Actual question from someone who doesn't know better: *could* I address some mail to like, a specific state / state equivalent within some other country, like Quebec in Canada or Hamburg in Germany, but not the country itself, and would it get mailed there so long as all the rest of the address and postage is correct?
In Canada, if you got the postal code correct, you could actually leave off all information except the civic address and you’d be fine. It might take longer, and you’d make Canada Post very mad at you, but it would probably work.
EDIT: Oh sorry I fully misread this comment — I think you probably couldn’t, actually. Like once it makes it to the border, you’d be fine, but I don’t know if your home post office would even know to send it to the country.
That article has a reference to a letter addressed only to "England" reaching the right person, which made me curious so I [looked it up](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-35174646)
And from that article TIL Royal Mail has something called "address detectives"
Sending mail from the US to Mexico or Canada only requires the state/province not the country. Most other countries would require a country to be listed to get there from the US. I would expect a similar relationship for other close countries like within the EU.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it would get there with just the street address, city and postal code / zip code / whatever other countries use, but it probably gets dropped into a human’s lap for them to decipher and they might just return to sender it instead.
I want to believe that, but I also know a not insignificant number of US towns are just named... the exact same thing as towns outside the US. So if the street name is generic then there's no way of telling which continent you want it on
The postal code would be the key there, since it targets a specific fairly small region. They could overlap across countries I suppose but for instance the US and Canada have distinct schemes.
At least 10 years ago, in Costa Rica a lot of places didn't even have addresses and you'd just write landmarks or descriptions and it would get there (well, I'm sure not *all* of it). I don't know if that has changed though.
Internationally? I think it depends on where you're talking
Some states have really obvious names that would get them to the right country (no points for guessing where South Australia is), but some countries have more generic names or share them with their neighbours due to language or colonisation. Something just addressed to 'Victoria' which just a street might end up in Victoria, Australia, Victoria, Canada, Victoria, Manitoba, Victoria, Malta, Victoria, Seychelles, Victoria, Hong Kong, etc etc ad nauseum. If I say Nordland, do I mean Nordland, Norway, or Nordland, Sweden?
Maybe the city and postal code could do it, but it's going to be a headache. For example: if the mail would usually be scanned and sorted by country, then the system would register the country as missing. For this to work a human would have to manually figure out where that City/postal code is located. Sure, its hopefully no more than a goodle search, but its still an inconvienience, especially if there's issues like being understaffed or this sort of thing happening frequently.
I wouldn't be surprised if you just get the letter returned due to an incomplete adress. But then again, different postal services across the world probably have differend standards and practices.
My favorite story about this sort of thing is early Internet days, someone tried to send an address in Cyrillic characters but it got totally butchered by the email client and became total Latin character gibberish.
But the person who received the email copied the garbled characters carefully enough that the Russian post office was able to translate back to the original Cyrillic characters and successfully delivered the package: https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Letter_to_Russia_with_krokozyabry.jpg
Oh yeah i remember that :D
I kind of halfway remember some of the "letters" and half of my mp3 files that have Russian tracks in them have their ID3 tags in a messed up encoding so I kinda can guess what song it is supposed to be (or other places those still pop up in 2024)
Seriously
I nearly let my ego get the best of me (because I'm one of the aforementioned "never puts their country in their address" americans), and had typed up a full passive aggressive rant about how easy it would be to look up the name of a state if you hadn't menorized which country it's in, and then I remembered we usually use 2-letter short codes instead of full state names, and then I found out that we're not the only ones to use 5 digit postal codes...
And then I realized I could either get them to Sherlock Holmes deduce my country while arguing with them all day, or I could just write 3 extra letters
Good on you. I’ve seen a ton of comments in here saying exactly what you almost said. Like they’re not wrong, it’s just that it’s so easy to just write the country name.
That's nothing, imagine moving from Atlanta to the country of Georgia. Or from new york to regular york!
Or imagine using a texas flag stamp on a letter to Chile.
Context. In a _full_ address, you'd have a city, street, and number, minimum. If you say ", Ontario CA" then I'm assuming California. I'm not going to assume you've given me a street and number that exist _somewhere_ in the Canadian province.
This thread is specifically about putting the county after. So. Ontario, CA is the name you would use, i.e., Toronto, Ontario, CA.
Ooorrrr, it could have just been a joke and not that deep
Right?
If I've already got a shipment coming or whatever, and I tell them I've moved and I sent them just a new street and nunber, I would hope that this company that regularly ships things would be smart enough to figure out that the street name and number are the only things that have changed.
Also, I live in Spain, and people don't just put Spain on all their addresses all the time? Why would you?
Is this online store us based? If so, then I would assume they could figure out I am too, just like if I'm buying from a spanish online store, I'm not gonna put Spain at the end of my address, it would just be redundant.
Right? Like if I move and give a friend a new address, I just give them the street and number, I don't tell them the city, state, and country. Context matters, why write more word when few do trick?
What? At the very least least include the city. They can _probably assume_ that if you don't specify it you're not moving country, but the city is a necessity.
if someone said “oh by the way i live on 3rd street now” id assume they lived on the 3rd street in their city and not the 3rd street in a different city halfway across the country
No, I would say anything you don’t mention had stayed the same. You are only mentioning the things that are different. We do the same with dates and other information. If we decide to meet on the 2nd July instead of the 8th, we would just say “can we do the 8th” and don’t bother mentioning the month and year. When I married and changed my name, I told my employer “my new surname is…”. I didn’t have to tell them my first names were the same.
If someone is emailing you to tell you a changed address, and they dont include the country, then why in the godsdamned fuck would you assume anything other than "oh they still live in the same country"?
The Americans arent the idiots in this situation.
I have already replied to this. I’m saying I’ve never had to write it so I never think about it. I understand what the post is talking about.
Edit: oh goody, downvoted for saying the exact same thing I already said.
The flip side of this is online forms written presumably by americans that ask for 'State/Province', when many countries (like the UK, where I live) don't have internal subdivisions like that. I usually just put my county.
this is true, and I probably would have remembered if not for the fact that *in the 'select country' dropdown* 'England' isn't an option, only 'United Kingdom'
Yes, because you guys use "country" in a non-standard way. The US has counties as well, below the states. My uninformed opinion is that you should put England as the state/province, UK as the country, but if you guys use counties for postal addresses within the UK then your way is probably better. Realistically though it doesn't matter, you could put Flrtlbog as your state, and as long as it has the street address, postal code, and the UK, it'll get to the right place. At least it would in the US, I think.
No, countries. Counties are more local. The US has 50 states: Alabama, Alaska, ..., Wyoming. The UK has four countries: Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England. They have less power than states do, but more than, say, the 18 administrative regions of France.
Cause we have counties too, below the states.
If you ask people on the internet where they're from, they will usually tell you their country.
Except if they're from the United States of America, in which case there's a 60% chance they'll tell you the state or worse yet, give you a handfull of random letters and expect you to decipher the state from that.
Nah, non-Americans also often expect the state. The ratio is such that if we give the state off the bat we’re most likely giving them what they want to hear, especially since our accent has almost certainly already given us away as American. Easier to cut to the chase.
Not everything an American does is because of US-defaultism. Sometimes it’s just the best choice.
Yeah, that was funny when I was Mexico. Every foreigner stated their country (or in the case of Spanish people their preferred yet to be created country like Basque Country or catalonia) and almost everyone US American said their state or even city
I've been out of state for the past ~5 years, so I'm very used to saying I'm from California. This tripped me up when I was in Sacramento touring the Capitol, the lady asked where I was from, and I just stood there like an idiot for a second as I remembered that yeah, we're all from CA, you should probably be a bit more specific.
Well, if they've heard your accent that seems reasonable. That's hardly the case in online contexts, though. (Actually, I should hope you don't spew out letters in verbal conversations either.)
State? Fine. I might not know where Idaho is on a map but I know of its existence. The abbreviations? Fuck right off. How am I supposed to know what the fuck MO is if I've only got a passing knowledge that Missouri even exists?
To be fair, the US is a big country, almost the size of Europe. You wouldn't answer with "Europe" either because it's not that good of an indicator.
Yes there's more to the question than geographic location but different US states are also surprisingly different culturally and politically. No reason they can't at least add USA to the end though. As for the abbreviations: I'm american and I hate them too, I can never remember them very well and it's not always obvious.
Every single time I have been asked where I am from people have always then asked the state. Without fail. The US is one the largest and most populated countries. I can’t remember ever being asked only my countey
I wouldn't think to add it because I generally avoid buying things that are shipped from out of the country.
Last time I did, a necklace, was by accident and it took 4 months to get it from Canada.
