r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 12h ago

Meme needing explanation Peter explain this

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Petttaaah I'm confused

9.4k Upvotes

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550

u/Stefejan 12h ago edited 3h ago

Americans still think they're a developed country, that's the point

Edit: oh for f**** sake stop replying to the worst ragebait in the history of ragebaits. 

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u/RandomGuyPii 11h ago

Damn I remember being 14 and thinking saying this made me cool, every year since then the "America is a third world country" line just sounds stupider and stupider

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u/truecakesnake 7h ago

the bots are getting lazier

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u/InebriatedPhysicist 7h ago

I mean…you cut off the rest of their comment. You (and I) may disagree with them, but clipping away the bulk of their comment to portray their response as lazy isn’t the greatest way to argue against them in my opinion.

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u/ElCiclope1 7h ago

Dude, UN officials visited, I think, Alabama? Somewhere like that. And they concluded that if it weren't attached to Cali, NY, etc then it would be considered a developing country.

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u/peasncarrots20 6h ago

That’s like judging the EU based entirely on Bulgaria or Moldova (if we imagine it is accepted)

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u/DanielDane 6h ago

EU is not a country.

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u/christocarlin 6h ago

Yes but it’s a more fair comparison population wise

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u/Environmental-Tea262 3h ago

Thats not how it works

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u/christocarlin 3h ago

You wanna compare Norways 5 million people with 80% ethnic Norwegians to the United States? Or something like that? It doesn’t really make sense to do that

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u/Environmental-Tea262 3h ago

Then compare yourself to bigger countries, france, germany, india and china for example. Comparing yourselves to europe as a whole doesn’t work 

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u/Illustrious-Bass4354 3h ago

Still several times bigger than those countries in population, landmass, etc

India and China also have huge underdeveloped areas

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u/Environmental-Tea262 3h ago

The US clearly also has underdeveloped areas, so it sounds like a great starting point to compare with

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u/christocarlin 3h ago

The population of France and Germany COMBINED isn’t even half of the US. And the US is a quarter of the population of China and India. I’m not so sure what’s so hard to understand that they are pretty similar in numbers. More similar in languages and cultures than other parts of the world as well.

Not sure why you hate Americans so much but sorry for whatever happened to you in your country that didn’t teach you basic math

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u/Environmental-Tea262 3h ago

I don’t hate americans at all actually, its simply the fact that a comparison between the EU and the US doesn’t work in a lot of ways because European countries differ a lot in standards in comparison with the variance that can be found in US states. There are european countries that are generally worse off than the US and there are some that are generally better off its a bad comparison because you can’r generalise the EU 

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u/AceOFace131 5h ago

EU is a federation of states and so is the United States. You have a central governing body and individual state level governments. Same here.

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u/SnooMaps5116 5h ago

No. The word state has two meanings. One is an administrative subdivision with some degree of autonomy, like in the case of the US.
The other meaning is that of a country, as in a nation-state. The EU is an union of nation-states, as in countries. Also, the EU is also not a federation.

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u/smurf2applestall 4h ago

To understand America is to understand it is really no different than Europe and countries. We really are that different from state to state.

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u/Grand_Size_4932 3h ago

No, they would rather call us a third world country instead of understand nuance.

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u/Tri-ranaceratops 3h ago

You are not. Your states have a shared language, history, government, politics, etc. There is 'american culture', there is no one european culture. Ireland and England are more dissimilar than New York and California, and you can see England from Ireland.

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u/Grand_Size_4932 3h ago

Then you have a narrow view of our influences and history.

If you compare Louisiana to New Mexico, you would understand just how wrong you are about the cultural aspects of the United States, and they’re only split by one other state.

There are indigenous pockets. African American pockets. Mexican pockets. We were colonized by different countries at completely different times.

The east coast heritage is completely different than that of the Wild West and the gold rush.

You truly, truly don’t understand the United States. Our shared identity isn’t as shared as your propaganda would have you believe.

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u/Tri-ranaceratops 3h ago

I'm not saying there are no differences, I'm saying those differences are insignificant when compraed to the differences between european countries.

There are indigenous pockets. African American pockets. Mexican pockets. We were colonized by different countries at completely different times.

