Why Do The British Look Down on Americans?

How do you feel the British perceive Americans? I feel like there's quite a lot of, I hate to say it, but mockery involved. I think a lot of people think Americans are extreme. Do you think that the British think that they're better than Americans? I think some do, yeah. There's a lot to make fun of, I think. We're also fantastic at queuing as well. That's another great thing about us. They're rubbing me the wrong way because they're too extra. It doesn't seem like it's genuine. Today, I'm in London to get to the bottom of a very important question. For as long as I can remember, I have had the sense that the British look down on Americans. This is a generalization and therefore doesn't apply to everyone, but it's a strong enough trend that I felt I needed to investigate this further. Here's a quote from Prince Harry's memoir, Spare, that perfectly captures the feeling that I have about this. With some, the anti-American sentiment ran very hot. I was reminded of my childhood when people warned me all the time about Americans. Too loud, too rich, too happy, too confident, too direct, too honest. I'm very curious what people are going to have to say about this. I have a feeling I'm onto something. Okay, so having said that, let's start talking to some people. I'm wondering if I could just get a moment. I haven't got too much time. We're off to a very slow start. That's okay, let's just change up the spot because I'm feeling like there's enough projections in that 100 meter radius. You know, I always feel really terrible that everyone's first attitude is, oh, you're from America, are you? Oh, okay. You know, which is always a bit, you always feel a bit bad about that because I'm not entirely sure why we still do that, but you know, it's fine. How do you feel perceived as Americans by the British here in London? A big, stupid, bellowing oaf. Really? Yeah, genuinely. I always feel like I have to apologize for being Americans. Like, I know my accent's the worst thing you'll hear today, but can I just order a coffee? My experience, I feel like, has been a little bit different. I think that might be somewhat informed by the fact that I'm a student here. At first, there was a bit of a learning curve. Like, when I would speak loudly on the tube, I would kind of get looks, and people would tell me, like, you're being American. Like, maybe not. There's definitely sort of a sense that there is a lot of difficult things going on in America and that America potentially could be quite a difficult place to live, especially if you're of color or from the Middle East. I have to admit, the inspiration to make this video came when I moved to Europe. As I've explored in previous videos on this channel, many Europeans have mixed its negative views of Americans as dumb and uncultured. But to my surprise... The same goes for the British. I've come to realize that the only people that see the British as intelligent and sophisticated are the Americans. Many Europeans, like the Portuguese or the Spanish, see a very different reality. The British that go off on holiday to get extremely drunk and break things. The British that are isolationist with Brexit. The British that don't learn foreign languages that stick to their native tongue. Wait a second, I thought to myself, that's what Americans do. Other people do this as well? How dare they copy us? I kid, of course. Still, it does feel like the Brits act like the Americans of Europe, but I am certain that is not something that they'd like to hear said about them. I mean no offense, I am American after all. Does that not prove my point though? No one wants to stoop to the level of Americans. I felt I had to get my answers directly from the source. My perception is that the UK is one foot in Europe, one foot like in the Americas. It feels like it should be in the middle of the Atlantic. Do you agree with that? I think that's a pretty conclusive idea. Yeah, I think that's definitely true because a lot of people wouldn't even class England as being in Europe. You know, even in England when you talk about going to Europe, no one ever thinks you mean Doncaster. They always think you mean Germany. You do get some perception that everyone's some sort of like a Ballygirl accent or something like that. And I think that annoys people quite a lot. But then again, it's the same way that... English people are often perceived as all sort of being from London. The American dream, making yourself better and being seen to be self-improving. And it's a lot about earning money and being the best you can and going to the gym and all these kind of things. Do you think that's, are you saying it's positive or negative? I think it's a positive thing for Americans, but I think the way it's perceived is often everyone goes, oh, get out of my face, you know, because they probably, no one likes to. enjoy someone else's success, at least in England anyway. I think in America it's probably very different. Oh great, you got a promotion. Fucking bastard, you know. The identity of being American is like such a thing. Right. That I don't think... other places have that as much. I don't think people are necessarily dumb and I don't think it's a question of being dumb. I think it's just that there's this idea of like, yeah, being the best. To think that like people in America, depending on where you're born, you can have access to care or not. It's frightening. And I don't know how you can speak about being the best when you can't even make sure that everybody's like taken care of. Are you treating everyone the same way in America? No, not everyone is treated the same way. Just like not everyone is treated the same way in Europe. Having been to America a lot, they often ask, obviously as a joke, but just like, do you know the royal family or anything like that? So do you feel that generally, this big generalization, there's mockery towards the Americans and Americans towards the British, it's more like, cute, we think you're cute. Yeah, I would say that, yeah. How do you feel about Americans thinking you're cute? Well, it