Lol. Lmao even
As I’ve always said, soft power is no joke and the biggest reason the US has so many immigrants. People like to say it’s actually to avoid imperialism and that’s assuming most people immigrating to the US are as versed in politics as we are.
They see Americans living it up on US shows and movies, assume everybody lives like that, and make the journey instead of moving to a wealthy country in the region that wouldn’t have been as difficult to get to.
This is where the USSR struggled. This is why Japan is beloved in countries like the Philippines by their younger generations. It’s also why South Korea is seen so positively. Shit, I’ve even seen it in my country. We have a famous singer in Latin America and people have assumed that Guatemalan men are also attractive and smooth talkers because of him.
Soft power is an absolute must and it doesn’t even need to be blatantly political. China seems to be on the right path with stuff like Genshin and Wukong, but it will be an uphill battle with how hard US media demonizes China.
fried chicken is a dollar if they mean per wing
That third one is true for most of western europe. Not america. But I suspect it won’t be true for western europe for much longer, starting with the UK and Germany when AfD get in.
The rest are bs.
This just demonstrates that propaganda through treats is the strongest form of propaganda because that’s where the Chinese have gotten all of these ideas, the depiction of american lives in american entertainment products. Entertainment industry products should be a priority focus of any leftist state’s propaganda machine. Television, movies and videogames.
Oh yeah, I’m an American and I WISH that any of these were true
The fact that there wasn’t one negative “rumor” really shocked me. My impression was that the entire world thinks of this country as a joke of a hellhole
Sorry to break it to you but everyone thinks of your country like a movie set in a 1990s high class suburb.
You have no idea how badly I wish it was
Every American either lives like the Simpsons, the family at the start of interstellar, or the cast of Friends,
That third one is true for most of western europe
Immigrant workers are definitely exploited more than 40h/week in western Europe, and unpaid extra time is also plaguing most new hires in consulting and financial office jobs.
Yeah that’s fair. This is why I chose “most” rather than just saying it is true for those here. Generally speaking social safety nets are what keep these total hours down, people can (usually) claim enough to survive, meaning that they can actually just be unemployed rather than forcing upon themselves absurd hours just to avoid homelessness. These nets aren’t always easily accessible if totally honest about circumstances though, and they’re not accessible to various migrants or those without documents.
Idk what country you’re talking about. I’m Spanish, and the “safety net” during unemployment is going back to living with your parents, which is a form of houselessness (not in the sense that you live on the streets but in the sense that you don’t have income to rent or buy a place)
- and 4. are true for sucdem Finland, but even here number 3 is slipping away fast now and 4. is only partially true on the sanitary pads (only done in some places).
This reads like the list of what the US advertised to be many decades ago.
It’s not an exaggeration that US propaganda is insanely powerful.
As someone who has never been to America, growing up the only thing I had to judge American life were sitcoms where the “average Joe” was depicted as having a gaint two story house and having a ton of expensive shit on a single income.
It wasn’t until Malcolm in the Middle that a non-rich family was even depicted as the norm.
“We were saving that money for our kids college” always confused me as a kid though, my thought was always “But wait, what if they can’t afford to save for college? Do that just not get to go? That doesn’t seem right. That would be too unfair.”
Kids growing up watching Disney channel is the most powerful propaganda tool of the cia.
It’s just wild to me to think that, you know, the Chinese government is too fucking busy TAKING CARE OF ITS CITIZENS to even care to spread vile propaganda about the US like we do about every other country. We’ll, maybe it’s not “wild”, because even if other countries fabricated lies about the US they would probably be accurate lol
Also I never thought about how little media shows families realistically. But even then it’s still a father raising three kids and providing for a stay at home wife which is…lol. Maybe it was doable pre-2008 though.
Lois isn’t a stay-at-home mother, despite having 4 children, she works part-time at a large pharmacy store and some other gigs. I believe it also talks about how despite having a college degree, she is unable to find better work due to long gaps of unemployment due to pregnancy and child-rearing.
Oh shit that’s right I totally forgot! Damn that is pretty surprising considering the time it came out
Malcolm in the Middle is down right Marxist in its portrayal of class antagonisms compared to literally every other sitcom.
Damn okay maybe it’s time for a rewatch
I mean its still possible but its like the person has to be petit bourgeois to make it. A business owner like auto repair or car dealership or (maybe) dentist.
There was Roseanne, but I don’t know if that was popular outside the US (ignoring Roseanne Barr currently and the “revival”)
it still blows my mind she used to consider herself a “socialist”It was around but I think it was before my time
I keep trying to think of who/what Roseanne is and my mind just starts playing the drum beat from Rosanna by Toto.
What’s even the point of the great firewall if they are getting propagandised like that anyway?
Actually it was mostly to develop local tech industry and be able to enforce laws against American tech products; which considering China was able to leapfrog ahead to create the US’ most popular social media app I consider it a rousing success.
Is that the real reason? I’ve never heard that.
