American things

1. biscuits & gravy
2. rodeo
3. smores or smore’s or smore(s)
4. “a super bowl”
5. stoops
6. speakeasy
7. “high school prom”
8. cheese in a can
9. dr pepper

smore

wtf?

Steely Dan
The Beat Generation

10. "democracy"
11. mac 'n cheese
12. sherrifs

It's s'mores and it's short for some more.

13. those varsity jackets with a big letter on the front
14. propeller beanie hats

15. grits

16. Shriners

https://s.hswstatic.com/gif/shriners-little-cars-1200x800.jpg

monster trucks

bison
bass fishing tournaments
Yellowstone Park

Looney Tunes cartoons

22. tipping

Mate,

https://i.imgur.com/kjgsMLQ.jpg

I mean, don't forget 23. Indigenous Genocide, but, you know.

if we're going down that route let's not forget 24. slavery

and of course 25. egg creams

slavery has existed everywhere for all recorded history. hardly confined to America, although we certainly embraced one of the most brutal forms of it for a couple centuries.

26 white ppl
27 mayonnaise
28 conway twitty
29 all the bad things
30 no good things

31 guns guns guns love guns need guns
32 sabermetrics
33 god

(Holland surely king of mayonnaise though, for better or for worse)

34. (With drawl) PICKUP TRUCK. GIDDY UP COWBOY.

35. 99.9% of all "cultural appropriation"

36. $$$

37. Road Trips
38. Self Help
39. Seminars on how to flip properties with no money down

40. Hawaii

41. Grand slams

42. Brian Wilson

43. drive-in cinemas

44. john cena

(19)45. the atomic bomb

(19)46. Donald John Trump

Just sayin some of these things aren't exclusively American. They're everybody's!

47. Superhero movies for "grownups"

48. jack kirby

49. jack ruby

27 mayonnaise

27 "ranch"

ranch-style houses

Ranch might be the most american word there is. The sound of it, the meaning, the house style, the dressing. It's 100% American.

https://i.imgur.com/IOlj6Lw.jpg

51. Saturday Night Live and dozens of comedy series and comedians no-one's ever heard of.

... no-one else, that is.

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

I mean there are all these british comedians called "Jimmy Pram" or "Tolliver Whelk" or whatever that the britishers on the board seem to reference a lot.

52. happy endings
53. late night shows
54. hyper-capitalism
55. "football"
56. "soccer"

Italians
Irish

57. Barack Hussein Obama
58. Velveeta

Misuse of the collective clause when referring to sports teams

Every nation seems to have its b-list comedy that doesn't escape its borders though

Saturday Night Live is b-list?

'Math'

American comedy is painfully unfunny. There's no real bite, no real cynicism, it always has to be nicey nicey in the end. A or B list, SNL fits that bill surely.

today, sure. I think SNL at its best (maybe 80s-early 90s) was good exactly because it captured and spoofed that wide-eyed lack of cynicism. Kevin Nealon comes to mind, and all of the fake commercials. Since at least Will Ferrell and maybe going back to Chris Farley and Adam Sandler though the style of comedy has been very "I AM BEING FUNNY RIGHT NOW! DO YOU SEE ME BEING FUNNY!"

Yes but if the job of arse wiper exists in one country but not others we can note this

At Aldi I bag my own bc it’s the only way. But at a lot of grocery stores it’s barely do-able without getting into the cashier’s work area. (As map pointed out.)

At one grocery store where I worked in high school, a customer bagging their own groceries was a red flag, and anybody from stocker to manager would put a stop to it.

Most aren’t quite that service-oriented (IME, Harris Teeter still is) but it’s still kind of like if a guest at a restaurant got up to refill their own water or get a clean fork. It’s a little odd for everyone.

I forgot till now — at the stores where I worked, the baggers pushed the cart or carried the bags to customers cars. You definitely did not OFFER — you just started to do it and let them decline if they didn’t want help.

And if the baggers were all busy, then someone else jumped in bc it was a basic service.

this all seems way too complicated but I’m neurospicy I understand

I'll answer PP's query - the right is preferable bcs chainlink fences are fucking ugly.

I almost always bag my own groceries. I don't really mind if a dedicated bagger does it, but at the two stores I usually shop at (one a local market, the other Trader Joe's), a bagger shows up maybe 10% of the time. Instead of standing around while the cashier does two jobs, I'd rather just get to work and get out of there more quickly. I bring my own bags and have my own system for where to put what.

It can be really awkward to bag your own groceries because sometimes the cashier gets a little flustered and apologizes for being being slow or for all the baggers being busy.

this has never happened to me.

ever.

Honestly I can’t remember ever encountering this situation either.

I bring my own bags and have my own system for where to put what.

this makes sense. i'm just picturing all of the checkout lines i've been in where the grocery bags are behind the payment kiosk and basically out of reach. apparently that's not always the case.

Self-serve all the way for me. Especially if its the longer converyor-belt kind of self serve, those ones have more space and dont use a weighscale so you dont end up with the annoying errors. I dunno if they have those in other places?

https://images.7news.com.au/publication/C-2919693/ddea0f42cfc776d823a0b0072a2bc0936159803f-4x3-x0y46w740h555.png

All the ones I've used have a little metal platform that yells at you if you try to take something off of it to scan it.

https://i.imgur.com/zTkmADk.png

I'll answer PP's query - the right is preferable bcs chainlink fences are fucking ugly.

