This specific form of U.S. centrism

Stormtroper

You're reading exampleforum.com, you click on This Forum's Obligatory "Where Are You From" Thread, you scour through posts, you see this:

• Tacoma
• Lincolnshire, England
  
• Romania
  
• Minneapolis
• Louisville, KY
• Beersheba, Israel
  
• Utah
• Vermont
• Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Manila, Philippines
  
• Denver
• Lyon, Rhône-alpes, France
  
• Manchester, New Hampshire

No points for guessing which thread triggered this (although our thread was "better" about it in that other nationalities did it too). Still, I've seen this quite consistently.

BecNoir

...so?

Stormtroper

So it bugs me that people assume I should know all that, and making me have to go to Wikipedia.

IanExMachina

Also it allows confusion due to there being other countries who have the same place names.

Nyarly

Well, many US states are well-known enough that a lot of people outside of the US know them. That's not the case with the regions other countries. How many non-German people know more Bundesländer than Bavaria? Hell, how many know even about Bavaria?

GLORIOUSLeader

Wait, wasn't there that one king they made the ride out of at Busch Gardens? That counts for something, right?

IanExMachina

^^ Depends on your education, personally around here we never get any education regarding American states (as well it isn't important, the same way I don't know the states/provinces in Russia or China .)

I however did know of Bavaria, as they do nice blue brie, and a close friend is German so we've talked about countries etc.

Stormtroper

^ Pretty much. The only reason I know of U.S. states and cities, besides those that show up all the time on TV and faint Monopoly memories, is mostly because of these threads.

I happen to know where Bavaria is. Still, one being more well-known than the other doesn't mean everybody knows about it.

Central Avenue

I've always put "Columbus, Ohio" because I figured putting "Columbus, Ohio, USA" is insulting to people's intelligence, somehow.

And just putting "Columbus, USA" is ambiguous.

SotiCoto

Well it isn't our fault that the first generation yanks were not only so unoriginal as to just copy all their place-names from the very places they'd been escaping from.... but that they were so retarded that they did this several times over to the extent where place-names are repeated across the whole damned country (and up into Canada too).
I mean c'mon.
Someone I know on Facebook mentioned something about "girls from the deep south" the other day, so I asked her if there were seriously girls living in caves under antarctica.  Just made sense, really.

Gelzo

I'm going to assume that U.S. states are about as recognizable as small/medium nations, and that you can get away with not specifying where certain cities are.

I'm going to view it as redundant for someone to say London, England or Paris, France.

That said, I've forgotten what state Denver is in.

Oh, so it's Colorado.

Nyarly

Could it be that Delaware is the most underrepresented US state? For a while, I even forgot it's existence. Of course, I don't have every single state in my head, but normally as soon as someone mentions one, I know it's an US state. Except Delaware. The last time, someone mentioned it in an article on the internet, I had to think really hard until I realized that it's an US state. And while I don't know what it was about anymore, the article implied that Delaware isn't mentioned often.

Delaware, the Saarland of the USA.

GLORIOUSLeader

No, that would be Montana. 

Central Avenue

Delaware is one of those states that's so small that most maps have to have put "DE" out in the ocean with a line pointing to it.

(Rhode Island is smaller, though)

Nyarly

...Rhode Island is a state?

DYRE

Rhode Island is a state.  A tiny state, but a state nonetheless.

GLORIOUSLeader

Rhode Island is a state, but not an island. The island it is named after is Rhodes. 

IanExMachina

^ 

Honestly if only the settlers had had some imagination with the naming when over there.

Central Avenue

Also its official name is The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, but no one calls it that.

MoeDantes

So it bugs me that people assume I should know all that, and making me have to go to Wikipedia.

If it helps, imagine that you're playing a more adult, social version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

IanExMachina

"If it helps, imagine that you're playing a more adult, social version of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

We were talking about US states...

U.S. CENTRISM

MoeDantes

Slaps self Oh, sorry. I misread the entire goddamn thread.

Yeah, I'm not doing well today.

Central Avenue

There was never a goofy-but-fun game show based on Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego?, though.

MoeDantes

I never liked the game shows, personally.

But does anyone besides me watch Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego on the Hub? That shit is awesome!

IanExMachina

Also whilst on the subject 'World Series Baseball'?

As if.

It's called rounders here and played by teenage girls.

SotiCoto

I know where a few Canadian provinces are...  which is probably more than I could say for american states.
But then my ex-wife was Nova-Scotian.

Stormtroper

I only now found out that the Moscow Murders did not take place in the capital of Russia.
Heeey, this was one of my first threads.

lrdgck

Back when I posted on Nationstates forum, I had my location as "Kansas of Europe". For what it's worth I didn't come up with it, but I found some forumer's incredulous reaction to some then-current issue amusing enough to crib it. I remeber neither the issue nor the person, but the quote stuck with me. Which is probably telling by itself.