Ultimately the reason why it makes me roll my eyes every time there's a post that makes fun of the way americans don't know shit about the world and someone adds a response about how it's not niceys to make fun of people for not knowing things and everyone has blindspots and you weren't born knowing everything and blah blah blah today's lucky 10.000 UwwwwwU etc. is because, ultimately, I don't think what's wrong with the average online american is that they're ignorant, ignorant people are everywhere, and everyone is ignorant about a lot of things.
What's wrong with the average online american is not that they're ignorant, it's that every time they have to confront the things they're ignorant about they immediately construct a narrative where their ignorance is the product of some uniquely and exclusively american disadvantage that they, and apparently no one else in the world, have to deal with ("our educative system doesn't teach us anything about the world, you don't understand how bad it is", "we're bombarded with propaganda since birth", "we're subjected to a culture that punishes curiosity instead of rewarding it", "we're so overworked and underpaid, you think we have the energy to try to learn anything in our spare time?", or my favorite I saw a couple months ago "well you might not know this but for the average american traveling abroad is not really accessible so it's not like we can visit other countries to learn about their culture" as if the average person outside the US is constantly taking international vacations or something) when, in reality, their ignorance is a product of immense cultural privilege, a product of the fact that they even have the ability to go through their entire life without needing to learn shit about anywhere else in the world, which is something that no one else in the world has (well people from other first world countries kinda have it too but not to the same degree as americans because in terms of cultural hegemony the U.S. is the first world's first world)