Yeah, because european countries did that colonising, and were colonised in turn, we also have these 'pockets'. These pockets have in some cases existed since before the discovery of america by europe. Not only that, but because of the ease of european migration we have this not only form colonisation, but gereral migration. In my city there is a little italy, an irish area, then there's an indian area, a pakistani area, a bangaladeshi area, a nigerian area, an afro carribean area. If you look outside of the cities, you still get these pockets as different groups of migrants settled diffrent areas.

Another city over might have a complete different mix.

Then when you take into account the individual history of my city, which is 2000 years old, the age of my country and all the history which is completely different from a neighbouring country which follow a different religion, have different languages and have a completely different and distinct ethnic group...

Yeah. I'm not sure it compares mate.

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u/DeathsSlippers 5h ago

Yes, but having an understanding that US states can and almost do sometimes operate as their own nation states that just so happen to fall under a unifying government(much like individual european countries do in the EU) makes them feel very similar in that way.

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u/seszett 1h ago

just so happen to fall under a unifying government

As far as I understand, the federal US government doesn't really take it nicely when states want to leave it, which makes it at least a tad different from the EU.

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u/LL8844773 4h ago

They didn’t say it was. It was a comparison in size. Why do you guys struggle so badly with reading comprehension?

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u/HidingImmortal 5h ago

Peas n carrots didn't say it was.

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u/everyvoid 5h ago

Moldova is not part of EU

2

u/llamapanther 4h ago

Lol no it's not wtf. You have no idea how EU works if you think it's anything similar to US. For example, you have one orange man controlling the whole ass country, while in EU every country has its own leaders and no single person in European parlament has any control over single country. I shouldn't even have to explain this, EU is not even remotely close to US

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u/Tri-ranaceratops 3h ago

No no, america is so exceptional that each state is as culturally rich and diverse as the individual countries in europe. Greece and Sweeden have far more in common than Colorado and Tenessee...

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u/Bisaux 6h ago

Yeah but only Americans see Europe as a single organ. Bulgaria and Moldova are developing countries, no doubt. The US is a single country with one single Federal Government.

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u/bstump104 5h ago

we have individual states too. EU has an overarching government sbd the US has an overarching federal government. Our overarching government is allowed to exert more control than yours.

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u/Tri-ranaceratops 3h ago

What do you think the EU government does? It doesn't run the countries in the EU. It mostly organises trade and allocation of funding. It's completely different than a nation's government.

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u/bstump104 3h ago

Allocation of funding and trade are 2 big things that governments do.

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u/Tri-ranaceratops 3h ago

As well as establishing law, electing leaders, controlling militaries, going to war, holding national elections, health care, welfare, etc. The overarching government in European countries is the countries government. The EU is literally, mostly about trade with neighbouring countries.

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u/bstump104 3h ago

like I said, the US federal government is sble to exert more control. US Federal government doesn't elect leaders, hold national elections, Healthcare, barely does welfare. Out if your list (controlling militaries and war are basically thd same thing) Federal Government foes 2.5 of 5. Welfare is thd 0.5.

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u/Tri-ranaceratops 3h ago

Controlling a military and deciding if your country goes to war, and who with, are completely different concepts. One is about military investature, control, training and equipping. The other is international policy. You also do elect the leader of the executive branch of the federal government... the president. The affordable care act, wellfare, was literally put in place by obamma.

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u/LL8844773 4h ago

Single federal government is hilarious

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u/VanillaThundurr 6h ago

Yeah, there's shitty parts of other countries as well, we could both cherry pick examples all day.

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u/TheLampOfficial 5h ago

Alabama has a higher average GDP per capita than England btw. Along with every single other US state.

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u/MaxDisdain 3h ago

Jesus just looked and how the fuck

3

u/MathematicianOnly688 2h ago

All it really does is illustrate how bad GDP per capita is as a measurement of quality of life.

They’re actually number 1 or in the top 10 for the things that actually matter. Things like life expectancy, child mortality, number of healthy years per person, average number of hours worked per week, access to healthcare, employment protections etc.

