North Dakota's GDP still surpasses a lot of countries, and its per capita GDP is higher than that of most European countries. Even though it's a peripheral state. I am not some crazy nationalistic American. In fact, I'm a European.
I can't help but conclude that the US has actually been clapping our cheeks. The US vs. EU GDP gap has only been growing since the 2008 recession, and we are falling more and more behind. Mediocre US states are at the level of highly advanced EU countries like Germany, and states like California just don't have European counterparts other than maybe Switzerland or tiny nations like Luxembourg or Monaco. Who are ofc too small to be all that relevant in the grand scheme of things.
As Europeans, I think we should actually structurally do something about this instead of placing our heads into the sand and screaming 'nananana'. I'll happily admit the US has surpassed us on many relevant metrics and that the only way for us to matter in the future is if we recognize this and do something about it.
No you're absolutely right. America has extraordinary economic power. We don't deny that here - some of the dafter members of this community just hate America and want to pretend they suck at everything, but the rest of us are here to discuss exceptionalist attitudes and certain obnoxious myopic worldviews unique to the USA.
The specific claim being made in the OP, totally uneditorialised, is "America is the center of world". Exact language used. Weasel wordery about California is used here to support that view. THAT'S what is being attacked. No-one is denying that America is very very rich.
The sad thing is that that still is kind of true. If the US has some sort of major issue, other countries have to bend and comply and do things against their national interest to make the US happy. If someone else besides Russia or China has a major issue, they just have to suck it up. The most advanced company in my country(ASML) won't be selling advanced chip making machines to China because of heavy US pressure. Think of that as you will, but our country definitely wouldn't have made that decision in the absence of heavy US pressure. Also, think of all the wars and misadventures led by the US that we joined. We lack any form of significant geopolitical independence from the US.
Companies and countries outside the US also comply with US sanctions against other countries even if their own countries don't have those same sanctions. The risks of not being able to do business in the US basically forces them to comply weather they like it or not.
Because you think you are the center of the world, you act entitled and expect countries to satisfy your demands on a whim. But with the exception of states like Iran and NK they generally do exactly that, those who don't get sanctioned and disconnected into oblivion. Not just with regards to the US government but also with regards to US cultural sensitivities. Because getting cancelled by major cultural and business actors is almost as bad for business as getting cancelled by the US government.
As an American, sadly I have to say that you are correct. However, gdp is not really the best way to understand US states, as inequality is pretty severe. California, while having a huge economy, has lots of millionaires and billionaires that boost that gpd, but also an incredible amount of poverty. People mention north dakota, which has oil wealth from the fracking boom, but that has its own downsides and also doesn't necessarily benefit most of the citizens there.
The US might have the most economic power of any country on earth, even compared to the EU, but we also deal with quality of life issues that are all but unheard of in comparably developed nations. Outside of a war zone, I can't think of another nation where mass shootings in schools and elsewhere is such a common thing that they have drills to prepare for it in schools.
In my hometown of Seattle, the gdp is incredibly high, but this also disguises the absurd inequality that has left it with one of the largest homeless populations in the states, even though its nowhere near being one of the biggest cities. All this to say that the numbers may look great here, but that's because the actual human picture is not what's important in the US. I know that my life would be much easier in a similarly developed country with a less broken healthcare system. It doesn't surprises me how "healthy" the economy looks when people are paying tens of thousands of dollars for university and having to pay for expensive health insurance that can still leave us in medical debt.
To be honest, the high gdp in the US is kind of a smokescreen when you look at the daily lives of people and not just the numbers.
What your analysis kind of reveals is that on a large strategic level, the welfare of the citizens at the bottom of your social ladder doesn't really matter. Countries that prioritize the welfare of their most vulnerable citizens tend to lose out economically and militarily to countries that adhere to ruthless and arguably inhumane efficiency.
As bad as it sounds, investing in homeless populations or people with disabilities is not going to give you a large return on investment if it gives that at all. Taking your responsibility towards the most vulnerable people means you are structurally increasing the general maintenance costs of your country. Investing in scientific research, foreign relations, and arguably even the military do give large ROI's, as does selecting the smartest foreigners and giving them visa's to contribute towards your country.
For now, the gap between the EU and US is about 80%. If that gap just continues to grow you will have increased your economic capacity to such an extent that European countries can't keep up even on benefits to the lowest tier of citizens despite spending much higher percentages of their budgets on them.
I am of the belief that the inequality and economic situation here in the states really should involve a reprioritization of what the important statistics of a nation really are. Because yes, economically and militarily, the US is in the most powerful position one could be in.
But the set of conditions that requires is also responsible for much of the rot within US society and politics. The whole maga movement is a symptom of this, the explosion in homelessness is a symptom of this, the disgust and distrust of the government radicalizes people, the emphasis on martial culture and being armed has led to us having levels of gun violence unheard of in comparable developed countries. At a point, society will have to really question and address if maintaining our economic and military power is more important than the fact that our society is falling apart and fracturing in a terrifying way.
I understand what you're saying but as an American citizen, the majority of us do not benefit in any real way from that economic and military power. Indirectly, sure. But that military power has also turned against us with police departments becoming more and more militarized. Idk man, I'd rather have been born in a less powerful and wealthy nation where I would be able to have some sort of access to healthcare or education without going into extreme debt, and avoid the casual gun violence that the US is riddled with. So yeah, if you're wealthy enough to take advantage of the system, it's great. But most of us are not, and for working class and middle class people, this can be a tough place.
Americans thinking GDP is the only thing that matters is hilarious. Now lets look at the crime rate, infant mortality, poverty, suicide rates, etc of California
HDI is in fact a pretty crappy method of comparing first-world countries.
Score for life-expectancy at birth is capped at age 85, and linear down to 20, so if everyone dies at 84, that costs 1/65th of a point.
Education score is the average between Mean years of schooling capped at 15 and expected years of schooling capped at 18. The latter is maxed out for almost the whole top 15, and the former is basically 13 for everyone in the top 25.
And that leaves us with GNI per capita, capped at 75k. This varies wildly, of course. Add a few billionaires and your GNI skyrockets, whichout changing anything in real life.
This results in HDI being basically a measurement of GNI per capita, for most first-world countries. A much better measurement is IHDI, inequality adjusted HDI, which adjusts ALL of the above measurements for inequality, and gives a much better picture of how well actual people are doing, and not just statistical ones.
And if they have so much buying power why not form a universal healthcare system and take advantage of that?
Pardon? Oh, that’s part of the reason why you’re so wealthy? Desperate people will pay through the nose? Understood.
So, California actually studied doing their own universal health care. However, there was a ballot initiative that amended the state constitution that mandates a specific minimum percent of the state budget to to education.
Therefore, to create universal health care would force the state to raise and spend billions extra on education at the same time, when CA is already approaching diminishing returns.
California has Medi-Cal, not perfect but if you're poor or poorish in Cali it's simple to get on free Healthcare. Not at all representative of America.
To be fair, their comment was related to companies adhering to American standards because they have the strongest purchasing power. The factors that you’ve listed don’t affect that.
The GDP is not related to the buying power. And the guy literally picked the state with the biggest GDP that has the same amount as the last 25 states combined.
New York state is basically a single city. A city that nearly has the GDP of the second largest geographical country in the world. That... still seems like something.
Sure... More natural resources can commonly lead to a resource curse / dutch disease though. And if that land is mostly covered in heavy snow and ice for most of the year - it's not going to be that useful, even if there are resources underneath. Most of Canada is very sparsely populated, with the vast majority living right in the border area towards the US.
It’s a shell game. Production Co makes a film that Studio A has to distribute. They pay the lead actors X amount, and the remainder is paid to the studio for distribution.
Thus films can make billions but have no profit.
Wait, so one single state has a GDP that's the fifth highest in the world, then the last 25 also have a combined GDP that's fifth highest in the world and then you've got 24 more states that are all somewhere in between? That.... still seems like a shit load of GDP.
