- 4 months ago
Proof Americans Think The UK Is Just Old AmericaThumbnail text (Top): Clueless Americans
"An American tourist just told me—with complete confidence—that London is basically 'the first New York' and that Shakespeare wrote in English so he must be American. I've compiled every baffling moment where Americans genuinely believed the UK is just their rough draft, and honestly, the pattern is terrifying. But here's what I really need to know: is this actually what they're teaching in American schools, or is this just what happens when you're raised to believe you invented everything?"
"An American tourist just told me—with complete confidence—that London is basically 'the first New York' and that Shakespeare wrote in English so he must be American. I've compiled every baffling moment where Americans genuinely believed the UK is just their rough draft, and honestly, the pattern is terrifying. But here's what I really need to know: is this actually what they're teaching in American schools, or is this just what happens when you're raised to believe you invented everything?"
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00:00An American tourist just told me with complete confidence that London is basically the first
00:05New York and that Shakespeare wrote in English so he must be American. I've compiled every
00:11baffling moment where Americans genuinely believed the UK is just their rough draft and honestly the
00:18pattern is terrifying. But here's what I really need to know. Is this actually what they're
00:23teaching in American schools? Or is this just what happens when you're raised to believe you
00:28invented everything? So I was explaining to an American that Britain invented the English
00:34language and he said yeah but we perfected it. Just like that. No hesitation. Complete sincerity.
00:43The kind of confidence you usually only see in people who are absolutely categorically wrong
00:48about something but have never been corrected in their entire lives. Now I've lived in the UK my
00:55whole life right? Born in Manchester, raised on tea and sarcasm, went to school where we actually
01:01learned world history. Not just the bits where we look good. I thought I understood cultural differences.
01:07I really did. I've watched American TV shows. I've eaten at McDonald's probably more times than I
01:12should admit. I've even attempted to pronounce aluminum the way you lot do. With that weird
01:18missing eye in the middle. I thought I got it. I thought I understood Americans. But nothing,
01:24and I mean absolutely nothing, prepared me for the day I realised that some Americans
01:30genuinely believe the United Kingdom is just old America. Like we're the beta test. The rough draft.
01:38The practice run before they came along and did it properly. It's like they think we're the black
01:44and white version of a movie that they remade in colour with better special effects and a bigger
01:49budget. I first noticed it about three years ago. Little comments here and there. Tourists saying
01:57weird things that I'd brush off as just jet lag or confusion. But then it kept happening. Different
02:03people, different cities, same bizarre energy. And slowly, like watching a really disturbing magic eye
02:11picture come into focus, I realised this wasn't just a few random people. This was an actual thing.
02:19A whole perspective. An entire way of viewing history that somehow made America the original
02:25and Britain the sequel. Even though we've been here for literally thousands of years before the United
02:31States was even a concept. It's like if someone looked at your childhood photos and said,
02:36oh cool, you dressed up as an old version of me for Halloween. That's the vibe. That's the energy I'm
02:43dealing with here. And look, I know how this sounds. I know it sounds like I'm exaggerating. Like I'm
02:50taking a couple of silly comments and blowing them up into some big cultural thing. But I promise you,
02:57I'm about to show you what happens when historical amnesia meets absolutely unshakable confidence.
03:05When someone believes something so completely that facts just bounce off them like rubber balls off
03:11a brick wall. I'm talking about Americans who think Shakespeare might have been American
03:17because he wrote in English. I'm talking about tourists who look at buildings from the 1500s
03:22and call them colonial era, as if the colonies came first and then England happened afterward.
03:28I'm talking about the kind of mix-up that makes you question whether geography and history are even
03:33taught in schools anymore. Or if they've just been replaced with advanced classes in believing America
03:38invented everything. And here's the thing that really gets me. These aren't mean people. They're not
03:46trying to insult us. They genuinely, truly, honestly believe what they're saying. There's no malice in it.
03:53Just this rock-solid certainty that America is the main character in world history and everyone else
04:00is just background decoration or maybe supporting cast if we're lucky. I've got stories. So many stories.
04:08Stories that will make you laugh, make you cringe, make you want to ship an entire set of history textbooks
04:14across the Atlantic Ocean. I'm talking about the American who asked me if we celebrate the 4th of July in
04:20England. Not as a joke, as an actual serious question. Because apparently some Americans
04:26think Independence Day is just summer Christmas and everyone does it. We don't, by the way. We
04:33definitely don't. I'm talking about conversations in pubs, in museums, on street corners, where I've had
04:39to explain basic historical facts to adults who looked at me like I was the one saying crazy things.
