I don’t remember that pile-on but I wouldn’t doubt it. That said, according to What Exit?'s stats, about forty percent of our traffic comes from outside the United States and if what you said happened, she’s the only person I know of that’s got piled on for it. Other prolific posters that’re either well known as being foreign, like **jjimm ** and The Loaded Dog, or not a part of the dominant American culture, like **Askia ** and Anaamika, don’t get dogpiled for referencing their culture but they don’t make it a central part of their posting history, either.
Anyone who constantly brings up the same thing over and over and over again, in a number of topics that aren’t even necessarily related, is going to annoy a lot of people. At least one poster, Reeder, was banned in part for it, I believe, but his one-trick pony was Bush, not his heritage.
I think the thread referenced by the OP was mainly an example of someone not thinking. Even if we were all in the US, the answer about NA beer would be answered at the state or possibly even county level. Young people of limited experience tend to phrase their questions that way.
I love it when European and Canadian posters join in the employment law related threads asserting rights and benefits completely foreign to the US workplace. Actually, I welcome the comparative perspective, but we all need to see and identify it as such.
Regarding the contact numbers, my vote is to get an international number. If you just need a warm body in the US, there’s probably somebody in the international students office who can serve that role. But if no one has your family’s overseas number while you are lying in a coma somewhere, that’s bad news. The complexity of an emergency affecting an international student is great enough that it would make sense to plan ahead and get both kinds of numbers.
Didn’t notice you’d already mentioned this - it was the incident I was talking about a few posts later - yes, that happened. I think it happened because a bunch of people already had their knickers in a massive twist over some other incident (that I think arose out of something Nava said appearing way too blunt for everybody’s liking) - once everybody was outraged, they started looking for other reasons to be upset and they siezed upon the fact that Nava had often geographically tagged her comments (quite reasonably, IMO) with phrases like “here in Spain…”
Thank Christ for that. Every day I log on to the Dope, for the last six years, I’m half expecting to have been pitted with, “TLD, will you SHUT THE FUCK UP about being Australian? We know, already!” Problem is, I find myself mentioning my Australian-ness more often than I would like, but it’s difficult not to sometimes, because there’s usually a need to clarify, especially as my interests tend to draw me towards threads where local difference need to be specified - ie, a cute kitten pic is a cute kitten pic wherever in the world it’s taken, but threads on things like traffic law, railways, booze, and travel tend to demand clarification on locality. I even get down to semantic games with things like replacing, “well, in Australia…” with “in my local jurisdiction…” Hopefully I needn’t bother. Just paranoid of being “the Australian guy” to the exclusion of all else.
BTW, I do (mildly) agree with the OP. I think it was OTT, and I respect my American friends’ right to post local stuff to their heart’s content, but it doesn’t kill people to hit the few keystrokes: “in the US…” or similar. I’m happy in a way to “travel to America” daily, and I still find it amusing that this kid from Sydney can hear terms like “DFW”, “Twin Cities”, “Socal” etc and mentally absorb them instantly like a local. It’s great to be a part of that. But it’s taken time to learn what things like a “401 plan” are, and it often could have been made easier by a simple two or three word explanation for the rest of us.
One thing I am immensely grateful to the US doper community for, though, is the fact that this is the only place on the internet that I know of where I can type rapidfire Commonwealth English without having to stop and translate, and knowing some clueless person will be asking for definitions every other sentence. Sure, I might translate for some Australianisms I judge to be sufficiently obscure, but I can “take the lift to the ground floor to get a cheque out of the boot” for all it’s worth. And that is refreshing after some places I’ve been to on this here intarweb.
I disagree. While it’s obviously not exclusively used by people from the United States or limited to topics related to the US, one needn’t lurk for very long at all to learn about the Chicago Reader or realize that most of the posters are from somewhere in the US.
I’m referring to the content of the DM’s message board, not just the fact that it obviously belongs to a UK paper. For that reason I believe the comparison is sound. I don’t see how you could spend any time reading here at all without inferring the location of the “average” poster. Of course that’s not true at every board, but it is here, and here is where the rant is.
There are a lot of good points made in this thread about how difficult it can be to conduct international affairs with US entities. I just don’t see the need for a Pit rant. The OP of the other thread could have been more specific, the OP of this one could have just ignored the oversight and used some freaking context clues, and I could have gotten a pony for my birthday. Let’s start with the easiest thing first?
That’s why I said it in my post. And that has nothing to do with the OP’s “other countries exist” pit. Learn to read.
By the way, I, like Leaffan, don’t really care about the main issue. It just pisses me off that What Exit? bothered to rebut my comments without actually reading them.
Might come as a surprise to few, but I’m a SPANIARD, though I live for the most part, currently, in the DOM REP and also spent 'bout fifteen years STATESIDE – which only cost me two alimonies and a child-support. No complaints about the latter must say. Best thing I’ve ever done – with some American help, granted
Still and all, matters not, for wherever I am, I sure as shiite HATE BUSH AND HIS ACOLYTES. Yet another surprise, I’m sure.
There. Pile-on and make this thread about all about me. After all, I bet I’ve got at least a decade (or two) on Nava in being a Spaniard. So let her be and concentrate on moi.
Bout time time I beat Lib to one of these friendly Pit ‘gatherings’ and garnered all the attention. So please send some hatred my way. Lots of it rather.
That depends on whether or not ‘inferring’ actually means assuming each poster is American unless you see evidence to the contrary. Which seems to be the implication.