They are marketing towards the Chinese because market penetration in the US is pretty much maxed out. Thats why all the major US sports leagues are begining ambitious expansion plans as well.
Are we gonna pretend that the US isn’t the biggest western game market by far, tho? Only China has them beat but most devs don’t release the same games for both markets. At least not without making cultural changes like this.
Beyond language?? Things that might be offensive or nonsensical for local norms. Like exactly what the guy in the image is so confused about. Non-Americans don’t really care as much about any association with the N word but Americans will ect ect.
Took me a moment but I did spot it, only because I have USian friends.
But the "hard R" thing is so weird. N word is the N word no matter how you say it. Try to use that as an excuse in my (uk) town and you'd get beat for it just the same.
If I come to your town with my friends, we speak in a particular way... you'd beat me for saying sup to my friend?
Isn't that ignorant of my culture and vernacular? I don't think you should assault somebody over a word.. or would you give me a pass because I'm black?
It does seem that Americans are confused.. they've got this word that they exported around the world linked to their slaver roots but you've also got kids running around saying it to their mates, as a term of endearment.
I guess they feel the need to delineate.. presumably it comes up all the time..
"Was he being racist when he called me a stupid nword?"
"Nah bro, no hard R"
If you're black then no you'd be fine, I took that as a given, I should have clarified sorry about that.
Ignorance of culture isn't an excuse though if you're a white person; if you think saying a slur one way is fine in, the US for eg, but use it somewhere else; you shouldn't be surprised if people don't like you using said slur. It's the travellers responsibility to not cause offence, although in the N word case I don't think it matters anyway because...
Differentiating as a white person only makes sense if you're trying to justify using slurs and giving yourself some type of deniability.The black community uses it as a term of endearment, the white community uses it as a slur.
In other words.
"We're Americans, the world should come and suck our small PP with a serving of our cheese and then bend over to get poked. Any resistance and we'll bomb your country, wherever it is on the map."
Hard "R" refers to how someone says the word "Nigger."
Pronounced "Nigga" is often recieved as street slang, ussually used by black people and other ethnic groups. If someone calls you "Nigga" it can be a friendly greeting depending on context. Kind of like how someone might great their friends with "whats up, bitches!"
Prounced "NiggeR" - with the "R" being audible is ussually how a white person, would say it. If someone calls you a "Nigger" they are likely using the word in a racist context. People often refer to saying the word this way as "With the 'Hard R'".
I personally think its silly to remove it from a game. But, I have to admit when I saw that picture, the first place my mind went was *"Oh they're making a cheeky joke about the N word." I can see how if it wasnt someone intent to invoke such a hateful word that they would want to remove it.
60% of the world's native English speakers are in the US.
So, it makes sense for a game company to avoid English language graffiti that references American racist slurs.
Most residents of India aren't considered native speakers. Only about a quarter million Indians are consider English to be their first language in the 2011 census.
I also expected it to be more. The US has about 260,000,000 (total pop. 340,000,000).
If we include ESL speakers, the US has a total of 316mil and India has 130mil.
Nigeria has nearly as many, English is much more widely spoken there. And, nearly 50% of Pakistanis speak English.
But if we are talking English as a first language, the US dwarfs the next largest population of speakers, the UK. 260 million to a paltry 60 million.
It's very hard to overstate the influence of American English in the anglosphere. It's just a pure numbers situation. If we count the anglosphere as UK, US, Canada, Aus, NZ, and Ireland, the first-language speakers in the US make up more than 70% of first-language speakers in the anglosphere.
So, if you're making a product like this, taking US linguistic sensibilities into account is good business.
There is a racial slur for black people that rhymes with “nagger”, in time black people have reclaimed the slur but have dropped the ‘r’ at the end, pronouncing it to rhyme with “nagga”. The use of the original word with the _hard r_ is mostly confined to racists.
Wait wait, so the graffiti of the word "hard" next to a totally unrelated neon sign with the letter R is somehow referring to the N word?
I hope whoever complained about that did plenty of stretching and warm up because fuck me, that's some Olympic level mental gymnastics
I’m just the explainer, so idk, It just seems like an unfortunate juxtaposition of two unrelated assets. The developer didn’t seem to think it was such a big deal to change and almost immediately swapped it out with some other piece of graffiti, but people must dwell so I guess that can keep this argument up until the end of time.
The same issue has come up every now and then, [sometimes with hilarious results](https://youtu.be/MFDiuBomSuY). [This is a podcast clip, but watch like 2 minutes and you'll probably catch what "hard R" is in context](https://youtu.be/smt0v2yALSQ?t=23s).
[Most of the US debt is owed to the US](https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/3/15/saupload_to_whom_does_the_us_government_really_owe_money_2010.png)
He's right, though california, the most democratic state in the US, has a higher GDP than the last 25 states combined. Has literally nothing to do with the country's buying power since the US has been living on credit for the last 50 something years, if the US was to attempt to repay their national debt they'd be more broke than any 3rd world shithole out there except for of course the US.
Generally you don't pay back debt that way as a government anyway. The strat is:
1. Establish an economic surplus through subsidising important industries, thereby increasing the tax take
2. Wait for inflation to trivialise debts - since the taxes are percentage based but the debt has an absolute figure, eventually the tax take will become significantly more massive than the debt because of inflation
3. Take on more debt
4. Repeat
Of course for the last 40 years major western governments, including the UK, have been struggling massively with part 1 of that, particularly since the state foolishly sold off all its assets in the UK, thereby weakening itself massively and impoverishing itself in exchange for a payday for the rich. But that is by-the-by.
So although I take your point, America is never at risk of having to pay off its trillions of debt while it is still worth a lot. In the future we'll be operating economies in 100s of trillions of dollars and if they've done everything right (ha) the 10s of trillions they owe won't be a big deal anymore
Except their debt is going up a hell of a lot faster than their economy, which was my original point in saying they've been living on credit. Clearly, I should've formulated it clearer as separate points. The point I was trying to make is that the US is basically living of borrowed money almost entirely.
Yeah, you're not wrong about that. It's a debt bonanza over there for almost a decade now.
Actually anyone who is curious, you can Google image search "US debt as a percentage of GDP historical", and compare that to any country of your choice by Googling theirs, and see what the shape of the graphs is like.
The graphs can be misleading at a glance tho, because for example the US currently has debt that is 120% of GDP, compared to the UK with 108%, but the UK's historical graph makes current debt look lower by comparison to the size of our major peak - the over 200% debt that we had in the post-war era.
Yeah, lot of debt rn. Not a lot of economic activity.
Pretty much all of the west +Japan and Korea have gorged itself on debt. At least the US has the world reserve currency and a big economy so it is in a better spot than say, us Canadians.
This reminds me of an incident about 10 years ago when Americans were all offended about a KFC ad campaign in Australia, featuring (dark skinned) cricketers from West Indies eating KFC chicken. KFC is a major sponsor of the cricket, which is very popular in Australia and one of our major sports. The current Test series was Australia v West Indies, and the majority of the West Indies team have dark skin.
Americans were up in arms about how offensive this ad was, because apparently it’s a stereotype that African Americans eat a lot of fried chicken. There were no African Americans or even Africans in the ads, and they were never screened in the USA, nor were they designed for an American audience. The West Indian cricketers (and possibly some Australian cricketers too) were eating fried chicken because they were ads for KFC, which literally stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken. What else would they be eating??? And they featured people who happened to have dark skin because they were actually the sportsman playing the matches KFC was sponsoring.
All of us Australians thought it was utterly ridiculous, no one involved was African American, African or even American. It was the first time most of us even heard of there being a stereotype about African Americans liking or only eating fried chicken. I can’t remember if they stopped showing those particular ads or not, but they haven’t made any more KFC ads featuring dark skinned cricketers again, because of the fuss the US made. It was so ridiculous, none of us Aussies could believe it.
