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this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2026
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A place for Australians and friends to share news from the other countries. Like all communities here, we discuss topics from the Australian perspective.
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Dear seppos,
Australia proposes a cultural exchange whereby we will happily invite your progressive well adjusted not-stupid people in exchange for your accepting our fuckwits on a 1 for 1 basis.
Sadly there are way more of you than us, so if we send you our most fucked 10%, that's only 3m of you.
However, Gina Rinehart, Rupert Murdoch, and Clive Palmer are each worth 1m in exchange if you can seduce them to renounce their Australian citizenship.
Deal if it's retroactive because Murdoch already had to give up citizenship for control of foreign media type reasons.
Now that we have a credit for 1m refugees...
I had to look up what seppo means and that's fucking hilarious
Brits say 'Tank' for the same reason, with more rhyming.
You don't know the meaning of Seppo
Yeah, I live in the US and, like most of us, can't afford to see other countries, so I haven't had the pleasure of hearing it said to my face.
Mine was a hugely stupid totally Finland-based joke that nobody outside needs to understand. The guy in the picture is named Seppo, from a Finnish day-time soap opera.
Sorry.
Ok that's hilarious
Yeah no need to apologize xD I thought it was just a random reaction image but that's really funny
send them pauline she'd do numbers over there.
and so the table has turned
Mate, murdoch already is 'american', thats how he owns Fox.
yeah someone else already said that. well done.
Sign me up. MAGA. Make Australia Great Again. Oh, wait…guess I’d better make a different acronym, lol.
I'd never heard the term 'seppo' before. Looked it up. Have to admit a bit saddened that you used it.
Im a bit fucking saddened by the global financial catastrophe that we didnt need to have.
I agree fizzle, but to call all Americans seppos is insulting and unfair.
First and foremost, I dont care how you feel.
Secondly, I really hope you do feel miserable and humiliated just generally, even if not the result of my comment. The USA is precipitating unspeakable harm that will resonate around the globe for decades.
Finally, the term seppo isn't intended as an insult. Its a jab or a jeer. Like calling an American a yanks, or calling your friend hairy legs, or a queenslander a banana bender, or a western Australian a sand groper.
I wouldnt call my girlfriends father a seppo, but an American im on friendly terms with, absolutely.
Thank you for your sensitive words fizzle 😆
Some if not most of the Americans that are in this community would have had to look up seppo just the way I did. They might not see it as friendly banter. We need to be supporting each other to create a better society. Call me snow flake but I am not a fake. Understanding other people creates connection and solidarity. We need that now.
would this be before or after the "You're either with or us against us?"
the US has spent just shy of a century throwing its weight around and making sure everyone did exactly what it wanted. Now it's losing soft and hard power, and its citizens are finding out exactly what everyone thinks of the country and society they have helped build vote and shape over their lives.
Sucks, but take it as a teachable moment.
Taleya, most educated US citizens would very much know that they are not universally loved and have been so aware for many generations, not just recently. Remember 'Yankee Go Home"? This phrase has been used since the 1950s by diverse countries and groups in response to US meddling in their affairs and stoking wars.
What if you don't feel 'at home' in the country you were born? What if you feel unsafe? What if you can see through the propaganda that many of your countrymen and women don't? What if you can't see yourself making a difference but do see yourself as a target for some uniformed or ununiformed thug or madman with a semi-automatic, or as someone whose career will be scuttled if they object? This and a lot more is happening in the US right now. It is oversimplified to lump all Americans (or Australians, or anyone else) in one basket.
No one begrudged German Jews leaving Nazi Germany when they saw the writing on the wall and they still had the freedom to leave (which was later taken from them). If we uphold democratic rights like freedom of movement for ourselves then we should uphold it for everyone who supposedly lives in a democracy.
yeah your last two paragraphs have wildly deviated from this conversational thread, which was about the fact you didn't like someone used the term "seppo". Ironically a nickname that came into use during the second world war.
Taleya I was responding to your comment which was about how US citizens are finding out now what the rest of the world think of them. You didn't mention the 'seppos question' 😂 at all. And yes, ironically I had never heard the word before so there you are.
I think she very rightfully pointed out that you don't get to sit there and demand everyone pull together to create a better society (rather than mock americans) after decades of the US doing everything possible to steer, derail and otherwise mandate that society (and mocking everyone else)
You've got no ground to stand on to make that demand. You have no social capital after your behaviour as a nation. And now the US no longer even generates fear, it has nothing
in Australia a blue nickname is a term of endearment
I kid you not
Don't be. The etymology of the word is simply that it rhymes with 'tank', and not specifically the word it rhymes with.
