What have you heard people say that screams "I have lived my life in a Westernised bubble and have no idea how the world is" ?
"They should just protest/go on the street/revolt/start a revolution" when talking about Russia or, to some extend, other countries like China or Noth Korea.
It's not even that this is a highly brutal military state that will kill you without blinking. Or that they will not just put you in prison but threaten your family if you dare to resist. It's not even the cover ups, or that no news on easily accessible media would run a story about your case.
I'd argue it is the underestimation of how propaganda gets you. All of you. All of us, me and you. No one is immune. And I'm not just talking about "oh our government and leader is the best". I'm talking about generations of oppression where you know that this one uncle or neighbor who tried something, who tried to be different, to change something, just brought destruction over himself and his loved ones. It's the propaganda of "just look away, don't bother, your actions won't change anything, just try to live your life as nicely as you can".
Thinking people who were raised with this mindset, by people who have the same mindset because they in turn were raised by people with a similar mindset, can just "get up and revolt" is so naive.
I also want that, sure, I also want them to get up and revolt, desperately, but man, you have no idea, do you.
People in countries like China don't revolt because the system works for them and supports them. It's ironic that you claim propaganda impacts all of us, while then immediately repeating the most bog-standard anti-communist propaganda straight from the US state department. I highly recommend reading False Witnesses, "Brainwashing", and Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of "Brainwashing" in order to better understand how people think, and how propaganda actually works. Propaganda works by providing justification for what people perceive to materially benefit them, not by simply convincing them of fantasy.
Funny, CIA wants them to revolt too.
"Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person"
Totally buying the touristy theme park version of whatever other culture. No, the people at the resort don't actually think you're great. No, tripping with a self-proclaimed shaman who charges a month's local wage to resolve your mommy issues is not how the locals do mysticism.
Its usually about placing value of life & comfort at top.
if you are a terrible person just say that, no need to make a list lmao
"$1 million isn't a lot of money."
Have you seen "Crazy Rich Asians"?
That could be rich people from anywhere.
A close friend (bless his heart) asked me if I "really think China is more free than, say, France?" when talking about things like freedom of the press and journalistic integrity. I've seen a lot of that recently, that because we live in a country which had been once considered to be "socialistic" that the stories we are told and things we have been taught wouldn't align as much with what global and local capitalists want us to believe is true. At one point I remember him critizising me for using the term "wage slave" (which I used jokingly but w/e) because "none of us here are actual wage slaves". Because you apparently have to be an Asian child in a Nike sweatshop to actually be opressed by capitalism. My brother, no-one is free until all are free.
"freedom" is such a vague concept though, mostly used for bullshit rhetoric
Yeah that's true
"none of us here are actual wage slaves"
Bro is just cosplaying as one
It might have been a misunderstanding between how being unemployed doesn't rule out being a wage slave, even if you live in a country with a relatively high standard of living because the means of production are still capitalistic, you just don't have any income and the government tries its best to not give you any also. Or I used the term in a too abstract of a manner elsewise. Or a combination of all and some others.
Acting that everyone on Reddit/Lemmy is American.
The Netherlands is just as much a part of the West.
Thinking China is the same as it was 10-30 years ago and that Chinese products can’t have superior quality.
We’ve reached a point where the US doesn’t even know how to manufacture some of the stuff China can.
I've recently been getting some stupidly high-quality stuff from China for insanely good prices.
Essentially, I've been buying stuff from Walmart that has been marked down over $100. What I think is happening is no-name Chinese companies try to make a high quality product and sell it for a premium, but then nobody buys it because of the reputation no-name Chinese companies have. Then, they still need to sell their inventory so we can get great products at great prices.
These bluetooth headphones from a company I've never heard on straight up shit on the Sennheisers I used to have that cost significantly more.
It's more that China already produces so much of what, say, Statesians consume. US-based companies offshore production and sell domestically at higher prices, but if you go straight to the manufacturers, you can get closer to the prices the US-based companies are already buying them for. These products are often made at the same factories, even, but don't have the US branding, that's about it.
I think some Chinese brands need to own their premium prices. It might be difficult with electronics however.
There are steels that premium Chinese brands can make that are objectively better that nobody else has produced yet and they are VERY expensive.
Their attitudes towards elderly parents. I've been told I shouldn't worry about helping them in their old age because they had their chance to work and save for retirement and so it's their responsibility of it's not enough. Except... They didn't. They migrated here with nothing, provided for THEIR parents their whole lives, and did the best they could for me, which left them with next to nothing. Westerners assume everyone boomer aged or so had the same opportunities that their parents had. The nuclear family is also very hands-off about caring for the elderly. That's not how most of the world operates. Plus, it's so sad!
Yep, same in the UK. We've abandoned our elderly and seemingly can't wait for our kids to leave so that we enjoy maybe 10 years of watching TV and not working before we die.
In other, less 'developed' countries the family is a unit. The elderly help with the infants (which has been proven to be mutually beneficial), while the rest of the family works or helps maintain the household. There's way less likelyhood of abandonment or lonliness in old age, which in my country is endemic.
Jaysus
"If your poor its because you didn't try hard enough"
Even in the west that one doesn't stand. We have systemic unemployment and tons of hard working family owned business lost everything when Amazon took their market share
Yeah that one is less a 'westernism' and more a '1%er-ism'
I agree that's the reality here, but that doesn't mean people will acknowledge it. I mean... look at what people who are willfully ignorant and/or intentionally hateful have done to the west. They're still saying shit like "better work harder, scrub" even though that's complete bullshit and applies just as much to them as anyone else.
