Well, you clearly are one of the people overreacting to alleged anit-americanism, as are the half a dozen or so other people that replied to my posts along the same lines. You're on dire need of fuse-extension surgery here.
But fine, have it your way. Rephrasing: Anecdotal evidence hints at a certain trend towards taking offense of vaguely critical online comments when it relates to the attributes of people born in the United States of America. While this has not been proved to manifest on a statistically relevant percentage of the population, it seems to correlate to people posting on forum threads about said attributes and it should present itself in a significant percentage of individuals matching these parameters.
Furthermore, there is a secondary trend, also merely observed anecdotally at this point, to conversely argue that other collectives in turn overreact to similar criticism or evaluation over their own defining attributes. This has been brought up by third party observers before (cfr. Chipman, Bob in http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-big-picture/2783-Correctitude). While there is no proved correlation between both subsets of the online population at this point, we are running from the working hypothesis that there is at least some overlap for the purposes of this post, which can hopefully be confirmed at a later date through additional research. Happy now? In case that didn't come across, the point *now* is that your man-on-a-mission approach to proving that I am pointlessly anti-american is strongly self-defeating and counterproductive. Get it in your head that it is not some sort of crime against the sacred laws of online forum discussion to say something that applies to a group of people if that group of people happens to not encompass the entirety of their gender, race, country of origin or religion. I am not banned from identifying a pattern just because there are people that don't match the pattern. "
First of all, let me apologize for something. I mistook you for being the OP, who was being much more ridiculous than you were, so I judged you unfairly. I don't think you're being unreasonable here, so I'm sorry for the prior confusion. My fault on that.
But regardless, your arguments about people in general being overly sensitive, while not necessarily untrue, is still an incredibly tenuous and shaky because anecdotal evidence is very unreliable for making statements about large groups. It's a very weak and unconvincing argument. I think the video you posted made a great point, but I'm not convinced that it's as big of a problem as you claim.
I'm not American, and I haven't heard a single European post along these lines.
You wouldn't hear it regardless, Japan and Europe doesn't have the same history with each other that America and Japan does. No matter how many idiots Europe had you wouldn't find these same comments from them because of that. Also, I think this post of yours is the same type of oversimplification that you accuse Americans of doing- You're taking the opinions of a small amount of Americans and generalizing them to describe the whole country. It's hypocritical. "
No it is fucking not. Gah, it's so frustrating. I did not generalize at any point. Go and check. Seriously, everybody that cared to post back saying basically this, go and actually read what I posted. I said that the fixation with Pearl Harbor and the religious undertones *were specifically American*. I never said that ALL Americans shared them. Not once. Not ever. Nope. If anything, my statement effin' exonerates most Americans. It's a cultural thing. Europeans don't do it because we don't have the Pearl Harbor fixation AND we're less religious, so you get less idiots going down this path. Our idiots have plenty to say, mind you, just not these specific things. But apparently, you can't do this on the Internet anymore. If you by any means hint at anything about America that can be vaguely misconstrued as a criticism of American personality or, God forbid, intelligence, you become a moustache-twirling, monocle-adjusting, pipe-smoking pompous European stereotype which, really, I appreciate for the irony alone. Let me get this out of the way: some Americans are idiots. Not all Americans are idiots. American idiocy is very specific and, frankly, odd. There are things about Americans as a whole that unnerve me, and there are things about Americans as a whole that I admire. And I will fucking mention both of those whenever I see fit, if you don't mind. "
So you're stating the obvious. I honestly don't see the point of your rambling. "
Well, it had a point five pages ago when it was a mere statement of fact. People were arguing about whether or not Americans were obsessed with Pearl Harbor. Some people said Europeans were doing the same and I stated the obvious "no they don't, but that's probably a cultural thing based on education and a certain fixation with WWII and, well, God". Which, somehow, sparked a flamefest that lasted for pages on end. Which, in retrospect, does completely legitimize stating the obvious. If the obvious causes this massive shitstorm of righteous anger, then it is very much worth stating. So yeah, if you need a point to my rambling, it's this: People fucking overreact to anything approaching anti-americanism online with a passion without first bothering to apply basic reading comprehension (or, in fact, physically scanning the suspect text with their eyes even once). There is value in saying out loud that you get to object to some parts of America's collective psyche, policy and behaviour without being labelled a Euro-snob (not that I resent the title, I very much am one, but I am also reasonable). Minor point not brought up until now: these are often also the idiots that claim that political correctness is harmful in excess. Which, again, is military-grade refined irony. "
Who are these "people" that overreact to anti-americanism? All people? Most people? Some people? A tiny minority?
In addition, who are the people saying political correctness is harmful in excess? What makes you think these are the same people?
You're using such broad, undefined generalizations in those arguments that you have no real point.
I'm not American, and I haven't heard a single European post along these lines.
You wouldn't hear it regardless, Japan and Europe doesn't have the same history with each other that America and Japan does. No matter how many idiots Europe had you wouldn't find these same comments from them because of that. Also, I think this post of yours is the same type of oversimplification that you accuse Americans of doing- You're taking the opinions of a small amount of Americans and generalizing them to describe the whole country. It's hypocritical. "
No it is fucking not. Gah, it's so frustrating. I did not generalize at any point. Go and check. Seriously, everybody that cared to post back saying basically this, go and actually read what I posted. I said that the fixation with Pearl Harbor and the religious undertones *were specifically American*. I never said that ALL Americans shared them. Not once. Not ever. Nope. If anything, my statement effin' exonerates most Americans. It's a cultural thing. Europeans don't do it because we don't have the Pearl Harbor fixation AND we're less religious, so you get less idiots going down this path. Our idiots have plenty to say, mind you, just not these specific things. But apparently, you can't do this on the Internet anymore. If you by any means hint at anything about America that can be vaguely misconstrued as a criticism of American personality or, God forbid, intelligence, you become a moustache-twirling, monocle-adjusting, pipe-smoking pompous European stereotype which, really, I appreciate for the irony alone. Let me get this out of the way: some Americans are idiots. Not all Americans are idiots. American idiocy is very specific and, frankly, odd. There are things about Americans as a whole that unnerve me, and there are things about Americans as a whole that I admire. And I will fucking mention both of those whenever I see fit, if you don't mind. "
I'm not American, and I haven't heard a single European post along these lines.
You wouldn't hear it regardless, Japan and Europe doesn't have the same history with each other that America and Japan does. No matter how many idiots Europe had you wouldn't find these same comments from them because of that.
Also, I think this post of yours is the same type of oversimplification that you accuse Americans of doing- You're taking the opinions of a small amount of Americans and generalizing them to describe the whole country. It's hypocritical.
" @iAmJohn: Well, genre's are part of the lexicon of video games. It's how we talk about them. If the definition of the words and how we used them was fucked up in a language like English would we need to fix it? "
Genre names don't need to give a precise definition of the game to work. It's just meant to be a quick, shorthand description of a game so that you can give somebody a rough idea of what the game is without getting into specifics. If you've never heard of Bulletstorm before, and I tell you it's an FPS, then you have a basic idea of what to expect.
" Take a game like Demon's Souls for example. That game was actually pretty big and I like to think that some portion of its success is due to how much the Bombsquad talked about it. What do you think? "
Demon's Souls was getting attention even well before the game had been confirmed for North America.
Also I really doubt Persona 4 was significantly influenced by GB either, even before the ER, Persona 4 had a significant following, being an Atlus game and all.
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