I mean, why do (some) Americans think that every country uses US Dollars?
Because just like (some) members of every country they’re fucking idiots.
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
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I feel that the only people who can afford to visit other countries are the stupid, self entitled rich people of the US, so they give everyone a bad name.
Kind of like how the only people who get elected are the stupid, self entitled people so they give everyone a bad name.
I've not seen that level of entitlement at home; I don't think I've seen anyone in person ever say "speak English!" in person like, ever.
You did not notice that both of your examples have nothing to do with "US defaultism" but just normal properties of shitty humans?
I've heard Britons and Singaporeans speak like this about English, and I've even heard people whose language is not even the "world language" like Germans or Italians speak like that.
Same with the currency thing, I've seen people do that same thing with Euros and Yen.
This is not a US-specific thing, it's just a privileged/narcissistic/patriot human thing.
You seem like the type that really likes stereotypes instead of depth of understanding and nuance.
Local cafeteria put up a sign that the fish contains bones. I asked about the obvious, someone returned it asking them how the heck he was supposed to eat that, cause you know, it had bones.
I've been to fish restaurants in the US and literally got served breaded fillets. Kinda like fishsticks, but more expensive. Same thing for shrimp, no heads, seldom tails.
The population that is used to eat fish in fishform and shrimp in shrimpform is just very low.
We went to Cabo Verde, Santa María on Sal.
Heard an American loudly proclaim "I don't speak Portuguese" to one of the waiters in the restaurant.
Fair enough. Neither can I, but the waiter was asking for their order in English
I was super young, like maybe 4-5 or something, when my family took a short trip south from San Diego (USA) into Tijuana, Mexico since the border was right there and it wasn't a big deal back then.
I remember seeing price tags and being really surprised... That they were in US dollars.
I don't think I had even started school yet, but I still knew that different country = different language and different money. Not sure how people can miss that so easily.
When I was a teenager an American visitor wrote to our biggest newspaper calling us a shitty little 3rd world country for not serving hashbrowns. Which is how I learned what a hashbrown is. I can see why you like them, they're in the same conceptual space as potato chips. Not sure you'll get my buy-in as a breakfast food, though. So greasy!
Though, many countries in Europe have dishes that are comparable to hashbrowns, a badly made Swiss Rösti for example. Or Dotsch in my region, which is probably even greasier if made right.
Breakfast foods here in the USA can be pretty greasy from my experience. Breakfast sausage, bacon. Even eggs depending on how you cook them. Probably more too I can't think of off the top of my head.
Breakfast is just a difficult meal.
If it's not greasy it's 50% sugar
50% actual sugar, 50% simple carbs. Maybe 4oz of milk, more likely 8oz of sugar water juice. Pastries, toast, waffles, pancakes, donuts, neon cereal, processed oats, and orange juice.
I mean, why do (some) Americans think that every country uses US Dollars?
Post WW2 the US economy was the only one that hadn't been bombed to absolute shit...
So the US dollar was worth more than any other currency. Exchange rates fluctuated constantly, but US was always worth it. So US travellers could "haggle" in US currency, and even if it wasn't enough at the moment, it might be too much tomorrow.
The assumption in areas with US travelers, was shop owners all kept a stash of US currency to exchange when it was highest.
So you got some elderly travelers who think the world is still like when they were teenagers, and some younger travellers going off decades old information.
For the host country, it's a steady stream. But very few Americans cross either ocean, which is why it's often people on their very first trip who have no idea what's happening. They learn as soon as someone actually explains it, but everyone is so tired of the steady stream they don't keep explaining.
It's the exact same thing with Chinese tourists going to America or Western Europe.
The few who do it regularly, quickly learn to blend in, it's just a constant stream of people who just showed up and have no idea what the actual cultural norms are due to language barrier
A lot of countries do have tourist areas where staff are taught to speak English and will take USD. Like the only places in Spain I went where someone didn't speak English were a beauty store and a taxi stand. Otherwise there was always at least one who spoke English. The card reader allowed me to choose between USD and Euros. Touristy areas are designed to accommodate foreigners.
People speaking English in tourist areas is normal, but I've seen Muricas complain about people speaking Spanish first or even among themselves here in Spain.
Also, no, the machine asking you USD or EUR is because your card is in USD and you can choose whether to have the bank in Spain do the conversion or let your bank do it. If you tried to give a dollar bill in that same establishment you would be informed that they don't take dollars, or be charged an absurd conversion rate to justify his bother of having to exchange that money.
Choosing between USD and EUR is a fraud scheme, though. They have an exceptionally bad exchange rate for the non-EUR currencies. It's basically always cheaper (unless your own bank is an absolute madhouse!) to choose payment in local currency and let your bank do the conversion.
Paying with card is not the same as paying with a dollar bill.
If you find a place that takes USD in cash in Europe, prepare to be ripped off. They only do that because they can overcharge you on the conversion without you noticing it.
Even my doctor (in Germany) doesn't speak English. And I'm in a very popular tourist area (the Black Forest). Also, nobody in Europe accepts cash dollars.
Not exactly an answer but:
No joke, when I was 8 years old, my family left the China for the first time and then I saw some food item in a store in the Korean airport costing something like 15,000 of a currency, I was like holy shit are all foreigners this rich?
Then my dad told me its just a different currency, its actually just equivalent to something like $10 美金 "American Money" (USD)...
Which I also didn't understand what it meant, before that incident, the Chinese Yuan / Renminbi was the only thing I knew of...
So for a while, its was just the adult's weird magic numbers to me lol...
I think some people just never left their country before and never learned about stuff, maybe their parents are also ignorant and never taught them anything.
And the English Language Defaultism probably arises from it being widely taught and so many countries use it like Canada, UK, Australia... and lot of the colonized countries still retained it like India... and its the probably most commonly taught languahe in non-anglosphere countries... So, some English-speaking people just made a false assumption about the world...
It's not just Americans who do this by any means, and nor are they the worst offenders! Trust me on this, I'm British - the most wilfully parochial nation on earth.
You'll always get the odd jerk, but mostly this stuff tends to come from a lack of travel experience more than anything else. Unless you've travelled, you may not even realise what assumptions you're making about how day-to-day life works. And, well, a lot of Americans haven't travelled much outside of the USA. (That's not a criticism by the way - the USA is absolutely enormous and incredibly diverse, and you could spend a lifetime exploring it and not see it all.)
All that said, back in the days before dual voltage power supplies were common I did used to find it amusing watching Americans in Europe blithely plugging their electrical goods into the 220V mains and wondering why they blew up.
"Fish and chips por favor."
Reminds me of my grandpa's best efforts in Spanish: "Dos children and two Erwachsene"
average briton on spain
'On' Spain?
That's when you inject Spain directly, yes.
One American I knew was absolutely outraged that shops were closed on sun- and holidays.
English is the common tongue of the world. Expecting everyone you might plausibly interact with to speak enough for basic communication is in fact reasonable. Fun fact: burger King used to accept dollars in Germany. I don't know if they still do.
As far as I know they only did this in areas with a lot of US traffic, like around military bases or in tourist towns. It was probably very profitable because they'd give you horrible conversion rates.
Another LLM bot. Same writing patterns as the other ones.
They seem to have an active account though, not a sign of a bot imho.
I think they're just using it to translate.
When someone does that, it picks up a lot of those AI "goosebumps" that make it feel off.