04:45Like when I mentioned that Oxford University is older than the Aztec Empire and someone responded,
04:51yeah but Harvard's better though, right? As if age and quality are having two completely different
04:58conversations. But the moment that really got me, the one that made me realise I needed to document
05:06this phenomenon before I went completely mad, was when an American tourist looked me dead in the eyes and
05:12said, so London's like the first New York, right? And when I started to correct him, he just nodded
05:20like he'd figured something out and said, makes sense, we kind of upgraded your system when we left.
05:26Upgraded. Our system. Like Britain is Windows Vista and America is Windows 10. Like we're all just
05:34sitting here in our quaint little island waiting for America to come back and show us how to do things
05:39properly. Never mind that London was a major city when New York was literally a swamp. Never mind that
05:46we had universities when America was still a theoretical concept in some philosophers daydream.
05:52None of that matters when you've got confidence this powerful. So buckle up, because I'm about to take
05:58you through the most baffling, hilarious, occasionally infuriating collection of moments where Americans have
06:05confidently explained British history to British people. And trust me, it only gets wilder from
06:12here. I'm working at a pub in London, right? This beautiful old place in Southwark with wooden beams
06:18so dark they're almost black and floors that creak in 17 different spots because they've been walked on
06:24for 400 years. It's a Tuesday afternoon, quiet, just a few regulars nursing their pints and reading
06:30newspapers. Then this American tourist walks in and I can tell immediately he's American because he's
06:37wearing shorts in October and has that particular look of wonder that says he's never seen a building
06:42older than his grandparents. He looks around at everything, the low ceiling with its ancient beams,
06:50the fireplace that's been burning since before America existed, the brass rail at the bar that's been
06:56polished, smoothed by centuries of elbows. And he goes, wow, this is so authentic.
07:04It's like colonial times. I'm wiping down the bar and I say trying to be helpful. Well, it's from 1623,
07:12so technically it's a bit earlier than that. He nods, really enthusiastic, like I've just confirmed
07:20something he suspected. Right, right. So this is like Revolutionary War era. I pause. The cloth in my
07:28hand stops moving. No, that's about 150 years later, actually. But he's not really listening anymore.
07:36He's taking photos, turning in a slow circle, absolutely delighted. Then he looks at me and says,
07:43with complete sincerity, this is so cool. It's like you guys kept everything exactly how we built it.
07:50We built it. I just stand there. My brain does this thing where it tries to process what I've just
07:57heard, realises it can't, and then just sort of restarts like a computer that's given up.
08:03I serve him his pint of bitter. He pays with a credit card, and the whole time I'm wondering if
08:08every history lesson I ever sat through was somehow wrong. Maybe America did come first. Maybe time runs
08:15backwards and nobody told me. Maybe I'm the confused one here. My mate Sarah works as a tour guide at
08:22Westminster Abbey, right? She does this job where she walks groups of tourists through 900 years of
08:28history, pointing out tombs of kings and queens, showing them where poets are buried, explaining
08:34about coronations and royal weddings. She's good at it too. Patient. Kind. The type of person who can
08:41explain the same thing 40 times a day and still make it sound interesting. So she's got this American
08:48family on a tour. Standard group. Dad with a camera hanging around his neck. Mum with a guidebook.
08:56Two teenage kids who look like they'd rather be literally anywhere else on earth. They're walking
09:02through the chapel and the dad stops at Henry VII's tomb. It's this massive thing, all gilt and marble,
09:09absolutely stunning. He's taking pictures from every angle. Then he looks at the tomb, looks at Sarah and
09:17goes, so these guys were like the original politicians before we had congress. Sarah goes into professional
09:25mode. She's explained this a thousand times. Well, this is Henry VII who died in 1509, so we're talking
09:33about 500 years ago, long before the United States was founded. The dad nods, but you can tell he's not
09:40really getting it. Right, but like, he was basically doing what George Washington did first, right?