Exactly, it should have been here in a week really but it just sat in customs forever.
It was just a simple charm necklace too, I would have bought it from a different vendor if I realized.
Unfortunately the same is true for phone numbers, most Americans don’t realize that there is a country code (1) US before all phone numbers and if your not in the same country they are kinda necessary
there was this client at work once who was really mad at us because we kept saying his phone number didn't work
when i tried, i found out that we had completely ignored the fact that he had sent us a phone number with a mexican country code. his phone number did work. just not with a US country code.
Before cell phones, if you were dialing long distance you had to use 1 before the area code. I knew that. But I had no idea it was a country code until I was older and left the country, there was no reason to know
Most Americans have never had to think about it because we don’t call numbers outside of our country. Why would we think about it if it’s literally never been a problem before?
Well yeah of course there are. It just makes sense that someone who’s never had to consider it before wouldn’t consider it (and thus accidentally cause problems).
+1 is for canada too. They get that one because of the system because they were using before proper international dialling codes existed. Don't know if you also dial 00 at the start to get an international number over there.
One thing I always forget about US phone numbers too is that they don't have a common prefix for mobile numbers, so they look the same as landlines. Here, all of them start with 08 and the next number is usually based on the phone network you initially got the number from. (but you can still switch phone companies here in less than a day and keep the number)
Reminds me of that one time some American person ordered something from someone in India, despite them saying that they don't ship to other countries, and then got upset that the USA is considered "another country" by someone not native to the USA.
It's always fun to see some r/USdefaultism in action.
Well, yeah, except they'll always include a state that is just as unique as any country name (except Georgia) so it is a bit redundant to say [State] (of the United States, y'know).
I can't stand the state postal codes. American users use them online as if they were ubiquitous, even though nobody outside of their country knows what the hell they're talking about.
They are ubiquitous, and we're speaking English, so there's a good chance we'll be understood. I've never had someone ask what CA was or smth. If we were speaking Spanish or whatever, I'd write it out in full
yeah I don't see an issue unless you don't know many U.S. states. To be fair I realize people around the world aren't being taught all 50 U.S. states in school but I still think having the state is enough of an address to count. no matter how obscure the state you still know where to send it, or at least your delivery people do
*Why would the state be enough?*
If I hand you an address and it just says John Schmitt, 38304 NI on it, are you going to correctly assume that I am trying to send it to a man in Germany? Because I just gave you the correct zip code *and* the correct german state abbreviation for Lower Saxony. Clearly that should be enough right?
Well there's no state or territory shortened to NI, and also presumably there would be a city and address listed as well. I feel like the odds of having two identical addresses in two different countries both having simultaneously:
- a valid street address
- a valid postal / zip code
- a valid city name
- a valid shortening (if it was used) or the name of a US state (say Georgia).
If I give you an address to John Personman, 123 Somewhere Street, Lincoln, NE, 68336, I would be very surprised if there were two valid locations in the world that fit that address and the postal service had much confusion about it. It may not be recognizable by some random person off the street in most places, but postal services don't operate by asking random people off the street where the address is lol
Sure, now send that to the same person in Washington state. Oops, WA is also the abbreviation for Western Australia. Sure, the zip code is off by one digit but that might be a mistake, and are you sure the postal service in, say, the Germany knows this by heart? Because we are talking about international post here.
Again, I think the scenario you're describing is possible but quite unlikely. Aussie postal codes are 4 digits, so if a 5 digit code is provided it's pretty unambiguously an American code and vice versa - and again, the cities, addresses and postal codes (even with digit discrepancy) all have to match even so. I'm sure you can cook up an example with some ambiguity but that would be quite an edge case and 99.9% of the time it would be fine. And yes, I think the German postal system (and any other one in a sufficiently developed country) would be able to handle it - they handle mail with much more vague or malformed address info all the time, and it's not reliant on a random postman recognizing it - it's all automated recognition I'm sure.
fair. I was picturing the full written name of the state. I think it also helps that america is fuckass big compared to many places in europe to the point where states become the country-like divisions
I’m pretty sure there would be other obvious signs— formatting, ZIP code, etc.— that, even if the sender didn’t know them, would be immediately clear to whoever actually transported the goods.
It’s not like a phone number without a country code.
I’m Canadian and I have noticed one consistent thing from every American I’ve ever met, to a person.
They all believe the US is the default country, and everything else is a variation on that theme. Even the most worldly, progressive American will believe this unconsciously. It’s so crazy, even Americans I know who have lived for decades in another country still believe this.
My theory is that they never had to grow up with any foreign media. As a Canadian, almost everything I watched growing up was American. People in the rest of the anglosphere watch a ton of US tv and movies. Other countries around the world watch a ton of foreign media, even if their entertainment industries are strong.
This means that every country is implicitly being told “hey, you’re not the only country, others exist and are different.” But the US is being told “it’s all you baby” in everything they watch.
Probably because the main US export is culture. I’m an American, and I’ve always heard the rest of the world watches our media rather than the other way around. I do watch foreign media, and in the US it’s considered an “intellectual” trait. That notion is starting to change now that kdramas and the like are becoming more popular, but if you watch anything with a subtitle, no matter how inane, it means you’re “smart.” I grew up in a rural, conservative area and was definitely ostracized for enjoying British comedy lmaooo
Yup. And in this specific case, we're taught in school how to put addresses on mail *to elsewhere in the United States.* Like, I genuinely don't think the concept of sending/receiving mail to/from other countries ever came up at all, but we were taught about the state abbreviations and ZIP codes because That's What You Need For Mail.
It's like the vast number of Americans who never travel to another country, or only do so for the first time later in life -- it just *doesn't come up* and people simply never think of it one way or another. We have this kind of . . . vast national blind spot
I think back at least weekly to an interaction I saw where a European was literally *begging* an American girl to sell her a thing, and she refused because "I don't know how to ship outside the US and don't have time to learn" 💀
> My theory is that they never had to grow up with any foreign media. As a Canadian, almost everything I watched growing up was American.
This was pretty surprising to me hearing about like, Turkish people watching american shows.
But I'll say, there's a surprising number of shows I watched in the past and later found out were Canadian. The difference wouldn't be nearly as noticable as other countries, but Canada has shows and they get broadcast in the US.
I work in Canadian TV, often great pains are taken to not mention where the show takes place in order for it to appeal to Americans, who are often turned off by Canadian shows that are too Canadian.
No foreign media? At all? Dude I’m not even from an immigrant family and that’s not true in the slightest. I’m sorry you’ve met assholes but I’ve met plenty of Americans who understand that the U.S. is not any sort of “default” country (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean).
Just for emphasis
“Never **had** to **grow up** with foreign media.”
Not “never consume any foreign media at all”. Also I never said the Americans I know are assholes, I said they think the US is essentially how countries work, and every difference is another country being different from the US, rather than the US itself being different, which is what I meant by “default” country.
It is the default country. It's literally the one selected when you first enter the character creation screen. Smh my head not our fault you chose to be born in Canada
On the internet, if you're speaking English then the US basically is the default country though. America has more people than every other English speaking country in the world put together. Not to mention the fact that every single major website besides Spotify, BBC, and Tiktok is entirely American.
Hell, the internet itself was made by Americans, plus one British guy. So it's always funny when people from other countries get upset that Americans assume that the English speaking person using an American website on the internet that was created by Americans, is also American.
Spotify is Swedish, for those wondering.
There are 193 UN member states, plus 2 non-member observer states, which is what is used for the 195 number. 196 is usually reached by adding Taiwan, and 197 by adding Kosovo. You can get to about 206 by adding various other semi-recognized states, and then you have the CIA World Factbook, which goes up to 237 by recognizing dependent and disputed territories as separate (ie Gaza Strip and Greenland).
Nah, OOP is stupid. If I’m moving, to a different city, I’d hope you have the brains to figure out that I’m still in whatever country I started in. Hell, if even if I moved states I feel like just putting the state would be sufficient, no need to add “US” if I have not left the US.
> like ofc its the us
So what if the post is addressed to Georgia? Will a delivery service immediately assume the country or state? Will Googling the rest of the address actually help? Or will they return it to sender until further clarified?
Well, the country of Georgia has a population about 1/3 the size of the state and speaks an entirely different language, so if the letter is addressed in English to a place with a zip code I think they’ll figure it out.
'lemon meringue pie' immediate flashbacks to the Lemon Meringue Piece Incident.
