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Non-Americans share 15 misconceptions they had about the U.S. that changed after visiting it

"I thought the Southern accent was made up/exaggerated for TV."

via Canva/Photos

American school us, bbq, and Christmas lights.

When people across the world think of Americans, they have a mixed bag of images. They think about freedom, opportunity, enthusiasm, patriotism, and Hollywood movies. They think Americans are confident and optimistic but disinterested in the world outside of their borders. Critics of America have problems with its guns, politics, and consumerism.

People also see stereotypical images of America in countries that seem too fantastical to be true. Do kids really go to school in big yellow buses? Does everyone have a garbage disposal? What’s up with those huge red cups everyone has at parties in college movies? Well, yes, they are true, but you won’t believe it ‘til you come to the States and see the magic of America yourself.

A Redditor asked non-Americans to share their misconceptions about America that they believed until they visited the country, and there were many positive responses. After fearing they were obnoxious, many people were blown away by how kind Americans were when they met them. They were also impressed that Americans are much more cultured than they thought beforehand. However, the one drawback is that the visible poverty in the land of opportunity was distressing to many people.

americans, college parties, red solo cups, coolers, alcohol, red cup hatsA group of people at a red Solo cup party. via Canva/Photos

Here are 15 “misconceptions” people have about the U.S. before they visited America and saw it for themselves.

1. Christmas lights

"It wasn't a misconception - I just didn't believe everything you see in the movies is real and especially in Christmas movies, things are a bit exaggerated. So, I didn't believe people really had THAT crazy of Christmas lights in suburbs. I was so very wrong. America is crazy for their Christmas lights."

2. Southern accents

"I thought the Southern accent was made up/exaggerated for TV until I heard it come out of Some Guy."

"I’m from the South, and I’m even shocked at some Southern accents."

3. Angry New York pedestrians

"When I went to New York, not a single person said 'Hey, I'm walking here.' Or 'What are you? Some kinda mook?' This was disappointing."

4. New Yorkers are nice

"I feel like NYC is one of the most helpful places when you really need help. It's not help for trivial sh*t, that's everyone, everywhere, all of the time in NYC. No one has the time or energy to be polite and helpful in every situation. But when sh*t really does down, New Yorkers will step in."

"This. I’m a Midwesterner who LOVES NYC and visits often, and I’ve found that as long as you have your shit together and don’t waste their time, New Yorkers are the most helpful and stand-up people in the U.S. They just do not suffer fools."


new yorkers, americans new york city, brooklyn, walking in ny, man and womanA couple walking in New York City.via Yandesbois/Flickr

5. American friendliness

"F**k me I've rarely been treated better in another country. Class bunch of people."

"As per a saying I once heard: 'I can't stand Americans, but I never met one I didn't like.'"

6. Dry humor

"That Americans don't understand dry humour. We Brits are very snobby, thinking our deadpan wit is superior to in-your-face US sitcom humour. The Americans in my company that I'd met in online calls were super upbeat and cheerful with cheesy jokes. Meeting them in person and seeing actual dry American humour was devastating. They were so funny."

"I feel like our dry humor is just really committing to the bit that it’s hard to tell we are in on the joke."

7. Millionaires

"I used to work with guys from Africa. They were shocked that all Americans aren’t millionaires. I ask why they thought everyone was a millionaire and they said in the movies everyone is held for ransom and it is a million dollars. There aren’t poor or homeless people in movies. It wasn’t what they expected."

8. American food

"The food. I'm French and I thought everything would be awful but i didcoverd the south US version of BBQ and I miss it since. I also discovered sweet potatoes there and I eat it all the time now."


american food, bar-b-que, sausage, brisket, cole slaw, pickles, chickenA plate of American bar-b-que.via Canva/Photos

9. Mobility scooters

"I didn't see a single person on a mobility scooter. I was led to believe they were everywhere."

"Did you go into a Walmart. That’s where they are."

10. Sincerity

"I was told that Americans were superficial and that their interest wasn’t genuine. But after traveling to the U.S. frequently in recent years, I’ve realized that Americans are actually kind, open, and genuinely interested in talking to you."

11. Guns

"I expected to see people walking around carrying guns like it’s a Rambo cosplay."

"That surprises me bc I'm from Texas too, and I have seen a ton of people open carrying. Maybe you're from a different part than me, but in the Dallas area, they are wearing their holsters to the gas station."

12. Fast food

"I genuinely believed everyone ate fast food for every meal. Then I visited and realized there are tons of people who are super into cooking, farmer’s markets, and healthy eating."

