First things first: this comm is about anti-imperialism.

It is to help you in your personal journey of cultural anti-imperialism.

American culture has spread all over the world, it has dumbed down and impoverished our variegated pre-colonial and non-capitalist cultures. Every time you yank yourself, a bit of their culture worms its way into your mind. Sometimes it's explicit propaganda like Top Gun, but sometimes it's subtle: the contempt shown for the poor, the celebration of selfishness, the mental foundation on which their empire stands.

All inputs enter the mind, are absorbed, and blossom as thoughts and deeds. Mass-produced culture dulls you and makes you a boring, mass-produced personality. And nations are losing their personality by letting one imperial power do this to them.

That the empire is doing this as a more-or-less deliberate tool of influence doesn't need stressing.

Stop doing this to yourself. Don't watch their television. Don't watch their films. Don't read their stupid news and politics: ABC and CNN and NBC and the rest. Don't be so fucking boring. You don't have to be boring and stupid. Turn off your TV. Pick up some of your country's classic books, or listen to African funk, or go to a storytelling night.

RAAMACFYL = Remove All American Media And Culture From Your Life

One way to start is to give NoYank a 30-day trial, like you would with NoPoo or NoFap. One common finding is that you are pushed towards more mentally-stimulating, less shallow content.

Examples of posts that are welcome

• Give recommendations of internationalist media

• Bookclubs for anti-imperialist books or just any non-american books

• Complain about americanised people and culture.

• Talk about your motivations

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QUESTIONS

• Why should I stop consuming American culture? – I'm not saying you should, you must do what seems like a good idea to you. Why don't you RAAMACFYL for a month and see how it feels? Maybe you'll be less angry, less competitive, more engaged with a richer cultural experience. It should be life-enhancing for you.

• Does [Breaking Bad/TheSimpsons/etc count?] – Yes.

• Are Yanks allowed post here? – Yes. It's about cultural de-americanisation, not yanks-out

• Aren't you just limiting yourselves, diminishing the diversity of culture available to you? – On the contrary, you will consume more diverse culture, not less. The average American culture enjoyer beats their brain with the same clichés over and over again. Try RAAMACFYL for one month and see for yourself that your horizons are broadened, not narrowed. Some other community members believe in the 4% rule, where 4% of your media comes from the USA, proportional to their share of the global population.

The reddit version /r/RAAMACFYL only ever had 250 people and less organic activity than this one.

Keep posting!

This is what I get when I look up 'quotes from Yellowstone' –

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Why?? What's the point? "Ooooh look at how evil I am, I am so amoral, I don't care about anything except money and power."

It doesn't even advance the plot, they're just doing it to be weird.

I made it about two minutes into that new British show about gladiators for the same reason: every single line of dialogue is like this.

The characters are complex enough that they do surprising things, don't just follow a simple template, yet their motivations make sense.

There is Machiavellianism but they don't pile it on (one of my pet peeves about current American culture is they constantly make a point of signalling how amoral they are, it's really weird)

It has some tropes (martial artists can fly/become weightless) but only here and there, not so they overwhelm the story.

Let's pick out a line from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm to see what he has to say:

"Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist."

That's a pretty typical line. Let's set aside for now the debate on whether nonconformity is good or bad: look at the tone of the writing. It is a moral lecture. It is saying: "This is how you should think, what you should believe, how you should be." The reading allows only one interpretation. It's just beating you about the head with serious truth-claims. Another line:

"Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given, something is taken."

Each sentence is a bland assertion. Commanding the reader what to think. I am reading a list of opinions. That is all it is: a list of opinions. This is considered peak Usan culture. It is considered to be literature or philosophy. Another line –

"He is a good man, who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming."

This is not literature. This is a self-help book. It is downright bad, adolescent writing. It's relentlessly po-faced, and there isn't a whiff of creativity from the prose. I grew up on Irish writers. Irish writers say things like –

"Choosing his boot, the buttoned class, as a convenient example of inanation, he lifted it in the air"

Irish writers say things like –

"She opened the fridge for the ham, the butter, the can of Smithwick's. Happy as a duck she was"

These are just the first two lines before my eyes when I picked up the first two books by my elbow. Do you see the difference? Literature should have warmth, humanity, creativity. Writers should have the craic with language. The words should be buttered with character. Ralph Waldo Emerson's output has all the banality of ChatGPT's. Imagine living with this guy. Imagine trying to flirt with him and he just starts lecturing you like a charmless Anglican.

Edgar Allen Poe's pretty good though I'll give the yanks that.