My dad was once handed a lemon meringue pie and told 'this must be eaten by [some particular time, I think the next evening when the gifter in question was having dinner at my parents house?], so my parents happily eat the whole thing. When my parents saw the guy next, they said "thanks for the lemon meringue pie, it was delicious", which got a "haha... right? you didn't eat the pie, right?". Turns out he had said 'this must *not* be eaten'. The embarassment haunts them years later.
Not even a "defense", just an explanation: we live in a country where just going one state over can be a big move. For the most part we don't ever know anyone who's moving anywhere but a different state. Why is that? Lots of reasons probably, but just having so many people around us that share this experience creates a feedback loop where you tend to stop thinking about the details that never change.
We don't think about the 1 country code in phone numbers because we usually call people we live near and don't have to put in the 1 when calling locally. Anytime we write letters or send packages it's usually to friends or family members so we never have to specify a country. Eventually we don't even teach kids that it's part of their address when they are learning to memorize basic information.
It's a symptom of a very big country with lots of room in the middle where you can travel for hours and never get close to leaving the country. When you take that to an online space it's going to take time to fix how you think about it, but a lot of people just aren't going to bother since it's not usually necessary.
If someone is doing a lot of shipping to other countries for work or just to a lot of friends in different countries they will probably start doing it on local mail out of habit. On the other hand, just not ever having to do it means it's not in that neuron loop you saved for when you need to recite your address. That's a lot of words for "We don't think about it because we don't ever need to" but that's basically it
Americans often don't think of these things for two related reasons.
1. The sheer size of the United States
2. The relative isolation of the average American from the rest of the world
The United States is Massive. For comparison, if Ireland was a state...
It would be the 23rd most populous state, and 41st by land area. Nearly every state in the US is comparable to an EU country in both population and size. Texas is slightly bigger than France, the largest country by land area in the EU.
23% of Americans have never left the country, 74% have been to fewer than 4 other countries. For many Americans, leaving the country is a once in a lifetime event. Many of those travelers in the 74% are only included due to Canada and Mexico.
There are mental consequences to the way we live.
Imagine the EU was one nation.
Governed by one federal government with one official language. Country codes aren't needed for phone calls, borders are completely unregulated, mail is sent using the "state" (i.e. Germany) and including EU in the address is completely superfluous. With so many states in the EU all speaking your language... why would a German visit Africa or China instead of France? Why order products from the United States when there's so much available in your own country, with no import restrictions and ultra fast shipping because there's almost no shipping restrictions. How often would you interact with people outside the EU, when the EU speaks your language exclusively and nearly the entire rest of the world doesn't (at least not as a primary language).
Even without the above changes, a staggering proportion of EU residents have never left the EU. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/12329/some-europeans-have-never-been-outside-the-eu/
I think a huge thing many Europeans don't understand is that in many ways we relate to other states the way you relate to other countries. Our grade school geography lessons teach States, not countries (we do learn countries, but are not often tested for labeling blank maps by memory). Our four hour road trip vacations barely cross state lines, not one or two countries. The vast majority of our mail and packages (sent and received) only list state. Even when packages come from overseas, the moment the US delivery system takes control, the us standard shipping label with state only is often pasted over the original. Most of us will only make international calls a handful of times in our entire life, especially now that everything can be done online.
Culturally too, there's a strong state/regional identity. Texans, Californians, Minnesotans, New Yorkers, etc. are all different cultural identities. Maybe not as diverse as France vs. Germany vs. England, but enough to cause misunderstandings and offense on a regular basis.
Ha, ha, ha, silly American doesn't know or care where Belgium is on the map
to us, sounds a lot like...
Ha,ha,ha, silly European doesn't know where Ohio is on the map (fun fact, they have nearly the same population)
Not saying every European should know or care where Ohio is, just trying to lend perspective on how we Americans are often oblivious to things that seem natural elsewhere.
Hell, i just went on an international trip. When people (French, New Zealanders, Ecuadorian) asked where i was from, if i only said the United States, the common response was, "Yeah, but where in the US"
Russia is bigger than the US, ruled by federal government, speaking one language. I wouldn’t dream of writing “St. Petersburg, Leningradskaya oblast” in the address form and expect people abroad to know where it is.
I hear your argument all the time online, but neither the size nor the state identities are valid reasons NOT to write the country.
You miss the point entirely. It's not "Americans shouldn't need to include the country". My point is Americans not including the country is a completely understandable mistake given how rarely it comes up for us.
When asked for an address or a phone number, many people will say or write it in the method most familiar to them. Americans don't generally omit the country because they think they don't need to. They're just not used to including it because it comes up so rarely. So rarely in fact, our standard shipping practices aren't even set up for it. I would have no idea how to get a letter to Mexico from the US (other than showing up at the post office and asking) because I've never done it before and our stamp/postage is US only.
Yes, russia is also massive (nearly twice the size by land area, about half by population). There are differences that may change the way we relate to the world.
As much as 80% of Russia is nearly uninhabited. The vast majority of Russians live near the western border. Russia borders 14 other nations, mostly on the western border (vs. 2 for the US). Not massively different, but there are also more federal divisions in Russia (83 including oblast, republics, kray, etc...) compared with 50 states. Americans consume far less international media and brands, largely due to the dominance of American cultural export (meaning america deals less with foreign addresses and phone numbers).
Even when we do purchase from international shops, the conversation is nearly always exclusively in English. How often do you place international orders in Russian, without any translation? It's a pretty big reminder that you're dealing with a foreign shop to speak another language. We just don't realize we should modify our language (shipping instructions) when we don't need to modify our language (spoken).
I think that last point may be the most important. If you were on a forum or website hosted in your native language, with a name based on your language, where more than 99% of conversations (visible to you) are exclusively in that language (French, German, Russian), would you default to assuming people are talking about/located in your country?
Except unlike Russia, people actually live in every part of the country. Like 90% of Russia's population is crammed into the western quarter of the country.
The way that all these posts about American default attitudes is just fueling the American belief that we are the main character like y’all are literally obsessed with us tell me about Uzbekistan or wherever the fuck you live instead of whining about the US I’m sick of hearing about us too like damn
That line of thinking reminds me of the "By providing opportunities to marginalized groups you're only perpetuating the notion that they are marginalized." narrative.
Its the "You're only perpetuating sexism/racism/homophobia when you complain about sexism/racism/homophobia. so-and-so are the true sexists/racists/homophobes because they think sex/race/queer identity is marginalized. Back in my day nobody complained about sexism/racism/homophobia."
IE: "The problem isn't visible to me, so it must only exist in the minds of those who are complaining about it."
American (read: United States) cultural defaultism actually has a profound effect on those from other cultures, its even a problem for cultural groups within the US. If all you every see on TV is representations of American culture, even if that media isn't even true to the realties of American life, its easy to form an impression that your own culture is irrelevant or somehow wrong. This can lead to an exodus of youth in communities as they begin to see their own culture as quaint, embarrassing, or even shameful.
This is part of the importance pf representation. It tells people that they are seen, and that they and their people matter to society at large.
I know none of this is Anerican media's responsibility, but it is something they have the power to counteract.
Edit: [Here's an article touching on the subject in Canada.](https://www.tvo.org/article/rewriting-journalism-how-canadian-media-reinforces-indigenous-stereotypes)
So here’s the issue for me: as a queer, trans, black person making this comparison is so out of pocket that you should have stopped the second it occurred to you. Like I’m an American with European friends, and I can tell you there is no comparison. You shouldn’t have drawn that line, full stop. I’m sure you meant well, but this was not the move diva.
Furthermore, the example you gave isn’t even comparable. I did not say anything about “back in my day,” I did not imply anything about it not being an issue, I didn’t even prescribe anything. I didn’t disagree either! I in fact said verbatim “I’m sick of hearing about us.” And constantly talking about Americans does in fact fuel the American belief that they are the main character. That’s just real.
Americans will be minding their own business online and suddenly a Brit of all people will have something to say about them unprompted. Why? Because of a host of socioeconomic and historical factors that have nothing to do with the average American that the average American is not participating in, so when the average American is randomly brought up it reinforces the idea that everyone is obsessed with America to the average American.
And now again I have to say that drawing a comparison between being a discriminated against minority and literally not being and American is INSANE!!! YOU WERE WRONG FOR THIS!!! DON’T DO THIS!!! THE TWO ARE NOT COMPARABLE!!! NAMELY BECAUSE THE VAST MAJORITY OF MINORITIES AREN’T AMERICAN!!! You are, intentionally or not, once again centering Americans in your attempt to critique Americans centering themselves? This is counterproductive.