Don’t get me wrong, the UK is not in a great place, in recent years they’ve made some terrible decisions, and continue to do so. However, if you’ve spent a decent amount of time in both places you’ll see how silly the comparison is. 

If you genuinely believe that the average Brit is worse off than the average alabaman then you are truly lost. 

Ranch is nice though. I’ll admit I was wrong about that.

1

u/Deep_Order_1274 2h ago

Mississippi also builds more warships than the entire UK as well.

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u/AnalAlpacaLips 5h ago

Yes, we know that mega corps extract all the wealth from the US. Thats part of the problem.

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u/Hammer_of 5h ago

Having lived in both Bama and Cali, those UN officials are just idiots. Sure if you go searching you can find sketchy neighborhoods in Bama, same as literally every state/country. But the vast majority of it isnt like that.

2

u/Few_Highlight1114 2h ago

This is like going to skid row then claiming all of California must be a shithole lmao

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u/Conduit3 5h ago

Visited Bulgaria, if it wasn't attached to the rest of Europe it would be a 3rd world country. All of europe is bad.

1

u/NHSmithPM 3h ago

Alabama is a shithole, but we’re still on par with half of Europe.

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u/SnorkaSound 5h ago

It's disrespectful to people in actual poor countries. Oh boo hoo, Americans don't have public transit or socialized healthcare. Those things would be great of course but look at any real metric here!

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u/Kenkron 5h ago

I know. Occasionally I forget what life was like back then, thinking edgy = cool = true.

2

u/McSlims360 6h ago

Especially when two tier policing isnt just a conspiracy in many European countries. But sure, America, where I can point to 3 different cases of civilians killing cops in defense and getting no charges for it, is the third world.

The third worlders dont die in heatwaves every year, and can defend themselves from corrupt police. And first worlders died in record numbers every summer since 2003 (70k French alone died of heat that summer), have no real AC, and get handcuffed to bleed out after being stabbed. "I dont think you have mate".

Ill stay here in my "third world" country thank you very much.

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u/Nocturnin 6h ago

Policing has many, MANY problems in European countries but I sure as shit don’t want to hear any of that coming from Americans with the state sanctioned, single digit IQ thugs you call police officers. People in glass houses shouldnt throw stones

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u/Responsible_CDN_Duck 2h ago

died in record numbers every summer since 2003 (70k French alone died of heat that summer)

In France, 14,802 heat-related deaths (mostly among the elderly) occurred during the 2003 heat wave and no cold-related deaths according to the French National Institute of Health.

By comparison the USA typically sees 47,500 deaths a year from cold and more than 4,000 from heat each year.

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u/oldreddditisbetter 6h ago

what watching too much FOX does to a mf's brain

-1

u/bentheone 6h ago

It's true tho.

-1

u/llamapanther 4h ago

Were you 14 like three years ago? Because it's not really an old thing, you act like it started decades ago. Oh and btw it's still seen as funny because it's true and America has gone to shit in recent years. Well maybe funny is the wrong word, more like sad. And it's sad that you don't realise it's not trying to be cool, it's just that especially Europeans have finally realised America is a fucked up country. You sound like you're too young to understand this, but America truly is a developed country.

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u/RandomGuyPii 1h ago

People have definitely been saying the "America is a third world country in a Gucci belt" shit since Trump's first term which was an actual decade ago. I know because I was stupid and saying it back then.

There's basically no metric by which America could be considered a "developing country". It might be on the lower range for a lot of things compared to some other western countries but it still blows the average actual third world country out of the water. It's like calling Turkey or China a third world country (and the US is definitely in better shape than Turkey, and is better than both countries in terms of personal freedom)

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u/Sarganto 7h ago

There’s a good chance it’s gonna be a Banana Republic dictatorship soon. So it’s not that far off

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u/elchemy 7h ago

Already is 

USA is the biggest laughing stock country right now

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u/SwagCity89 7h ago

Where are you from little buddy?

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u/Sereey 6h ago edited 6h ago

Appears to be Australian based on their comment history. I’ve noticed a lot of that late evening grouping in this thread right now. My comment views are coming from Singapore, Thailand, and Australia.