It’s another reason but not the only one ofc.
My dad
People in Chinastill thinking it’s the 50’s
Love the fried chicken myth in there along with fair wages, affordable housing, and government subsidies
Not rumours so much as people just watching American movies where everyone is upper middle class. This is how most of the world imagines the US
Whenever I watch tv with other people now I like to point out class in the show. Most shows are petty-bourgeois where everyone is a small business owner, particularly american shows though.
Yeah, I remember looking at Gilmore Girls and thinking "the entire class divide here is upper middle/lower upper vs Upper Class, loosely elided by the main character slumming it as a maid for a year before her employer realised she was “one of them”
Yeah this is basically a summary of the living conditions of the Simpsons family
Which were lower middle class when it came out. Plenty of plot lines revolved around money being tight.
3 kids, 2 cars, a house, all on one salary these days? Unthinkable.
Frank Grimes episode already made fun of it in season 8 because it was dated by 1997.
A single worker’s salary afforded him an apartment above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley. Homer could miraculously afford lobster for dinner, a stay at home wife, a 2.5 storey house, 2 cars, a cat, a dog and a drinking habit while being a college dropout.
As you say they lampshaded it already.
But Homer got his safety inspector job he was unqualified in season 1 as a bribe from Mr Burns after he got fired from a more menial job at the plant and became an anti-nuclear activist.
He then finished his needed college courses in Season 5.
Also he’s a union man.
Meanwhile, in reality, Joe Biden STILL owes me $1400.
“Gave out tens of thousands of dollars” meant $30,000 divided among 300 million Americans.
It’s because he had to do all that student loan forgiveness for like… ummm… 0,01% of what he promised.
I can’t believe that shit, really. How the hell are there still people who haven’t been paid? Because the tax system is such a pain in the ass or what?
It’s not an error, the correct amount of money was paid out. Biden just lied about how much money it would be then lowered it later
It’s not because of some kind of bureaucratic error, it was an intentional failure to honor a promise. Trump sent out checks for $1400, and Biden promised checks for $2000. When he made it into office, he decided that his actual promise was to bring the total to $2000, and he sent out checks for just $600.
Huge “fuck you” to everyone actually paying attention. They even called them two thousand dollar checks. Joe called them that. He said “vote for Warnock and those $2000 checks will be in the mail” or something like that. Said it with his mouth. On camera. I remember it. And then the whole 1400+600=2000 narrative came out. Total horseshit. And basically nothing compared to all the PP loans the businesses got.
What should have been a really basic layup of a talking point: “I gave you more $ than Trump” turned into a spectacle of gaslighting bullshit.
The democrats love being losers.
In a good Banana republic you at least get the cash in hand at the voting booth.
Which we all predicted he would do lmao
Be the type of American the Chinese think you are
But that’s too expensive
rumor
life in america is good, actually
Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction 21st century edition
Premise: 2 income family doesn’t have to resort to selling plasma to afford baby formula
Jonathan Frakes: Not a chance, we made this one up
damn, it always surprises me how much staying power US propaganda has
Right? Literally all of it is so positive, yet all of our propaganda against China is so vile. Gives a pretty good picture of how much the Chinese government cares to brainwash peoples perceptions of the country even though their propaganda would be totally correct lol
The Utopian legends of Omelas inspire the whole world.
doesn’t ursula k. leguin have a story about “omelas”? or does it predate her story/book
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is an original story by Ursula K LeGuin, but it has inspirational roots in Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov and William James’ essay, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”
I don’t believe anyone thinks that in 2025.
It could’ve been a joke, but there are hundreds of posts on there with users comparing Chinese and American society and the Chinese people are constantly shocked at how most of us live. I almost can’t believe this lol
Is amerikkka even amerikkka if borger is not cheap
In AmeriKKKa you can reach up and pluck a borger right off the borger tree
Then amerikkka is no more 😎
- 1950s
- 1950s
- 1950s
- free meals are very nascent trend, idk about “napkins” I’m assuming you mean pads.
- Only true if you’re counting unemployment checks or PPE loans.
Man Kissinger really fucked the US hard
You see on TV where kids get their shitty meals in a school cafeteria? The food is shown as bland, the cafeteria is usually used to establish cliques/groups like jocks/nerds/geeks/Asians within the school or Edward Cullen sparkling in the sunlight or setting up for a food fight or something. But they rarely, if ever, show the students actually paying for the food they get, hence the assumption.
You see dads go to work in the morning roughly the same time as the kids, finish work, maybe get a beer at a bar before going home. Or go home then go to a bar. The wife is rarely seen working full time if at all. They live in a 2 storey house with a furnished attic and large yard. They have time for trips to national parks or money for carnivals or flights to Hawaii or whatever.
US pop culture is a stronger propaganda machine than Eglin Air Force Base or the Pentagon.
They did mean pads/tampons, yes. This shit is so sad, this seems close to normal standards of living elsewhere. I’ve known my country sucks ass but it never feels any less disappointing