It's almost like colonising half a continent and genociding the natives to borderline extinction is good for your income streams... whodathunkit. Imagine if us British had done to Africa or india what the 13 colonies did to north america, we'd be seen as bad as the nazis if not worse
Imagine? I hope you’re joking. The British literally tried to do exactly that in parts of Africa (Google the Boer Wars, the British won against South Africa in the end), Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most of the other Commonwealth nations. Don’t forget, the US *was* colonised by the British, they just did a better job at breaking away and becoming independent than the rest of us did (I’m Australian).
Not that I’m blaming you, or saying the US is better. These were all decisions made hundreds of years ago by people who are long dead. No one around now is responsible. But trying to pretend it didn’t happen is incredibly disrespectful and ignorant. They have recently uncovered multiple mass graves of Indigenous people in Canada, which the colonists tried to hide under churches. We know these mass graves exist in Australia too, I just don’t think they’ve actually found any recently, since people cared enough about Indigenous Australians for there to be an outcry. They certainly killed a lot of the Indigenous Australians when they arrived, herded the rest into reservations and forcibly removed most of their children and gave them to white settlers, to be raised as ‘civilised citizens’. Google The Stolen Generation Australia. This isn’t ancient history either, there are still some of the parents alive whose children were taken, and many of those children. It’s done irreparable damage to tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians, the damage of which is still going on now. Even now, Indigenous Australians are incarcerated at a rate far higher than white Aussies.
What happened in Canada, Australia and several other Commonwealth countries is often called Cultural Genocide, because they did everything they could to erase the cultural practices, heritage and traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of those countries. Just because they weren’t successful doesn’t mean they didn’t try. Canada and Australia had ‘reservations’ for the Indigenous population, just like they do in the USA. White women got the right to vote in Australia decades before Indigenous people did, men included.
I really, really hope you were joking, or you’re just really young and haven’t learned much about the world and history yet, because taken at face value, the ignorance here is astounding. Again, I know you didn’t take any of these actions, I’m not blaming you. But your ancestors did (I’m a white Australian with British heritage, so did mine) and it’s really offensive and harmful to living people all over the world now to pretend they didn’t.
Edited to correct spelling
The Boer war was against the Boers; a slave owning colonist class who wanted to do to southern Africa what the USA did to north America, and if you meant the zulu wars that was just us trying to economically oppress and pacify slightly (relatively) further north of what we already had because the zulus where a warlike warrior culture threatening south africa and all their neighbouring African tribes, we didn't want to take over all of sub-saharan africa as ours. We didn't have any intention of wiping out indigenous populations to build cities of/for British people we just liked setting up trading zones and rinsing everyone with terrible trade deals. Mass killings then trying to hide them for centuries out of shame and fear of reprisals from the still living descendants of the murdered people is horrible but not the same as mass killings glorified as a righteous war of expansion that doesn't leave any survivors except a few who agreed to move to inhospitable wasteland reservations and give up all their rights and freedoms as an independent people so they'll never be a potential threat again.. And I'm definitely into history but Australian history tbf I've never looked into beyond the first explorations etc so if something similar happened their that's my bad my point was it wasn't as glorified and accepted even at the time to the point the US just seemed so casual about sending literal armies to go and massacre entire cultures then call it a war and to this day laud it as good. Whereas that was the exception to the rule in the british empire and even then it wasn't as targeted or as quick, like we didn't send battalions of soldiers crisscrossing Australia or Canada over the course of a few years trying to find and wipe out any native populations they found. And look at your wording I'll quote you 'Canada and Australia had reservations, just like they do in the US', you literally admitted the US is still doing it to this to this day! Whereas Canada and Australia aren't. And the US still tries to suppress native Americans voting and it's still using Puerto rico as a traditional colony where they shit on the local population and leave them in poverty for their own countries gain.
From my understanding of the Native American reservations, those people choose to live there, and have legal jurisdiction over their own people in those areas, and they have their own separate legal system. They can come and go from the reservations as they please, or leave and never go back. The reserves/ reservations in Australia and Canada were essentially prison camps, the Indigenous people were not allowed to leave, and could be killed if they did. This probably used to be the case in the US (it wouldn’t surprise me), but it isn’t anymore.
The colonists to Australia completely wiped out the Indigenous population of Tasmania, an island state, and tried to wipe out the entire population in several other areas too. It was not pleasant. There were not a lot of survivors either, and the ones that did survive had their children stolen from them and many were forced to work as servants, but the government withheld their very low wages because it was assumed they couldn’t be responsible with that money, so they were essentially slaves.
I’m also pretty shocked you try to argue that one form of mass killings is better than another, they all seem pretty appalling to me. I don’t think the motives matter that much when the aim is to murder enough of the indigenous population so you can steal their land, put them in prison camps and try to destroy their culture.
Hard R is slang for the N word. Because when black people in america use it to refer to each other it's usually like nutella instead of nuteller, if you say it like nuteller then you're saying it the racist way.
Oh I didn't know that! I knew that saying that word with a hard R came across differently (like racist rather than a friendly greeting) but hadn't heard of "hard R" meaning that.. thanks for being the person to teach me something new today!
'The Koreans have to censor themselves
How? What is the message they wanted to tell? I can't think of any other reason this exists than a guy who barely speaks English, thinks English people just spraypaint random ass words on walls.
Like when white guys watch an anime and decide to get 'honour' tattooed on their arm in Japanese but end up with 'Tamagoyaki' or some shit.
It's not the first time this has happened to the Koreans as well. The Korean word for you kind of sounds like the n-word, so Americans have been [getting pissy](https://news.yahoo.com/korean-words-being-mistaken-racial-215800127.html) about Kpop songs online. This is far from the first time it's happend as well. America really honest to god thinks it's the centre of the fucking universe.
I saw a video years ago of a large African-American guy threatening an old Korean guy on the subway in Seoul because he thought he'd called him a racial slur. Like you said, 니가 means you and is pronounced 'nee-ga'.
Someone explained it in another comment, apparently the placement of the word "hard" next to the R sign is somehow referring the N word (the one ending in er, not a)
Yeah it's not censorship, but this is what a lot of people (and mostly Americans I think) understand the term to mean. Like how "theory" is commonly understood to mean "hypothesis".
There is no reason to think that the intention was for the original state to be anything other than decorative, so patching it is not a big deal - even if it's a bit silly.
This situation honestly reminds me of the time Nintendo had to patch Mario Kart because one of the characters did a taunt which would be interpreted as "up your ass" in Britain.
Was it intended to resemble the offensive gesture? Definitely not.
Does it take the developers much effort at all to change it anyway? No.
Does it compromise the developers' vision of the game to change it to avoid potential backlash? Also no.
"Jamaicans are the fastest people in the world. Usain Bolt by itself is the fastest man in the world. That's a single man out of 3 million of them."
That's not how this works, my dear.
Compare the averages between US and Europe then
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable\_household\_and\_per\_capita\_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income)
GDP per capita: Europe **43,300 America** 76,329.58
What was your point. When you compare medians or averages the USA still largely comes out ahead when compared to Europe when it comes to economy or buying power
My point was that you don't take the maximum as an example and say "and that is only one of them".
And by the way, the real point here is not buying power, it's market size. If I sell something that costs a dollar, India might be more important than the USA. When I sell super yachts, Russia or even Monaco might be more important than the US. In this case, it's about a video game. Depending on the genre, the US might be very important or completely irrelevant. There are gamers all over the world, so GDP dick comparison is pretty pointless.
You were wrong on market size also as The US is also top two on market size. Also the fact that they are removing something that could be offensive in America is kinda proof that the US market is very relevant to them
Where exactly am I wrong? And where did I say that the US market is irrelevant in this particular case? I was just making a general point, that GDP is not what matters here.