09:46The whole king thing was just their version of president. His teenage daughter, bless her,
09:52she looks at him and whispers, Dad, I think it was the other way around. And the dad whispers back,
09:59totally serious, don't be ridiculous, honey. America came first. Sarah told me later that she
10:07just moved on to the next tomb. What do you even say to that? How do you explain that England had kings
10:13and queens for a thousand years before George Washington was born without sounding like you're
10:18being rude? The confidence was just too powerful. It created its own reality field that facts
10:24couldn't penetrate. I'm at a coffee shop in Oxford a few months after that, not doing anything special,
10:30just sitting by the window with a book and a cappuccino, enjoying the autumn sunshine coming
10:35through the old glass. This American student sits down at the table next to me. She's clearly on a study
10:42abroad program. Got the university scarf, the tote bag with American university pins all over it,
10:49the whole look. She pulls out her phone and video calls someone. I'm not trying to listen in,
10:55I really wasn't. But she's talking at full volume in a quiet cafe, so I don't have much choice.
11:01Oh my God, Mom, you should see this place! She practically yells into her phone. It's like if
11:07Harvard was older and had more British people. I nearly spit out my coffee. I managed to swallow it,
11:14but just barely. Her mum says something I can't hear through the phone and the girl responds,
11:20no, like they have colleges here too. They basically copied our whole system,
11:24but made it ancient looking. It's so cool. Oxford University was teaching students in 1096.
11:31That's over 300 years before Columbus even sailed to America. 540 years before Harvard opened its
11:40doors. But sure, we copied you. We saw what Harvard was doing in the future and travelled back in time
11:46to make an older version. That makes perfect sense. Here's the thing, right? At first I thought these
11:52were just random moments. Just a few people who slept through history class or weren't paying
11:58attention that day. They covered basic timelines. But then I started actually paying attention,
12:04started noticing the pattern, and I realised this isn't rare at all. This is common. This is a whole
12:12way of thinking. The American confidence isn't just confidence. It's bigger than that. It's like the
12:18foundation of a building. It holds up everything else. And I was about to discover just how deep this
12:24really goes. But that's nothing compared to what happened at the British Museum.
12:30I'm there for a work thing, some corporate event where they rent out part of the museum
12:34for networking and finger food that's too small to actually fill you up. I'm standing near the
12:41Rosetta Stone, because honestly, if you have to be at a boring work event, you might as well stand next
12:47to something that's actually interesting. The stone's right there behind its glass case, covered in three
12:53different types of ancient writing, looking exactly like it has for thousands of years.
12:59Then I hear this voice, American accent, loud enough that half the room can probably hear.
13:04Babe, babe, come look at this. This is like the original Google Translate.
13:09I turn around. There's this guy, maybe 30 years old, pointing at the Rosetta Stone,
13:15like he's just made the discovery of the century. And honestly, that's actually pretty clever.
13:20I'll give him that one. The Rosetta Stone basically was ancient Google Translate.
13:27It helped us understand Egyptian hieroglyphs by showing the same text in three different languages.
13:34So yeah, fair comparison. His girlfriend walks over, looks at the stone,
13:39reads the little information plaque next to it. Then she goes,
13:42why is it in London though? Shouldn't it be in Egypt?
13:46Now, before I can even begin to process the irony of an American questioning Britain's imperial
13:51acquisitions, before I can even think about how to respond to that very valid point, the boyfriend
13:57jumps in. Well babe, back then Britain was basically America's parent company, so they collected stuff
14:04for the whole empire. We probably have some of this stuff in the Smithsonian. I just stand there, frozen.
14:12My brain is doing that thing again, where it tries to understand what it just heard and completely
14:18fails. Britain was America's parent company. We collected things for America. The Smithsonian has
14:25parts of the Rosetta Stone. Every single part of that sentence is wrong. Not just a little bit wrong,
14:32completely, totally, absolutely wrong. But he says it with such confidence, such absolute certainty,
14:41like he's explaining something obvious to someone who just doesn't get it yet.
14:46And she nods, satisfied with this explanation, and they move on to look at the Egyptian mummies.
14:53I seriously considered following them around the museum, just to hear what else they'd come up with.
14:58But I had to go pretend to care about quarterly reports. My friend James drives a black cab in
15:04London. He's been doing it for 15 years, knows every street, every shortcut, every bit of London
15:13trivia you could possibly imagine. He's picked up everyone from celebrities to politicians to regular
15:19people just trying to get home after a long day. He's heard every possible conversation you can have
15:26in the back of a taxi. So he picks up this American couple from King's Cross station.
15:31They're heading to their hotel in Kensington, which is a decent ride across the city.
15:36The guy starts chatting immediately, friendly enough, asking questions about London.
15:41So, is this like your version of New York City? James has dealt with this before. He's patient.
15:47He's professional. London's about 2000 years old, mate. Predates New York by quite a bit.
