Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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There's really no pressure for most Americans to learn another language. English is the lingua franca across the Western world, American culture has been disseminated globally, and besides that, most Americans spend their whole lives without ever leaving the country. I'm making no comment on whether or not these things are good or right, but there's almost no social, personal, or economic pressure for an average American to learn a separate language. Anecdotally, the only times I've ever felt like learning another language it was as a hobby or challenge to myself.
To be fair about most American's never leaving the country, it's a big country. You can spend literal days driving from one side to the other.
If you asked the average American, "What's the furthest you've traveled?" That distance will most likely exceed the average distance traveled by someone from, say, Germany.
The German could have been to half a dozen countries, and never gone outside of Continental Europe.
An American leaving the US is more comparable to a European leaving Europe rather than their home country.
Hilariously enough by percentage, the number of Americans who have never left the US is similar to the number of Europeans who have never left their home country (40% vs 37%). That's honestly insane given leaving the US is much more difficult than hopping on a train to go to an adjacent country in Europe. I've never left the US, but there's so fucking much here that with the exception of a few culturally significant places in the world (mainly Thailand) I have no desire to really travel abroad.