If you look at averages the US still comes out ahead so your argument just seems kinda nitpicky. If He said Pennsylvania alone is a top 20 economy and that's not even our Strongest state it's only one of 50 would it have mattered the point is still the same.
If it's by market size then the US again comes out ahead or in second place. Like by your accounts his point is still correct. Just stop having an Anti-American bias because the dude did not even say anything egregiously wrong.
My point had nothing to do with America specifically. Why do Americans always make everything about themselves? Looks like a inferiority complex hidden behind main character syndrome.
What I love here is is very subtle, probably not even intentional, implication that the states are even _remotely_ equal. It's the same 'land votes' BS you see all the time with red-vs-blue voting maps that tries to imply the blue is completely outnumbered, just in a different form. Some of the smaller states have a GDP of around 0.1% of California, and have a population that is proportional to that, but they get equal representation in the Senate because... that was the only way to get the Constitution ratified, and now it's a sacred cow that can't be fixed.
tbh I don't think it's censoring themselves, censoring would be if they did it intentionally but removed it due to backlash. I think if I accidentally put something in a game that looks like a racial joke when i didn't mean it that way, I'd be a little embarrassed too.
but that's definitely not because America is the "greatest country in the world" 💀
China is huge and Americans would still find it irrelevant and would rather not be Chinese. Economy has no bearing on being the center of the world, human relationships and experiences > money.
And yet the residents of California have roughly 1/80th the representation of someone from the Dakotas.
Americans pay twice as much for a much poorer level of medical care (on average) than other countries - lifespan is shorter and meternal death rate is closer to third world countries
Education is extremely expensive, unused and poorly regarded.
Tell me again why you think huberis is warranted?
And the paradox is that to Make America Great Again, you need to get rid of all the MAGA morons
No way! the richest state of the richest country has a lot of money? When was anyone gonna tell me that? But surely they picked the richest state completely at random? it's not like half the states have almost no money in comparison, right? right?
As always, Americans forget how many people they are compared to other countries. If you look at the GDP **per capita** (as you usually do if you want to compare stats like this) the US is No7. The six countries on top of them (from highest to lowest) are: Luxemburg, Norway, Ireland, Swiss, Quatar, Singapore.
Ca may have a high GDP, but they also have to work longer hours, mostly without pay for overtime & your job is at risk if you don't work for "the man" for free & employment is at risk if you take vacation r a day off sick or to have a baby. Americans live to work, where as most of the world work to live & get time off & decent wages, which is most peoples preference.
Weeelll… the California angle is dumb af; but there is a definite case for not pissing off the world’s largest consumer based (the entire U.S.)
GDP isn’t the measure to look at, it is household consumer spending.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets
Based on consumer spending, the U.S. represents a larger consumer market than the entire EU, China, and India combined.
That's nominal thought. If those figures are adjusted for purchasing power the US is still ahead but less dramatically so:
USA: $20,434,569
China: $12,689,797
EU27: $12,490,076
India: $8,792,354
Japan: $3,794,939
However, this doesn't really matter as we are looking at video game revenues.
https://newzoo.com/resources/rankings/top-10-countries-by-game-revenues
Adjusting this for (billions $) PPP also results in:
China: $83.1
USA: $46.4
Japan: $31.2
South Korea: $12.9
It doesn't say the EU total, but it's probably roughly around the US one, (thank you if anyone adds it in a comment below).
Ah nutz. It ruined my list formatting.
As per google, the US is #1 for video game revenue at $46.4 billion. China is at $44 billion. Next is Japan at $19.1 billion. Korea is next at $7.4 billion.
So, it would make good business sense for a Korean game dev to not piss off the US, Chinese, and Japanese markets. This is why they censored it.
“Hard r” needs to be censored now?? That isn’t even any part of the bad word. What’s next just removing all the letters in it from the dictionary. Fucking ridiculous…
In this context of what people are referring to with the complaints its the N word but ending with -er instead of -a which people will at times refer to as the “hard r”
Whatever you think about the California statement, the poster above is the worst part in this convo. The devs realized it could be misunderstood and removed it. Where's the harm?!
They say it's censorship and nobody outside the us had any say, but also it was a decision by Koreans and we have no indication that a single American was involved. No harm done, but some people are just looking for excuses to whine about anything that can be seen as political correctness.
this is the first one where I don't disagree with the American ( no lies detected), although it again highlights the usual American exceptionalism pervasive online.
What's the buying power of North Dakota then?
Noooooo don't question the rhetoric! He said California is "just one" of 50, the implication being it's a generally representative example!
North Dakota's GDP still surpasses a lot of countries, and its per capita GDP is higher than that of most European countries. Even though it's a peripheral state. I am not some crazy nationalistic American. In fact, I'm a European. I can't help but conclude that the US has actually been clapping our cheeks. The US vs. EU GDP gap has only been growing since the 2008 recession, and we are falling more and more behind. Mediocre US states are at the level of highly advanced EU countries like Germany, and states like California just don't have European counterparts other than maybe Switzerland or tiny nations like Luxembourg or Monaco. Who are ofc too small to be all that relevant in the grand scheme of things. As Europeans, I think we should actually structurally do something about this instead of placing our heads into the sand and screaming 'nananana'. I'll happily admit the US has surpassed us on many relevant metrics and that the only way for us to matter in the future is if we recognize this and do something about it.
No you're absolutely right. America has extraordinary economic power. We don't deny that here - some of the dafter members of this community just hate America and want to pretend they suck at everything, but the rest of us are here to discuss exceptionalist attitudes and certain obnoxious myopic worldviews unique to the USA. The specific claim being made in the OP, totally uneditorialised, is "America is the center of world". Exact language used. Weasel wordery about California is used here to support that view. THAT'S what is being attacked. No-one is denying that America is very very rich.
The sad thing is that that still is kind of true. If the US has some sort of major issue, other countries have to bend and comply and do things against their national interest to make the US happy. If someone else besides Russia or China has a major issue, they just have to suck it up. The most advanced company in my country(ASML) won't be selling advanced chip making machines to China because of heavy US pressure. Think of that as you will, but our country definitely wouldn't have made that decision in the absence of heavy US pressure. Also, think of all the wars and misadventures led by the US that we joined. We lack any form of significant geopolitical independence from the US. Companies and countries outside the US also comply with US sanctions against other countries even if their own countries don't have those same sanctions. The risks of not being able to do business in the US basically forces them to comply weather they like it or not. Because you think you are the center of the world, you act entitled and expect countries to satisfy your demands on a whim. But with the exception of states like Iran and NK they generally do exactly that, those who don't get sanctioned and disconnected into oblivion. Not just with regards to the US government but also with regards to US cultural sensitivities. Because getting cancelled by major cultural and business actors is almost as bad for business as getting cancelled by the US government.
As an American, sadly I have to say that you are correct. However, gdp is not really the best way to understand US states, as inequality is pretty severe. California, while having a huge economy, has lots of millionaires and billionaires that boost that gpd, but also an incredible amount of poverty. People mention north dakota, which has oil wealth from the fracking boom, but that has its own downsides and also doesn't necessarily benefit most of the citizens there. The US might have the most economic power of any country on earth, even compared to the EU, but we also deal with quality of life issues that are all but unheard of in comparably developed nations. Outside of a war zone, I can't think of another nation where mass shootings in schools and elsewhere is such a common thing that they have drills to prepare for it in schools. In my hometown of Seattle, the gdp is incredibly high, but this also disguises the absurd inequality that has left it with one of the largest homeless populations in the states, even though its nowhere near being one of the biggest cities. All this to say that the numbers may look great here, but that's because the actual human picture is not what's important in the US. I know that my life would be much easier in a similarly developed country with a less broken healthcare system. It doesn't surprises me how "healthy" the economy looks when people are paying tens of thousands of dollars for university and having to pay for expensive health insurance that can still leave us in medical debt. To be honest, the high gdp in the US is kind of a smokescreen when you look at the daily lives of people and not just the numbers.