15:54The American nods along. Oh, sure, sure, but like, functionally. Big city, lots of people,
16:01finance stuff. It's basically New York, but European. Right? James is driving through traffic,
16:09navigating between buses and cyclists, and he's thinking about how to explain this. He could talk
16:15about how London was already a major world capital when New York was still called New Amsterdam and
16:20was basically just a small trading post. He could mention that London has been a centre of global
16:26power for centuries while New York is, historically speaking, pretty young. But he decides none of that
16:32will actually land. So he just says, something like that, yeah. But the guy's not done. He settles
16:40back in his seat, looking out at the London streets going by, and says, makes sense. We basically took
16:46your blueprint and supersized it. American style. James told me later that he had to pull over.
16:53Just stop the cab right there on Cromwell Road because he was laughing so hard he couldn't see
16:57straight to drive. Not laughing at the guy he made sure to tell me. Just laughing at the sheer
17:04audacity of it. The pure confidence it takes to believe you can supersize 2000 years of history
17:12like it's a meal at McDonald's. The couple thought he was having some kind of medical emergency.
17:17He had to explain he was fine, just remembered something funny and then drove them the rest of
17:22the way trying not to crack up again. Right. But the absolute peak of this, the Mount Everest of American
17:29historical revisionism happened to my cousin at a house party in Manchester. She meets this American
17:35guy there. He's visiting on some kind of work exchange program. Seems nice enough. Decent
17:40conversation. They're chatting by the kitchen counter. Plastic cups of cheap wine in hand,
17:45music playing in the background. He asks what she does for work. She tells him she's a teacher.
17:50Oh, cool. What do you teach? English literature. Nice. So like Hemingway, Steinbeck, that kind of thing.
18:01She shakes her head. No, more like Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, Dickens, that era of writers.
18:08Oh, the British guys. Yeah, that's cool. You learn about them too. My cousin stops. Her hand freezes
18:16halfway to her mouth with her drink. Two? Yeah, like, obviously American literature is the main
18:22thing, but it's cool you guys keep your own stuff alive. Cultural preservation, you know. It's important.
18:29She just stares at him. For a long moment. Long enough that he starts to look uncomfortable.
18:34Then she says, very slowly, very clearly. American literature is about 200 years old.
18:41English literature has been around for over a thousand years. And this man, this confident,
18:47well-meaning, genuinely nice man, he thinks about this for a second. You can see him processing it.
18:55Then he smiles and says, right, but quality over quantity, you know? She dated him for three more
19:03months after that. I still don't understand why. I've asked her about it multiple times.
19:09She just shrugs and says he was good at other things. I don't want to know what things.
19:16Now I want to be really clear about something here. I don't think Americans are stupid.
19:21I genuinely don't. I've met plenty of brilliant Americans who know their history perfectly well.
19:27But I think some of them have been taught American history with such focus, such intensity,
19:33such main character energy, that everywhere else just becomes background noise.
19:40Supporting characters in the United States story. And when you grow up learning that America is the
19:45centre of everything, I guess it makes sense that you'd assume everything else came after,
19:51even when it very obviously didn't. But nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, could have prepared
19:57me for what I was about to hear next. The most outrageous one happened in Edinburgh during the
20:01Fringe Festival. If you don't know what the Fringe is, it's basically this massive arts festival that
20:07happens every August. The whole city turns into one giant stage. There are performers everywhere.
20:15Street corners, pubs, actual theatres, random buildings that get converted into performance
20:20spaces for a month. It's chaos in the best possible way. Comedians, dancers, musicians, actors,
20:28people doing things you didn't even know could be considered performance art. The entire city smells
20:34like beer and fried food, and possibility. I'm walking down the Royal Mile, which is this long street that
20:41runs through the old part of the city, connecting the castle at the top to the palace at the bottom.
20:46It's absolutely packed with people. Tourists taking photos, performers handing out flyers,
20:53bagpipe players competing with each other for attention and spare change. The noise is incredible.
20:59Everyone's talking, laughing, shouting to be heard over everyone else. Then I see this crowd gathering
21:05around a street performer. He's set up right in front of one of the old stone buildings, proper set up
21:12with a small platform and everything. He's in full costume. We're talking doublet, hose, the ruffled collar,
21:18the works. Full Elizabethan era outfit that probably cost more than my monthly rent. And he's performing
21:27Shakespeare. Not just reciting it, but really performing it with all the gestures and emotion
21:33and projection you'd see in a proper theatre. He's doing Hamlet's to be or not to be speech.
21:40You know the one. Whether it's nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
21:46all that. It's one of the most famous speeches in all of English literature. He's really good too.
