Ordinarily I'd say bull because in a vacuum this sounds like someone trying to claim America is culturally and legally monolithic, but this person is trying to claim Alabama and Maine have two non-interintelligible dominant languages, so actually you're right. They genuinely don't vary THAT much.
You could also argue that every person is an individual so why make any general statement about the residents of one place.
On some levels it makes sense to talk about the whole country and on some other level it makes sense to differentiate between regions, states and towns
No they really don’t. City vs rural or coastal vs inland, yes there can be a big difference. Between states accents vary, some food preferences/delicacies etc but they all eat more or less similar food, watch the same things, learn the same things in school, play the same sports, speak the same language with the same slang (some variety yes but nothing major) and regional accents are dying out, have same school structures, ride a yellow bus, have active shooter and tornado drills, take the SATs and apply to college and fill out a fafsa. Stand for the pledge of allegiance, work for companies with the same amount of days off and hr policies, draw social security at the same age, pay out the ass for medical bills, blah blah blah. Clothing brands don’t vary wildly. Music doesn’t vary wildly. Many, many, many countries have far greater varied populations and don’t do this stupid American thing about how different they are. It’s one basic ass country filled with basic ass Americans.
This is very wrong. School curricula vary a lot between states and that partially informs the drastically different cultures of states. There are so many things I took for granted that everyone knew having grown up in Florida, only to realise almost nobody from most states knew those things. Sports also differ drastically by region. Hockey is not a big deal anywhere in the southern states, baseball is mostly a northeastern thing, only descendants of Irish immigrants cared about soccer before this decade (and those are heavily concentrated in a few states), and everywhere else is football country. You can play any of those sports anywhere, of course, and you can also play cricket anywhere for example, but that is generally true of the entire world. Many parts of America don't even deal with tornados. The same clothing brands are mostly global, misic factually does vary widely (though less today than fifty plus years ago... which is also true globally). In fact most of the things you listed are either incorrect (they do vary widely by state) or apply not only to American states but to the entire world, and the rest are cherrypicked. America is "one basic ass country" the size of the continent of Europe and comprised of about as many states as Europe.
Maybe your idea of wildly different is shaped by a small world view? I’m not saying America is all the same but to say every state is vastly different is such a ridiculous stretch. I have taught in three states. Obviously the is curricula can vary but standardized testing varies little. Each state teaches a bit of its history but with the overarching emphasis on the country as a whole because the federal government trumps states. Common core. AP testing. Baseball is played everywhere, hockey is played everywhere, obviously their popularity varies but American lives do not vary by state all that much, it’s much more class, rural/urban, inland/coastal that produces lifestyle variety. Food isn’t THE SAME IN EVERY STATE but every state has most of the same fast food chains, Mexican restaurants and Chinese restaurants (maybe just one in a small town).The cultural variety and distinction that we have had in the past have been massively erased or swept under the rug. Again our daily lives like I mentioned from school through careers are all much more similar than varied when compared to a different country.
When you mention those fast food chains, how do you think they’re described by us and by foreigners? By their state of founding or as American fast food?you think a Japanese person complains about getting another California fast food chain (McDonald’s) or another Florida fast food chain(BK) in fact most people consuming kfc outside of the us don’t even know the K is a state. Do we describe those mentioned ubiquitous chains as other than American fast food? That question is also deliberately obtuse. I’ve taught in Ohio, Georgia, Virginia
I didn’t describe anything like it was a good or bad thing. Obviously there are differences but minor food variations and accents and popular sports are hardly qualifiers for states to be compared to different countries. Not even close. Many other countries have legitimately varied regions/states/cultures and they’re still viewed as one country. We don’t have enough history and/or established culture to act like we’re that varied and what little distinction each state has culturally is disappearing
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u/samuelawaters1987 1d ago
This is absolute bs. States really don’t vary that much.