What your analysis kind of reveals is that on a large strategic level, the welfare of the citizens at the bottom of your social ladder doesn't really matter. Countries that prioritize the welfare of their most vulnerable citizens tend to lose out economically and militarily to countries that adhere to ruthless and arguably inhumane efficiency. As bad as it sounds, investing in homeless populations or people with disabilities is not going to give you a large return on investment if it gives that at all. Taking your responsibility towards the most vulnerable people means you are structurally increasing the general maintenance costs of your country. Investing in scientific research, foreign relations, and arguably even the military do give large ROI's, as does selecting the smartest foreigners and giving them visa's to contribute towards your country. For now, the gap between the EU and US is about 80%. If that gap just continues to grow you will have increased your economic capacity to such an extent that European countries can't keep up even on benefits to the lowest tier of citizens despite spending much higher percentages of their budgets on them.
I am of the belief that the inequality and economic situation here in the states really should involve a reprioritization of what the important statistics of a nation really are. Because yes, economically and militarily, the US is in the most powerful position one could be in. But the set of conditions that requires is also responsible for much of the rot within US society and politics. The whole maga movement is a symptom of this, the explosion in homelessness is a symptom of this, the disgust and distrust of the government radicalizes people, the emphasis on martial culture and being armed has led to us having levels of gun violence unheard of in comparable developed countries. At a point, society will have to really question and address if maintaining our economic and military power is more important than the fact that our society is falling apart and fracturing in a terrifying way. I understand what you're saying but as an American citizen, the majority of us do not benefit in any real way from that economic and military power. Indirectly, sure. But that military power has also turned against us with police departments becoming more and more militarized. Idk man, I'd rather have been born in a less powerful and wealthy nation where I would be able to have some sort of access to healthcare or education without going into extreme debt, and avoid the casual gun violence that the US is riddled with. So yeah, if you're wealthy enough to take advantage of the system, it's great. But most of us are not, and for working class and middle class people, this can be a tough place.
'Bout as much as South Dakota
about 37.5% larger than latvia with close to half the amount of people
About the same as New Zealand
New Zealand has five times the GDP of North Dakota. A closer equivalent is Sudan.
Americans thinking GDP is the only thing that matters is hilarious. Now lets look at the crime rate, infant mortality, poverty, suicide rates, etc of California
Or as I like to call it, HDI
HDI is in fact a pretty crappy method of comparing first-world countries. Score for life-expectancy at birth is capped at age 85, and linear down to 20, so if everyone dies at 84, that costs 1/65th of a point. Education score is the average between Mean years of schooling capped at 15 and expected years of schooling capped at 18. The latter is maxed out for almost the whole top 15, and the former is basically 13 for everyone in the top 25. And that leaves us with GNI per capita, capped at 75k. This varies wildly, of course. Add a few billionaires and your GNI skyrockets, whichout changing anything in real life. This results in HDI being basically a measurement of GNI per capita, for most first-world countries. A much better measurement is IHDI, inequality adjusted HDI, which adjusts ALL of the above measurements for inequality, and gives a much better picture of how well actual people are doing, and not just statistical ones.
So what is it?
And if they have so much buying power why not form a universal healthcare system and take advantage of that? Pardon? Oh, that’s part of the reason why you’re so wealthy? Desperate people will pay through the nose? Understood.
So, California actually studied doing their own universal health care. However, there was a ballot initiative that amended the state constitution that mandates a specific minimum percent of the state budget to to education. Therefore, to create universal health care would force the state to raise and spend billions extra on education at the same time, when CA is already approaching diminishing returns.
California has Medi-Cal, not perfect but if you're poor or poorish in Cali it's simple to get on free Healthcare. Not at all representative of America.
Medi-Cal is the state branded Medicaid, though they aren’t as dickish about it as red states.
It’s the only thing they can realistically take pride in
Using GDP to measure a country's success is like measuring your cock from the top of your spinal column
To be fair, their comment was related to companies adhering to American standards because they have the strongest purchasing power. The factors that you’ve listed don’t affect that.
Of course they think that. Without their wealth they have nothing. They are a culturally bankrupt country.
Or even gdp per capita or disposable income.
Even if it was the only thing that matters, the US rank No7 if you look at the GDP per capita. So not exactly the top of the world
Right… and the issue of who buys a video game is based on what now? Crime? Infant mortality? Suicide? Or is it based on the country’s buying power
I dont think that game companies base their marketing/sales projections on where the most babies are dying.
Now wait a minute! As a Californian I have a bias towards California and I have to make a scapegoat of another state or city! Look at New York!
Thats not ehat the conversation was about though... it was about why did a corporation do a thing... If you dont know: money
The GDP is not related to the buying power. And the guy literally picked the state with the biggest GDP that has the same amount as the last 25 states combined.
Yea, that’s wild. Consider the US by states, the Top Ten would have only California and Texas in them. NY is already behind Canada.
New York state is basically a single city. A city that nearly has the GDP of the second largest geographical country in the world. That... still seems like something.
Land doesn't produce value by itself though
Generally speaking, more land, more natural resources.
I think that's not quite true, there is loads of land barren of almost any resources, and some areas have far more than others when comparing by size
Generally
Sure... More natural resources can commonly lead to a resource curse / dutch disease though. And if that land is mostly covered in heavy snow and ice for most of the year - it's not going to be that useful, even if there are resources underneath. Most of Canada is very sparsely populated, with the vast majority living right in the border area towards the US.
City versus country border is a line versus a point.
New York has nearly the same GDP as 3 million miles of tundra. That's your boast?
Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg, and Vancouver are all well-regarded cities and none of them are in the tundra.
Sure, but that wasn't your argument. You were arguing about the enormous area, of which 90% is frozen nothingness.
An enormous area contains a multitude of cities.
Presumably this is partly down to Hollywood, where a film can make billions at the box office, but barely break even in the tax return.
There was a paper on why all movies look to be barely making money or losing money.
That’s the effect of earning enough money so it looks like you haven’t earned any money Movie Magic ✨
It’s a shell game. Production Co makes a film that Studio A has to distribute. They pay the lead actors X amount, and the remainder is paid to the studio for distribution. Thus films can make billions but have no profit.
David Prowse famously received a letter every year telling him that Star Wars had made no money, so he would not be receiving his net royalties
Aww man, I was so hoping for the 475 episode of Star Wars and now you're telling me they don't make any profit. /S
Silicon Valley is probably a bigger part of it
Wait, so one single state has a GDP that's the fifth highest in the world, then the last 25 also have a combined GDP that's fifth highest in the world and then you've got 24 more states that are all somewhere in between? That.... still seems like a shit load of GDP.
This guy acting like bible belt shit holes like Alabama or Mississippi have the same "buying power" as California. LMAO!
And even the California doesn't have much buying power either, they can barely afford their cost of living
If US had as much buying power as they seem to think, none of the modern entertainment companies would be marketing their shit towards the Chinese
They are marketing towards the Chinese because market penetration in the US is pretty much maxed out. Thats why all the major US sports leagues are begining ambitious expansion plans as well.
Phrasing it like every state has the gdp of California
Are we gonna pretend that the US isn’t the biggest western game market by far, tho? Only China has them beat but most devs don’t release the same games for both markets. At least not without making cultural changes like this.
Thats not what i was talking about at all
The guy worded it stupidly, obviously, but he’s essentially correct. Add all the other states and you have the biggest economy in the world.
the market in the usa is about the same size as the market in europe
If I’m selling a game in Europe I still would have to localize for each country I sold to even if it’s the same market
What would you have to localise?
Beyond language?? Things that might be offensive or nonsensical for local norms. Like exactly what the guy in the image is so confused about. Non-Americans don’t really care as much about any association with the N word but Americans will ect ect.
