Now I finally understand all of the Americans who pretend to be Canadian when traveling abroad. It gets depressing constantly having to apologize for all the crappy things America has done and dealing with all the head shakes and rolling eyes every time my local friend would introduce me as his friend from Texas.
I always figured that I would do my best to represent America positively when visiting other countries but it would probably be a whole lot more pleasant if I just pretended to be Canadian. It got to the point where I asked my friend to stop introducing me that way!
Such a shame because I’m always so happy to meet and greet foreigners when they visit the states and make sure to be very polite, but evidently we have such a bad rap oversees that complete strangers won’t even try to hide their disdain at the very mention you are from the US.
I can only imagine it being worse in other countries that like us even less than the UK does.
Your friend needs better friends. I didn’t notice this while I was in the UK. I can’t wait to go back. I didn’t notice any exceptionally rude behavior from the French either. Italians on the other hand. . .
Seconded. No snark at all, your friend really just has crappy friends.
I’ve never experienced anything remotely like what you’ve experienced, not even in countries more antithetical to the U.S. than the U.K. is. Not even during the Bush 43 administration.
I wonder if there would be less reaction if the Texas bit was left off the introduction. People often have strong, though frequently uninformed, ideas about Texans.
Bush and Perry didn’t help the state’s whacky reputation.
How about you don’t apologise for anyone but yourself.
US foreign policy is not popular pretty well anywhere. What do you want people to do instead of letting an American know that?
At least it was your friend’s friends rather than the general populace, so you know it might well be just them. Lots of British men love “banter,” which is basically insulting each other and is intended to be friendly - you wouldn’t do it to someone you disliked. So it could be that they were doing that, but didn’t appreciate that you weren’t one of them so, quite reasonably, didn’t get that it wasn’t really meant to be mean. I know you said you know British humour often revolves around taking the piss but among male friends it can really get quite heavy, possibly heavier than you’d expect.
Or perhaps it was meant to be mean.
What exactly did they say, if you recall? Was it piss-takes of Texas, cowboy stuff etc? That would be annoying even if was genuinely intended as a joke but I guess it would help in retrospect if you knew it was likely that they didn’t actually mean to offend you.
Might be a good idea to mention this in a light-hearted way to your friend.
You have no idea what a particular individual’s stance is on various issues. For all you know drewtwo99 protests against US involvement in the Middle East every day.
If it’s a matter of just informing him what his government is doing, I’m pretty sure he knows, and also, if I were to criticize everyone from X on X government policy then there would be little time to talk about anything else.
I’ve had some interesting discussions with, for example, Greeks on what their government is doing, but that’s after I’ve got to know them as people, and ascertained they are interested in politics. Because that’s what civilized people do.
Finally even when I am talking with someone about their country’s foreign policy, it’s a discussion and one in which I would hope to add to my understanding. Not condemning someone for events I am no expert on, and that the person likely had nothing to do with.
Nor do you. Why do you assume he doesn’t support his government - presumably for the same reason you deign to offer my apology to him. You seem to know a lot about people.
Fwiw, there are tens of thousands of Americans who moved away by choice and you know that’s largely political so of course there is nothing to say.
It’s a democracy, what is being done to the world in their name is unacceptable to civilised people, so visiting Americans - yeah, they can explain their opposition or apolgise.
I’m apologizing for rudeness and ignorance. There’s no excuse for being rude to someone you just met, and know nothing about, other than which passport he carries.
Well it’s also slightly rude exploding children into thousands of strips of meat via a cctv attached to a drone. To which you will have contributed with your tax.
I don’t get to choose how the money I pay as tax is spent. And if I don’t pay my taxes, I go to prison. So how the fuck can you seriously claim I have some direct culpability in what some people (I likely didn’t even vote for) do? Seriously what is your fucking problem?
OP, I suspect you’ve been the recipient of some pretty heavy handed piss taking. If you’re not used to it, I can imagine you’d find it rude or insulting, even if the intent is the British male’s admittedly rather strange approach to friendship bonding.
Take it as a compliment that they feel friendly enough towards you to insult you
Ah, I see. This is a meta-comment, demonstrating exactly the thing that the OP is complaining about. It’s showing what a knee-jerk response to the superficial aspects of the person looks like, how to identify when a person’s response is not worth valuing, and I assume, eventually he’ll explore the ill-conceived motivations of this hypothetical person.
Well played, sir, well played. I look forward to phase 2.