It's the same as 'pom' for English people. And used in similar context. Yes, it's a little derogatory - but more in a teasing way rather than a nasty way.
People who eat pork pies are not thought of as habitual liars, but it's where 'porkies' comes from. Actually, that may not be a thing for you guys, huh? Porkies a chain there, right?
Not just 'tank', septic tank, therefore seppo. Not just tank and yank.
well thats how rhyming slang tends to work, e.g. you would hear someone say "there was a barney" meaning there was a fight (that's Barney Rubble = trouble); or to "have a butcher's" meaning to have a look at something (Butcher's hook = look). Using the first part of the word or phrase is part of what makes it an in-group marker; those who know will understand, hence calling someone a seppo is just combining the cockney rhyming slang the ANZACs came across during the war with an Australian stylism. i would normally take that as friendly banter rather than derogatory.
Ned, I know about rhyming slang in general (I've been on this earth long enough :D) but the use of seppo IS derogatory and unfair. If (god forbid) ON won our next election and the Americans called Australians 'losers' for it would that be justified? I don't think so. Right-wing narrative control in the US is very heavy and we are going in the same direction but the rest of our political landscape is not as lightweight as theirs is. Their voting system is different as you know and the economic situation a lot worse than here.
You'll just have to take our word for it that it's not a nasty term. Nobody who wants to insult you is going to use the word 'seppo'. We have far more colourful words for that.
Nath, I know. I've been in Australia for over 6 decades but not everyone understands our larrikin humour or has seen the word 'seppo' before.
You've been here six decades and never heard the term 'seppo'?
That's ... astonishing.
Astonishing it may be but it's true. I well and truly know now what seppo means 😆
There's a type of American who deserve the term, but like all generalisations, it's mostly unfair. It's a big country with a lot of different people and subcultures. If everyone judged us by the prime ministers we've elected, I'd be very upset.
If we elected a sex trafficking child rapist who initiated the apocalypse to fuel his ego then we would deserve to be judged.
Someone getting ~~elected~~ nominated prime minister by their party in the runup to elections in Australia tells a lot more about the general populace there than it does in the US, because we've got first-past-the-post elections and you lot have ranked choice.
Edit: And there's a fine for not voting in Australia; this is not true the US.
Edit edit: there, now it's completely accurate as opposed to just accurate in spirit. Thanks for keeping me accountable, internet!
Riiiight, technically the party picks the leader. Of course they pick the leader in the runup to the elections, don't they? And people vote based on that, don't they, which is why it's such a problem when leaders get ousted mid-term, like with Rudd and Gillard, right? And why Murdoch plastered Abbott's face on the cover of his rag as Australia's saviour, isn't it, to get people to vote for his party who were running him as their pick for PM?
Or are you still kidding yourself that Australians don't vote for the PM? The same way you're kidding yourself that American citizens votes actually count for anything while the electoral college exists?
No, I think it is a technicality.
The party leader from the party forming government needs a mandate from the electorate.
As in, when you cast a vote to elect the party to choose a leader and form government, it's reasonable and expected for that party to tell you what their proposed government would look like and who their leader would be.
Imagine if Labor won an election with Albo as leader during the campaign but then he stepped aside a few weeks later and the party made Wong the new PM. That's not the structure that the electorate voted for, and although "technically" permissible the vast majority of the voting public would rightly feel that it's not the government they voted for.
There are of course exceptions - hypothetically suppose there were a sudden unexpected invasion from one of our neighbours in SEA, a party might elect a "war time" leader to be PM. Given the dire circumstances, there might be bi-partisan support for the move, and the public might support it.
Generally though when a party elects a new leader as PM they'll move to election as quickly as possible in an effort to receive that mandate from the public.
Yes those who vote for and against fascism are identical
I didn't b say they were.
Then how is a person deserving to be judged by others' actions? Doesn't really add up.
Guilty by association?
Seems to be what they're arguing for.
Everyone is held accountable for the actions of their compatriots.
This might be true but it should definitely not be.
Yes it should.
Im an Australian. Of course im accountable for the harm done to our indigenous Australians despite most of that occurring before I was born. The same is true of Japanese and German gen x.
All Americans are accountable for this crisis.
Ridiculous
The deserving ones will generally self-indicate, so it's fine.
Its super strange, I'd run across it pretty frequently from weird super hostile nationalistic youtube comments in the past few years (flag of st George/american flag punisher kind of profile pics, nationality doesn't seem relevant), but rarely anywhere else until recently on Lemmy. I always imagined it had been common in Australia for a while but recently it seems to have broken containment.
Kind of a self own if used seriously, though. I can't imagine anyone but a little kid using rhyming slang to try to be hurtful.