Also, you all must have some classy looking tennis courts. :-p

As a home fence! Theyre fine for sports enclosures or like school grounds or industrial estates or whatever :P

https://i.imgur.com/ipWlGL7.png

Search Terms Trayce Has Never Used, Part CXXIV

bag your own shopping you lazy cunt a good trick is to just put it directly back into the cart as it’s scanned, then after you’ve paid wheel it away and bag up at your leisure

― sideshow melt (wins), Tuesday, August 5, 2025 5:15 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

In Japan and some Nordic countries IIRC in some places they put your stuff in a new basket or trolley and you take it over to a bagging station to get on with at your leisure.

tennis courts rarely argued as being attractive but tbf the green-plastic-enclosed wire both looks better initially and holds up years longer than raw wire at a schoolyard or house

went to a Trader Joe’s tonight and thought of this thread while triaging the heavier items into my backpack and getting a single paper bag for teabags, mochi and frozen garlic naan

Y’all would hate SE Asian grocery store etiquette btw. I’ve almost lost it several times. I just repeat, it’s cultural. It’s not that they don’t give a shit about my time. Not sure how true that is though.

bagging was my first summer job and i just assumed that in this age of self checkout and cost cutting that it had gone the way of the gas station attendant and the cigarette girl - kind of astonished it hasn't!

I think in the UK it might be seen as a bit ... servile? I think the US approach to customer service can make British people slightly uncomfortable.

We now have handheld scanners in some supermarkets so you can scan and bag as you go.

At the checkouts at Lidl the cashier scans your groceries then moves them to a conveyor belt, which drops each item into one of two lanes = let's call them lanes 1 and 2 - with lane 1 accessible from the aisle you're in and lane 2 accessible from the adjacent aisle. Before the cashier scans the next shopper behind you, s/he moves a lever that routes their items to lane 2 while you bag your items and place them in your cart in lane 1. One of my friends finds this setup intimidating. I don't, but you certainly can't doddle, because if you take too long bagging your stuff the person who was two behind you will have their items routed back to the same lane 1 you're using and they'll be a traffic jam of sorts. You also have to remember to move your cart to the adjacent lane if you happen to be assigned lane 2.

I still love Lidl though; long hours, good selection, and crazy-low prices despite good-quality stuff. They deserve the same kind of adoration Trader Joe's does around here.

Yes but if the job of arse wiper exists in one country but not others we can note this

This reminded me of dog poop services — guessing those are met similarly divergent reactions

That in turn reminded me I’m almost due to get my dog poop serviced

almost as if regional and societal norms differ even across the same country -- or between stores -- when it comes to service expectations

What the devil are dog poop services? A dude that walks alongside you when you take the dog for a walk and scoops up their poop?

People who come and clean up the dog poop from your yard.

(Only just learned about this, and there are some great business names out there... "Turd Burglars - Pet Waste Removal in Carmel Indiana")

"Poo's the Boss is the #1 Chicago area dog waste removal company."

Well, it's a living I suppose.

lol kinder — reminds me that Little mermaid and lLittle Shop of Horrors have doppelgänger songs

I had no idea such things existed — will search up!!

Spelling mould as mold or, if you prefer, TS: Mouldy Old Dough vs. Moldy Peaches.

https://bobmould.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/bob-mould-2024-photo-credit-Ryan-Bakerink.jpg

Spinal Tap

lol so true. I watched the first one again recently and I had never realised how shaky the accents were :/

Christopher Guest is good, the other two not so much. I've heard worse though!

It's one of these films I hear talked up a lot as an unassailable classic, and yes it gave us "up to eleven" etc. But I can't recall anyone I've met IRl fawning over the film in the same way Americans do. It's been a while since I saw it myself, but from what I recall I found it just fine

Christopher Guest is apparently a British baron, hence his ability to do the accent

yeah his dad is British and he spent time in the UK while growing up

But my guess is that a lot of the humour stems from some variant on "LOL Britishers with their accents" (see also stuff like Austin Powers etc), which I get, but the joke dissipates somewhat if you are a Britisher I suppose

You know what is good? Walk Hard

I actually think you're completely wrong about Spinal Tap being an "American Thing"! You're probably not hanging around with the right (or wrong) people.

tbh I (re)watched Spinal Tap a couple of weeks ago and thought it held up pretty well

But my guess is that a lot of the humour stems from some variant on "LOL Britishers with their accents"

Again, I think this is wrong too. Christopher Guest is the only one with a slightly comic (and very accurate) English rocker voice, the others are pretty bland. Plus a lot of the cast are actually British!

as an american, never thought them being british was really meant to be funny. more that it mirrors some of the actual bands being parodied and sets up the entire "british band touring the us" bit and primes you for minor cultural misunderstandings

that and the whole stonehenge bit

I always thought that as an example of Americans playing English people, it was one of the best examples out there. but it's a very specific kind of English people of course.

You get English rockers who've lived in the US for years who sound a lot less convincingly English - have you ever heard Dave Mason speaking?

mh otm

spinal tap is as to americans as withnail & i is to the british

neither are good or funny

Weird Al Yankovic
Mr Rogers

Nothing against either of these two gents but boy do they loom large in American culture.