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[–] 140 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Is it? Or is it a question of which communities you're looking at? Because mine isn't.

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  • [–] [S] 45 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Yes, you can set that up. But most news communities such as /world, /worldnews, /news, and others are very US-centric. I wonder why that has to be the case when it should be clear to everyone by now that the White House is employing troll tactics.

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  • [–] 72 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Because the USA has so much military and economic power that it is the axis about which the English-speaking world turns. And it is making wildly stupid choices in its foreign and domestic policies, which gets peoples attention from both potential impacts to their own countries and out of sheer horror and exasperation. Finally, it has a huge population relative to any other english speaking nation, and its citizens will tend to vote as a bloc about things they find interesting. And the things they find interesting will typically involve their own nation. Germans, for example, will do this too - but there are far fewer germans than americans, so in an open market, American news gets the most votes from its citizens and ends up on top of the stack.

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    [–] 82 points 1 year ago* (7 children)

    The US population is grouped together in one giant pool instead of spread out by state like Europe is grouped by individual country. We focus on national news that affects the large population, and stuff that happens on other states becsuse of the shared identity, while European countries don't have the same kind of European Union shenanigans that affect all of Europe and mostly post about country level stuff. Communities in languages other than English also tend to be posted in separate communites further separating their discussions from the general purpose communities.

    We are also louder, which also contributes, but that is not as big of a deal as the sheer numbers.

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    [–] 67 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Presumably you're browsing english-language Lemmy

    Most people are going to want to converse in their native/primary language, and by numbers that means a lot of Americans who are, of course, primarily concerned with American issues

    There's also the fact that America is a huge player on the international stage, so American issues can have a lot of repercussions in other countries

    And if you haven't noticed, America has kind of a lot of shit going on and there is a lot to talk about there.

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    [–] 59 points 1 year ago

    Everyone slows down to watch the car wreck.

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  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Because Americans are louder and tend not to confine their activities to the country-specific forums

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  • [–] 49 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Because the Europeans post in their weirdo languages.

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    [–] 47 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I see German content here all the time, even though I don't understand it or follow it.

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Have you seen the shitstorm we're (U.S.) in? We're like the worst car crash you've ever seen and then the ambulance also crashes then the fire truck blows up and then aliens come down and start attacking...kinda hard to look away.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    I thought I understood US politics...even if it was by osmosis given the sheer volume we're exposed to...but lately I felt like I only understood the dem half...after the election I'm not sure and by now I have this "there is no hope of understanding this mess, different culture, different values" that I get from trying to understand Indian politics.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I mean honestly this is the most deranged and worst it's been in my ... at least adult lifetime. I think a lot of the political mess we're in is tied into our appetite for some pretty terrible pop culture. Yes, yes, we have moral and intelligent and sane people here too, but the way that we have leaned in so hard to trashy reality television, infuencers, anything to grab your attention and reward it monetarily...hell we have a reality tv president. It's not the only reason I think we're in the mess, but I think we've been primed to accept more and more outrageous behavior cause we've always been over the top and big and loud. I always assumed I'd live in a democracy, it was just a given. This is the first time I'm doubting it.

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  • [–] 42 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Because it's the most newsworthy country at the moment. The most powerful country in the world is crashing before your eyes, whilst the rest of the world mostly continues on as it was. Yeah, some noteworthy things are happening all over the world, but that's not as dramatic as the fall of arguably the most hated country in the world. And everything from genocide to climate change, disease and general suffering can be at least tangentially related to the disaster that is the US and it's administration. I mean, what noteworthy things are there to chide Sweden for? Anything? Is it comparible to the horrors and despair that the US is causing? There's your answer.

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    [–] 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Please. Let it diversify.

    As a US dweller, I'd love it to be anything but US centric.

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    [–] 36 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I assume its because people love watching train wrecks.

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    [–] 33 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The US is the largest English-speaking country by far and this post is in English. Switch to another language and you'll see less US stuff.

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    [–] 32 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Most of us came from Reddit, and Reddit is predominantly Americans.

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    [–] 31 points 1 year ago

    yeah, I want to hear more about which of your former ministers have shit themselves at McDonalds!

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I think only Americans like announcing they are Americans. Working with tourists in Europe spotting Americans was easy because the first thing they would say is "hello, I'm from America", or "I'm from Califooornia"

    Never had this happen with any other nationality.

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    [–] 23 points 1 year ago*

    My guess is because the US is a dumpster fire that is exploding right now, and let’s be honest: who doesn’t slow down to “rubber neck” a dumpster fire when they’re passing by?

    Once we’ve completely fallen on our asses, and worn ourselves out crying like little babies, I’m sure the noise will subside.

    Until then you probably want to get a lemmy client that supports keyword filtering and you can at least lessen the noise a little.

    As an American, I don’t know if “rubber necking” is a known colloquialism outside of the US. So, if you don’t know, it’s a term used to refer to the assholes on the road who slow down to gawk at traffic accidents as if they’ve never seen one before; very, very annoying.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    It would already be nice if posts specified they are about the USA instead of just blurping out something about "the civil war" for example instead of "the USA civil war".

    One can dream!

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    [–] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    From around 7PM - 9PM HST, lemmy is almost 100% German.

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    [–] 15 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    This is one of my main motivations to learn other languages. The internet is tedious if you only speak English.

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    [–] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Most likely English-centric.
    For me, english is my internet language anyway so...

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago

    Donald Trump and the current iteration of america are train wrecks. It's hard to look away no matter where you are in the world. Super power countries don't fall every day.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    if there were countries in Europe that were as politically idiotic as the US has been for literal decades I'm sure you'd read about that place more than the US.

    I live in Canada and as far as political news goes here...it's dreadfully boring and I imagine it's the same for most of Europe. It's always been like that. even regular news here it's boring. nothing dramatic happens because unlike the US most of the world has their shit together when compared to the US.

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    [–] 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I'd spend time in All and filter out a bunch of US-centric news communities if I was you. I did that with loads of communions I didn't want to see stuff from.

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    [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    Because in a 24 hour news cycle the most interesting story gets the most airtime? Also we likely outnumber you on any engagement. I can't tell you the last time I saw a story from Canada or Germany or the uk that beats felonious demented white nationalist pedophile attempts to ruin entire world in narcissistic crashout. Even if a euro story is important, There are likely less lemmy users who even have a chance of seeing the story much less understand the context enough to engage. Even chinese people are engaging with America's shit show on xiaohongshu. It's a matter of worldwide impact on every platform. Everyone here to watch Nero fiddle

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The internet as a whole is pretty US centric

    There are however exceptions (for example: china)

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    [+] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)
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    [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    There are just more of us than any single EU country.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    In pretty sure my instance is based in Germany, or somewhere in Europe at least. That doesn't really matter. You can belong to an instance hosted anywhere, and also I don't trust data privacy at all in the US so I'd rather not have my home instance be hosted here.

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    [–] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    There are 27 countries in the EU, there is only one USA. Most people don't seem to care about each other's national happenings.

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    [–] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Maybe it has to do with your language settings as well? I imagine filtering out English will make your experience much less US-centric.

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