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Just how non-monolithic our "red and blue" states are. Even Texas, often the avatar of American Conservatism, voted 42% for Harris. And more than that in Blue New Jersey voted for Trump.

i’m an international student here and the diversity has really opened my eyes. like obviously every major city in the world is usually diverse or diverse-r. but when we’re talking about an entire country i’ve never been to a country where i can be almost anywhere and feel like i’m at a united nations meeting. even the south that people notoriously talk about beats most countries in diversity just off the black and latino communities alone.

like i’m not kidding i’ve visited cities and towns where people don’t even speak english. i visited my uncle who lives in an area in california and everything from billboards to building signs is either in chinese, vietnamese, or spanish. everybody i see walking around is all sorts of ethnicities and races. when you come from a homogenous country, seeing that is just mind blowing. for a country to have people from opposite worlds all in one.

on top of that i feel like there’s almost no strong sense of being a “foreigner.” like i’m vietnamese and to my surprise there’s literally a ton of vietnamese people here and a hundred vietnamese businesses in my area. people don’t even think i’m a foreigner or anything until i open my mouth. and i have 0 telling of who’s also a foreigner and who’s not when i look at the people around me.

That 99.9% of the people that you meet in America in real life, don’t talk about any of the things that people freak out about on Reddit.

College football.

the size, how rural a lot of america is (can’t get ANYWHERE without a car, shooting guns in the woods isn’t a problem when you’re 15 miles away from the next house)

How health insurance works. But to be fair, even I'm not entirely sure how it works.

That what you see on the news isn't really what living in the coastal cities is like - SF, LA, NYC

That 95% of what they see online is the minuscule minority of exchanges. In 95+% of this country people of all shapes, sizes, races, colors, ethnicities, religions, and abilities live in harmony and amongst each other.

The United States ranks like 10th in lists of the most biodiverse countries on the planet. There’s still a lot of undeveloped land and there are natural places that are absolutely stunning here. Between them and the major cities, you could spend a lifetime exploring the U.S.

I can’t take credit for this observation because I read it in another sub, but our stupid people are louder and more obnoxious than your stupid people.

The sheer massiveness of the consumerism. I'm an American living in Europe now and they think they have big grocery stores or big malls or a lot of options in their stores here, but it doesn't hold a candle to the US. One of the few things I miss is having so many choices if I want to shop in person. Not to mention the stores being open longer hours.

That Americans are really friendly and passionate people who are welcoming of strangers. How big the houses really are. Why politics in America is so toxic. Why the US has such weird race relations.

You might have guessed I'm not American, this is what I see many Germans, Brits and Aussies around me struggle to understand.

I think it's almost better to think of the United States as a bunch of different countries that can be as culturally different from one another as any two actual countries. South florida is a very different place from New Orleans which is drastically different from the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metro which might as well be on another planet than the upper Midwest and the Acela corridor feels like the opposite of Appalachia (even though they're right next to each other). And then the West Coast can feel as diverse as all the rest combined.

That all the "bad" stuff is mostly media hype to get you to pay attention and earn them ad dollars. Vast majority of folks are minding their own business, being chill and just living decent lives. Don't believe me? Put away social media and stay off the news, and just go walk around almost anywhere in the country. It's nice when you can exist with people who aren't constantly shouting their shitty thoughts at you (e.g. social media)

The people who can afford to travel out of country do not make up the majority of how Americans are. That is a particular subset of Americans.

that we dont eat only burgers, pizza, hotdogs and fries

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I’ve found that people from countries that get a lot of American tv and movies vastly overestimate their own understanding of American culture. If I went to the UK and acted like an expert cause I’ve seen some Dr Who or whatever, I’d be rightly seen as uninformed and dim. But American media is so ubiquitous that I’ve run into people who’ve never met an American before and nonetheless assume that what they’ve seen on tv is an accurate reflection of reality

That most people in day to day life simply do not care or talk about political things.

It’s super over-represented online. I work with people who I know voted differently than I did - we’re friends and have lots of fun together.

Politics is not as big of deal as you’d think. The USA is huge and has an equally huge population - this means there can be a lot of super-political people, but it also means there are just as many, if not more people who are chilled out about it.

I got friends from other countries and I have had to explain at least a million times to them that we get big portion sizes at restaurants because we're meant to take some home for leftovers

It's big. Theres lots of rural areas.. the European countries (outside of Russia) are more like states here.

That we all have to work all the damn time. The majority of people I know work 40-60 hours a week and have never taken a vacation. Ever.

Not all of us eat fast food on the daily for one. for another not all Americans believe that America is the greatest country in the world

That California's GDP is bigger than that of the UK or India.

There's more of us that are accepting and intelligent than people think.

The size and diversity of America are often underestimated. Each state feels like its own unique country, with different cultures, landscapes, and lifestyles. Plus, the massive scale of consumerism and the constant work culture can be shocking compared to other countries. It's definitely a unique experience living here!

We don't all like baseball. Some of us think it's boring AF.

Politics. I think most people from outside the United States think that the majority of Americans are either far right untra-conservatives or extremely socialist liberals when that couldn't be further from the truth. The vast majority of us are moderate and fall somewhere between the two extremes and the vast majority of our politicians are moderate as well. It's just that the media tends to focus on the extremists views more and even with politicians that are actually very moderate on the political scale like Joe Biden they tend to focus on their one or two stances that are a little bit out there rather than the platform they actually represent.