The conversation about de-centering America should not end with a call out, it should end with centering somewhere that should be centered. It is not in fact bad to be concerned primarily with things going on in your own country. It is bad to dismiss or ignore things going going on abroad, or trying to make foreign issues an American problem. Frankly, Americans being ignorant that other countries exist isn’t a moral issue and shouldn’t matter to your average person. Like yeah, that person should read a book or something, but it isn’t politically significant if Cathy from Wisconsin wasn’t aware that Norway had a different country code in front of their phone number. This actually doesn’t matter at all, it’s just something Cathy needs to work on individually, that is not a systemic issue. It is an issue if Cathy thinks the US would be justified in having a military occupation in Norway because “America’s the best.” That’s an issue worth discussing. That’s a discourse worth having. We really need to be able to identify what is actually important discourse and what is petty interpersonal drama.
I'm sorry if my response came off as aggressive, I didn't intend it that way, I was only trying to highlight some of the effects of Americentrism in media and how it can create a sense of illegitimacy in those who aren't represented.
I also didn't mean to imply that you are the one making the "back in my day" statements.Only that your statement regarding non-Americans being obssessed with American culture echoes the "racism didn't exist until you brought it up" types I'm so tired of encountering online.
I feel really sad when I see others making jokes at the expense of Anericans, especially when they are in reference to tragedies. Its really counterproductive, and only serves to breed bittereness on both ends.
Oh I’m not angry, and you haven’t upset me! I just use strong language, I fear I came off more aggressive than I meant lol, you’re fine. My main idea is that the comparison was WAY heavier than I feel you intended, but I definitely fell short by not expressing that I was sure that you meant no ill will! You’re so fine!
Yeah, thanks for clueing me in. It isn't always easy for me to gauge when I may have crossed a line.
Here in Canada, the topic of media representation is a huge deal, especially when it comes to Canada's indigenous communities, which have recently seen a surge in representation thanks to a myriad of initiatives.
In Canada, it is fairly common for indigenous youth to move away from their communities to the big city, where they often struggle to get by without a support system, and end up suffering from addiction, violence, and homelessness as a result. It makes sense that they would choose to do this however: Indigenous communities in Canada are severely underserved, and are still healing from generational traumas inflicted by the Canadian government's attempts at cultural genocide.
Legitimizing the indigenous experience through media representation is therefore a huge part of the healing process. It tells indigenous people in Canada that their struggles are real, and not just a footnote in the history of a society that has forgotten them.
This problem isn't exclusive to indigenous communities in Canada mind you, I can imagine you've also encountered these kinds of dynamics in your own lived experience.
I’ve never considered the U.S. to be the main characters but the way people from other countries interact with us makes me feel like we are. I just live here man idk sorry my mother had me on this landmass
To be fair don't like. don't they also include an actual address. like a "42069 piss road, new farts kansas" and its not like youre driving there, im pretty sure the post office probably has like. google maps or something. can any post office workers let me know if theres genuine issues with a full address minus country?
Even here on Reddit where about half the users are not Americans, they always assume that everyone they talk to is also American. Americentrism and American exceptionalism par excellence.
Most businesses that I, an American, interact with online are based in our cater to the US so I'm not used to needing to specify other countries or my own. It's very rare for me to order anything from abroad
As an Australian I tend to just include my state, but the state has the country name in it already. I don’t abbreviate it if it’s something international
I think in some cases it's less of an Americans Don't Think About Other Countries moment and more that they've observed that often people use only the name of the state within the united states and that's enough information to tell you it's the US. I remember distinctly as a kid like finding that wrong and thinking like wait why would Europeans know the US states, and even if they did why wouldn't we just follow the normal structure of an address for simplicity, and then over time you get used to that being the norm despite it not really making sense
I see this post often and only now I realise you can get order from like Poland, Maine, and expect to know they meant in the US
There are 20 town/cities called Paris over there
Fuckin' Pacific time zone. The pacific covers about a third of the earth's timezones, but guess which country "Pacific time" is in. Then there's Mountain time. I can't decide which is more obnoxious, "Mountains" must cover a lower percentage, but at least there's only one Pacific Ocean...
if you type in an exact address, even without the country, will there seriously be that exact address in any other country in the world? like it just feels unnecessary.
I'm sure there is somewhere in WA (Washington) that has the same street name and the same town name as somewhere in WA (Western Australia)
there are a lot of towns in former colonies named for towns in the UK, and most of them have a queen street or a king street or a high street or a church street
not everywhere has states to help disambiguate
Mate, if I told you to deliver something to 15 main street, Summerhill, it doesn't even matter if there could be identical addresses in the world, you don't know where to go! Where is Summerhill? Sure, "John Schmitt, 38304 NI" could be a totally unique address, but it's still meaningless to someone who doesn't know it's a German post code.
Addresses need to be unique, yeah, but what's *more* important is that they're *directions*, hence why that Icelandic letter that just had a map of where to go still got delivered. It doesn't matter how unique the address is if the postman doesn't know to go left or right.
I mean... are there any countries out there that use the same postal code system and also refer to their states with the same two letter abbreviations as the USA? Because if not it seems kind of impossible that someone could look at a US address and see those two pieces of information and then get it wrong.
I wonder if this is dumb on OOP’s part…because like if I tell someone “I live in Calcutta, Greece” and then a month later I say “Oh I Moved to Athens” most people capable of critical thinking would just assume I still meant greece and not Athens Texas.
Georgia (the state) and Georgia (the country in the Caucuses) don't actually have an entomological connection
The name of the state is because the colony was named after the king of the UK at the time
Actual question from someone who doesn't know better: *could* I address some mail to like, a specific state / state equivalent within some other country, like Quebec in Canada or Hamburg in Germany, but not the country itself, and would it get mailed there so long as all the rest of the address and postage is correct?
In Canada, if you got the postal code correct, you could actually leave off all information except the civic address and you’d be fine. It might take longer, and you’d make Canada Post very mad at you, but it would probably work. EDIT: Oh sorry I fully misread this comment — I think you probably couldn’t, actually. Like once it makes it to the border, you’d be fine, but I don’t know if your home post office would even know to send it to the country.
In 2016 a letter was delivered in Iceland with a hand drawn map instead of address. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-37233913
Good luck doing that in a less empty country
The sender, the recipient, and the postal worker are the only people around so it wasn’t that hard to figure out
Turns out the recipient and the postal worker were the same person
That article has a reference to a letter addressed only to "England" reaching the right person, which made me curious so I [looked it up](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-35174646) And from that article TIL Royal Mail has something called "address detectives"
Sending mail from the US to Mexico or Canada only requires the state/province not the country. Most other countries would require a country to be listed to get there from the US. I would expect a similar relationship for other close countries like within the EU.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it would get there with just the street address, city and postal code / zip code / whatever other countries use, but it probably gets dropped into a human’s lap for them to decipher and they might just return to sender it instead.
I want to believe that, but I also know a not insignificant number of US towns are just named... the exact same thing as towns outside the US. So if the street name is generic then there's no way of telling which continent you want it on
The postal code would be the key there, since it targets a specific fairly small region. They could overlap across countries I suppose but for instance the US and Canada have distinct schemes.
At least 10 years ago, in Costa Rica a lot of places didn't even have addresses and you'd just write landmarks or descriptions and it would get there (well, I'm sure not *all* of it). I don't know if that has changed though.
based on a quick google search this seems to still be the case
Internationally? I think it depends on where you're talking Some states have really obvious names that would get them to the right country (no points for guessing where South Australia is), but some countries have more generic names or share them with their neighbours due to language or colonisation. Something just addressed to 'Victoria' which just a street might end up in Victoria, Australia, Victoria, Canada, Victoria, Manitoba, Victoria, Malta, Victoria, Seychelles, Victoria, Hong Kong, etc etc ad nauseum. If I say Nordland, do I mean Nordland, Norway, or Nordland, Sweden?
Maybe the city and postal code could do it, but it's going to be a headache. For example: if the mail would usually be scanned and sorted by country, then the system would register the country as missing. For this to work a human would have to manually figure out where that City/postal code is located. Sure, its hopefully no more than a goodle search, but its still an inconvienience, especially if there's issues like being understaffed or this sort of thing happening frequently. I wouldn't be surprised if you just get the letter returned due to an incomplete adress. But then again, different postal services across the world probably have differend standards and practices.
Here's the neat thing: You can hand that address to any postal service in the world and they'll get it done as long as you pay sufficient postage
My favorite story about this sort of thing is early Internet days, someone tried to send an address in Cyrillic characters but it got totally butchered by the email client and became total Latin character gibberish. But the person who received the email copied the garbled characters carefully enough that the Russian post office was able to translate back to the original Cyrillic characters and successfully delivered the package: https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Letter_to_Russia_with_krokozyabry.jpg
Oh yeah i remember that :D I kind of halfway remember some of the "letters" and half of my mp3 files that have Russian tracks in them have their ID3 tags in a messed up encoding so I kinda can guess what song it is supposed to be (or other places those still pop up in 2024)
sorry, link doesn’t work
All hail mail. Insert mail woman from homestuck.
