These topics often arise in american internet forums but I’ve rarely (if ever) seen them being discussed in European forums:
-“Personhood” of corporations
-Tipping
-Circumsision
-Pharmacists refusing sale of contraceptives
…just a few I could think of the top of my head. The “personhood” thing is usually offered as a bit of trivia while the other three topics can really put their panties in a twist.
What are the permanent hot topics of discussion in other countries?
Americans
Soccer (that’s football for the rest of us).
The Constitution . . . and specifically the First Amendment. It’s surprising that other countries don’t have an equivalent to this.
The reverence for the founding fathers. I mean, yes clever bunch, but the continual navel gazing fascination of trying to determine what their views on 21st century issues might be is just eye rolling.
It isn’t just about revering historical figures. As the previous post indicates, the views of the founding fathers, and the meaning of the documents they wrote, have immediate and direct implications for issues such as same-sex marriage. We’re not particularly interested in what someone like Daniel Boone or James Fenimore Cooper thought about 21st century issues, because they didn’t write the rules that we’re trying to live by now.
constitutional infallibility
spreading santorum
American exceptionalism
But you go on and on and on about were they atheists, deists, Christians, and did they consider a modern army a militia or was that Bob down the street with a rifle. Outcomes from those arguments aside, the rest of the world don’t care.
I don’t get it.
Virtually all Western countries have some sort of legal protection for free speech, the practice of religion, and liberty in general, and virtually all have some sort of debate from time to time over how to interpret and apply that protection. What do other countries have the USA doesn’t in this regard?
I just re-read the OP and apparently I misinterpreted it as “what do American’s go on about that others don’t care about” instead of “What are the permanent hot topics of discussion in other countries”
Language rights for Canada I suppose.
Guns.
Abortion.
I know a few English people who own guns, and I’m sure at the shooting club and in gun shops they talk about them- but I used to be an active member on a forum which was NZ based, about 60% European, 35% Aus/NZ, and maybe 2% US (remaining 3% being a random mix) which featured ‘The Gun Thread’, which last time I went on there had run to around 200 pages, which was almost exclusively Americans arguing with each other. I’ve never just heard people discussing their guns in a pub, or anywhere else really- and I lived in a village with a shooting range.
Likewise, I seem to remember having ‘abortion’ as a debate topic once at school, but other than that, it barely comes up. Every now and again there’ll be a newspaper article about someone trying to ban it, but it seems to be less controversial than MMR jabs.
He’s probably talking about the establishment clause. Or the idea of banning certain topics, like Holocaust denial in Germany (not sure how common that is, though).
American politicians nobody else has ever heard of.
Abortion, gun control, climate change, evolution.
Ummm… dunno what else. I guess the problem is I just skip over the thread titles if I don’t know what they’re on about.
Americans are much more politically vocal online than a lot of other countries (or, possibly, America is the largest population of English speaking countries, and so overwhelming dominates most English speaking forums online). I’m sure there are massive Chinese or Spanish speaking forums which I’m just not aware of, but being from an English speaking country but the US in any English-based forum (i.e. any place online where you’re ever likely to be) generally means you don’t understand what 50% of the conversation on the intrawebs is about. And you can’t click on any video links.
The Founding Fathers/Constitution is purely an American right wing obsession. No one else discusses either except as forced responses to the RW, and I never heard a peep about either one after high school Civics class (required at the time), until the rise of Tea Party fanaticism.
I amend that to say, except for various particular movements that are supported (or are imagined to be supported) by a particular Amendment.
Australians talk a bit about climate change, particularly about taxing carbon.
They also talk about soccer, particularly around the time of the World Cup, and they call it soccer. I’d say most English-speakers-- Canucks, Yanks, Kiwis, Aussies, dunno about South Africans-- call association football soccer. The Australian national team is the Socceroos, not the Footyroos, for instance. Australians who try to get other Australians to refer to soccer as football are seen as dickheads, in my experience.
Disconcertingly, Australians talk a lot about American politics. Often it’s just “why is American politics on the bloody news all the time” but after Obama was elected there was talk about if he’d get assassinated. Often discussions of American politics fall into the topics of “Stupid Yanks”, “Bloody Yanks”, or “The Yanks Are Going To Get Us All Killed”.
Not a lot of talk about guns, true, but the subject will reliably come up whenever there’s a mass shooting in America. Even better, no talk about hunting, a topic much discussed in Michigan and one I disliked.
Even even betterer, you hardly ever run into a holy joe who wishes to share his or her opinions on religion. There’s the occasional street preacher or a Jehovah or Mormon dropping by to give you something to recycle, but really the most common blather on religion comes from the sort of guy (and it’s always a guy) who claims to be “not religious but spiritual”. Other Australians see them, correctly, as dickheads.
Immigration is a fairly big topic, much like in America, which makes me snigger. When Aussies go on about how Indonesians or whoever will take their jerbs I’m tempted to point out how tiny a trickle of illegals Australia gets and how easy it is to keep out boats compared to patrolling the Mexican border.
Personally, as an American, I’m fascinated by the founding generation. They really were quite unusual, much to be admired, and the American Revolution was highly unusual. Naturally, these topics never come up in conversations with Australians, but I don’t remember them coming up much with Americans, either.
Australians service workers do talk about tipping, in my experience mainly how they’d rather get a tip from a customer than a compliment. Can’t have it both ways, dickhead.
I asked my wife’s opinion on the subject, and she said mental health and therapy. She cited talk shows like Oprah and Dr Phil, where Americans explore their psyches. Australians, in her opinion, would be more “fuck off, get out of there” than “let’s explore”.
Or from Crocodile Dundee:
Sue: People go to a psychiatrist to talk about their problems. She just needed to unload them. You know, bring them out in the open.
Crocodile Dundee: Hasn’t she got any mates?
If this board is anything to go by, Americans spend a lot of time discussing their credit scores. I’ve never heard the subject raised in Australia. I don’t even know whether we have credit scores.
And Jeopardy is another topic.
For Spain:
Liga,
politics,
basket,
linguistic policies at the local, regional, national and EU levels,
Copa,
education,
tennis,
the latest sucesos (shocking news),
Champion’s League,
the EU,
so-called minority sports (i.e., anything other than soccer, basket, tennis and the Three Big biking events),
unemployment,
friendly fútbol tournaments…
Another one for “things Americans talk a lot about and Europeans (well, most people in the first world) don’t”: whether countries should or should not have UHC.
In America your credit determines everything, you can’t get a contract cell phone without it or even open a bank account, most places will not hire you if you have a bad score. Its even being used by insurance companies to set rates.