I think back to the World Cup with a unified social media message about how awesome American air conditioning is.

Like, that meme was astroturfed right? People in Europe don't talk like that or act like that.

And we also had foreigners from all around the world (Japanese, Korean, etc. etc.) come and be all Costco is amazing or other tidbits of pro-Americanism.

I dunno, something just felt off by it. There's clearly something going on and it doesn't feel completely natural.

It's fine to like America and be patriotic and all. But for it all to strike at the same time with extremely similar messaging? Even memes had more diverse concepts than what happened.

We are IMO in the age of AI boosted memes where people are trying to form large scale reality distortion fields.

The author needs to understand that X/Twitter is its own bubble that does not reflect any real shared cultural or political sentiment in the United States. On November 2nd the conventional Twitter wisdom was that polls were actually over-estimating Democrats and that Republicans were within striking distance of a "Reverse 2022" (No wave; modest D gains only). It was clear a day later that it was an illusion - polls were actually grossly underestimating Democratic performance, with some missing by 15 points, like the HarrisX/Harvard pollster.

The middle class in the west collectively has lost purchasing power the last decades, lately that has started to become too apparent, and on both sides of the Atlantic now, there are people who try to deny it. It’s sad no matter if they’re Americans or Europeans

This post is an awkward read because it carries a tacit assumption that the bulk of this posting activity is organic engagement - as opposed to merely a new flavor of shit being thrown at the wall by bot-propagandists, which then happens to resonate with some smaller segment of disenfranchised people. The analysis still does apply for why those people are drawn to such a refrain, but the situation lacks the weight of a cultural trend and is better off seen as a subculture - there is no counterveiling force of people disagreeing with the narrative and arguing against it (en masse), because most simply ignore it and go elsewhere.

lovley topic - which I was digging into a bit lately [1] - from an economic standpoint one way to think about the US-Europe income gap is to separate output per hour from GDP per person.

[1] https://philippdubach.com/posts/us-europe-productivity-worki...

Hilarious how so much political discourse now is just downstream from /pol/ shitposting and people believe it's actually worth writing about. I've never seen the term "europoor" outside 4chan before this.

The degree to which Europeans are less wealthy than the US, and the degree to which that gap has been growing, is important, and no amount of rhetoric will change that. Of course calling them Europoors is rude and serious people should not do it. But the policy differences are not pure upside for Europe and there are serious open questions about the sustainability of the European social compact, especially in France. If anything Europe is in a significantly worse position now than 15 years ago.

Hell yeah, America...!

This is an "argument" between relative elites. Both Europoors and USAian-poors don't spend time on the internet caring about each other. Most Europoors don't even speak English, and USAian-poors don't speak anything but English, so they literally couldn't communicate easily until recently, and they still haven't found a reason to.

That being said, this is largely European cope. Europeans are falling into the toilet. But the Brits they're arguing with are British elites who spend most of their time online pretending to be American Britishly (which amounts to being rude while using US slang), and the Americans they are arguing with are dimwitted xenophobes in debt up to their eyeballs and just pretending to have money. American elites (i.e. people with assets who only work as a hobby) are also doing very, very well, but they don't care about arguing with Europeans online. They think of Europe as fancy and fashion, and avoid most direct contact with Europeans (except expats and when they're on vacation) in order not to ruin that image.

But I have to repeat that Europeans are absolutely delusional. The future is looking terrible for them, and their elites feel like their only hope is war with Russia. They feel like they can regulate and judge things that the world is accomplishing around and without them. They've been coddled (by US arms and political meddling) into an unearned sense of superiority over a generation or two that is leading them into disaster. They have beautiful infrastructure and a big healthy, educated population, and they're losing simply because they let themselves be ruled by venal morons and will believe the dumbest neoliberal fairy stories.

Instead of propping them up to create the image of an international consensus, a failing US has just decided to treat Europe as a resource to be drained. Its only interest is to keep Europe alienated from China, who would also use them just as a resource to be drained. Somehow, Europe has even lost Russia's energy supplies to China and India, and cultivated such hate in Russia that this relationship might be harder to repair than the US-Russia relationship, which is insane. Somehow, the US has been able to fob off its ongoing (virtually hot) war against Russia onto Europe, and is successfully pushing them to pay for it (like Trump used to say about the border wall and Mexico.)

I have to agree that it reflects on American insecurity. Americans feel like they're living in a failing state heading into civil war and they're all going to die. Then they look at Europe, and they see a state born from war that failed to come together at all, and is somehow getting worse. It makes them feel better about themselves for a second, until they see the price of hamburgers and get depressed again.