can be taken as a compliment, obviously, but if they think that we're like as a country not really a force to be reckoned with then just because we do all these things that date back to long before the US was established, it's not really relevant that they can mock us for that. Is it condescending? Would you say? A little bit. Or ignorant? More ignorant. It doesn't hurt me. How do you feel Americans perceive the British, first of all? They kind of look down on us. Do you feel that? I feel like Americans feel everything like they're on top of everything. And there's always competition between the two. So do you feel like the British have a chip on their shoulder a little bit because of that? Yeah, a lot. What do you think the British are better at than Americans? Yeah, polite, really. More polite? Yeah. More talkative, more helpful. More helpful? The British are more helpful? Yeah, than Americans. But Americans are nice, they're funny, got good music. Got good music, okay. Well, the British have good music too, man. Americans are taking over the music scene. But I mean, come on, there's a lot of great British music. So here's the thing that I think is going on here. We are not the same, the Brits and the Americans, but we sure have a lot of similarities. Compare us to the Japanese or to Native Americans or to Ethiopians and the differences between Americans and the British seems relatively small. We're like blood siblings in the village that is the globe. So here's what all of this started to make me think of. There's a concept in psychoanalysis. I'm going to read you the definition, but it's called the narcissism of small differences. This comes from Freud. The narcissism of small differences is the idea that the more a relationship or community shares commonalities, the more likely the people in it are to engage in interpersonal feuds and mutual ridicule because of hypersensitivity to minor differences perceived in each other. We see this all over the world, between the Argentinians and the Chileans, for example, between the French and the Belgians, and indeed, I think this is what is happening between the Brits and the Americans. But at the end of the day, I feel like we make the little things that make us different. much bigger than they really are. The way that we speak and the words that we use, and again we were talking about this weren't we? Yeah. About certain words. We've been talking about things like autumn versus fall and it's like that's often something that people like bring up and for some, well it's because it's a simpler word and it's like ah fall, American. You guys don't say fall. No we don't say fall. Oh interesting okay. So this is autumn. But you can say Autumn as well. pouring myself into making these videos as high quality as possible. And all of this is possible thanks to sponsor support like from BetterHelp. I am a big believer in therapy. There are a lot of people in my life that have been deeply affected by therapy, myself included. And what I really like about BetterHelp is how flexible it is. First of all, there's flexibility in who you're speaking with. As in, you can freely change therapists if you're not clicking with the person that you're speaking with, which I think is super important because I feel like it's really important for me to feel fully comfortable. to be able to open up with the person I'm talking to. There's also flexibility with regards to how you speak to your therapist, whether that's via text or video call, depending on what you prefer, as well as when and where, right? Because this is all remote, and so you can easily adapt it to when it fits into your schedule. Furthermore, all of this is a lot more affordable than traditional therapy. And I like that all of these things make it so that it's not something that's only accessible to the wealthy. In a crazy and chaotic and changing world, It feels important to me to be able to have access to something like this. It's easy to sign up and get matched with a therapist. I'll leave a link in the description if you want to check it out. Otherwise, you can just go to betterhelp.com slash Nathaniel Drew. Clicking that link helps support this channel, but it also gives you 10% off your first month when you sign up with BetterHelp. Having said all that, thank you BetterHelp for supporting my work. And now let's dive back in. Personally, when I come to the UK, I have the impression that I've come halfway across the Atlantic, not just off the coast of continental Europe. And by that I mean culturally, it feels so much more similar to the life that I had in the US. The convenience of life, the speed, the capitalism, the language. Everyone speaks English. Everyone's got the same sort of core values. I'm not necessarily a big Christian person at all, but... We all come from this like Christian based countries. America and Australia are English. There's some things that happened in history, but at the end of the day, we're kind of all the same group of people in that regard. Culturally influenced by the same group. So I personally don't see many differences at all. I mean, I've got wonderful American friends who I adore. So that question for me is a difficult one because I think they're great. They're fantastic. I think the differences in the way our languages and the way we use different words that's where there's a difference so pretty minor yeah do you think that sometimes some of the british media or or the portion of the british population that looks down on americans is it a way to deflect some of the issues that exist here could that be said of all societies you can say that of all societies but you can also say that about the media they're always distracting aren't they from topics whatever it is america's seen as very alpha male we think about it in terms of masculine feminine yeah there's an alpha illness to americans and maybe it's just the way they speak, the accent, but you don't really have that sense of Britain. I think there's a stereotype of the repressed male, that soft-spoken. Considering we're like right on the edge of Europe, we have more in