Americans are NOT stupid

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Honestly

http://media.putfile.com/On-The-Streets-Of-America-3

 

ROFL One guy said Canada.

 

Ooooh boy, I love camera shows like this. They're so accurate! I mean, it isn't like these camera crews spend all day (often, several days) picking out the dumbest answers from the hundreds of people they pick out on the street or anything. Or that they target the dumbest-looking people they can find. And it isn't understandable at all that some people, when caught off guard on the street, don't always give out the most well-thought answers on a moment's notice. No sir!

Posts like this say more about the stupidity of the poster, rather than the country they're dissing. Like this is "proof" of American stupidity. I'm sure if I did the same thing on the streets of London every single person I walked up to would be a f*cking social studies professor.

 

Hmm, can't view the video. Oh well, was it really that bad?

 

It was worse.

I have to agree with Death rabbit though, they sure know who to pick. It's not that hard to guess who's what going to say, no matter where you are.

 

It's a reporter asking random people "Who do you think we should attack next in the war on terror?" About half the people say something relevant to the subject, mostly "Saudi Arabia,""North Korea," or "Iran." One guy said "I think we should turn the whole damn place into a f*ckin' glass factory." Some others said Pakistan, China, one guy said Canada I believe, which is kind of funny. It was pretty tame, but evidently to Sarevok, random people on the street not being able to pick out small countries on an even smaller map means the whole country has it's collective thumb up it's ass. He evidently isn't bright enough to realize that these segments can be so heavily slanted they don't mean a damn thing.

 

Some Americans are stupid. I know quite a few, believe me - I used to live in Texas. Anyone who confuses France for Australia is an idiot, I agree. But don't try and tell me the purpose of this thread wasn't America bashing on your part, Sarevok. "Man on the Street" interviews can be easily skewed to make people look like idiots, and I believe that's the case here. The producers of this segment clearly edited together the most entertaining answers, and people correctly answering questions like this in a thoughtful manner aren't entertaining. You using this to take a cheap shot at my country is not only obvious, but pretty tired (as this is about the 3rd or so such thread on this same topic I've seen in my time here) and certainly obnoxious. So ha ha, congratulations - Americans are stupid. Way to be original.

If I started a thread that implied all Britons were morons because dental hygene isn't a terribly complicated procedure, and we all know people in your country have a reputation for having ghastly teeth (otherwise the Austin Powers joke wouldn't be so funny), I wouldn't expect you not to be insulted. So don't tell me to calm down. You were clearly America-bashing, be man enough to admit it.

 

Well about 99,99% of teens in Poland wouldn't be fooled by such map
To mistake Australia for North Korea Adult people! Most of them educated at least at primary shool. This only shows that many people in USA don't bother themselves about other countries (not to mention the existance of many or pointing their location on map)

 

Now now Deathrabbit, calm down, I never said a bad word about Americans.

 

[semi-sarcasm]Well this pretty much proves it.[/semi-sarcasm]


Come on, how the hell can you be so unknowing that you confuse Australia with France and all the other countries they mentioned. Even if they picked these people out of hundreds I have a hard time emagining that this could happend in another industrial country where the education system supposedly is working.

 

Well, I could safely say that no Brit could mistake Australia for France, that's certain.

 

Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that it's damn well possible.

 

HAHAHAHAH

I cannot believe that people don't know at least part of the map (France or North Korea being in Australia?!). I mean, I don't know every African or Middle Eastern or Asian country, But i damn well know the larger countries.

And yes, the general population of America is stupid. Even though I'm American, I'll admit that we are reeally stupid.

And on a side-note: American do not know (or care) about other countries. Everyone knows about America. I interveiwed a man from an African country (i forget, this was a long time ago) who fled the country because he wrote something in the newspaper that went against the government, so they were going to have him killed. When he came over, he was surprised that Americans new so little about other countries, whereas everyone else knows about America. Everyone knows Bush, everyone knows the war in Iraq.

Of course, we are also a single nation, whereas Americans would have to keep track of a bunch of others, but still...

 

Well, it hardly matters; if they keep invading countries like this, sooner or later they will burn their hands. But hey; why can't we have some nice, asian films for change? Ridiculing yanks is getting pretty old...