"My friend from France recently asked me if I eat burgers and fries for every meal because I'm American, and that's what we eat in shows."


mcdonald's, cheeseburger, fast food french fries, american food, beef, cheeseA McDonald's cheeseburger and fries.via Breanna Schulze/Flickr

13. The size

"It’s not really a misconception but I was taken aback by the scale of everything. From the size of the land itself, the distances, the size of cities, parks and neighborhoods, the height and size of the buildings downtown of a few major cities, the variety of products in supermarkets and the packaging sizes….the list goes on and on. Obviously, I knew it was to be expected, but seeing it with my own eyes was truly fascinating, and in some ways it made me understand the American way of thinking and living a little bit more."

14. Poverty

"I thought US people all lived in good conditions. But the levels of poverty in cities like Portland, Seattle, Oakland, and New York were astonishing."

"And then there's the poverty in poor and rural areas. The UN about a decade ago sent observers to study parts of Alabama because conditions there were akin to what's seen in third world countries."

15. The media

"I was just taken aback by how much influence the media has here, to an almost brainwashing degree."

"The 24-hour 'news' stations (i.e. Fox and CNN) are just mouthpieces for their respective political parties and their viewers just believe almost everything they say. Social Media is even worse as so much misinformation is spread through there with little to no fact-checking."

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What the idea of 'personal responsibility' really means in a pandemic

@gerabito/Twitter

We Americans are an interesting bunch. We cherish our independence. We love our rugged individualism. Despite having pride in our system of government, we really don't like government telling us what to do.

Since rebellion is literally how we were founded, it's sort of baked into our national identity. But it doesn't always serve us well. Especially when we find ourselves in a global pandemic.

Individualism—at least the "I do what I want, when I want" idea—is the antithesis of what is needed to keep contagious disease under control. More than anything in my memory, the coronavirus pandemic has tested our nation's ability to put up a united front, and so far we are failing miserably.

I hear a lot of the same complaints from people who decry government mandates to wear a mask or governors' stay-at-home orders. We don't need a nanny state telling us what we can and can't do! This is tyranny! This is dictatorship! What ever happened to personal responsibility?

I actually have the same question. What did happen to personal responsibility?

Anti-mask folks throw that phrase around a lot, but I don't think it means what they think it means. After all, if everyone were actually taking personal responsibility, we wouldn't be in the position we've found ourselves in—floundering in an out-of-control pandemic with an accelerating death toll and continuing economic devastation because of our ongoing, half-assed response to it.

Taking personal responsibility doesn't mean only looking out for yourself. It means being responsible for yourself, which includes doing the responsible thing for the society of which you are a part precisely because you are a part of it.

More than 400 years ago, the poet John Donne wrote these famous words, which are timelessly and universally true: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main." We are connected with one another whether we like it or not. And because we are part of a whole, we have a responsibility toward the whole. The irony in this particular moment, of course, is that our connectedness is what's killing us. It feels counterintuitive that we must acknowledge our oneness by staying apart from one another, but that's what keeping a pandemic from destroying the whole requires.

Personal responsibility in a pandemic means choosing, as individuals, to exercise that responsibility we have toward one another. It means using our individual agency, our freedom of choice, to do the right thing for the whole. It means that even if I am not personally at high risk of complications or death from COVID-19, I take responsibility for how my personal actions affect others. If lifelong public servants who are at the top of the epidemiology field ask me to wear a mask to protect others and keep our country from floundering in a pandemic, I choose to wear a mask. If the public health officials in my state, who are generally some of the least appreciated people in our government, say that we need to keep our distance from one another to protect the vulnerable, I choose to abide by their guidelines.

Making the choice to do what public health officials are recommending is what being personally responsible looks like in a pandemic.

As an American who trusts most politicians about as far as I can throw them, I understand people's distrust of government. But just because a message is coming from government officials doesn't mean it's untrustworthy. Just because a mandate is coming form government officials doesn't mean it's tyrannical. Generally speaking, governor's are following the advice of public health officials—the people who have spent their lives and careers preparing for just such a time as this—and if you think public health officials are in the same category as the politicians you don't trust, well, you're probably overly paranoid.

The key here is that if people were actually good about taking personal responsibility, we wouldn't have to keep having government mandates in the first place. The countries that have managed to control the virus—New Zealand, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, to name a few—did so with a combination of swift and decisive governmental response and unified action on the part of the people. An effective pandemic response requires both. Guidelines from the government are useless if people don't comply, and people don't know what they should do if the government isn't clear about what needs to be done and why. Successful countries understood both things. America seems to have rejected both things.

Our government's handling has been terrible, yes, but Americans' tacit distrust of government is also not a virtue in this moment. By extending that distrust to public health officials, we are hurting ourselves and each other. We have sacrificed the societal freedom that would come with controlling the virus for individual freedom in the moment, which results in effectively losing individual freedom anyway because if the society we live in is negatively impacted by a virus, so are we.

"Live free or die" is too simplistic right now. In a pandemic, "live free or die" effectively means "live free and kill people." Is that really the kind of freedom we cherish?