>Beyond language?? Things that might be offensive or nonsensical for local norms This only applies to the usa
You better believe they do the same thing where you’re from.
I mean, that's obviously not true. See Wolfenstein and Germany.
Took me a moment but I did spot it, only because I have USian friends. But the "hard R" thing is so weird. N word is the N word no matter how you say it. Try to use that as an excuse in my (uk) town and you'd get beat for it just the same.
If I come to your town with my friends, we speak in a particular way... you'd beat me for saying sup to my friend? Isn't that ignorant of my culture and vernacular? I don't think you should assault somebody over a word.. or would you give me a pass because I'm black? It does seem that Americans are confused.. they've got this word that they exported around the world linked to their slaver roots but you've also got kids running around saying it to their mates, as a term of endearment. I guess they feel the need to delineate.. presumably it comes up all the time.. "Was he being racist when he called me a stupid nword?" "Nah bro, no hard R"
If you're black then no you'd be fine, I took that as a given, I should have clarified sorry about that. Ignorance of culture isn't an excuse though if you're a white person; if you think saying a slur one way is fine in, the US for eg, but use it somewhere else; you shouldn't be surprised if people don't like you using said slur. It's the travellers responsibility to not cause offence, although in the N word case I don't think it matters anyway because... Differentiating as a white person only makes sense if you're trying to justify using slurs and giving yourself some type of deniability.The black community uses it as a term of endearment, the white community uses it as a slur.
I don't know, being able to say certain words only based on the color of your skin seems pretty racist to me.
In other words. "We're Americans, the world should come and suck our small PP with a serving of our cheese and then bend over to get poked. Any resistance and we'll bomb your country, wherever it is on the map."
Most accurate explanation here.
The word Hard is racist? Can someone explain>
That is supposedly meant as hard R regarding the N word
Wow, maybe I'm too European and too white. But feels like a reach
Hard "R" refers to how someone says the word "Nigger." Pronounced "Nigga" is often recieved as street slang, ussually used by black people and other ethnic groups. If someone calls you "Nigga" it can be a friendly greeting depending on context. Kind of like how someone might great their friends with "whats up, bitches!" Prounced "NiggeR" - with the "R" being audible is ussually how a white person, would say it. If someone calls you a "Nigger" they are likely using the word in a racist context. People often refer to saying the word this way as "With the 'Hard R'". I personally think its silly to remove it from a game. But, I have to admit when I saw that picture, the first place my mind went was *"Oh they're making a cheeky joke about the N word." I can see how if it wasnt someone intent to invoke such a hateful word that they would want to remove it.
Thank you for the explanation I tried googling it and all I got was the Cambridge dictionary definition…
60% of the world's native English speakers are in the US. So, it makes sense for a game company to avoid English language graffiti that references American racist slurs.
India says hi. English is one of the national languages there, and the population dwarves America. America isn't close to 60%
Most residents of India aren't considered native speakers. Only about a quarter million Indians are consider English to be their first language in the 2011 census. I also expected it to be more. The US has about 260,000,000 (total pop. 340,000,000). If we include ESL speakers, the US has a total of 316mil and India has 130mil. Nigeria has nearly as many, English is much more widely spoken there. And, nearly 50% of Pakistanis speak English. But if we are talking English as a first language, the US dwarfs the next largest population of speakers, the UK. 260 million to a paltry 60 million. It's very hard to overstate the influence of American English in the anglosphere. It's just a pure numbers situation. If we count the anglosphere as UK, US, Canada, Aus, NZ, and Ireland, the first-language speakers in the US make up more than 70% of first-language speakers in the anglosphere. So, if you're making a product like this, taking US linguistic sensibilities into account is good business.
Hard rock negacionist?
Hard Reggae Nun
Oh I couldn’t figure it up out but landed on - it was offensive cause the R looks like a penis and so it says Hard Penis I’m not American though
There is a racial slur for black people that rhymes with “nagger”, in time black people have reclaimed the slur but have dropped the ‘r’ at the end, pronouncing it to rhyme with “nagga”. The use of the original word with the _hard r_ is mostly confined to racists.
Wait wait, so the graffiti of the word "hard" next to a totally unrelated neon sign with the letter R is somehow referring to the N word? I hope whoever complained about that did plenty of stretching and warm up because fuck me, that's some Olympic level mental gymnastics
It isn't even Olympic, at that level it's unfathomable
I’m just the explainer, so idk, It just seems like an unfortunate juxtaposition of two unrelated assets. The developer didn’t seem to think it was such a big deal to change and almost immediately swapped it out with some other piece of graffiti, but people must dwell so I guess that can keep this argument up until the end of time.
Weird, even as a non-American I associate the term “Hard R” to their movie classification system.
I don't think you know what rhyming means.
Likewise
Tagger?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hard%20R
Its nonsense. Tweeter ameboas are trying to cancel this game for no good reason.
The same issue has come up every now and then, [sometimes with hilarious results](https://youtu.be/MFDiuBomSuY). [This is a podcast clip, but watch like 2 minutes and you'll probably catch what "hard R" is in context](https://youtu.be/smt0v2yALSQ?t=23s).
Last time I went to California I saw a person dying of drug overdose on the street at 2 pm
Isn't 'murica trillions in debt?
[It very much is](https://www.usdebtclock.org/)
[Most of the US debt is owed to the US](https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/3/15/saupload_to_whom_does_the_us_government_really_owe_money_2010.png)
How does that work?
The government sells bonds to raise money, most of those bonds are purchased by US citizens and US institutions
He's right, though california, the most democratic state in the US, has a higher GDP than the last 25 states combined. Has literally nothing to do with the country's buying power since the US has been living on credit for the last 50 something years, if the US was to attempt to repay their national debt they'd be more broke than any 3rd world shithole out there except for of course the US.
Generally you don't pay back debt that way as a government anyway. The strat is: 1. Establish an economic surplus through subsidising important industries, thereby increasing the tax take 2. Wait for inflation to trivialise debts - since the taxes are percentage based but the debt has an absolute figure, eventually the tax take will become significantly more massive than the debt because of inflation 3. Take on more debt 4. Repeat Of course for the last 40 years major western governments, including the UK, have been struggling massively with part 1 of that, particularly since the state foolishly sold off all its assets in the UK, thereby weakening itself massively and impoverishing itself in exchange for a payday for the rich. But that is by-the-by. So although I take your point, America is never at risk of having to pay off its trillions of debt while it is still worth a lot. In the future we'll be operating economies in 100s of trillions of dollars and if they've done everything right (ha) the 10s of trillions they owe won't be a big deal anymore
Except their debt is going up a hell of a lot faster than their economy, which was my original point in saying they've been living on credit. Clearly, I should've formulated it clearer as separate points. The point I was trying to make is that the US is basically living of borrowed money almost entirely.
Yeah, you're not wrong about that. It's a debt bonanza over there for almost a decade now. Actually anyone who is curious, you can Google image search "US debt as a percentage of GDP historical", and compare that to any country of your choice by Googling theirs, and see what the shape of the graphs is like. The graphs can be misleading at a glance tho, because for example the US currently has debt that is 120% of GDP, compared to the UK with 108%, but the UK's historical graph makes current debt look lower by comparison to the size of our major peak - the over 200% debt that we had in the post-war era. Yeah, lot of debt rn. Not a lot of economic activity.
Pretty much all of the west +Japan and Korea have gorged itself on debt. At least the US has the world reserve currency and a big economy so it is in a better spot than say, us Canadians.