Failing to have a coherent understanding of how imperialism works. A lot of westerners seem to think they live in developed countries developed purely by their own industry, while not realizing how financial capital continues to plunder the global south.
Any resource you could recommend for someone who wants a better understanding of this?
Yes, actually! I wrote an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list, you can skip straight to the "imperialism" section. It'll be a bit difficult to jump straight there without the other sections, but it won't be impossible. If you only read one, it should be Lenin's Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism | Audiobook, which is by far the most clear and important work on the subject. The only problem is that imperialism has developed quite a lot since Lenin wrote it, and the US Empire is now unquestionably the top dog. For more on that, I recommend Michael Hudson's Super-Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance.
If you only want a quick overview, though, Prolewiki's article on imperialism is really good by itself.
sometimes not acknowledging it even exists.
Definitely true as well.
"immigration is why our lives are getting worse"
Very clear indicator that someone has barely attempted to understand how the world works
MM/dd/yyyy date format by default on software
this is just the USA, not the whole west
Worst format ever. It should either be dd/mm/yyyy or yyyy/mm/dd
Goodness gracious, it gives me an aneurysm every time I set up a new computer with the en_US locale or have to fill out forms with that date format.
This is just the madlads in the US
date +%s
Maybe more of a US bubble but American software never considers that people might be multi lingual and public transport is always disregarded.
Examples include: Google knows that I speak German and English since I put it in my settings and yet it tries to auto-dub German YouTube content and auto-translates German comments in Maps.
Public transport stops only appear in Google Maps when you zoom in quite a lot despite being some of the most important points of interest when using public transport. Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
Those are just examples, there are many more examples in software where you can notice some 20 year old US tech bro came up with it who has never been to a different country.
Examples include: Google knows that I speak German and English since I put it in my settings and yet it tries to auto-dub German YouTube content and auto-translates German comments in Maps.
I actually have the opposite problem. Sometimes when googling something I get auto translated results (mostly reddit posts tho), and a week ago the YouTube app on my phone decided to auto translate English video titles.
No, I DON'T want your shitty Dutch auto translation. Give me the original English. I am not English illiterate and you 100% know it, Google.
Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
This reminded me of a few months ago when I went to Milan with a friend. I used Organic Maps for getting around and they used Gmaps. Their phone was always trying to get us to walk as little as possible, using EVERY possible combination of metro, tram and busses for even the shortest trips, it was insane. Change bus here, ride one stop, get on the metro, change to the other line, get back on a bus, take the tram, it never ended. Same trip on organic maps was 3 changes on the metro and a 5 minute walk at the end.
Public transport stops only appear in Google Maps when you zoom in quite a lot despite being some of the most important points of interest when using public transport. Public transport navigation is also very lackluster.
Maybe its a personal experience or a US problem, but when I was in Japan Google Maps was a godsend for navigating the subway and railway system. I learned quickly to trust that system because they had rail cars coming and going constantly. Ignoring the system caused me to get onto the right train, but that train was a full service train saand stopped at each individual station. Had I waited 2 minutes as directed I would have gotten on the limited service train and arrived at my destination many minutes faster.
I had never noticed public transport stops being missing in maps, but that is probably because there are no public transport stops where I live. I had noticed it always greys out the bus when I ask for directions though.
Literally anything MAGA says
Someone once tole me only Western hippies believe in alternative medicine
In the west - yeah? Obviously third worlders also believe in various miracle healers and televangelist preachers and such, but those countries too have scientific minds and communities and bodies that practice evidence-based, aka "western" modern medicine.
Crocs
Polo Shirts.
anything that implies they've only learned European and US history (e.g. discounting the global technological contributions of Asia and Africa)
I have one for this!
I once asked someone "In school, who were you taught invented vaccination?"
I thought she'd say Edward Jenner. In fact it was well-known in West Africa and the Ottoman Empire a century before Jenner (PDF)
She said George Washington!
"Nambia"
Paraphrasing, but:
Romanticising armed revolution.
Pretty common around the world IME
Yeah. Places actually in armed conflict don't like it. Afterwards, history gets rewritten as mythology.
An LGBT group that advocates for a country that executes LGBT people, or even just people suspected of being queer. It was a very depressing double take.
That was years ago. Now, little surprises me. Humans are idiots and are extremely shortsighted when it comes to climate change and politics. It will be interesting to see if we can salvage things before there is a large scale ecosystem collapse.
Unlike Interstellar, there's no portal that's going to give us access to other earth-like worlds.
Which LGBT group and which country are you talking about?
The best outcome for queer Palestinians is the dissolution of the fascist Zionist state killing far more of them than any resistance group. After being free from genocide, social progress happens far faster. Israel completing its genocide means no more queer Palestinians.
I would like to submit, for the question in the post, "thinking opposing the literal extermination of an entire country means uncritically supporting every single policy of the country's government"
Can't be gay when you're blown to pieces by Israeli missiles can you?
Israel has executed at least three orders of magnitude more LGBT people than Palestine ever did.
Israel kills far more Palestinian gays than Palestine does
"We need to help African kids!"
These often don't know a single African country besides "South Africa"