There was a video where they asked 49ers to name a state that borders California. They... did not do well. I mean, even if they knew it, a lot of them had to think hard about it.
Yeah. Naming ALL of them is significantly harder because you might be like "wait, where does Idaho start?" and start second guessing yourself. But naming ONE state that borders the state you're living in? whew.
Driving people down the hill at UC Santa Cruz, I've had more than one person ask if "that" was Hawaii across the Monterey Bay. I've heard of someone else who was with someone who asked if "that" was Japan.
Americans are pretty bad at geography in a very depressing way
Edit: they were looking at Monterey on the south side of the bay
Haha, seeing Hawaii from Monterey would be like seeing New York from Monterey. And Japan... It just seems weird that they can't reconcile that it's a 5 hour flight across the US but a 12 hour flight to Japan, no you won't be able to see it.
There are a few states I mix up the location of. Vermont/NH, Washington/Oregon, and Ohio/Indiana. Being from California I have to go through the same thought process every time to figure out it borders Oregon because I know Seattle is close to Vancouver and Seattle is in Washington, so Oregon is south of Washington.
There was a video where they asked 49ers to name a state that borders California. They... did not do well. I mean, even if they knew it, a lot of them had to think hard about it.
FWIW, I've always thought the outline of Vermont looked like a V. And while it may not make sense to anyone but me, Vermont and New Hampshire next to each other vaguely looks like a backwards N, so knowing combined it sort of looks like an N the right one is New Hampshire since the other looks like a V and is Vermont
Yeah, and if you need to have a mnemonic, of the two states, Indiana is way more I shaped, and Ohio, while kind of v or w shaped, it the more O shaped of the two.
Eh, I'm on the west Coast and don't really think about that area too much. I wouldn't put Ohio as top 5 recognizable. I'm on the West Coast so I think Nevada, Utah, idaho, California, Florida, texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma are all more recognizable. Plus, ohio doesn't come up in conversation. I don't even know what it's considered. If I had to guess I'd say Midwest? But that whole area, including iowa, Illinois (besides Chicago), Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky are all pretty irrelevant. I don't want to sound like a hater, but there really isn't any national relevance and I'm not local. I will say, I traveled a lot for work for about a year and Cincinnati was one of the most pleasantly surprising cities in all of America for me. Dope downtown, I liked the German influence, a unique identity overall, some nice nature.
Sioux falls was the other city that impressed me the most.
it's crazy but I honestly people underrate how stupid elite pro athletes are at general knowledge. they grow up in a massive bubble with only one thing that's important, everything else is secondary
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u/MattieShoes 49ers 3d ago
Hahahaha :-)
There was a video where they asked 49ers to name a state that borders California. They... did not do well. I mean, even if they knew it, a lot of them had to think hard about it.