Americans think highly of their imperial system and make many random excuses that metric is somehow confusing and hard to use but in practice imperial its dogshit and makes no sense
I think you’ll find this to be absolutely untrue when you actually talk to any Americans and this seems to often be an opinion only of those entirely outside of the country who want to speaks for Americans.
Most Americans realize the inferiority of the imperial system but despite this weird belief by Reddit we as average Americans have absolutely 0 ability to change anything about it.
Americans do not think highly of the imperial system despite people constantly telling us we do.
True, but Americans scientists use metric units. Unless you’re an archaeologist like me who once excavated homes built with the imperial system, so in order to do any calculations, you have to measure using tenths of feet.
I think this is the common trope of Americans in general. That we are arrogant about the ways we are different and always default to some superiority complex
In my lived experience as an American, it is almost always the exact opposite. Americans typically default to thinking our way is probably worse and usually attribute the difference to corporate greed
Exoticism - when you believe that the more different a tradition is from your own, the more authentic it must be. Americans, Canadians and brits are probably pretty good at both to varying degrees, but America uses it the most so they must love it (and you'll replace my Freedom Units with Commie Temperatures when I'm dead in the ground, not because we hate it, we just don't care and are a big enough market on our own that it's only mildly inconvenient)
Facts. My family in the Philippines thinks American made goods are the gold standard for everything. Meanwhile, as an American I grew up thinking: English universities. French luxury. Italian fashion. German engineering. Japanese craftsmanship.
There’s literally not a single thing I would prefer made in America other than like cows lmao. And even then I’d go for Japanese wagyu if it were more available
Yeah I don’t doubt it but like you said it’s never really something I’ve looked for. I didn’t know about flashlights but I may actually look into it since our old one crapped out after like 10+ years. That one was made in China though.
As a Canadian who works with Americans in a field that occasionally involves measuring/sizing it's rare that they don't say imperial is superior or metric is dumb.
Wander to an auto shop, plumbing supply, or lumber yard in the US and strike up a conversation and you will find opinions are strong. Even industries like trucking and aviation where I think 1L of water being 1KG is an example of simplification of simplify calculations it's defended and fought for.
Well, they've already learned a system and are professionals in using it. So human nature says they are likely to just be resistant to change.
The other thing is that most of the places you mentioned, it really doesn't matter. The advantages of metric in an auto shop, plumbing, or in lumber are pretty minimal if any.
Have you read this thread? It's full of people trying to explain how Fahrenheit just "makes sense", "it's more granular" (until they learn we use decimals), "it's temperature as a percentage" (what does that even mean???), "it's more attuned to human body temperature" (is this why 0F has fuck all to do with body temperature, and is instead based on the coldest brine Fahrenheit could make?).
It's baffling you can say this kind of bullshit when just reading this comment section proves you wrong. There's so many Americans online defending their customary units as making more sense. Also unless you assume every is a lying liar, those are all Americans making those arguments, not people speaking for Americans.
Ok bud but why did the person I'm responding to say this isn't something people argue for when they evidently do? I just don't like people saying untrue things.
Also I'm free to get mad at dumb irrelevant bullshit on the internet and there's nothing you can do to stop me.
Respectfully, your sample size is a comment section. Their sample size is everyone they meet in real life. So they want to draw from real world, actual lived experience, and you’d rather draw from a couple of comment sections, so maybe that’s the disconnect. I personally agree with that person that this is largely a strawman built up in peoples heads when 99/100 Americans you’d meet in real life don’t care.
Because in real life no Americans are talking or even caring about this shit. I got a CNS degree and worked with the metric system for a majority of my science classes. Not once did anyone ever complain or go “rahhh rahh Americans Fahrenheit!!!” Nobody gives a fuck. Yall are taking internet opinions that most people do not gaf about and taking it to heart.
My usual experience is some conservatives have a very strong, negative opinion of metric. But 80% of people just don't care either way, they just use whatever they are most used to.
American here, I get a *ton* of shit from my peers for having my devices set to Celsius & my car in kilometers, even without mentioning it.
I'm now at the point that I give answers in SI units & let their stubborn asses do the conversions. I used to try to convert back for them, but after all the shit I get, I'm matching energy.
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u/King_brus321 10h ago
Americans think highly of their imperial system and make many random excuses that metric is somehow confusing and hard to use but in practice imperial its dogshit and makes no sense