21:52His voice carries across the crowd, clear and strong, every word perfectly pronounced.
21:58People have stopped walking. They're standing there, 30 or 40 of us, just watching this man
22:03pour his heart into Shakespeare in the middle of a busy street in Scotland. He finishes. The last line
22:09hangs in the air for a moment. Then everyone starts clapping. It's genuine applause too, not just the
22:16polite kind you do to be nice. People are impressed. Some folks are even dropping money into his hat.
22:23It was a beautiful performance. The kind of thing that makes you remember why you love live theatre.
22:31I'm standing there, still clapping, feeling pretty good about humanity and art and street performance,
22:36when I hear this American woman next to me turn to her friend. It's so cute how they still
22:42perform American plays with British accents. Really commits to the bit. I stop clapping.
22:48My hands freeze in mid-air. I turn to look at her, thinking maybe I heard wrong. Maybe the noise
22:55of the street distorted what she actually said. But no. She's smiling, nodding to herself,
23:01clearly pleased with her observation. Her friend, who genuinely might be an actual angel sent from heaven,
23:07says very quietly, Shakespeare was British. The first woman looks confused for a second.
23:14Yeah, but he wrote in English, so… She trails off, but the implication is crystal clear.
23:20English equals American. American equals original. Therefore, Shakespeare, who wrote in English,
23:26must be American. The logic is airtight if you ignore literally every historical fact that exists.
23:33Her friend doesn't push it. She just sort of nods, and they walk away, disappearing into the crowd of
23:39festival-goers. And I'm left standing there on the Royal Mile, in Scotland, in the United Kingdom,
23:45having just watched someone claim that the most famous British playwright in history
23:51was actually American, because he wrote in the language that England gave to the world.
23:56I didn't follow them. I didn't correct them. What would I even say? Where would I start?
24:03Do you begin with the fact that Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564?
24:09Do you explain that England had the language first, literally invented it, and America adopted it later?
24:17Do you point out that American English is called American English specifically because it's a
24:22variation of English English, not the other way around? None of it would matter. The confidence
24:27was too strong. It had its own gravity, its own atmosphere. Facts would just bounce off it like
24:33rain off a windshield. Look, here's what I've learned from all of this. From the pub,
24:39from Westminster Abbey, from the British Museum, from black cabs and coffee shops and house parties
24:45and street performances in Edinburgh. Americans don't think they copied us. That's not what's happening here.
24:52They genuinely believe they innovated. That they took our rough draft of civilisation
24:58and improved it. Added freedom and better teeth and portion sizes that actually fill you up.
25:05They think they're the finished product and we're still stuck in beta testing. And you know what?
25:10There's something almost impressive about that level of confidence. It's wrong. It's historically
25:17illiterate. It's occasionally pretty offensive when you really think about it. But it's also kind of
25:23amazing to be so sure of yourself that you can look at a thousand years of documented history and just
25:30decide it happened differently. That takes a special kind of belief in yourself. Remember way back at the
25:38start when I told you about the American who said we invented English but America perfected it?
25:43His name was Brad. He was from Wisconsin. He pronounced herbs without the H sound at the start.
25:51Like it was just herbs. He called football soccer even though the rest of the world calls it football.
25:56He put ice in everything, even water that was already cold. But he genuinely, truly, completely
26:03believed that he spoke English better than English people speak English. Better than the people who
26:08invented the language in the first place. Better than the country where the language was born and
26:14grew up and developed for over a thousand years, before America even existed as an idea. And I think
26:20that might be the most American thing I've ever encountered in my entire life. So, here's my question
26:26for all of you watching this. What's the most confidently incorrect thing you've ever heard someone say about
26:32your country? Because I know Britain isn't the only place dealing with this. I know there are people
26:38all over the world who've had tourists or visitors or exchange students explain their own history back to
26:44them completely wrong, but with absolute certainty. Drop your stories in the comments. Please. I need to know
26:53I'm not alone in this. I need to know that other people have experienced this special kind of madness.
26:59Also, Americans in the comments, and I know you're there, please tell me this isn't all of you. Please restore my faith
27:08in international relations. Tell me you know that other countries existed before America. Tell me you
27:16learned about world history, not just American history. Give me hope. I'll be reading every single
27:22comment, every story, every correction from Americans telling me I've got it all wrong. I genuinely want to
27:30hear from all of you. Cheers. Subscribe to In Another World if you're ready to see the world from a whole new angle.
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