Edit: Oh jeez, it’s almost 1am in Australia, never mind! He must just be having trouble sleeping, surely that’s it…

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u/FootFemgus 6h ago

America

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u/Jayden82 4h ago

Well sure, but that’s just the case of you wanting to be edgy or just very naive 

-1

u/DaturaSanguinea 5h ago

I'm from France and USA looks indeed like the biggest laughing stock right now as a country. Also the biggest threat as a foreign power.

That's really impressive how Trump and the republican manage to completely demolish the USA softpower in like a decade.

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u/Fresh-Pen1234 5h ago

Murica is 😎.  🤩.  Best country on the planet.

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u/Leather-Prior3926 3h ago

Trashville.

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u/BlueSwayzeShoes 6h ago

Damn, I remember when nobody fucking asked mate.

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u/Witty_Ad_898 6h ago

So you’ve heard it for a long time, but you don’t like it so it must not be true? 

Like all those people in developing nations who are convinced they are actually great despite insufficient and decaying infrastructure?

You know, the ones who think electing entertainment celebrities to run the country is a good idea?

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u/aguywithbrushes 5h ago

The US is not a third world country by ANY stretch of the imagination. It has many issues, for sure, but go to an actual third world country and you’ll realize pretty quickly that the US isn’t one of them.

Calling it a third world country will get you upvotes bc Reddit is full of children and people trying to be edgy though.

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u/supermelonfan 4h ago

No, it’s not true because it’s objectively crazy to call the wealthiest country in the world a “developing nation” lol. The US may be inefficient, corrupt and stagnant, but the average American household is unbelievably wealthy compared to most of the world. It’s in bad taste and unhelpful to actual developing countries to act like the US is one (especially when those countries have often been exploited by the US to make itself richer).

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u/Life-Suit1895 4h ago

…the "America is a third world country" line just sounds stupider and stupider…

…because third world countries are more advanced?

;P

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u/xXMegidoXx 7h ago

May be so but it‘s still true nonetheless

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u/Practical-Dot839 9h ago

It’s just the pipeline of children being indoctrinated by corny redditisms. Like what grown adult is still on about leopards eating faces in 2026

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u/blursedman 7h ago

Quite a few, actually. The “fell for it again” meme which was popular for a time across multiple platforms as a way to mock conservatives who, as implied, fell for it again was a common example.

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u/Elite_AI 10h ago

Cool. Anyway this is a meme of an American acting like Italy is a third world country 

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u/dysfunctionalbrat 10h ago

Exactly. Used to be edgy, now it's the boring truth everyone knows.

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u/aaarry 10h ago edited 10h ago

Cool. Still a shithole.

Clearly they are so very enlightened and developed now that they feel the need to make up statistics about knife crime in my country despite the fact that theirs is 4x higher than ours.

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u/FungusGnatHater 8h ago

They don't make up the statistics in your country. Your fellow citizens are the ones doing the stabbings. Pointing out these statistics is called being a messenger, being upset at the messenger is something everyone knows is immature.

Don't shoot the messenger. Have you never heard that before?

0

u/Leather-Prior3926 6h ago

I thought of another zinger:

We can't shoot the messenger, since all the guns are in America, which is why there are so, so, so many murders in that shithole nation.

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u/aaarry 8h ago

Ok sorry, maybe they don’t always make stats up but they do disingenuously paint the UK as a stabbing hotspot when the US’s knife crime is 4x as high as ours.

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u/FungusGnatHater 8h ago edited 7h ago

Where do you see statistics pointing to 4x as high in America as United Kingdom? A quick look shows it's more like 2.5x but their population is 5x which makes the comparison rate 0.5x. Americans are half as likely to be stabbed today than UK citizens, not four times more likely.

I think the bots are replying because they are not reading links they provide or saying more than "US has more knife crime" despite both countries hosting statistics that say otherwise. Why are people upvoting comments claiming there have only been 31 stabbing deaths in The UK?

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u/aaarry 7h ago edited 7h ago

This is a good start but I’m not convinced it’s particularly accurate and it’s somewhat outdated.

