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.

I think a lot of strange cultures talking to the rest of the world can feel like that -- especially as it's not necessary how those cultures talk to themselves. And visitors to a country often have a fairly predictable set of wow! (or wtf?) moments. So when there's a moment like a World Cup or Olympics you just see a lot of simultaneous commenting about stuff that isn't usually in the discourse. A lot of UK people (I'm British) fall into a fairly united pattern when addressing strangers about their country: talking up the NHS, queuing, the full english breakfast. Visitors to Britain will love double-decker buses, funny politeness and euphemism, everyday comedy etc, etc.

The air conditioning, Costco, sports complexes. even things like a gun show, or a silly Texas parade, are very often what tourists *individually talk about when they visit the US for the first time.