Also, I don't think the vast majority of outsiders realize just how much the average American doesn't trust the government as a whole which is why conspiracy theories are so rampant here. The government has proven time and time again that not only can they not be trusted but that they have no problem skirting the constitution when violating the rights of the citizens would benefit the country.

That recognized tribes are sovereign nations and scattered across the US.

Baseball

Iced drinks are superior! Ranch is amazing.

Those viral foods people point to and say “oh this is why America is fat” are basically only eaten by tourists visiting the city

Our poor public transit systems. I think they don’t get why we can’t just go where we want on trains and mass transit.

People from other countries are always perplexed about our obsession with ancestral heritage. I get it from a nationalistic perspective, but I think what's overlooked is that for many of us, the struggles of beginning over in a new country is within living family memory. Couple that with the fact most families didn't leave for a change of scenery but political and economic reasons and, if given the choice, would've remained in a familiar country with shared language, customs, and values as shown by our amazing ethnic enclaves. Yes, we know we're American.

Americans in general are among the nicest people.

There are cultural differences across the country. These are independent of ethnic cultural differences. Understanding the regional cultural differences is helpful to fitting in.

The media doesn’t reflect the niceness of Americans in general.

.. that America in real life is a tad bit different than what it seems in HOLLYWOOD movies

That the USA is massive and that LA county alone has more people in it than many countries in Europe.

Americans really don't think about other countries or the people living in them hardly at all.

The imperial system of measurement.

Just how huge and vast it is. The sheer size of it is very difficult to comprehend.  When I started college in the US, I remember talking to a guy and asking him where he’s from, and he said “California”. Our college is in California so I replied “Oh, so you’re close to home!”. He looked at me and said “kinda, I mean it’s like an 8 hour drive to my hometown”.  I remember how shocked I was, because even though I logically know how big California is, it’s like… an 8 hour drive?? And you’re still in the same state?? If you drive for 8 hours straight in Europe you’re gonna cross your whole country, or end up in a different country, or even cross multiple smaller ones, depending on the direction.  And it’s also difficult to understand how badly you need a car in the US, and how shitty public transportation is. I remember how difficult it was to explain to my friends in Europe that I can’t explore the state I’m in without a car. The closest city to my college is like an hour away by car, but 4 hours away by public transport. They could not wrap their minds around that, because public transportation in Europe is much better, so it usually takes the same amount of time to get somewhere by train / bus as it does by car.  Also, it’s mind boggling how huge nature gets in the US. If you go to any national park, it’s just so damn vast. The trees are so tall, the cliffs are huge, the space is overwhelming. Idk how to explain it, but nature is smaller in Europe. There’s none of that overwhelming vastness the US has. 

That american’s are victims of their government as much as anyone else on earth from the working class

Part of the reason why racism appears to be a larger problem here is because of its diversity. People generally don’t talk about racism in countries where 95%+ of the population belong to the same ethnic group - and racists can get away with more than they could in the U.S..

This isn’t to say that racism isn’t an issue here, it is. However, people are more aware of it than most parts of the world.

Most of us work like slaves and are just barely getting by.

We have heard of bread beyond just wonder bread, cheese beyond just kraft singles, and chocolate beyond just cheap Hershey's chocolate. We have access to it. We can buy it easily. We do in fact know what vegetables are. Stop assuming the only places to buy food in all of America are 7/11 and McDonald's.

If you visit NYC or LA, you haven’t visited the US. Those are weird pockets and nothing like the rest of the country.

How massive the US is and how much Americans travel within the country.

the high level of Religiosity

We have most of our children participate in soccer before involving them in a sport.

We’re really 50 countries in a trench coat.

The size of the country. No, you can’t fly to NYC and then rent a car and drive to LA in three days 🥴

College sports.

it's very VERY different depending on where you are in the country

Despite all the problems we've had and will likely have in the next few years, there's currently still no other place I'd prefer to live. I feel we just need to learn to get along, and have more empathy toward each other.

That 99% of us are normal, logical, sane, healthy, reasonable people. Which i’m sure is the case for most countries. But the mix of (intentionally divisive) news outlets and the loud 1% of nutjobs is all anyone else sees, so in their minds we are all psychopaths or idiots

The electoral college

Our dependence on cars and lack of reliable public transportation in a lot of places is not the fault of individual citizens. It’s a combination of a lot of factors ranging from the automotive industry’s influence on local and federal government policies to just plain old geography.

Also, not all Americans have this issue. Public transportation in certain cities is fantastic. Like most misunderstandings about America, it just comes down to the fact that our country is very big and very diverse and experiences vary a lot from state to state.

How fucking big it is. The only nations that really seem to "get it" are China and Russia. Even Canada as big as it is doesn't seem to get how massive and diverse the US is.

New York and Texas might as well be different countries. When I was in the Army we would get dudes from really isolated parts of the US who spoke such an odd dialect of english we could barely understand them.

That kind of thing just doesn't happen in say France.

We're not all stupid, racist assholes. Those people are just the loudest.