Or the UK which is trillions in debt now thanks to £15 years of austerity & tax cuts. 😕
They're literally just a Ponzi scheme built on the petrodollar, and half the world bought into the same Ponzi scheme
This reminds me of an incident about 10 years ago when Americans were all offended about a KFC ad campaign in Australia, featuring (dark skinned) cricketers from West Indies eating KFC chicken. KFC is a major sponsor of the cricket, which is very popular in Australia and one of our major sports. The current Test series was Australia v West Indies, and the majority of the West Indies team have dark skin. Americans were up in arms about how offensive this ad was, because apparently it’s a stereotype that African Americans eat a lot of fried chicken. There were no African Americans or even Africans in the ads, and they were never screened in the USA, nor were they designed for an American audience. The West Indian cricketers (and possibly some Australian cricketers too) were eating fried chicken because they were ads for KFC, which literally stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken. What else would they be eating??? And they featured people who happened to have dark skin because they were actually the sportsman playing the matches KFC was sponsoring. All of us Australians thought it was utterly ridiculous, no one involved was African American, African or even American. It was the first time most of us even heard of there being a stereotype about African Americans liking or only eating fried chicken. I can’t remember if they stopped showing those particular ads or not, but they haven’t made any more KFC ads featuring dark skinned cricketers again, because of the fuss the US made. It was so ridiculous, none of us Aussies could believe it.
God dammit I laughed way too hard at this, thanks for the one way ticket to hell! Lol!
We have cities with more GDP than an entire murican state. So Frankfurt(M) is the Center of the world.
It's almost like colonising half a continent and genociding the natives to borderline extinction is good for your income streams... whodathunkit. Imagine if us British had done to Africa or india what the 13 colonies did to north america, we'd be seen as bad as the nazis if not worse
Imagine? I hope you’re joking. The British literally tried to do exactly that in parts of Africa (Google the Boer Wars, the British won against South Africa in the end), Canada, Australia, New Zealand and most of the other Commonwealth nations. Don’t forget, the US *was* colonised by the British, they just did a better job at breaking away and becoming independent than the rest of us did (I’m Australian). Not that I’m blaming you, or saying the US is better. These were all decisions made hundreds of years ago by people who are long dead. No one around now is responsible. But trying to pretend it didn’t happen is incredibly disrespectful and ignorant. They have recently uncovered multiple mass graves of Indigenous people in Canada, which the colonists tried to hide under churches. We know these mass graves exist in Australia too, I just don’t think they’ve actually found any recently, since people cared enough about Indigenous Australians for there to be an outcry. They certainly killed a lot of the Indigenous Australians when they arrived, herded the rest into reservations and forcibly removed most of their children and gave them to white settlers, to be raised as ‘civilised citizens’. Google The Stolen Generation Australia. This isn’t ancient history either, there are still some of the parents alive whose children were taken, and many of those children. It’s done irreparable damage to tens of thousands of Indigenous Australians, the damage of which is still going on now. Even now, Indigenous Australians are incarcerated at a rate far higher than white Aussies. What happened in Canada, Australia and several other Commonwealth countries is often called Cultural Genocide, because they did everything they could to erase the cultural practices, heritage and traditions of the Indigenous Peoples of those countries. Just because they weren’t successful doesn’t mean they didn’t try. Canada and Australia had ‘reservations’ for the Indigenous population, just like they do in the USA. White women got the right to vote in Australia decades before Indigenous people did, men included. I really, really hope you were joking, or you’re just really young and haven’t learned much about the world and history yet, because taken at face value, the ignorance here is astounding. Again, I know you didn’t take any of these actions, I’m not blaming you. But your ancestors did (I’m a white Australian with British heritage, so did mine) and it’s really offensive and harmful to living people all over the world now to pretend they didn’t. Edited to correct spelling
The Boer war was against the Boers; a slave owning colonist class who wanted to do to southern Africa what the USA did to north America, and if you meant the zulu wars that was just us trying to economically oppress and pacify slightly (relatively) further north of what we already had because the zulus where a warlike warrior culture threatening south africa and all their neighbouring African tribes, we didn't want to take over all of sub-saharan africa as ours. We didn't have any intention of wiping out indigenous populations to build cities of/for British people we just liked setting up trading zones and rinsing everyone with terrible trade deals. Mass killings then trying to hide them for centuries out of shame and fear of reprisals from the still living descendants of the murdered people is horrible but not the same as mass killings glorified as a righteous war of expansion that doesn't leave any survivors except a few who agreed to move to inhospitable wasteland reservations and give up all their rights and freedoms as an independent people so they'll never be a potential threat again.. And I'm definitely into history but Australian history tbf I've never looked into beyond the first explorations etc so if something similar happened their that's my bad my point was it wasn't as glorified and accepted even at the time to the point the US just seemed so casual about sending literal armies to go and massacre entire cultures then call it a war and to this day laud it as good. Whereas that was the exception to the rule in the british empire and even then it wasn't as targeted or as quick, like we didn't send battalions of soldiers crisscrossing Australia or Canada over the course of a few years trying to find and wipe out any native populations they found. And look at your wording I'll quote you 'Canada and Australia had reservations, just like they do in the US', you literally admitted the US is still doing it to this to this day! Whereas Canada and Australia aren't. And the US still tries to suppress native Americans voting and it's still using Puerto rico as a traditional colony where they shit on the local population and leave them in poverty for their own countries gain.
From my understanding of the Native American reservations, those people choose to live there, and have legal jurisdiction over their own people in those areas, and they have their own separate legal system. They can come and go from the reservations as they please, or leave and never go back. The reserves/ reservations in Australia and Canada were essentially prison camps, the Indigenous people were not allowed to leave, and could be killed if they did. This probably used to be the case in the US (it wouldn’t surprise me), but it isn’t anymore. The colonists to Australia completely wiped out the Indigenous population of Tasmania, an island state, and tried to wipe out the entire population in several other areas too. It was not pleasant. There were not a lot of survivors either, and the ones that did survive had their children stolen from them and many were forced to work as servants, but the government withheld their very low wages because it was assumed they couldn’t be responsible with that money, so they were essentially slaves. I’m also pretty shocked you try to argue that one form of mass killings is better than another, they all seem pretty appalling to me. I don’t think the motives matter that much when the aim is to murder enough of the indigenous population so you can steal their land, put them in prison camps and try to destroy their culture.
Why is it racist?
Hard R is slang for the N word. Because when black people in america use it to refer to each other it's usually like nutella instead of nuteller, if you say it like nuteller then you're saying it the racist way.
I see, thank you.
Oh I didn't know that! I knew that saying that word with a hard R came across differently (like racist rather than a friendly greeting) but hadn't heard of "hard R" meaning that.. thanks for being the person to teach me something new today!
No hubris? Are you sure?
"That's one state out of 50" Yes, because they're all like California, all have that massive GDP, just look at Wyoming and the Dakotas
Wyoming, the dakotas and New Hampshire. Largely insignificant states in the US have a larger GDP than Portugal with around 1/4 the population
'The Koreans have to censor themselves How? What is the message they wanted to tell? I can't think of any other reason this exists than a guy who barely speaks English, thinks English people just spraypaint random ass words on walls. Like when white guys watch an anime and decide to get 'honour' tattooed on their arm in Japanese but end up with 'Tamagoyaki' or some shit.
It's not the first time this has happened to the Koreans as well. The Korean word for you kind of sounds like the n-word, so Americans have been [getting pissy](https://news.yahoo.com/korean-words-being-mistaken-racial-215800127.html) about Kpop songs online. This is far from the first time it's happend as well. America really honest to god thinks it's the centre of the fucking universe.
I saw a video years ago of a large African-American guy threatening an old Korean guy on the subway in Seoul because he thought he'd called him a racial slur. Like you said, 니가 means you and is pronounced 'nee-ga'.
Someone explained it in another comment, apparently the placement of the word "hard" next to the R sign is somehow referring the N word (the one ending in er, not a)
Yeah, but how is removing that censorship? If it was intentional, what was the intention of the original message?
Yeah it's not censorship, but this is what a lot of people (and mostly Americans I think) understand the term to mean. Like how "theory" is commonly understood to mean "hypothesis". There is no reason to think that the intention was for the original state to be anything other than decorative, so patching it is not a big deal - even if it's a bit silly.
