34 Things That Americans Do And Only Realized They Are Actually Weird Once They Talked To Foreigners

If you’re from somewhere else besides the United States of America, throughout your life, you have probably noticed that the world is relatively America-centered. For instance, if you look up the statistics of something, you will often get results about the American population. 

Let’s do a quick experiment. We came up with a random question – “How much bread do people eat?” – and added the word “statistics” when Googling it. And guess what? The first thing that popped up was statistics about bread consumption in the United States. To prove our point, you can do a little experiment on your own – maybe you can prove that only our search engine algorithm shows American results first. 

Either way, it doesn’t change the fact that American culture is seeping its way into other cultures, and it’s been happening for a while now. In fact, there’s a whole term for it – Americanization. 

Let’s take a look at cinema to grasp the lengths of Americanization. Since around the 1910s, American cinema (or simply said, Hollywood) has dominated the market. The majority of the top 50 highest-grossing films of all time have been fully or partially made in the United States or at least were financed by their production companies. 

Of course, not everything is all because of cinema; there are plenty of other players too, like businesses and commercials. Brands like Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Subway, Starbucks, Burger King, and KFC having places all around the world and being widely popular there shows how much soft power American culture can have. 

These are just a few examples. Basically, people worldwide get easily exposed to American fashion, scenery, lifestyle, and customs, sometimes without even realizing they do. And that means Americanization has succeeded in its task. 

While we non-Americans notice Americanization, within the US, there’s a thing called Americentrism. People tend to assume that their American culture is more important than others and/or judge everything they encounter by its standards. 

In today’s list, you’ll find plenty of examples of things that are kind of related to Americentrism. To be more specific, it’s full of things Americans thought were completely normal for everyone until they talked with someone from a foreign country. 

As you will see, this collection includes things like having your country’s flag seemingly all around, date arrangement, amounts of sugar in food, and so on. We won’t spoil more – you’ll see for yourself. 

Well, there’s a reason why people say that meeting people from other cultures is important for an individual’s personal development – it opens up a whole different world, one you wouldn’t be able to grasp without learning about it firsthand. This list is full of instances where this proved to be right. 

So, enjoy it, upvote, and if you have any similar examples yourself, leave them in the comments!