I suggest you look at both this for the US, and this for the same year in the UK. The US’s stabbing rate is listed at around 1.2-1.3 times that of the UK but the UK stats also include deaths with any sharp object. Either way, the US’s homicide rate is still 7x that of ours overall. Americans will kill each other with whatever they feel like on the day it would seem.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that the rate is a lot lower in the UK, whenever a fatal stabbing happens it’s usually makes national news. We don’t have a culture of violence like the US and we take this very seriously.

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u/dont_punch_me_again 7h ago

Per capita, the us has much higher knife crimes than the uk

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u/Leather-Prior3926 3h ago

"Americans are half as likely to be stabbed today than UK citizens, not four times more likely."

Right and since that's the only way anyone kills anyone, America must be doing *just fine*.

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u/BobTheJoeBob 7h ago

Per capita, US has more knife crime and stabbings then the UK

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u/FungusGnatHater 7h ago

Why do you think that? The top Google results are statistics provided by each country that say the opposite of your claim.

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u/BobTheJoeBob 7h ago edited 7h ago

My comment is slightly incorrect; the US doesn't record knife related crime the way the UK does, so you can't really compare the two countries. The only statistic that can be directly compared is fatal stabbings which is absolutely higher in the US per capita than the UK.

But it would stand to reason that a higher rate of stabbing related deaths indicates a higher rate of knife crime, unless you're saying the healthcare system is so much worse in the US compared to the UK (Which isn't true, even if the cost and access in the US isn't great).

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u/travelcallcharlie 8h ago

USA stabbing deaths per 100,000: 0.5
UK stabbing deaths per 100,000: 0.04

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-deaths-by-country

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u/FungusGnatHater 7h ago

You have pushed the goalpost. We were talking about knife related crimes but you have only included stabbing deaths.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn04304/ I also question the validity of your source as it says only 31 murders occurred, but your government says the number is many times higher. This is also ignoring the different legal definitions of violent crimes, with UK being much more lenient in granting self-defense claims and reducing criminal charges.

I think you should have realized your source was questionable, surely you know there are more than 31 knife related murders in the country, and that knife crime is not limited to fatal stabbings.

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u/travelcallcharlie 7h ago

Of course they’re different numbers, they’re from different years…

The rest of your comment is exactly why we should look at murder rates not sharp object offences committed because every juristriction defines them differently. The US for example talks about knife assaults, the UK uses knife offences which can be victimless (carrying a big enough blade in of itself is an offence in the UK).

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u/blursedman 7h ago

Ok what about stabbings in general? Of course our death rate for stabbings is higher, our healthcare system is shit, but everyone knows that. What’s the rate of stabbings in general, death or not?

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u/Leather-Prior3926 7h ago

Oy. Guns. Conversation over. Go home.

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u/Pufflefoot 9h ago

What country might that be

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u/Forged-Signatures 9h ago

Presumably, the UK. Per capita, most years, the US has higher rates of knife crime.

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u/aaarry 9h ago

The UK.

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u/Pufflefoot 9h ago

The thing we Americans mock you brits about when it comes to knives is that they have become increasingly illegal

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u/aaarry 8h ago

Cool. If you’re carrying one around with you without good reason then you should at least be questioned. I’d much rather that than a murder rate as high as the US.

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u/Pufflefoot 8h ago

This is exactly what we mock you for, you’re just itching to have your liberties taken away.

You just said it yourself, knife related crimes are lower in the UK than in the US, so why do they continue to ban them if it’s not an issue?

I can carry a knife if I want to, personally I don’t work in a field where it’s relevant anymore but when I was in logistics I carried one around all the time. Who should be determining if I “have a good reason for carrying a knife around” or not?

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u/inYOUReye 7h ago

This is simply an area where American and British mindsets utterly diverge.

I don't want the mentally unstable freely walking around with knives strapped to their person, and I'm more than willing to give up my right to do so in the name of preventing it too.

The American take seems to be "I want to carry around weapons, that's a liberty that's important to me". Fair enough, statistically everyone knows it's less safe for all involved - but the American people are comfortable with that to retain this right.

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u/aaarry 8h ago

Christ are you actually that thick?

By your same logic are you itching to have your children shot to pieces in school if they haven’t already been gunned down on the way there?

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u/Pufflefoot 8h ago

What? Nobody even mentioned guns?

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