But I've been an American for decades. I _KNOW_ how foreigners talk about USA.

* Big portions of our meals? Check. If some European were taking pictures or talking up the SuperSize meal at McDonalds then yeah, that's "normal".

* Mega-Highways? Check. Our roads are a marvel to everyone (please ignore our lack of public transit. But at least we have highways). Both the shear size and scale, not just of the roads but also of our cars.

* Gun Ranges? Yeah, that's normal depending on which culture they came from. Some people like hunting and gun ranges.

* Size of the country? (2 hour drive is just one state over). Big road trips? Yeah.

Etc. etc. I already KNOW what foreigners think of my country.

But freaking air conditioning? No. Even poor Filipinos have air conditioning and aren't really wow'd by it these days. Certainly not in 2026. Filipinos will talk about maybe the "new air con bus" (in contrast to the Jeepny they used to take), but that's about how the Philippines has improved... a point of pride for the Filipinos and not an item of foreign wonder when visiting the USA.

If there's wonder or exasperation, its actually a negative. Filipinos find the air conditioning settings way too cold here in the USA to the point of annoyance. They're not "happy" about it like how it happens in these meme videos. If someone's skin is used to 80F, 90F or higher temperatures, sitting in 68F all the time is downright uncomfortable.

Europeans? Japanese? Koreans? They're even richer than Filipinos. They aren't going to be wow'd by this at all. They already have access to air conditioning, maybe not quite as much as us Americans but its not really a point of exasperation or wonder.

> Our roads are a marvel to everyone (please ignore our lack of public transit. But at least we have highways). Both the shear size and scale, not just of the roads but also of our cars.

I would say not necessarily 'marvel' in a positive sense. I've mostly only been to San Francisco (generally there once a year) but that elevated roadway through the city is a blight; it's absolutely awful. Also it seems to constantly have ridiculous traffic.

> They already have access to air conditioning, maybe not quite as much as us Americans but its not really a point of exasperation or wonder.

Yeah, this is a particularly weird internet belief about Europe. Regions where the weather historically justified it have domestic air conditioning; in regions where it rarely gets hot it's usually mostly confined to commercial use (commercial spaces have way more waste heat; 100 people in a room is ~equivalent to running a 10kW heating system constantly).

What you're seeing now is that some regions which historically almost never got hot are suddenly getting hot fairly frequently due to climate change; they're shifting from "domestic aircon would be silly, you'd run it for two days a year" to "maybe it's needed now".

Speaking of San Francisco, most homes in San Francisco don't have air conditioning; it hasn't yet come under the sort of climactic pressure which would make it necessary.

Europe and the Philippines have very different climates, though. Most of Europe hasn't historically had the kind of weather where you need air conditioning, hence why many (most?) people still don't have it, whereas the Philippines is obviously tropical. Climate change is just pushing Europe into hotter weather where now air conditioning is, suddenly, worth considering.

>> Filipinos find the air conditioning settings way too cold here in the USA to the point of annoyance

As European I find AC settings ridiculously low. It's summer, why should I carry a hoodie just for a bus ride?

So air conditioning has become a larger topic in Europe, because our summers are getting so much hotter. Here in Germany it feels like we've cut short spring and fall, and summer an winter make most of the year. Air conditioning is very unusual in flats, schools and most public buildings. Hell, even some public transport is still lacking it. So I could imagine coming from that summer to the US and everything is a chill 290K might have motivated some people to tak to social media. But of course, social media is also just incredibly fake.

There's this new brand of dickheads, the Dubai Dudes, and they seem to be a pretty loud and influential voice on social media, amplified by the royal houses down there and bond villain billionaires like Peter Thiel.