I used to play Geoguessr and I absolutely hate playing the state streaks map because every single state looks exactly the same. I would have to go through miles and miles and miles of suburban subdivisions that were mazes just to find a phone number and just go off that, which you’re not really meant to do. Literally the only thing that was different was the area codes.
Sorry OP, it never crossed my mind how hard it must have been for you to learn the geography of your own country and stuff. I too know someone with mental issues, so it’s okay, no big deal, buddy.
I will say having driven across the US it does feel very different at different points, but yes, stroads are everywhere from deserts to mountains to plains and coasts
The natural geography is different but anywhere united statesians actually build stuff it’s all the same crap
There’s actually plenty of different architectural styles when you look beyond the late 20th century and later generic commercial style. It’s pretty cool to see over the course of a few days, though definitely not worth the drive.
Wonderful. Everything from “I’m about to learn you a thing” to “check republic”.
Just a bit too obvious though.
Everyone knows it’s supposed to be Cheque Republic
I mean, it is very clearly intended to be hyperbolic satire
We need c/woosh
“learn you a thing” sure sounds like an American person trying to speak
Not to mention ✅ republic
“learn you a thing” sure sounds like an American person trying to speak
Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but poor grammar does indeed not qualify as a good criterion to distinguish 'muricans from people elsewhere in the world,
Sort of sound like an American hillbillies out of thing. Don’t think anyone else would say it like that.
Funny how they always ignore Australia when attempting to swing geographical peen.
Not sure what that has to do with anything i said but go off, i guess
“check republic”? No one uses checks anymore.
The polish are more reliable anyway
The Germans do, for some reason.
Nope, nope, nope.
German here, i have never seen a check in my life.
I once got one. Must be 35ish years ago, though.
German here. While it does look massively different here we have these walls around the Autobahn to lower the noise from the cars. And since they’re mostly everywhere it also looks the same everywhere: Autobahn, walls, sometimes trees or otherwise green.
(rush hour ofc looks different and is the same every damn day and we just keep on doing it)
On the other hand I have to say aside from the streets there’s a huge variety in scenery, here as well as in the states.
The walls are common here in the states for highways going through populated areas.
The areas shown in the original aren’t highways, they are the awful roads running through large commercial areas. They are designed to get as many cars through as possible while still letting people turn into the exact parking lot they want. They have a lot of accidents
Autobahn is out of the city experience. Stroads on OP picture are basically half of every American city.
This is so ridiculous and absurd it HAS to be satire. Either that or Poe’s Law got me. This just seems too hyperbolic and flippant to be somebody being for real and genuine
This should have been immediately obviously that it was satire.
A trick to tell if something is satire is to consider what would have to be true for it not to be satire and why they would use that tone, and then weigh what’s more likely.
I call it the Flat Earth conundrum. There is no comment so stupid that someone won’t make it unironically.
Satire conundrum: there is no comment so stupid someone won’t take it anally.
I am just waiting for someone to utterly fail at basic reading comprehension, be told the correct answer, and then comment, unironically “well the fact I imagined someone that dumb says a lot about society”
I have experienced it in the other direction, the other day. There was a comment that was so ridiculously racist that it had to be a bit, for sure, racists wouldn’t say things like that. Nope. They apparently would.
Ragebait used to be believable 🥀
Its not ragebait, its satire mocking how similar small town design is across America.
Except that people just might be this stupid
People who don’t understand sarcasm will get genuinely mad about this post, and I’m here for it
I like that all the states are shown to be all blobby and fat looking. Perfection.
When people can’t tell if you’re joking, it’s a problem with your sub, not the joke
I mean maybe they were being a brat on purpose and you were the one who didn’t get it
Poe’s Law - without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views that someone won’t mistake for the real thing. You cannot tell the difference between extreme satire and genuine stupidity or fanaticism because real-world opinions have become just as ridiculous as jokes.
sub
brat
BDSM on my autism app?
I’d venture there’s more purple in that Venn diagram than you think
“joke’s on you, i was only pretending to be stupid”
One reason why I’m starting to hate communities revolving around “fuckX” (Not the social platform, btw). Responses are filled with devoid hate against everything not just X.
I can’t stand when I get somewhere in the US in geoguessr because 80% of the country looks identical
You can usually tell a little bit from the plants. I can’t exactly put my finger on what it is but the grass in Florida looks different to the grass in California. Both in terms of colour and shape, but that’s not an automatic and said because it’s difficult to get an image where you’ve got a good view of blades of grass.
I can usually figure out which part of the country I’m in from the plants, buildings, and mountains, but narrowing things down in those regions can be tough. I’ve had at least one where I passed 3 dollar generals before seeing any state name, flag, or outline.
I have the same problems in rural South Africa, Australia, and especially Russia though.
I was messing around with a steetview app one time and I was pretty fascinated by the fact that basically anywhere on the globe, clicked at random, looks incredibly similar to somewhere that I’ve been. Click randomly in Ukraine, “huh, I’ve definitely been on country back roads in the US that look basically just like this.” Click a spot in Kazakhstan, I’ve seen places in the Midwest that look pretty similar. Click something in a more tropical spot in search of something altogether different, “you know I’ve been to some coastal towns that look a lot like this.” Click a spot in a French mountain range, “This doesn’t look all that different from parts of the Rockies.”
It brings to mind one of my favorite quotes:
“If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.”
- Marjane Satrapi
That quote always hits me hard. I really want the best for the ordinary citizens of Iran
You can do this with Europe too
yeah, this is trivial to do when you cherry-pick. no cities? no national parks? nothing from any of the mountains, deserts, two sets of dunes, or coasts? nothing from the PNW? no forests? not even grasslands? the grand canyon is literally one of the natural wonders of the world.
Yeah but what does it look like where people live?
I picked random spots in European cities in google street view and most of the places did not look at all like the photos above. Brick streets, people driving bicycles, people chilling in out door cafes. I did see some spots (mostly in Eastern Europe) that looked like the photos above. I did same bigger cities and some cities I never even heard of.
Doing the same thing in the US, I got dropped into a train station in Charlotte NC, so that was cool. But besides that, I saw a lot of suburbs, parking lots, and places that looked like the photos above from random cities across the US.
It’s a joke so it only needs an element of truth to it. And it’s directed at American culture, not about landmarks. From what I can see from my very non-scientific survey, the joke definitely has an element of truth about American culture being very samey in terms of how the places the live look.
It might also be fair to say Western Europe all looks the same with people driving bicycles on brick streets to cafes and such. But that probably wouldn’t sting all that much.
I would say that stems from the fact that America is extremely young. So all of the development of our cities, architecture, and transportation happened in the last like 300 years.
Most of it has been from the 50s
Exactly, so all of the layouts and architecture was done around the same time, so the styles and culture spread much faster over a wider area. That wasn’t the case in Europe, which has a much more diverse set of cultures from thousands of years. Cities and infrastructure will feel more unique because they weren’t designed with the same considerations.
the homogeneity is mindblowing
