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The US is a big place, so non-Americans should be sometimes forgiven for having misconceptions about, say, which states have or don’t have a Cracker Barrel. But the world is a whole lot bigger, which often doesn’t stop some Americans from confidently making utterly incorrect claims.
So we’ve gathered some of the best (or worst) things Americans have said online. Load up your hotdog with ketchup, mustard and relish, get comfortable, warm up your eyes because you are about to be rolling them, upvote the worst examples and share your own stories in the comments down below.
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#2
Serial pacifist 8 hours ago
Yep. USA discovered America and decided to move there from Narnia and Lilliput. It is a well-known historical fact.
Take the recurring belief that Europe simply refuses to install air conditioning out of some stubborn old world purity. Every summer this argument resurfaces online, with Americans baffled that anyone would voluntarily sweat through July, and Europeans just as baffled that anyone thinks central air is a personality trait.
What actually gets lost in these viral spats is that the real reasons involve older housing stock, energy prices and building codes, not some collective European decision to be dramatic about heat. But nuance rarely survives a good ratio, so the myth keeps circulating like it's brand new information every single year.
#5
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 13 hours ago
Your businesses refuse to pay a basic wage, keep your lifestyle to yourself.
#6
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 13 hours ago (edited)
More likely the other way around, no one in MAGA heard of Greenland until the orange shart wanted to invade it.
This kind of thing tends to happen because a country that spans six time zones and takes up a huge chunk of a continent can start to feel like the whole world on its own. When your own nation already contains deserts, swamps, mountains and everything in between, it gets easier to assume the rest of the planet is just a smaller, less important version of home.
That assumption is exactly what showed up in the National Geographic-Roper Global Geographic Literacy Survey, which set out to measure how much young adults in nine countries actually knew about the world. Only 17 percent of young adults in the United States could find Afghanistan on a map, and the U.S. landed second to last overall, ahead of only Mexico.
#12
A later version of the same survey found things hadn't improved much, with young Americans answering only about half of all the questions correctly. Some of the specific numbers are almost impressive in how wrong they are. Researchers found that a large share of young Americans genuinely believed the U.S. population sat somewhere between one and two billion people, when the real number at the time was under 300 million.
None of this means Americans are uniquely bad at learning things, because the same surveys showed young adults everywhere struggling too. What made the American results stand out was the confidence gap, the tendency to answer boldly instead of admitting uncertainty. Researchers pointed to a fairly simple explanation for why this happens so often.
#16
Roman Arendt 14 hours ago
Corgies must have a British accent, you can't convince me otherwise.
#17
Onan Hag All 13 hours ago
It beggars belief that a grown person could be so f#cking dumb and survive.
#18
WindySwede 10 hours ago
You love the military, yet mocks the kilomerer as well as 24h clock? 🤔
This is exactly why the internet has become such a reliable stage for these moments. A single confident sentence, posted without a second of doubt, can travel across the globe faster than any fact check ever could. Someone insisting Africa is a country, or that Europeans don't have basements because they're all secretly hiding something, or that a place with functioning subways must be a third world country because it also has visible poverty somewhere, none of that requires malice.
It usually just requires someone who has never had a reason to double check what they think they already know, hitting post before a single ounce of doubt creeps in. The genuinely funny part is how universal the pattern is once you notice it. Confidently wrong claims about foreign countries pop up from every corner of the internet, but Americans get an outsized share of the spotlight because English language platforms dominate, and because a culture built on self assurance doesn't always leave much room for a quiet "actually I'm not totally sure." So enjoy the very best examples below, and maybe check a map or two while you're at it.
#22
StrangeOne 13 hours ago
Tbf, no one can mention healthcare and eating out at restaurants without the Americans hijacking the whole conversation.
#27
Shiv Harikrishnan 12 hours ago
“But the American architecture is actually older than that, because America is bigger, better, and older than Europe”🤣🤣🤣🤣
#30
LakotaWolf (she/her) 8 hours ago
Look, I have to count on my fingers to translate 24hr time sometimes, as it's not intuitive when you weren't taught it and it's not pervasive. Almost all of our systems here in the US are 12hr time, not 24hr time, unless you're literally in the military. We say "AM/PM" instead of the numerical equivalent. That being said... I CAN count on my fingers to very easily figure out what time 18:00 is XD Any American who bítches about 24hr time and demands that someone "translate it to American time" for them is just a lazy ídiot.