 

It's amazing how like three of those people selected Australia as the base of all evil...

 

Well, some people simply don't like kangaroos.

 

That happens everywhere: a VIP TV guy was talking to another about lating gangs, at some point, he said that Ecuador is a central-american country, which, for those that understandably don't know, is not; I had the chance to study about geography and I know mostly every country around the world, but with the latest changes that happened in the former USRR where lots of new countries born, I really can't tell which is one or another and UNTIL I don't take some time studying/watching information about those countries, I WILL not know nothing about them; in Argentina there are lots of tv shows where they pick random people to ask stupid questions and always they air the most stupid answers, and I think that that doesn't make a country stupid or ignorant. I study a lot things about almost everything but you should ask me about something I didn't study, I should, maybe, answer something stupid, which, doesn't make me stupid.
Sometimes information doesn't get to every people, and sometimes, that information is not relevant to other people. That doesn't make a person stupid/ignorant.

 

Every country has its idiots.

 

Okay, methinks kitrax said it best (to which I'll paraphrase) Idiots are everywhere.

And I'll tell you exactly why 'mr. cnnnnnn pollster' managed to find so many people who seem so uninformed - ALL people are LAZY and often can't be bothered running the info they're getting through the old 'common sense' part of their brain. They just take the question asked at face value, without checking for obvious falacies. In this case, they assume that the map provided is correct - this intelligent interviewer wouldn't have any errors in his map!

And yes, I said *all* you, you even YOU (I see you there, trying to hide behind your monitor ) and even ME; it's natural to assume information being presented to you is accurate - if we had to 'second guess' everything we heard, saw, read, etc. we'd never get anything done! We HAVE to take some info 'as given' otherwise there's no point in taking in info at all.

For example, it's technically possible for someone to forge posts to a newgroup, bulletin board, forum, etc. So it's possible that say that posts attributed to...uh...Pac Man, say, are actually being sent to us from D.B. Cooper, or whatever he's calling himself nowadays.

I *could* go through all the effort of tracing the origin of the 'Pac' posts in this thread, comparing their origin with some that I know are from the real person (or DO I? ) but, is it really worth all the effort?!? So I assume...

And that's all that's happening here - most of these people are getting caught with their assumptions around their ankles. (whether they know the correct locations of countries is beside the point; they trust the interviewer)

An even more blatant example of this 'blindside poll for funny results' is Rick Mercer and those 'Talking to Americans' segments and shows. At one point with the 2000 election he managed to dupe both candidates:

- He asked Al Gore (in the middle of a busy media scrum) - if he became president - whether the first state visit Pres. Gore would make would be to Canada's capital of Toronto. Gore waffled like the party bureaucrat he is to this day, but basically agreed.

- Rick also asked then Gov. Bush (in the same noisy crowded circumstances) for his feelings about Canada's Prime Minister (Jacques Poutine) declaring that he'd prefer George W. Bush as the next President. Now I don't like Bush, his daddy, his brother, or the party they all represent, but I will give dubya this to his credit - he asked for the question to be repeated, paused a good few seconds with this glint in his eye that seemed to say "WTF is this guy on - is he trying to trick me or something? Ahhhh, what the heck, let's go along with the joke" and when he replied about america's valuable 'neighbor to the north', and how 'this man has a lot of sense' (without actually stating anything obviously wrong), he was grinnin' from ear to ear.

But my point is that they didn't have the time to stop and think (that looks bad on TV...'the potential candidate is a lethargic plodder who can't answer a simple question without screeching to a halt') and trusted someone to be honest and accurate with their info....something we ALL do.

Anyway, this kinda leads to the other group that I believe make up those that made it to air: the people that realized that the whole thing was a joke, but went ahead with it anyway.

But what disturbs me is the VERBAL responses from some people - especially the chap who decided that BRAZIL should be the next target of the War on Terror(tm). I mean, Canada I can see - I'm a Canadian and we tick off the yanks all the time (with our cheap lumber, our socialized medicine, our incessant joking about our 'dumb' neighbours, etc.), but BRAZIL?!? What the heck did they do, raise the cost of beef they sell to McDonald's or something???

It's possible that the gentleman in question was just "foolin 'round", but if not...