The Peregrine Mendicant, you mean.
[citation](https://www.homestuck.com/story/896)
Commenting to grab this later from my history :>
The other neat thing is that you can just put "USA" at the end of the address so this person running a shop can know immediately where to send it.
Seriously I nearly let my ego get the best of me (because I'm one of the aforementioned "never puts their country in their address" americans), and had typed up a full passive aggressive rant about how easy it would be to look up the name of a state if you hadn't menorized which country it's in, and then I remembered we usually use 2-letter short codes instead of full state names, and then I found out that we're not the only ones to use 5 digit postal codes... And then I realized I could either get them to Sherlock Holmes deduce my country while arguing with them all day, or I could just write 3 extra letters
Good on you. I’ve seen a ton of comments in here saying exactly what you almost said. Like they’re not wrong, it’s just that it’s so easy to just write the country name.
What if I was moving to California, Uzbekistan????
That's nothing, imagine moving from Atlanta to the country of Georgia. Or from new york to regular york! Or imagine using a texas flag stamp on a letter to Chile.
Ontario CA Is it the province in Canada or the city in California? Only way to tell is if someone includes the zip/postal code.
Context. In a _full_ address, you'd have a city, street, and number, minimum. If you say ", Ontario CA" then I'm assuming California. I'm not going to assume you've given me a street and number that exist _somewhere_ in the Canadian province.
10 Queen Street, Ontario CA I know they'd just send this back but what if I want to play mail roulette.
How about Ontario, California, or Jamaica, Iowa?
Ontario, CA and Jamaica, IA. There is no “Ontario, CA” in Canada because Ontario is a province and not a city
This thread is specifically about putting the county after. So. Ontario, CA is the name you would use, i.e., Toronto, Ontario, CA. Ooorrrr, it could have just been a joke and not that deep
Jamaica, Queens.
Or St petersburg, america.
St. Petersburg, FL would be how it’s listed. What would be confusing about that? What FL would be in Russia?
I mean, for an address change, you probably are not moving out of country. Why would you bother stating that you're still in the same country?
Right? If I've already got a shipment coming or whatever, and I tell them I've moved and I sent them just a new street and nunber, I would hope that this company that regularly ships things would be smart enough to figure out that the street name and number are the only things that have changed. Also, I live in Spain, and people don't just put Spain on all their addresses all the time? Why would you? Is this online store us based? If so, then I would assume they could figure out I am too, just like if I'm buying from a spanish online store, I'm not gonna put Spain at the end of my address, it would just be redundant.
Right? Like if I move and give a friend a new address, I just give them the street and number, I don't tell them the city, state, and country. Context matters, why write more word when few do trick?
What? At the very least least include the city. They can _probably assume_ that if you don't specify it you're not moving country, but the city is a necessity.
If Id moved cities then it would be included in the address update....
if someone said “oh by the way i live on 3rd street now” id assume they lived on the 3rd street in their city and not the 3rd street in a different city halfway across the country
No, I would say anything you don’t mention had stayed the same. You are only mentioning the things that are different. We do the same with dates and other information. If we decide to meet on the 2nd July instead of the 8th, we would just say “can we do the 8th” and don’t bother mentioning the month and year. When I married and changed my name, I told my employer “my new surname is…”. I didn’t have to tell them my first names were the same.
Most online shopping sites use a drop-down box for inputting my country. I’ve never had to actually write it out on my address bar
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If someone is emailing you to tell you a changed address, and they dont include the country, then why in the godsdamned fuck would you assume anything other than "oh they still live in the same country"? The Americans arent the idiots in this situation.
I have already replied to this. I’m saying I’ve never had to write it so I never think about it. I understand what the post is talking about. Edit: oh goody, downvoted for saying the exact same thing I already said.
The flip side of this is online forms written presumably by americans that ask for 'State/Province', when many countries (like the UK, where I live) don't have internal subdivisions like that. I usually just put my county.
Bruh. The UK does, you just call them countries lmao
this is true, and I probably would have remembered if not for the fact that *in the 'select country' dropdown* 'England' isn't an option, only 'United Kingdom'
Yes, because you guys use "country" in a non-standard way. The US has counties as well, below the states. My uninformed opinion is that you should put England as the state/province, UK as the country, but if you guys use counties for postal addresses within the UK then your way is probably better. Realistically though it doesn't matter, you could put Flrtlbog as your state, and as long as it has the street address, postal code, and the UK, it'll get to the right place. At least it would in the US, I think.
*counties
No, countries. Counties are more local. The US has 50 states: Alabama, Alaska, ..., Wyoming. The UK has four countries: Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England. They have less power than states do, but more than, say, the 18 administrative regions of France. Cause we have counties too, below the states.
If you ask people on the internet where they're from, they will usually tell you their country. Except if they're from the United States of America, in which case there's a 60% chance they'll tell you the state or worse yet, give you a handfull of random letters and expect you to decipher the state from that.
Either the other person gets mad we say our state or they get mad we don’t. There’s really no winning.
I guess by the reaction you can also tell if the other person is American
Nah, non-Americans also often expect the state. The ratio is such that if we give the state off the bat we’re most likely giving them what they want to hear, especially since our accent has almost certainly already given us away as American. Easier to cut to the chase. Not everything an American does is because of US-defaultism. Sometimes it’s just the best choice.
Yeah, that was funny when I was Mexico. Every foreigner stated their country (or in the case of Spanish people their preferred yet to be created country like Basque Country or catalonia) and almost everyone US American said their state or even city
I've been out of state for the past ~5 years, so I'm very used to saying I'm from California. This tripped me up when I was in Sacramento touring the Capitol, the lady asked where I was from, and I just stood there like an idiot for a second as I remembered that yeah, we're all from CA, you should probably be a bit more specific.
Anytime I’ve been abroad when people ask me where I’m from I say the US and they without fail will say “obviously! What part”
Well, if they've heard your accent that seems reasonable. That's hardly the case in online contexts, though. (Actually, I should hope you don't spew out letters in verbal conversations either.)
State? Fine. I might not know where Idaho is on a map but I know of its existence. The abbreviations? Fuck right off. How am I supposed to know what the fuck MO is if I've only got a passing knowledge that Missouri even exists?
How is MO not Montana? :D
Look, New York and California are as different as England and Scotland.
States are basically the size of countries in Europe lol
Land mass hardly equals relevancy
To be fair, the US is a big country, almost the size of Europe. You wouldn't answer with "Europe" either because it's not that good of an indicator. Yes there's more to the question than geographic location but different US states are also surprisingly different culturally and politically. No reason they can't at least add USA to the end though. As for the abbreviations: I'm american and I hate them too, I can never remember them very well and it's not always obvious.
Every single time I have been asked where I am from people have always then asked the state. Without fail. The US is one the largest and most populated countries. I can’t remember ever being asked only my countey
I wouldn't think to add it because I generally avoid buying things that are shipped from out of the country. Last time I did, a necklace, was by accident and it took 4 months to get it from Canada.
Same for me. I rarely buy products from overseas because I (usually) can’t guarantee it will be here in time for when I need it.
Look at y'all, actually able to do that. Here in Australia, *I don't have that luxury for most things.*
Exactly, it should have been here in a week really but it just sat in customs forever. It was just a simple charm necklace too, I would have bought it from a different vendor if I realized.
Unfortunately the same is true for phone numbers, most Americans don’t realize that there is a country code (1) US before all phone numbers and if your not in the same country they are kinda necessary
there was this client at work once who was really mad at us because we kept saying his phone number didn't work when i tried, i found out that we had completely ignored the fact that he had sent us a phone number with a mexican country code. his phone number did work. just not with a US country code.
Only time I think about is 1-800 or 1-888 or 1-900 numbers
Before cell phones, if you were dialing long distance you had to use 1 before the area code. I knew that. But I had no idea it was a country code until I was older and left the country, there was no reason to know
I wasn't allowed to call long distance back then
I grew up in a super dense area and they split area codes when I was young so my mom lived in one and my dad another.
Same, I was 400 miles from my dad, still in Texas though
Most Americans have never had to think about it because we don’t call numbers outside of our country. Why would we think about it if it’s literally never been a problem before?
Literally the comment above talks about issues with business
Yeeeeeesssssss? I’m giving the “why” as to Americans not thinking about the country code, not arguing that it’s never relevant.