#32
Mobey Drunk 14 hours ago
We learned that in elementary school. God, this list is making my head hurt. Worst part about it, I have met plenty of people here that really are that stupid.
#36
Forrest Hobbs 13 hours ago
Europe... Where our brick and stone walls have defied knives for - well, round here, there's one house I could take you to that was built in the 1600s (it's got a tile built into it stating the year of its construction). Just an ordinary house - never mind the actual castles...
#37
Did I say that out loud? 13 hours ago
Euros won't be of much use in Scotland, but at least they're asking.
#38
Roman Arendt 14 hours ago (edited)
He confused the Swiss with all Europeans. Calvin discontinued free will as he discovered predeterminism during Reformation. The Swiss are cool with that (well, they don't have a choice, do they?).
#42
#43
UKGrandad 7 hours ago
On another site a couple of years ago an American told me to GTFO because Trump voters weren't welcome on there. I patiently explained that being British and living in Britain sort of disqualified me from voting in US elections. His response was 'Yeah, that's what postal voting is for, MAGA boy'!
#48
Loosey Goosey 7 hours ago
Sure, because the UK is just a tiny little village where everyone knows everyone else and the only famous music artists here are American. The Beatles, Adele, Led Zeppelin, Queen, David Bowie, Elton John, Pink Floyd and many, many others were all secretly American and put on fake British accents.
#49
#51
David Morgan 7 hours ago
Dollars are an OLD measurement of money. They are referenced in Macbeth for goodness sake, (Act 1 Scene 2), and that is over 400 years old.
#53
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 13 hours ago
America is middle Earth! I won't if they have a Sauron and lots of Orcs...
#56
Littlekw81 14 hours ago
This drives me nuts. It's not that hard. Subtract 1200 from anything 1300 to 2359 and you have the pm equivalent. I was taught this in a US elementary school. Probably second or third grade.
#58
LakotaWolf (she/her) 8 hours ago
It's admittedly difficult to "read" a date as any other format than what you're used to. Everything in America is month-day-year, so we assume dates are month-day-year when we first read them. It's reflexive. That being said, the REAL issue is when Americans refuse to accept that other countries use different date formatting XD Or start screaming that other people "have" to write the date in American formatting (if the other person is from the UK or something and is writing a date in day-month-year format.) We're taught month-day-year in America, everything in our country is displayed month-day-year, we can't help that we instinctively read dates (initially!) as month-day-year. Forgive us for that, it's how we were taught XD Don't forgive the eedjits who refuse to accept that other countries don't format dates that way!
#59
LakotaWolf (she/her) 8 hours ago
We're taught to read mm/dd/yyyy and everything in America is displayed as mm/dd/yyyy, so I understand there can be initial confusion. However, it's incredibly easy to read dd/mm/yyyy once you realize someone has listed a date in that format. Refusing to read a dd/mm/yyyy-formatted date or telling someone they're "wrong" because they've formatted a date in that manner is so incredibly stupid. But forgive us Americans for assuming mm/dd/yyyy first - it's how everything is done here and it's all that most of us see XD
#62
StrangeOne 13 hours ago
And 2nd, and 3rd, and 4th, and last. Congrats, USA won all the medals and lost at the same time. 😂
#64
Shiv Harikrishnan 12 hours ago
Why would the US buy Australia, seeing as a lot of it is the outback?
#65
StrangeOne 13 hours ago
This is what happens when students are shown only the flat maps that warp the actual geographical size, shapes and placements of world lands.
#66
Another Panda 12 hours ago
They didn’t need AC until unregulated energy production and ensuing pollution accelerated climate change.
#67
StrangeOne 12 hours ago
Wait... I think they're not all wrong in this. I would say the state of the USA is untied.
#70
#72
#75
Littlekw81 13 hours ago
I frequently take trains up and down the northeast corridor. I think the stretch from Bostan to DC is still part of the US, thus making me an American...
#77
April Pickett 11 hours ago
No, you don't want to know what he knows about Spain. It will break your mind.
#79
StrangeOne 12 hours ago
I'm sure there's English courses in Britain. Highly recommended for this American.
