Europeans, what is something that Americans have/do that makes no sense to you?

Like A Duck@programming.dev to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 236 points –
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It's such a strange contradictory place. You pride yourself in freedom of speech but are so puritanical you refer to using the toilet as 'using the restrooms' and 'taking a comfort break'. Everyone knows you're going in there to crimp one off, not to have a comfortable rest in a designated room.

The fraternity and sorority thing at universities is really odd too. I don't really know what they're for aside from providing a dedicated environment for abuse via the deceptively amiable name of 'hazing'.

And referring to all your sports competitions as World Championships when the only teams that play are American. Bit cringey. I mean, you probably would win if there was an actual international basketball or baseball or american football competition, but at least the World Champion thing would actually mean something then.

And referring to all your sports competitions as World Championships when the only teams that play are American.

That's literally only Baseball (and they did it for marketing,) and baseball happens to be the North American sport with the most popular international championship, the World Baseball Classic (actually I don't know whether WBC or Olympic Hockey is more popular, but Hockey has a separate international championship from the Olympics.) The Football championship is called the Super Bowl, the Basketball championship is called the NBA Finals, the Hockey championship is called the Stanley Cup.

You wouldn't know if any of American teams are world class or not, there's no promotion it relegation in their leagues, you could put together the best team ever but never win the Superbowl, as there's no way to get promoted into it.

True. Reminds me of a Pep Guardiola quote: "It's not really sport if you can't lose." when he was asked about his opinions on there being no demotion/promotion in the then-proposed European Super League.

Well, the Super League was an attempt to bring that model over here. It felt to me like lots of foreign investors put money into top flight European teams without understanding they could have a bad season and their investment may drop in value so they needed to protect them.

What, does every team have a chance to get in the super bowl.

Fraternities are historical I think. At least here in Germany they are.

They pay the costs of going to college (in Germany it's already free, so they simply provide cheap housing) and provide connections to older students and graduates. In turn you are expected to stay as part of the community once you have a job and pay a membership fee that will be used to provide that cheap housing I mentioned.

It made sense back when "not immediately working" once you finished school was really expensive. Not only because of costs, but because of lost wages as well.

Now that the state takes care of this they are losing significance.

In the US fraternities and sororities are not usually financial assistance organizations as you're describing. The main focus is just as a social organization. A quick and easy way to get 50 friends to hang out with. They also do sometimes provide connections or help with studying.

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