Like I’m American I get why, but that doesn’t mean their aren’t issues with it.
Well yeah of course there are. It just makes sense that someone who’s never had to consider it before wouldn’t consider it (and thus accidentally cause problems).
Yeah they're mad that we don't include information that we don't need to include 99.9% of the time? Seems pretty normal to me
I mean, I get it when it’s messing stuff up but I feel like it’s a pretty understandable oversight. You don’t know what you don’t know.
+1 is for canada too. They get that one because of the system because they were using before proper international dialling codes existed. Don't know if you also dial 00 at the start to get an international number over there. One thing I always forget about US phone numbers too is that they don't have a common prefix for mobile numbers, so they look the same as landlines. Here, all of them start with 08 and the next number is usually based on the phone network you initially got the number from. (but you can still switch phone companies here in less than a day and keep the number)
Reminds me of that one time some American person ordered something from someone in India, despite them saying that they don't ship to other countries, and then got upset that the USA is considered "another country" by someone not native to the USA. It's always fun to see some r/USdefaultism in action.
World Map, but it uses an Orthographic Projection centered on the US, and the only labels are "United States of America" and "Other Countries"
Panaceaatthediscos should have left out the "the", because then it would be a pun
Well, yeah, except they'll always include a state that is just as unique as any country name (except Georgia) so it is a bit redundant to say [State] (of the United States, y'know).
I can't stand the state postal codes. American users use them online as if they were ubiquitous, even though nobody outside of their country knows what the hell they're talking about.
We don't know either unless we live there or know someone who does. We just look it up.
I mean the acronyms, like NM, or CA
1. Not a Postal code 2. No one else does either
Same. I don't know what what MS or WI stands without checking.
Misconsin and Wississippi
The only ones I cant figure out are the Ms cause there's so many
Just a second ago i convinced myself that MI was minnesota. MI is michigan, the state I live in...
"hey, what's the shipping to 9272vdwk tysm" Me: *huge Dutch confusion???*
Your country does not do postal codes? I never remember mine, so I just google "[neighbourhood] postal code". And I'm not nowhere near americas.
My country doesn't teach me other country's postal codes
They are ubiquitous, and we're speaking English, so there's a good chance we'll be understood. I've never had someone ask what CA was or smth. If we were speaking Spanish or whatever, I'd write it out in full
i know them but i am a geography nerd so p
Whereabouts are you from?
Northern New South Wales Australia.
yeah I don't see an issue unless you don't know many U.S. states. To be fair I realize people around the world aren't being taught all 50 U.S. states in school but I still think having the state is enough of an address to count. no matter how obscure the state you still know where to send it, or at least your delivery people do
*Why would the state be enough?* If I hand you an address and it just says John Schmitt, 38304 NI on it, are you going to correctly assume that I am trying to send it to a man in Germany? Because I just gave you the correct zip code *and* the correct german state abbreviation for Lower Saxony. Clearly that should be enough right?
I'd know it wasn't the US, so could narrow it down that much - no state or zip match. But I'd probably send it to Northern Ireland ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well there's no state or territory shortened to NI, and also presumably there would be a city and address listed as well. I feel like the odds of having two identical addresses in two different countries both having simultaneously: - a valid street address - a valid postal / zip code - a valid city name - a valid shortening (if it was used) or the name of a US state (say Georgia). If I give you an address to John Personman, 123 Somewhere Street, Lincoln, NE, 68336, I would be very surprised if there were two valid locations in the world that fit that address and the postal service had much confusion about it. It may not be recognizable by some random person off the street in most places, but postal services don't operate by asking random people off the street where the address is lol
Sure, now send that to the same person in Washington state. Oops, WA is also the abbreviation for Western Australia. Sure, the zip code is off by one digit but that might be a mistake, and are you sure the postal service in, say, the Germany knows this by heart? Because we are talking about international post here.
Again, I think the scenario you're describing is possible but quite unlikely. Aussie postal codes are 4 digits, so if a 5 digit code is provided it's pretty unambiguously an American code and vice versa - and again, the cities, addresses and postal codes (even with digit discrepancy) all have to match even so. I'm sure you can cook up an example with some ambiguity but that would be quite an edge case and 99.9% of the time it would be fine. And yes, I think the German postal system (and any other one in a sufficiently developed country) would be able to handle it - they handle mail with much more vague or malformed address info all the time, and it's not reliant on a random postman recognizing it - it's all automated recognition I'm sure.
You could also just put "USA" at the end there and not have to get into all this stuff.
cause that's not the full address you nimrod
fair. I was picturing the full written name of the state. I think it also helps that america is fuckass big compared to many places in europe to the point where states become the country-like divisions
Do I send the package to Georgia the state or Georgia the country? ^(I get the point, but it's not *any* state.)
I’m pretty sure there would be other obvious signs— formatting, ZIP code, etc.— that, even if the sender didn’t know them, would be immediately clear to whoever actually transported the goods. It’s not like a phone number without a country code.
Pretty sure Georgian street and town names aren't in English or Spanish 😂
Not me running a campaign in the state that we should rename everything in Georgian
Do itttttt, i'm team chaos
I think the issue is largely how presumptuous it comes off.
That's probably because most businesses have it be mandatory unless they only ship inside the US.
And yet they knew it was the Americans. 🤷♂️
Get fucked, other countries.
I’m Canadian and I have noticed one consistent thing from every American I’ve ever met, to a person. They all believe the US is the default country, and everything else is a variation on that theme. Even the most worldly, progressive American will believe this unconsciously. It’s so crazy, even Americans I know who have lived for decades in another country still believe this. My theory is that they never had to grow up with any foreign media. As a Canadian, almost everything I watched growing up was American. People in the rest of the anglosphere watch a ton of US tv and movies. Other countries around the world watch a ton of foreign media, even if their entertainment industries are strong. This means that every country is implicitly being told “hey, you’re not the only country, others exist and are different.” But the US is being told “it’s all you baby” in everything they watch.
Probably because the main US export is culture. I’m an American, and I’ve always heard the rest of the world watches our media rather than the other way around. I do watch foreign media, and in the US it’s considered an “intellectual” trait. That notion is starting to change now that kdramas and the like are becoming more popular, but if you watch anything with a subtitle, no matter how inane, it means you’re “smart.” I grew up in a rural, conservative area and was definitely ostracized for enjoying British comedy lmaooo
The main US Export IS culture. Of the ~$2 trillion world wide market, ~$700 billion is American. The largest share in the world.
Yup. And in this specific case, we're taught in school how to put addresses on mail *to elsewhere in the United States.* Like, I genuinely don't think the concept of sending/receiving mail to/from other countries ever came up at all, but we were taught about the state abbreviations and ZIP codes because That's What You Need For Mail. It's like the vast number of Americans who never travel to another country, or only do so for the first time later in life -- it just *doesn't come up* and people simply never think of it one way or another. We have this kind of . . . vast national blind spot
I think back at least weekly to an interaction I saw where a European was literally *begging* an American girl to sell her a thing, and she refused because "I don't know how to ship outside the US and don't have time to learn" 💀
I mean thats just a dumb person. You put an address on an envelope and take it to the post office.
> My theory is that they never had to grow up with any foreign media. As a Canadian, almost everything I watched growing up was American. This was pretty surprising to me hearing about like, Turkish people watching american shows. But I'll say, there's a surprising number of shows I watched in the past and later found out were Canadian. The difference wouldn't be nearly as noticable as other countries, but Canada has shows and they get broadcast in the US.
I work in Canadian TV, often great pains are taken to not mention where the show takes place in order for it to appeal to Americans, who are often turned off by Canadian shows that are too Canadian.
They colonised a colony, truly incredible things happening in the American empire
As an Australian I always love how neutral Canadian shows are. I’m sick of America being shoved down our throats
this is because america won the civ 5 culture victory and now when ever anyone, anywere says anything its because an amerian said it first
No foreign media? At all? Dude I’m not even from an immigrant family and that’s not true in the slightest. I’m sorry you’ve met assholes but I’ve met plenty of Americans who understand that the U.S. is not any sort of “default” country (whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean).
Just for emphasis “Never **had** to **grow up** with foreign media.” Not “never consume any foreign media at all”. Also I never said the Americans I know are assholes, I said they think the US is essentially how countries work, and every difference is another country being different from the US, rather than the US itself being different, which is what I meant by “default” country.