The bottom line is that my right to do what I want, when I want, doesn't outweigh my responsibility to my fellow Americans. Not when there's a pandemic raging through the country. I sacrifice for the greater good because I am part of that greater good. I recognize that our collective freedom in the long run is more important than my individual freedom in the moment, and I take personal responsibility by doing my part to ensure our collective freedom.

We stay distanced because we're connected, and we isolate because we are not islands. And as John Donne wrote later in his poem, we see ourselves in one another and acknowledge what our essential oneness means as we watch the statistics rise:

"Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

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She was tired of the flag being hijacked by hatred. So she made a design to reclaim it.

The American flag is supposed to be a symbol of what unites us.

But, unfortunately, the symbolism of Old Glory often gets muddled. When patriotism gets conflated with extreme nationalism, the flag becomes a symbol of xenophobia. When people fly the flag with pride while preaching of intolerance, our flag becomes a symbol of bigotry. When the banner itself is held higher in importance than the freedoms for which it stands, our flag becomes a false idol.

I've long believed patriotism doesn't belong only to those who define it by narrow, nationalistic standards. However, those are the folks who usually pop into my mind when I think of people who show their patriotism with a flag. And I'm not alone.

Courtney Hartman was tired of the flag being associated with intolerance and hatred. So she decided to reclaim it.

The designer and founder of kids' clothing line Free to Be Kids felt like the American flag was being hijacked by hate. She put out a call for help two years ago:

"I want to try to make an American flag design where the stripes are comprised of words like compassion, understanding, justice, equality, liberty, love, etc. To show the American flag as a symbol of the things that we do love and should love about this country. It's an ambitious design idea and I don't know if I can pull it off but I feel like we all could kind of use this perspective on America right now and I'd like to try.

So... I could really use your help with words of love for America!"

People responded, and the America the Wonderful shirt design was born.

[rebelmouse-image 19477798 dam="1" original_size="600x600" caption="Image via Free to Be Kids." expand=1]Image via Free to Be Kids.

Character qualities and humanitarian values make up the stars and stripes in a bold and beautiful statement.

With words like love, compassion, hope, justice, peace, diversity, equality, inclusivity, and more, Hartman reclaimed the flag as a symbol of what America really stands for — or at least what she wants it to aspire to be.

"We've committed so many atrocities," says Hartman. "But America was designed to be better, to learn and grow and improve. So the values represented in our design could be seen as aspirational. Or maybe they are just our good side — what Michelle Obama in her DNC speech called 'our national virtues.' We have a lot to face up to, but I believe that the words represented on our flag design are a vision of the America that so many people want us to be."

Hartman rearranged the 50 stars over the blue field into the word "LOVE," and not just because it fit well. Love is the key, and it serves as an anchor for everything else.

"We need to wear our love like a breastplate, our justice like armor," Hartman wrote on the company's blog. "Because love is what will prevail. When hate is loud, love must not be silent. ... Love, love, love is what will take back our country." Indeed.

Thank you, Free to Be Kids, for taking back our flag and reminding America that healthy patriotism and progressive values are in no way mutually exclusive.

We were not compensated to write this article — we'd tell you if we were! — we just really loved this design and what it stands for.

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Lindsey Vonn was asked about Trump and the Olympics. Her answer nailed it.

When U.S. Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn is racing down snowy South Korean mountains in February, you can bet President Donald Trump will be the last person on her mind.

Ahead of the Winter Games this year in Pyeongchang, the 33-year-old gold medalist sat down with CNN's Christina MacFarlane to chat about competing once again for Team USA and the possibility of winning her second gold medal.

Vonn at the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010. Photo by Francis Bompard/Agence Zoom/Getty Images.

But the topic veered away from sports at one point and, as conversations often do these days, turned to Trump.

"You previously competed at three Olympic games under two presidents," MacFarlane asked. "How will it feel competing at an Olympic games for a United States whose president is Donald Trump?”

“Well, I hope to represent the people of the United States — not the president," Vonn said, her tone clearly reflecting strong disapproval of Trump.

"I take the Olympics very seriously and what they mean and what they represent, what walking under our flag means in the opening ceremonies," she continued. "I want to represent our country well, and I don't think there are a lot of people currently in our government that do that," she concluded.

Vonn's patriotism and fervent opposition to Trumpism come at a remarkable moment in presidential history.

Unlike his recent predecessors, Trump has intentionally waded into controversy, capitalizing on cultural wars by attacking black and brown professional athletes who've protested during the national anthem at their games. Contrary to the president's claims, the players aren't protesting the flag, military, or anthem itself but rather using the moment to peacefully draw attention to racial inequality in our criminal justice system — namely, police brutality.

As a prolific American athlete, Vonn's disapproval of Trump coinciding with her patriotism — which is focused on the people of the U.S. and not its leader — shouldn't be overlooked.

When asked by CNN if she'd accept an invitation to the White House by the Trump administration, Vonn quickly responded, "Absolutely not."

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