What is one misconception about the United States most people miss?

I will never understand why so many people apparently believe yellow school buses are made up for movies and TV shows. Like....why would we do that?

I’m surprised by how many people think Americans are lazy. Statistically we work longer hours and take less time off than most developed countries. Sure there are lazy people but the vast majority take pride in working hard and it’s deeply ingrained in American culture.

We are not a monolith. The country is vast and incredibly diverse. Saying "Americans do x" or "Americans believe x" is completely nonsensical.

American food is actually really good Yeah we eat a lot of fast food and processed junk food (it's a problem), but if you come to visit it is not hard to find quality food in every corner. Being a nation of immigrants means we have the best foods from around the world all in one place. You want chinese? Mexican? Portuguese? Ethiopian? I know a neighborhood in New Jersey that has all four. You want something authentically American? Well, we got like a dozen different kinds of BBQ, new England or PNW style seafood, New Orleans Cajun, Southwestern spice, various native American cuisine still thriving, and a few great wine regions. If you come to America and only eat McDonalds and Starbucks, that's on you

Despite what the song "There Are No Cats In America" from the 1986 Don Bluth classic An American Tail may lead you to believe, there are, in fact, cats in America.

Despite our nation's negative publicity for the last decade (rightfully), the ADA, public restrooms, and access to clean water for free (drinking water at restaurants mainly) are basically protected public goods here, and our national park system (for now) is incredible.

That Americans all travel easily between states. The country is so big that some people have never even visited half of it

Europeans think they can "do a day trip" to another state and quickly realize they’re halfway through an 11 hour drive while still in the same cornfield.

The size. We can be ignorant of the rest of the world because the country is so big and it can cost a lot of money to get to other countries. The state I live in, Arizona, is bigger in square miles than the UK.

Despite gun violence statistics painting a bleak picture, the average person here has never witnessed a violent crime with guns. I've seen people online who genuinely believe that we're just out here ducking bullets every time we go out for milk. It ain't like that, you might hear some target shooting in rural areas but other than that most crimes happen in a select few neighnorhoods in a select few cities.

If the average person is being nice to you, that isn’t fake. We’re just nicer and more open than a lot of countries. (And of course many other countries are even nicer and more open than the US)

I moved from Silicon Valley to rural Kentucky for work and my coworker asked me if I missed having internet access. This was in 2019. She genuinely thought small towns didn't have WiFi and was shocked when I showed her my 200 Mbps connection. People really believe we're living in the 1800s outside major cities.

Americans eat tons of processed shit but most people hardly ever eat spray cheese. But for some reason that’s Europeans first thought

the culture is way more diverse than media shows, its not just hollywood stuff

That we all behave and think the same way. I hate it.

People are fat and lazy. I’ve met a few workers who are from out of country and they’re always stunned by the work culture

Size only Russians and Canadians really understand just how vast America is

That every American is either super loud and outgoing or deeply polarized politically. I've traveled to about fifteen states for work and the regional differences are staggering. People in rural Montana have almost nothing in common culturally with someone from downtown Miami or a suburb of Seattle. The food is different, the pace is different, even the humor is different. It's basically fifty small countries sharing a passport and a currency. Most of the stereotypes people have are based on whatever version of America Hollywood or the news decided to export that week.

For Europeans it's the sheer scale. Its huge and very diverse. Like.. you can drive from my house the same distance as driving from the southern tip of germany to the northern tip and still be in the same state. They wonder why we dont have effective rail systems and public transport. Its the size and distance between places. The amount of wilderness. People see the cities, maybe the farms, on tv. Finland, which is a decent size, and 75% forested.... has less forest than just the protected federal park/forest in my state, which is one of 50 and not huge by our standards. Thats not even counting private timberland, which is more than the federal land. In rural America its not uncommon to see signs that say "last gas for xxx miles". Why? Because if you don't fill your tank fully, you might not make it to the next town. Even mountains. The matterhorn in the Alps rises about 1500 meters above its surroundings. Thats... about equal to the small ski hill I live near. Which rises the same amount from the pacific ocean and is less than 20km away from it. Mt. McKinley is 6 km above sea level, but also rises almost all that from its base too. The population density here is not high. Averages lie. The east coast is very populated, more like Europe. But there are straight up whole states with an average of about 2 people per kilometer. While many Americans have never left the united states, it doesn't mean they haven't traveled or experienced different cultures. You just... can do that and stay within the national borders. I can drive 5600km from my house and still be in the us and taking the shortest route. Thats longer than Lisbon to Moscow. And you can do that both east/west, and north/south in the us.