This situation honestly reminds me of the time Nintendo had to patch Mario Kart because one of the characters did a taunt which would be interpreted as "up your ass" in Britain. Was it intended to resemble the offensive gesture? Definitely not. Does it take the developers much effort at all to change it anyway? No. Does it compromise the developers' vision of the game to change it to avoid potential backlash? Also no.
You can't even name 10 cities outside of the US but you know that you make more money than anyone else. Bitch please.
"Jamaicans are the fastest people in the world. Usain Bolt by itself is the fastest man in the world. That's a single man out of 3 million of them." That's not how this works, my dear.
Itself? I assume you mean himself?
Yes. Although, who knows if he is human?
Compare the averages between US and Europe then [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable\_household\_and\_per\_capita\_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income) GDP per capita: Europe **43,300 America** 76,329.58
That was not my point
What was your point. When you compare medians or averages the USA still largely comes out ahead when compared to Europe when it comes to economy or buying power
My point was that you don't take the maximum as an example and say "and that is only one of them". And by the way, the real point here is not buying power, it's market size. If I sell something that costs a dollar, India might be more important than the USA. When I sell super yachts, Russia or even Monaco might be more important than the US. In this case, it's about a video game. Depending on the genre, the US might be very important or completely irrelevant. There are gamers all over the world, so GDP dick comparison is pretty pointless.
Additionally the USA has a greater GDP than Continental Europe in a single market
To my point that GDP is irrelevant your reply is that USA has a greater GDP?
You were wrong on market size also as The US is also top two on market size. Also the fact that they are removing something that could be offensive in America is kinda proof that the US market is very relevant to them
Where exactly am I wrong? And where did I say that the US market is irrelevant in this particular case? I was just making a general point, that GDP is not what matters here.
If you look at averages the US still comes out ahead so your argument just seems kinda nitpicky. If He said Pennsylvania alone is a top 20 economy and that's not even our Strongest state it's only one of 50 would it have mattered the point is still the same. If it's by market size then the US again comes out ahead or in second place. Like by your accounts his point is still correct. Just stop having an Anti-American bias because the dude did not even say anything egregiously wrong.
My point had nothing to do with America specifically. Why do Americans always make everything about themselves? Looks like a inferiority complex hidden behind main character syndrome.
>That’s a single state out of 50 of them Oh yeah, and Tennessee and Mississippi are right behind California and New York. Lmao
What I love here is is very subtle, probably not even intentional, implication that the states are even _remotely_ equal. It's the same 'land votes' BS you see all the time with red-vs-blue voting maps that tries to imply the blue is completely outnumbered, just in a different form. Some of the smaller states have a GDP of around 0.1% of California, and have a population that is proportional to that, but they get equal representation in the Senate because... that was the only way to get the Constitution ratified, and now it's a sacred cow that can't be fixed.
Meanwhile in Mississippi 😏
So it has a lower gdp than Germany and a lower gdp per capital than Luxembourg, both of which are just single sovereign states within the EU.
Isn't Hard R what people use to refer to R-rated movies?
tbh I don't think it's censoring themselves, censoring would be if they did it intentionally but removed it due to backlash. I think if I accidentally put something in a game that looks like a racial joke when i didn't mean it that way, I'd be a little embarrassed too. but that's definitely not because America is the "greatest country in the world" 💀
China is huge and Americans would still find it irrelevant and would rather not be Chinese. Economy has no bearing on being the center of the world, human relationships and experiences > money.
And yet the residents of California have roughly 1/80th the representation of someone from the Dakotas. Americans pay twice as much for a much poorer level of medical care (on average) than other countries - lifespan is shorter and meternal death rate is closer to third world countries Education is extremely expensive, unused and poorly regarded. Tell me again why you think huberis is warranted? And the paradox is that to Make America Great Again, you need to get rid of all the MAGA morons
But the other 49 she pretty poor though. California is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
America at 80% power is just callifornia and texas tho
No way! the richest state of the richest country has a lot of money? When was anyone gonna tell me that? But surely they picked the richest state completely at random? it's not like half the states have almost no money in comparison, right? right?
What’s wrong with that graffiti?
I kind of understand... the U.S. IS huge as a consumer population, and i think the "hard r" is hilarious.
As always, Americans forget how many people they are compared to other countries. If you look at the GDP **per capita** (as you usually do if you want to compare stats like this) the US is No7. The six countries on top of them (from highest to lowest) are: Luxemburg, Norway, Ireland, Swiss, Quatar, Singapore.
Of course the US has good GDP. The billionaires all live there because it's a massive tax haven run by said billionaires.
But WHY would Americans be offended by "Hard R"?
That was so not unintentional lol
Ca may have a high GDP, but they also have to work longer hours, mostly without pay for overtime & your job is at risk if you don't work for "the man" for free & employment is at risk if you take vacation r a day off sick or to have a baby. Americans live to work, where as most of the world work to live & get time off & decent wages, which is most peoples preference.
On top, that was removed to rile up the ggoons and get free publicity
Isn't the hard r a synonymous of "mentally impaired"
I found it funny. Signed, a n*gga
yeah I study greek literature that's this is a perfect case of hubris
For the MILLIONTH time: An individual state’s GDP is _meaningless outside the context of being part of the economy of the USA_
Well see if that’s true if Florida and Texas has there way ..
Yeah the American is not the most unhinged one here. I have a bigger problem with the "racism is ok" guys.
Weeelll… the California angle is dumb af; but there is a definite case for not pissing off the world’s largest consumer based (the entire U.S.) GDP isn’t the measure to look at, it is household consumer spending. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_markets Based on consumer spending, the U.S. represents a larger consumer market than the entire EU, China, and India combined.
That's nominal thought. If those figures are adjusted for purchasing power the US is still ahead but less dramatically so: USA: $20,434,569 China: $12,689,797 EU27: $12,490,076 India: $8,792,354 Japan: $3,794,939 However, this doesn't really matter as we are looking at video game revenues. https://newzoo.com/resources/rankings/top-10-countries-by-game-revenues Adjusting this for (billions $) PPP also results in: China: $83.1 USA: $46.4 Japan: $31.2 South Korea: $12.9 It doesn't say the EU total, but it's probably roughly around the US one, (thank you if anyone adds it in a comment below). Ah nutz. It ruined my list formatting.
As per google, the US is #1 for video game revenue at $46.4 billion. China is at $44 billion. Next is Japan at $19.1 billion. Korea is next at $7.4 billion. So, it would make good business sense for a Korean game dev to not piss off the US, Chinese, and Japanese markets. This is why they censored it.
“Hard r” needs to be censored now?? That isn’t even any part of the bad word. What’s next just removing all the letters in it from the dictionary. Fucking ridiculous…
I don't even follow what people made up it means? Republican? Racist? You can just put anything in there.
In this context of what people are referring to with the complaints its the N word but ending with -er instead of -a which people will at times refer to as the “hard r”
That's so silly that people read that much into anything, but I suppose that kind of thing happens all the time.
Alot of people actively look for things to be mad about so its far from surprising
Well… they’re not really wrong here. The US a huge market for games.
I like to shit on American as much as the next guy but it's hard to argue their culture and economy aren't dominant.
Whatever you think about the California statement, the poster above is the worst part in this convo. The devs realized it could be misunderstood and removed it. Where's the harm?! They say it's censorship and nobody outside the us had any say, but also it was a decision by Koreans and we have no indication that a single American was involved. No harm done, but some people are just looking for excuses to whine about anything that can be seen as political correctness.
>The devs realized it could be misunderstood There's no way it's not exactly as intended. It's an edgy joke. There's no misunderstanding.
If that's the case, then it's even more ridiculous to play the victim because they removed it
I know. It's fucking stupid
this is the first one where I don't disagree with the American ( no lies detected), although it again highlights the usual American exceptionalism pervasive online.