this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
620 points (98.1% liked)

Shit Americans Say

473 readers
498 users here now

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 23 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Quoting, with some degree of irony, John Waters:

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

I took it one step further and put a copy of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand on my bookshelf and if you don’t ask me why the fuck I own that book when you see it then you aren’t getting laid.

[–] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 9 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Just be careful, that's like installing a claymore in your own home, date-wise 😆

[–] NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Meh, I’m into nerdy people, it’s been a 100% home run streak as far as that bit if kindling is concerned. Highly recommend.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I encourage all other men to adopt this strategy so there are more cuties to go around for me.

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 12 hours ago

Really want to fuck a cute she/they in the stacks at a library.

I'm totally getting off to that later.

[–] BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

The whole damn country is built on spite. Screw your taxes, I'll make my own! I'll make my own country, with blackjack! And hookers! Royal Crown soda? Spite. The price of Coca-Cola syrup went up. I actually kind of love that, though. Necessity may be the mother of invention, but I'd say spite is the deadz-beat dad.

Now, I think anti-intellectualism also stems from this spite complex. Do your own research! Don't believe anything actual scientists say. In fact, do exactly the opposite. Don't get vaccines. Roll coal. Become a sovereign citizen and end up right back where we started, refuse to pay taxes.

[–] collapse_already@lemmy.ml 7 points 14 hours ago

Do your own research, but don't read because that's nerd activity. So I guess listening to Charlie Kirk, Fucker Carlson, and other mentally incompetent, politically compromised agents of foreign powers is "research. "

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I've read that during the collapse of Rome the citizens and politicians behaved ironically in a way that helped accelerate its collapse. I think the same can be said about America.

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 29 points 19 hours ago (5 children)

for a sexual trist at the Library

I'm confused about this entire book/library sequence. Is John saying that libraries and reading are leftist things?

The thing about anti-intellectualism is that its proponents never consider the possibility that they themselves can be "intellectual". They think of intellectual people as having some sort of inborn superpower and that they have no choice but to be grovellingly deferential toward them, which they would rightly hate. But they can just read books and become intellectual themselves 🤷‍ The shit's open source. And it's open source even if you're poor, because of LIBRARIES!

[–] outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Also scihub, libgen, etc.

But if they read books their opinions would be changed, they would become impure. Communication is an attack.

[–] mojofrododojo@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

education overwhelmingly refutes their most deeply held beliefs time and time again. of course they reject it.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

Part of what used to make me read what I did was people saying "oh that's too difficult, you'll never understand it or enjoy it!".

It was like...challenge accepted, bitch.

[–] qarbone@lemmy.world 7 points 14 hours ago

But these people don't want to. They're tired, frustrated, and likely their school failed them such that reading is just another reminder that they don't know so many things.

It's easier to denigrate those who have read and learned than to confront the mountain that is their own ignorance. "I could climb that mountain, if I wanted." they might say, "But why would I do something so stupid when I'm doing such important stuff right now?? The people wasting their time climbing it must have something wrong with them."

[–] drspawndisaster@sh.itjust.works 11 points 16 hours ago

Right Wing politics are based around hierarchy, the idea of being above other people. Rich > poor, American > immigrant, me > you. In order for right wing propaganda to work on idiots like this, they need to make it seem like the people who aren't falling for it are below them in some way. This narrative that intellectuals are either brainwashed or knowingly brainwashing other people compensates for the noticeable difference in smarts and makes that imagined reality that much more tempting. They're not "uneducated", they just naturally knew better than to get brainwashed because of their massively superior true American brain! Fascism needs to be flattering in order to be convincing because it has nothing else except fear to offer.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

They each have a connection to the sum-total of all of humanity's recorded information and knowledge in their pockets at all times or hooked up to their screens at home. We all do. Not even we who cherish knowledge use this tool for learning new things more than a fraction of the time that we have it at hand.

Furthermore, education and knowledge doesn't even translate to "thinking." You can be very smart and not be good at thinking. You don't think consciously about a million things you do every day in response to feelings you have, but some people make more of an effort to think about those feelings and some people never even learned how to think.

That's not hyperbole, we have a stunningly high illiteracy rate in the US, nearly a quarter of adults can barely read text messages and are functionally illiterate or can only string together the gist of a written paragraph, and just get by on the wonders of what the brain can do without conscious effort. Verbal thinking, abstractifying information and changing perspectives with internal debate is NOT the norm for most people. You can in fact go through your whole life and have achievements without really knowing how to think with words and language about topics and ideas, and just let your brain write you stories to explain how you feel and roll with it to the bitter end.

We will all fight this scourge of willful ignorance a lot more effectively when we all understand and accept that it's all about feelings, it always has been about feelings, and humans broadly cannot function in a system that doesn't place personal feelings at the center of every issue.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

We will all fight this scourge of willful ignorance a lot more effectively when we all understand and accept that it’s all about feelings, it always has been about feelings, and humans broadly cannot function in a system that doesn’t place personal feelings at the center of every issue.

Relatedly, I think this is related to why at some point people convinced themselves that they were completely rational without really trying. A lot of the people -- on the right especially -- have convinced themselves that they live on some type of post-rational plane and that everything they do can be rationally justified. If you point at any of the pile of fallacies about one particular thing they do, say, or believe, they will try to distract you with their credentials or use other illogical arguments to defend those things...one at a time.

semi-related anecdote


Many of the people I worked with in tech that are "libertarian leaning" operate this way. They think because they work in tech that they are, by default, rational thinkers. I would also say that most of the people that are like this are extremely bad at their jobs if you dive into the details. Because, unlike them, I have found that working in software has taught me that I am very fallible and often irrational in minor ways. Programming a machine that executes nearly flawless logic at speeds the human mind can't match demonstrates plainly that we are endlessly fallible, often emotional, and almost never understand the full implications of our actions. But many of these people never seem to learn that lesson, and on more than one occasion I have had them discover "flaws in the compiler" that were simply them being idiotic upon closer inspection.