common with America. in many ways than we do with the rest of Europe, which in theory is where we should be more aligned. And I think there's sort of something that can feel sort of slightly odd about that, you know, like with the whole Brexit thing, breaking away more from where we're most closely connected to and sort of being in a situation where, you know, we're going to end up with chlorinated chicken instead. There's this tendency to think of Americans as just, you know, simplistic really. Are you like... Annoyed by the Americans here in Sometimes Depends how they are Now the interesting thing is I love to drag the US through the mud and criticize it for all the things that I think it deserves criticism for but the second the Brits start criticizing me or the US you have nothing to say kind of like I can criticize where I grew up but you aren't allowed to and the British in my opinion are doing They're a version of the same thing criticizing themselves to no end, but no one wants an outside opinion. Maybe we all do this. I think we all do this. It's like pointing at someone else's flooding house when your own house is on fire. So I lived in America for 60 years. I lived in California, Alabama, and Oklahoma for three years. Everyone hears my accent. Yeah, and it's like, oh, where America are you from? I'm actually from Australia, but then they give me their little opinions on American stuff. So I've actually had to... play defense a couple times since i've been out here i'm so serious i'm so serious they talk about guns or they talk about this but they don't have like a very good understanding not just english people just people around the world even in australia of the history of america and why those things became what they were people trying to you know, throw rocks in and hide their hands. They don't want the blame to be on them, so it's easy to put it on the big superpower that is on everyone's TV. My perception is I don't consider Americans necessarily lesser in terms of like lifestyle, culture, let's say. I just think it's a bit more apparent. than it is in the UK, but the UK is just as problematic. There's always sort of a sense in the past that like America was sort of, you know, two decades ahead of what was happening in this country. There is a sense that we're getting closer in a time frame. I would say younger generations tend to be a bit more, and the only word I can think of it is shameful of the heritage. I think it's a lot of things from like colonialization and things like that. There tends to be a lot more shame. around it. We're a small island, right? So we've got a small island mentality, but because we've got a small island mentality, we've got to overcome it by kind of that impression that we're the best. And I think that's changing, though. I wouldn't say it's necessarily a total reflection of society now, but I think historically it has been, of course. Let's flip the question. How are Americans perceiving the British? My answer to that is... There is a power dynamic going on and for better for worse the US is Much more of a world superpower right now, so I don't think that the US feels threatened necessarily like competitive with Great Britain because of that I think there's kind of like a ah they're they're cute you know what I mean like they're they're the Harry Potter and James Bond and sophisticated and You know? He's like autumn. Exactly. But I also think that there's also a major degree of ignorance. Like the US is so self-involved. We're not even paying attention to what's going on elsewhere in the world. So there's not even enough to form an opinion, you know? Now this video was definitely supposed to be in good fun. I harbor no ill will towards the British. I find our rivalries as human beings across cultures, across nations to be comical and interesting. It's like an insight into human... psychology. And despite all of the, you know, criticizing going on here, I'd like to end on a positive note. I'd like to express my appreciation for a few things that I think the British do better than Americans. Your healthcare system, for one. Also, the Premier League. They say football was invented in England, and if that is true, as someone with Argentinian background, I can only thank you. I also have to thank you for your incredible music. What a contribution to our collective heritage. It is a foreign idea to me to have a royal family. but I respect the commitment to tradition. I did move here the week that the queen died, so it was really interesting to see. I think my first impression of the British as a public was that of mourning for their queen, the 14-hour long line to go see her lying in state. So I think it was a little bit of a shock. This might sound silly, but how procedural the British can be. I noticed that that tends to be like every British person I've met, tends to be very procedural, as opposed to Americans, I think are a little bit more... like dare I say free-spirited or individualistic. So I mean I think there that's not to say that one is better than the other. And as a final note we are obviously a world of individuals and so stereotypes never fully work. Still I find it's so fascinating to explore the stereotypes and cliches that we have for one another. Not always but often there is some sort of basis of truth there or else they wouldn't spread and persist as they do. Anyway having said all of that I hope you enjoyed this video. And if you did, please consider liking it, which does the algorithms to share this with more people. I thought it was fun and it's a format I'd love to continue exploring and also consider subscribing so that you can see more of the material that I make. With that, I hope to see you soon.

Get 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor https://betterhelp.com/nathanieldrew

my blog/newsletter → https://nathanieldrew.substack.com/
second channel → https://www.youtube.com/@nobackupplan
instagram → https://www.instagram.com/nathanieldrew_/
online courses → https://www.nathanieldrew.com/onlinecourses
music → https://johnny-harris-x-tom-fox.disco.ac/cat/1632843844