#80
Shiv Harikrishnan 11 hours ago
I have a friend who says Europe isn’t a continent because a continent is a landmass, and because Europe and Asia are one landmass, so the continent is Eurasia, and he might be technically correct
#83
Nathaniel He/Him Cis-Het 13 hours ago
Americans do not have basic electrical items like the kettle.
#89
Toika Gao 13 hours ago (edited)
Well, that's true. The gdp per capita of the poorest US state (Mississippi) in 2024 was ~$49,800 - $53,900. The UK gdp was ~$47,000 - $49,100. However, even though the UK has a lower GDP per capita than Mississippi, it consistently outperforms the state on key measures that define a high standard of living, particularly in health, safety, and social welfare. (Thanks, DeepSeek)
#96
nicholas nolan 5 hours ago
OK, here's the thing with this one. Mocking a person for asking an honest question is b******t. This person is one of 10,000 people a day that is about to learn something. That's fantastic! Instead of laughing at this person(who may have travelled in the Carribean, Mexico, and the north coast of South America, where the USD is widely accepted), be a part of their learning! XKCD explains it best, link in my reply:
#97
horseloving panda 9 hours ago
To be fair this isn't that bad, at least he asked, and it is possible it could have been the other two?
#98
nicholas nolan 5 hours ago
Both of these people are wrong. And both of these phrases are acceptable. I recommend the YouTuber Lost in the Pond for some excellent deep dive(and shallow ones, it's not a university course) on the origins and differences.
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What do you think ?
Onan Hag All 13 hours ago
This problem emerges when you convince people that they live in the greatest country on earth*. Then you provide them with one of the sh!ttiest education systems available. You get a people so stupid yet so egotistical and convinced they cannot be wrong, that they become a world laughing stock. Not only that, but they then elect a president so amoral, stupid and venal that the rest of the world shuns them. *it's not, by any respectable metric,
DrBronxx 6 hours ago
I had no idea so many things were started, created and/or invented in the US, long before it was even established. Truly a country of wonders.
MiauMiau 6 hours ago
That’s true. It’s also true that many of those inventions were made by Europeans who emigrated
Load More Replies...
Apatheist 7 hours ago
I guess we can now add to this: "I didn't know what a red card was, but it sounded bad so I rang the head of FIFA and asked him to review it. I didn't interfere; I just asked him whether he'd seen The Godfather recently, and how his prize thoroughbred was doing..."
Loosey Goosey 6 hours ago (edited)
I wonder if Trump would have interfered so quickly if he'd known that Balogun has lived in the UK since he was two months old. According to Wikipedia, he was only born in the US because his mother went to visit family in New York from London whilst heavily pregnant and the airline wouldn't allow her to make the return journey back. I'd love to have seen Trump's face when he heard Balogun talk with an English accent and he realised the USA's "greatest player" came up through Arsenal's youth academy.
Load More Replies... Onan Hag All 13 hours ago
This problem emerges when you convince people that they live in the greatest country on earth*. Then you provide them with one of the sh!ttiest education systems available. You get a people so stupid yet so egotistical and convinced they cannot be wrong, that they become a world laughing stock. Not only that, but they then elect a president so amoral, stupid and venal that the rest of the world shuns them. *it's not, by any respectable metric,
DrBronxx 6 hours ago
I had no idea so many things were started, created and/or invented in the US, long before it was even established. Truly a country of wonders.
MiauMiau 6 hours ago
That’s true. It’s also true that many of those inventions were made by Europeans who emigrated
Load More Replies... Apatheist 7 hours ago
I guess we can now add to this: "I didn't know what a red card was, but it sounded bad so I rang the head of FIFA and asked him to review it. I didn't interfere; I just asked him whether he'd seen The Godfather recently, and how his prize thoroughbred was doing..."
Loosey Goosey 6 hours ago (edited)
I wonder if Trump would have interfered so quickly if he'd known that Balogun has lived in the UK since he was two months old. According to Wikipedia, he was only born in the US because his mother went to visit family in New York from London whilst heavily pregnant and the airline wouldn't allow her to make the return journey back. I'd love to have seen Trump's face when he heard Balogun talk with an English accent and he realised the USA's "greatest player" came up through Arsenal's youth academy.
Load More Replies...
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