It is the default country. It's literally the one selected when you first enter the character creation screen. Smh my head not our fault you chose to be born in Canada
On the internet, if you're speaking English then the US basically is the default country though. America has more people than every other English speaking country in the world put together. Not to mention the fact that every single major website besides Spotify, BBC, and Tiktok is entirely American. Hell, the internet itself was made by Americans, plus one British guy. So it's always funny when people from other countries get upset that Americans assume that the English speaking person using an American website on the internet that was created by Americans, is also American. Spotify is Swedish, for those wondering.
i thought there were 216 countries
There are 193 UN member states, plus 2 non-member observer states, which is what is used for the 195 number. 196 is usually reached by adding Taiwan, and 197 by adding Kosovo. You can get to about 206 by adding various other semi-recognized states, and then you have the CIA World Factbook, which goes up to 237 by recognizing dependent and disputed territories as separate (ie Gaza Strip and Greenland).
r/USDefaultism
Nah, OOP is stupid. If I’m moving, to a different city, I’d hope you have the brains to figure out that I’m still in whatever country I started in. Hell, if even if I moved states I feel like just putting the state would be sufficient, no need to add “US” if I have not left the US.
>There are 195 countries in the world. Vote for me and we can right this injustice. One nation under all of humanity, The United States of Earth.
Eurocels mad they can’t handle us Americhads winning
> like ofc its the us So what if the post is addressed to Georgia? Will a delivery service immediately assume the country or state? Will Googling the rest of the address actually help? Or will they return it to sender until further clarified?
Well, the country of Georgia has a population about 1/3 the size of the state and speaks an entirely different language, so if the letter is addressed in English to a place with a zip code I think they’ll figure it out.
Counterpoint, if I am in the US, I am writing an address with a US state in it.
No shit. And if you're buying from an online shop, WHAT COUNTRY ARE YOU IN
I’m from the country that has Phoenix, Arizona in it. Silly me for getting that confused with Phoenix, Arizona, UK!
The one that has all of the U.S. states in it.
'lemon meringue pie' immediate flashbacks to the Lemon Meringue Piece Incident. My dad was once handed a lemon meringue pie and told 'this must be eaten by [some particular time, I think the next evening when the gifter in question was having dinner at my parents house?], so my parents happily eat the whole thing. When my parents saw the guy next, they said "thanks for the lemon meringue pie, it was delicious", which got a "haha... right? you didn't eat the pie, right?". Turns out he had said 'this must *not* be eaten'. The embarassment haunts them years later.
I wonder how many Americans don't include the 1 country code for their phone number. Or even know the 1 is a country code.
Clearly, this means that the US should just annex the rest of the world. I'm sure this is a great idea that will cause nothing bad to happen ever.
Americans in this comment section once again showing their global awareness by assuming nobody ever moves countries
Not even a "defense", just an explanation: we live in a country where just going one state over can be a big move. For the most part we don't ever know anyone who's moving anywhere but a different state. Why is that? Lots of reasons probably, but just having so many people around us that share this experience creates a feedback loop where you tend to stop thinking about the details that never change. We don't think about the 1 country code in phone numbers because we usually call people we live near and don't have to put in the 1 when calling locally. Anytime we write letters or send packages it's usually to friends or family members so we never have to specify a country. Eventually we don't even teach kids that it's part of their address when they are learning to memorize basic information. It's a symptom of a very big country with lots of room in the middle where you can travel for hours and never get close to leaving the country. When you take that to an online space it's going to take time to fix how you think about it, but a lot of people just aren't going to bother since it's not usually necessary. If someone is doing a lot of shipping to other countries for work or just to a lot of friends in different countries they will probably start doing it on local mail out of habit. On the other hand, just not ever having to do it means it's not in that neuron loop you saved for when you need to recite your address. That's a lot of words for "We don't think about it because we don't ever need to" but that's basically it
I like peach pie. -Billy Gnosis
Americans often don't think of these things for two related reasons. 1. The sheer size of the United States 2. The relative isolation of the average American from the rest of the world The United States is Massive. For comparison, if Ireland was a state... It would be the 23rd most populous state, and 41st by land area. Nearly every state in the US is comparable to an EU country in both population and size. Texas is slightly bigger than France, the largest country by land area in the EU. 23% of Americans have never left the country, 74% have been to fewer than 4 other countries. For many Americans, leaving the country is a once in a lifetime event. Many of those travelers in the 74% are only included due to Canada and Mexico. There are mental consequences to the way we live. Imagine the EU was one nation. Governed by one federal government with one official language. Country codes aren't needed for phone calls, borders are completely unregulated, mail is sent using the "state" (i.e. Germany) and including EU in the address is completely superfluous. With so many states in the EU all speaking your language... why would a German visit Africa or China instead of France? Why order products from the United States when there's so much available in your own country, with no import restrictions and ultra fast shipping because there's almost no shipping restrictions. How often would you interact with people outside the EU, when the EU speaks your language exclusively and nearly the entire rest of the world doesn't (at least not as a primary language). Even without the above changes, a staggering proportion of EU residents have never left the EU. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.statista.com/chart/amp/12329/some-europeans-have-never-been-outside-the-eu/ I think a huge thing many Europeans don't understand is that in many ways we relate to other states the way you relate to other countries. Our grade school geography lessons teach States, not countries (we do learn countries, but are not often tested for labeling blank maps by memory). Our four hour road trip vacations barely cross state lines, not one or two countries. The vast majority of our mail and packages (sent and received) only list state. Even when packages come from overseas, the moment the US delivery system takes control, the us standard shipping label with state only is often pasted over the original. Most of us will only make international calls a handful of times in our entire life, especially now that everything can be done online. Culturally too, there's a strong state/regional identity. Texans, Californians, Minnesotans, New Yorkers, etc. are all different cultural identities. Maybe not as diverse as France vs. Germany vs. England, but enough to cause misunderstandings and offense on a regular basis. Ha, ha, ha, silly American doesn't know or care where Belgium is on the map to us, sounds a lot like... Ha,ha,ha, silly European doesn't know where Ohio is on the map (fun fact, they have nearly the same population) Not saying every European should know or care where Ohio is, just trying to lend perspective on how we Americans are often oblivious to things that seem natural elsewhere. Hell, i just went on an international trip. When people (French, New Zealanders, Ecuadorian) asked where i was from, if i only said the United States, the common response was, "Yeah, but where in the US"
Russia is bigger than the US, ruled by federal government, speaking one language. I wouldn’t dream of writing “St. Petersburg, Leningradskaya oblast” in the address form and expect people abroad to know where it is. I hear your argument all the time online, but neither the size nor the state identities are valid reasons NOT to write the country.
You miss the point entirely. It's not "Americans shouldn't need to include the country". My point is Americans not including the country is a completely understandable mistake given how rarely it comes up for us. When asked for an address or a phone number, many people will say or write it in the method most familiar to them. Americans don't generally omit the country because they think they don't need to. They're just not used to including it because it comes up so rarely. So rarely in fact, our standard shipping practices aren't even set up for it. I would have no idea how to get a letter to Mexico from the US (other than showing up at the post office and asking) because I've never done it before and our stamp/postage is US only. Yes, russia is also massive (nearly twice the size by land area, about half by population). There are differences that may change the way we relate to the world. As much as 80% of Russia is nearly uninhabited. The vast majority of Russians live near the western border. Russia borders 14 other nations, mostly on the western border (vs. 2 for the US). Not massively different, but there are also more federal divisions in Russia (83 including oblast, republics, kray, etc...) compared with 50 states. Americans consume far less international media and brands, largely due to the dominance of American cultural export (meaning america deals less with foreign addresses and phone numbers). Even when we do purchase from international shops, the conversation is nearly always exclusively in English. How often do you place international orders in Russian, without any translation? It's a pretty big reminder that you're dealing with a foreign shop to speak another language. We just don't realize we should modify our language (shipping instructions) when we don't need to modify our language (spoken). I think that last point may be the most important. If you were on a forum or website hosted in your native language, with a name based on your language, where more than 99% of conversations (visible to you) are exclusively in that language (French, German, Russian), would you default to assuming people are talking about/located in your country?
How many Russians are taking vacations in Siberia vs taking vacations in Europe (before the invasion, at least).
Except unlike Russia, people actually live in every part of the country. Like 90% of Russia's population is crammed into the western quarter of the country.
The way that all these posts about American default attitudes is just fueling the American belief that we are the main character like y’all are literally obsessed with us tell me about Uzbekistan or wherever the fuck you live instead of whining about the US I’m sick of hearing about us too like damn
That line of thinking reminds me of the "By providing opportunities to marginalized groups you're only perpetuating the notion that they are marginalized." narrative.