It’s massive in size. Europeans tend to look down on us bc most Americans only vacation within the US. While they go to multiple countries. Our States are as big as your countries.

That we are homogenous. There are parts of the US that are much more like other countries than they are like other parts of the US.

The US is the third most populous nation on Earth and the fourth largest by area.

It’s very big but the “culture” and people can be very different even within a short distance.   If you’re just driving through you will completely miss it because it looks homogeneous. 

That we're all rich

There are more Spanish speakers than in Spain.

Most people are not aware of the fact that much of the increasing divisiveness in America is a result of the failure of Reconstruction following the Civil War.

I think a lot of people don't realize that the US is like 50 little micro countries pretending to be one big country. Each state has it's own culture, accent, niche weird histories. I've met people overseas who have been to one state and assume thats all of America.

Not every female strives to be like a Kardashian.

That the US is a completely ruined dystopian state. The amount of people (most of them fellow Americans) actively wishing for the downfall of the country is disturbing. We have a lot of issues, but we can still fix them.

That the "United" part is at best HIGHLY euphemistic.

A lot of the things you see discussed as problems in the US only seem that way because they’re being viewed from a federal perspective and are actually being handled on the state/local level. Biggest example is that the federal minimum wage in the US is $7.25, but in my state I think it’s currently $18/hr with very robust worker protections and legal benefits on par with Canada. Maternity leave, unemployment, food assistance, public health services, etc is all pretty generous and functional here and I could go on about cultural differences but my point is basically  If you got all your news from listnook you’d think we were living in a collapsing dystopian hellhole where it was impossible to scrape out of living but there are really vast, vast differences in the states. 

How big New York is. It’s actually a huge state and if you say you’re from NY it doesn’t automatically mean New York City.

that healthcare is literally nonexistent and we all die in the streets. it sucks but most people i know have insurance through work, it’s just insanely expensive when you don’t

That is the least racist, safest place for all minorities and all the pronouns to live. All of us. We are in the land of opportunity. There is no where better. And those that can’t see that are only making it worse for themselves.

Not everyone has a gun, a lot of people do, but not everyone

That our public schools are bad. America has much higher rates of childhood poverty than other advanced countries. Kinda hard to succeed in school when you’re hungry and stressed and can’t access technology etc. When you compare apples to apples, our public schools are as good as any anywhere.

That we're all the same. Most people from other countries (especially smaller countries) can't really fathom how big in geography the U.S. really is! We have a very large amount of land and space and it can takes days of traveling just to get from one state to another. We also have many different attitudes and opinions many times even within the same state. It truly is the combination of all of us and our differences that make up the United States. It's really not fair to put a label on us.

That we all think we are better than other countries.

Just because you saw something on TV or in a movie, or read it on the internet, does not mean that it's a common thing that everyone does here. Most people here would think that cheddar cheese on apple pie is weird and revolting.

The ridiculous plates of restaurant food you see on TV, social media, etc. are not what the average American eats every day. We're aware that pastries aren't proper breakfast food. Restaurant portions are huge because they expect you to bring some of it home to eat as leftovers.

That you can divide the country neatly into "blue" and "red" states. California, New York and Illinois all have deeply conservative, rural areas (hell, there are more Republicans in NYC than there are in the Dakotas or Wyoming), while Texas has plenty of deep-blue cities. The Electoral College gives people the idea that each state is either uniformly liberal or uniformly conservative, and for all but a handful that just isn't true.

I think someone people miss just how big the US is. It gets a bad rep for people not travelling much, but there are places where the same drive that would take a person through multiple countries in europe wouldn't even get someone out of their own state