Questions for people who live outside the US?

Question

How do people from other countries feel about Americans in general? I won't be offended...Id just like to know what the general feelings are.

Answer 1

I feel that as a people is general, Americans can be quite self centred, arrogant and over patriotic. I have several American friends who do not display all or any of these characteristics, however, so I would never say all Americans have the same characteristics.

Answer 2

I am an American living in a Muslim country. Generally speaking, people here have little problem with Americans, but they strongly dislike what the American government does.

Also, many see the US as a place of many opportunities. Unfortunately they also see terrible morals, too much stress, lax family values, substandard education and a society too concerned about money.

Answer 3

I'm expat U.S. living in the UK. People here generally distinguish between U.S. citizens and the actions of our government and large corporations. (U.S. Americans seem to have this bizarre monopoly on despising people from other countries without adequate information or because Fox News tell them to.) There is a lot of very legitimate criticism of the U.S., but people are more curious than anything about me.

Throughout Europe, opinion tends to be positive, though that can depend on how many U.S. tourists they have to cope with. Paris gets the worst of us, which has an influence on opinion, but further away, it's a lot of curiosity (I was interviewed, in English and French, on a Breton radio station once -- they weren't used to U.S. Americans taking an interest) and kindness.

I've never been anywhere, outside the U.S., where people weren't willing to see me as an individual. I always make an effort to understand their basic etiquette and at least a bit of the language and the effort is very well rewarded.

In short, Europeans tend to see us as somewhat pampered, are happily suprised to find out that we aren't all as unknowledgable as our leaders, and want to find out what life in the U.S. is actually like.

Answer 4

USA is probably the only country in the world who do something about crazy governments(communism, wars, etc) but they only act according to their own interest and they always wants you paid them, the USA commercial imperialism sometimes affect badly other countries, and much times Americans (like Paris Hilton) are coarse and make people feel miserable, and really don't care about damaging people who have no voice in the society, but there are helpful Americans too, and that ,makes a balance, but sometimes this balance is broken and Americans can be hurting people to deal, the American capitalism doesn't works in much countries, the technology that they have researched it's a good thing, but when they use it to impose their rules in other countries, it's bad, i can call them balanced people, a balance between bad things like the extortionate capitalism and military power, and the good things, like peace treaties technology development, and economic help

Answer 5

I feel that a lot of Americans think they are the center of the world. They are self centered, hostile, and think they can tell everyone else what to do. They think their way is the only way.

This, of course, doesn't apply to all Americans. I've got a lot of pen-pals in America who's not like that, but that is my general impression.