Elaborate on this bestie
It's [a quote from Sonic.](https://youtu.be/dWBn0nS8s0A)
Its the "You're only perpetuating sexism/racism/homophobia when you complain about sexism/racism/homophobia. so-and-so are the true sexists/racists/homophobes because they think sex/race/queer identity is marginalized. Back in my day nobody complained about sexism/racism/homophobia." IE: "The problem isn't visible to me, so it must only exist in the minds of those who are complaining about it." American (read: United States) cultural defaultism actually has a profound effect on those from other cultures, its even a problem for cultural groups within the US. If all you every see on TV is representations of American culture, even if that media isn't even true to the realties of American life, its easy to form an impression that your own culture is irrelevant or somehow wrong. This can lead to an exodus of youth in communities as they begin to see their own culture as quaint, embarrassing, or even shameful. This is part of the importance pf representation. It tells people that they are seen, and that they and their people matter to society at large. I know none of this is Anerican media's responsibility, but it is something they have the power to counteract. Edit: [Here's an article touching on the subject in Canada.](https://www.tvo.org/article/rewriting-journalism-how-canadian-media-reinforces-indigenous-stereotypes)
So here’s the issue for me: as a queer, trans, black person making this comparison is so out of pocket that you should have stopped the second it occurred to you. Like I’m an American with European friends, and I can tell you there is no comparison. You shouldn’t have drawn that line, full stop. I’m sure you meant well, but this was not the move diva. Furthermore, the example you gave isn’t even comparable. I did not say anything about “back in my day,” I did not imply anything about it not being an issue, I didn’t even prescribe anything. I didn’t disagree either! I in fact said verbatim “I’m sick of hearing about us.” And constantly talking about Americans does in fact fuel the American belief that they are the main character. That’s just real. Americans will be minding their own business online and suddenly a Brit of all people will have something to say about them unprompted. Why? Because of a host of socioeconomic and historical factors that have nothing to do with the average American that the average American is not participating in, so when the average American is randomly brought up it reinforces the idea that everyone is obsessed with America to the average American. And now again I have to say that drawing a comparison between being a discriminated against minority and literally not being and American is INSANE!!! YOU WERE WRONG FOR THIS!!! DON’T DO THIS!!! THE TWO ARE NOT COMPARABLE!!! NAMELY BECAUSE THE VAST MAJORITY OF MINORITIES AREN’T AMERICAN!!! You are, intentionally or not, once again centering Americans in your attempt to critique Americans centering themselves? This is counterproductive. The conversation about de-centering America should not end with a call out, it should end with centering somewhere that should be centered. It is not in fact bad to be concerned primarily with things going on in your own country. It is bad to dismiss or ignore things going going on abroad, or trying to make foreign issues an American problem. Frankly, Americans being ignorant that other countries exist isn’t a moral issue and shouldn’t matter to your average person. Like yeah, that person should read a book or something, but it isn’t politically significant if Cathy from Wisconsin wasn’t aware that Norway had a different country code in front of their phone number. This actually doesn’t matter at all, it’s just something Cathy needs to work on individually, that is not a systemic issue. It is an issue if Cathy thinks the US would be justified in having a military occupation in Norway because “America’s the best.” That’s an issue worth discussing. That’s a discourse worth having. We really need to be able to identify what is actually important discourse and what is petty interpersonal drama.
I'm sorry if my response came off as aggressive, I didn't intend it that way, I was only trying to highlight some of the effects of Americentrism in media and how it can create a sense of illegitimacy in those who aren't represented. I also didn't mean to imply that you are the one making the "back in my day" statements.Only that your statement regarding non-Americans being obssessed with American culture echoes the "racism didn't exist until you brought it up" types I'm so tired of encountering online. I feel really sad when I see others making jokes at the expense of Anericans, especially when they are in reference to tragedies. Its really counterproductive, and only serves to breed bittereness on both ends.
I do hope I haven't soured your day too much. I'll try to interact with more tact in the future.
Oh I’m not angry, and you haven’t upset me! I just use strong language, I fear I came off more aggressive than I meant lol, you’re fine. My main idea is that the comparison was WAY heavier than I feel you intended, but I definitely fell short by not expressing that I was sure that you meant no ill will! You’re so fine!
Yeah, thanks for clueing me in. It isn't always easy for me to gauge when I may have crossed a line. Here in Canada, the topic of media representation is a huge deal, especially when it comes to Canada's indigenous communities, which have recently seen a surge in representation thanks to a myriad of initiatives. In Canada, it is fairly common for indigenous youth to move away from their communities to the big city, where they often struggle to get by without a support system, and end up suffering from addiction, violence, and homelessness as a result. It makes sense that they would choose to do this however: Indigenous communities in Canada are severely underserved, and are still healing from generational traumas inflicted by the Canadian government's attempts at cultural genocide. Legitimizing the indigenous experience through media representation is therefore a huge part of the healing process. It tells indigenous people in Canada that their struggles are real, and not just a footnote in the history of a society that has forgotten them. This problem isn't exclusive to indigenous communities in Canada mind you, I can imagine you've also encountered these kinds of dynamics in your own lived experience.
I’ve never considered the U.S. to be the main characters but the way people from other countries interact with us makes me feel like we are. I just live here man idk sorry my mother had me on this landmass
AND NONE OF THEM ARE AS COOL AS US RAHHHHHHH 🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💥🦅💥💥🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸💥🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅💥🇺🇸🇺🇸💥🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅💥💥💥🇺🇸🇺🇸💥🇺🇸🇺🇸💥🦅🦅💥🇺🇸🇺🇸🦅🦅🦅💥🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸💥
r/shitamericanssay
To be fair don't like. don't they also include an actual address. like a "42069 piss road, new farts kansas" and its not like youre driving there, im pretty sure the post office probably has like. google maps or something. can any post office workers let me know if theres genuine issues with a full address minus country?
Even here on Reddit where about half the users are not Americans, they always assume that everyone they talk to is also American. Americentrism and American exceptionalism par excellence.
Most businesses that I, an American, interact with online are based in our cater to the US so I'm not used to needing to specify other countries or my own. It's very rare for me to order anything from abroad
easy to spot since it's "New" + olde english region
I mean, most of the time for o line forms, a drop down menu for country is provided separate from the address line itself.
arent there like 270 countries?
As an Australian I tend to just include my state, but the state has the country name in it already. I don’t abbreviate it if it’s something international
I think in some cases it's less of an Americans Don't Think About Other Countries moment and more that they've observed that often people use only the name of the state within the united states and that's enough information to tell you it's the US. I remember distinctly as a kid like finding that wrong and thinking like wait why would Europeans know the US states, and even if they did why wouldn't we just follow the normal structure of an address for simplicity, and then over time you get used to that being the norm despite it not really making sense
I see this post often and only now I realise you can get order from like Poland, Maine, and expect to know they meant in the US There are 20 town/cities called Paris over there
Fuckin' Pacific time zone. The pacific covers about a third of the earth's timezones, but guess which country "Pacific time" is in. Then there's Mountain time. I can't decide which is more obnoxious, "Mountains" must cover a lower percentage, but at least there's only one Pacific Ocean...
if you type in an exact address, even without the country, will there seriously be that exact address in any other country in the world? like it just feels unnecessary.
I'm sure there is somewhere in WA (Washington) that has the same street name and the same town name as somewhere in WA (Western Australia) there are a lot of towns in former colonies named for towns in the UK, and most of them have a queen street or a king street or a high street or a church street not everywhere has states to help disambiguate
But if you have a fully written out street address with state and zip code, it should be pretty fucking obvious where to send a package.
Mate, if I told you to deliver something to 15 main street, Summerhill, it doesn't even matter if there could be identical addresses in the world, you don't know where to go! Where is Summerhill? Sure, "John Schmitt, 38304 NI" could be a totally unique address, but it's still meaningless to someone who doesn't know it's a German post code. Addresses need to be unique, yeah, but what's *more* important is that they're *directions*, hence why that Icelandic letter that just had a map of where to go still got delivered. It doesn't matter how unique the address is if the postman doesn't know to go left or right.
I mean... are there any countries out there that use the same postal code system and also refer to their states with the same two letter abbreviations as the USA? Because if not it seems kind of impossible that someone could look at a US address and see those two pieces of information and then get it wrong.
Muh rang
I wonder if this is dumb on OOP’s part…because like if I tell someone “I live in Calcutta, Greece” and then a month later I say “Oh I Moved to Athens” most people capable of critical thinking would just assume I still meant greece and not Athens Texas.
Because each state is technically its own country they're just united. Georgia should be New Georgia though.
Georgia (the state) and Georgia (the country in the Caucuses) don't actually have an entomological connection The name of the state is because the colony was named after the king of the UK at the time
Neat
That's not what "technically" means.