If you read any Greek philosophy they basically say the opposite thing, that man can occasionally reach for rationality or try to behave rationally, but that it is by far not a person's default mode of operation. They considered it basically communing with the Gods during the rare moments that man could even achieve a scrap of it for a period of time.

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago

John be like:

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 65 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

people who , write like this , make me want to ,. commit war crimes;;;

[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

YOU FORGOT……THE ALMIGHTY ALLCAP’S…..THE ULTIMATE….😀😀😀 CRIMES MUST OF….BE ACOMBLISHED….EXTRA APOSTROPHE’S!!! 😀😀😀

And don’t forget the smileys, misspellings, ellipses and “Have a nice day, libtard😀😀😀”.

(Ugh. I got irritated just writing that much in mockery)

[–] nthavoc@lemmy.today 2 points 10 hours ago

caps lock is CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!!!!!! 😀😀😀

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 15 hours ago

see this doesn't actually make me as uncomfortable because it's just.. obnoxious
it's not incomprehensible, i get why people would write like that

[–] dreugeworst@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

still better than. people who think the period. is the only punctuation one needs to know.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 0 points 13 hours ago

I'd much rather people write stilted sentences than comma splices everywhere.

[–] GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Breezy@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

Or hostile LLM.

[–] IndiBrony@lemmy.world 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Hello, Mr, Shatner

Edit : Oh , I misunderstood ,. You meant the constant ;;; spaces and, shit .. not the , Shatner sprach .

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

like, i get not being good at using punctuation so you just end up typing massive run on sentences or, like, constantly using, commas.. or overusing the.. uh.. what´s it called.. ellipsis..

but holy shit HOW HOW HOW do these people end up thinking THIS , makes any ,, sort of sense,,,;;;,,,;;;;;,:;.;.,:;.;:;.,:;:;:;:-----_'-'--¨'̈́̈́̈́̈́'̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́̈́....:::.:....:::.

in what fucking country, what fucking culture, is this shit actually seen as normal? the most i've seen being used as standard is like, french putting a space before question marks for some reason, and chinese or whatever sometimes using some slightly funky punctuation, but i've never found a culture that genuinely treats this shit;;; as normal

like.. do people not read things? how the fuck does one end up thinking no one is going to find that punctuation usage strange?

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Cripes. There's a guy on one of the old forums I frequent (yes, really) who does the ellipsis thing.

he writes literally everything all in lower case... with every thought punctuated with nothing but an ellipsis... even if hes asking a question... you know... youd think its a bit but hes been doing it consistently for years... i have to wonder if he actually writes all this work emails and professional correspondence like this too... like if he actually writes something out on paper with a pencil does he end every line with...

Anyway, lots of dumbasses in our country have been failed by our dumbass education system, which was ruined by other dumbasses. It's infuriating.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

i think what makes it so unnerving to me is that i don't see it just being caused by a lack of education, because if you can write then surely you can also read, and thus surely you can read normal text which exists everywhere and can't be missed

the kind of bad writing that lack of education causes is more just bad grammar and boneappleteas (writing unknown phrases as the closest matching words you do know, so "bon appetit" turns into "bone apple tea"), with maybe some sloppy punctuation usage but not outright

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

Such a thing is a "malapropism," which is now your word of the day.

[–] _AutumnMoon_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 72 points 1 day ago (4 children)

"Sexual trist at the Library" Damn what libraries are you going to?

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Bro went to a gay adult book store once and confused it with a library, now he's on a crusade (to find the guy who sucked him off in the bathroom).

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 5 points 10 hours ago

👏Stop👏Sucking👏Off👏 Conservatives 👏 In 👏 The 👏 Queer 👏 Bookstores👏

That's how you get an infestation.

[–] leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone 26 points 1 day ago (2 children)

One's that clearly have no dictionaries in them.

[–] burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 23 hours ago

Spelling isn't important anymore.

-Random dipshits on the internet who get angry about being corrected.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago

Indeed. One would like to know where one would find such outrageous dens of iniquity. So one can avoid them, of course.

[–] thanksforallthefish 5 points 1 day ago

Dunno either, but if you find out please clue me in

[–] raynethackery@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)
[–] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I've read that they ran out of Flavor-Aid and had to switch to Kool-Aid by the end.

I thought Flavor-Aid was the cheap alternative they used because they couldn't afford Kool-Aid.

[–] generic_computers@lemmy.zip 5 points 18 hours ago
[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Bet that guy calls himself a Christian, so a member of a literal cult.

[–] Lumisal@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Can't be, he's probably allergic to the bible, since it's a book. If he open it he combusts into flames reborn a big dicked gay guy who's emissions are like that of a donkey (someone will probably get that reference)

[–] Cethin@lemmy.zip 2 points 13 hours ago

He probably thinks it isn't gay if the guy is named Jesus though.

[–] Jerb322@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

Most of them don't read it....

:spelling

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 4 points 23 hours ago

But they'll proudly shout that it's the "MOST FAMOUS AND MOST IMPORTANT AND MOST READ BOOK IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] atomicorange@lemmy.world 7 points 23 hours ago

That’s the one you correct?

load more comments
view more: next ›