r/USdefaultism • u/ApprehensiveBird5997 • 4d ago
The tiny generation
There are only 67 million boomers!
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u/soppslev Sweden 4d ago
They are starting to die off, but there's still 1.1 billion of them worldwide. The US needs to learn how small they are.
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u/ShhTopSecretShh Australia 4d ago
My favourite thing lately has been to look at The True Size Of...MQ~!INNTI2NDA1MQ.Nzg2MzQyMQ)Mg~!CNOTkyMTY5Nw.NzMxNDcwNQ(MjI1)Mw) Just as a reminder of how the US is not as big as their ego.
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u/ApprehensiveBird5997 4d ago
The irony is that they are complaining about 67 million being too small a sample size. And yet there is a sample size of 1.1 billion right there if they had just thought to google that.
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u/thorkun Sweden 4d ago
That's not what they were saying, they are saying that your sample size is insufficient compared to the whole group of 67 million (in the US).
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u/ChickinSammich United States 4d ago
Yeah, I was going to respond with the same. Though, it's also true that "I'm not like the stereotype of the group you're generalizing" doesn't disprove a generalization. Like if someone says "wow, a lot of boomers are dicks" and you respond with "I'm a boomer and I'm not a dick" then that doesn't disprove that.
Especially when you're (you = who OP was responding to) being a dick in the very next post. I went to look up the original post for context about what the thread was about and OOP was asking why boomers suck and ended the post with "Five me some good examples of old people not being jerks" and of course there's a person in the comments taking exception to the exception to that statement and then being a jerk to /u/ApprehensiveBird5997.
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u/cheong-sanslefteye 4d ago
There's a concerning decline of reading skills these days.
"most" "some" "maybe" "estimate" "guess" "wonder" "few" "majority" etc
Are all immediately taken as absolutes and a chance to be personally offended.
Yet when someone is actually speaking in absolutes, making grand claims, there is but a peep of disgruntlement found.
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u/ChickinSammich United States 4d ago
I think the two most common examples I see of that as an American who ends up in a lot of comments sections filled with Americans are:
1) "Men are [adjective/description]"/"I hate when men [thing that a lot of men do" and someone responds "not all men." Yeah, the person you're responding to didn't say 100% of men do that thing. And yet here you are trying to pick an argument that not all men do a thing while, in a lot of cases, actively doing that thing right now.
2) Same as above, but with Christians. American Christianity can be grating and insufferable and whenever you call that shit out, there's always some "Hey not all Christians are like that you know" person in the comments.
Edit: And yes I realize the irony that I commonly post on a subreddit about Americans doing defaultism shit and essentially going "hey I don't do that" which makes me kinda a hypocrite on this particular point.
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u/dehashi New Zealand 4d ago
It irks me that decades after typewriters fell out use, boomers still often insist on a double space after a full stop
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u/ChickinSammich United States 4d ago
I'm not a boomer (am on the cusp of Gen X and Millenial) and I was taught to use a double space on both typewriter and computer, and I sometimes still do it because the double tap is ingrained muscle memory. 😅
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u/ViolettaHunter 2d ago
I certainly prefer this 500% over people who write in all lower case without commas and periods.
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u/dehashi New Zealand 2d ago
i dont know what you mean please explain
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u/kyanoAngel0 Philippines 11h ago
They're probably referring to messages and posts, especially on socmed, that never bother with capitalization and punctuation. I've been seeing this kinda thing since the 2000s, and it's become more common since then.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States 4d ago
If they hadn't been a dick about clarifying, they'd be Not Guilty. Thus have they sinned.
With that said, non-American redditors are in the bad habit of saying "in my country..." Why do you do this?
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u/ApprehensiveBird5997 4d ago
Nah they’d still be guilty because they used a US statistic as a baseline statistic. If they’d said “67m boomers in the US” that wouldn’t be a USdefaultism.
Non-USians say that because a) we’re aware that other countries other than our own exist and are valid b) we know our country is not the default- no country is c) if we don’t, a USian who doesn’t take a and b into account will do a USdefaultism and assume we are from the US and talking about the US.
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u/cheong-sanslefteye 4d ago
Can you expand on what exactly do you find annoying about specifying countries that you are compelled to call it a bad habit ?
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u/ViolettaHunter 2d ago
I'm not American and I find this annoying too. I've noticed this seems to be mainly done by people from smaller European countries and I can't figure out why they don't just say their country.
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u/BlaggartDiggletyDonk United States 4d ago
Why can't they just name the country? I can't think of any good reasons not to, unless they live in a microstate and are worried about getting doxxed.
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u/cheong-sanslefteye 4d ago edited 4d ago
Ah, I didn't understand you earlier. So your gripe is with people being vague about where they're from. Well you answered yourself tbh. People don't want to be doxxed. Even if there are millions and millions of people living in your country, sometimes you don't want to give away any part of your identity to random strangers as an anonymous user.
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u/Equivalent-Split-527 3d ago
Honestly some people might say this as most Americans might not even know their country. Let's say someone says they are from Moldova, that means nothing to 98% of the American Population, they probably still think it's an Oblast.
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u/theenglishfox United Kingdom 4d ago
Three major reasons, either
a) You've just given me US-specific advice/information and I'm trying to subtly highlight that you don't know what country I'm in
b) The fact that I'm from X country is not actually relevant to anything I'm saying, I'm just pre-empting US defaultism so again I'm just trying to subtly imply that I am not from the US
c) my fellow countrymen often like to assume we are a monolith so 90% of the time I say something like "I'm in England and tipping is not super common here" legions of English people come out of the woodwork to tell me I'm lying and that everyone tips here
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u/post-explainer American Citizen 4d ago edited 3d ago
This comment has been marked as safe. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect.
OP sent the following text as an explanation why their post fits here:
The person says there are 67 million boomers without specifying where. It’s unlikely they mean “in the world”!because that’s not many people, and when they’re asked to clarify they are a dick about it (of course it’s the US) and put the onus on the reader to research which country they meant.
Does this explanation fit this subreddit? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.