths that emerged world-wide, but every country there was in lock-step.

Here, we said "yay capitalism" and let the two paths duke it out. Nobody won. We now live with 2 systems, which means our collective buying power is split in half. That plus the gigantic land spread means Japan and Europe get cool phones waaay before us, ***along with any technology built upon them.

So yeah. sorry. That rambled a bit.

don't forget project runway, lost, six feet under, family guy, nip/tuck, the o.c., gilmour girls, desperate housewives, the sopranos, the 'l' word and, as you mentioned, the simpsons and seinfeld.

We obviously have an overriding similar culture that is percievable when we visit foreign countries.Or what would foreigners assimilate to? I think most of us (at least me) was speaking on a different level of cultural difference within and outside the norm.