44 Times People Didn't Expect To See These American Stereotypes To Be Real

The homeless people.

I have never seen so many homeless people in my live. And that was during the 90s. Can’t imagine what the situation is nowadays.

People actually going to see a high school or college sport game. In my country no one except the parents of the team players would bother to go watch an extracurricular sports game.

That Americans are very friendly. I have lived in the US now for 19 years and I can happily say that this is very true. As a brown immigrant, overwhelmingly, I have been treated very well here and people have always been very friendly.

Old school diners. Did a road trip from New York to Connecticut and stopped at this classic diner in upstate New York with the tables, long sit down counter right out of the movies.

Sugary food.. sure, we all know about the milkshakes, sodas, massive bags of candy (which are all true) but man EVERYTHING here is full of unnecessary sugar. Yoghurt, pasta sauce, breads, coffee etc. Took me some time to figure out why everything tasted odd to my European taste buds.

The massive gap between the bathroom stall door and the frame. You're just sitting there making direct eye contact with people washing their hands.

DMVs. I always thought it was a TV joke. It’s not. It’s awful.

How genuinely friendly strangers are. I expected the whole “Americans will talk to anyone” thing to be exaggerated, but people actually started conversations with me like we’d known each other for years.

I spent almost a month in a Denver suburb without ever seeing a bus. Public transportation really does suck.

My nephew came over from Germany and was shocked the buses were actually yellow. He enjoyed the American experience though.

Not me but my cousin visiting from Mexico. She was surprised by the SHEER amount of American flags. She had challenged herself to count all the American flags she saw and gave up when we passed a car dealership that had like over 50 lol.

How big the country is, there are parts that are still properly wild. Europe has been shaped by humans for thousands of years, there are signs of occupancy *everywhere*. You would struggle to find a significant area that doesn't have sign of humans having lived there at some point. All the land you see, even the equivalent of national parks are re-wilded to some extent. The US has large areas where there's little to no sign of humans now, or for extended periods of time.


The drive from LA to Vegas was illuminating, long stretches of MAMBA (Miles And Miles of Bugger-All). Other than the road, there's nothing out there. Internal flights are also interesting, in some cases, there just seems to be cities in the middle of nowhere just because there needs to be *something* there after so much empty space.

I say this as a half-Japanese, half-white American man living in Houston, TX:

Football down here is a religion for some. And yes, majority of the school funding did go into building the monolith stadium for a high school team. The movies and shows downplay it slightly.

The fact that you really do need a car to do pretty much anything.

Not so much of a stereotype but more so an effect. Growing up as a kid (not in US) I watched movies shot in New York and there would be steam coming out of the manholes in the street in dark scenes, think Batman. I always thought that the steam was a movie effect till I visited New York last January and the steam coming out of the manholes is definitely real. My jaw kinda dropped at seeing it and then I felt like an idiot.

Portion sizes. I got a *very* affordable plate of teriyaki that was really 2.5x the size you'd get for the same price in Canada. I got halfway through and was stuffed.

Specific to the south, namely Texas: my wife was mildly shocked that people actually wear cowboy hats and boots. Not ironically, not part of a costume, just everyday attire.

The obesity. The Target parking lot was full of very big people. I live in a city (Toronto) and the difference was stark.

Towns in the middle of nowhere, downtown is one long strip road - a couple of fast food places, a grocery story, a petrol station, a bar with no windows and four churches.

My host sister from Germany - the high school cheerleaders.

She thought it was just a cheesy movie trope, or an exaggeration. She was absolutely exasperated that it was a real, genuine sport and a genuinely normal thing to see a school sporting events, let alone professional events.