Was this really necessary?

[tom2050]

It's a pretty big translation error to include America in the translation when the word America was not included in the others. That argument is possible, but doubtful at the same time to a degree. Who ever wrote it probably has an anti-US chip on his shoulder.

It's not a jab at how American History is taught to 5th graders, it's at how American's are labeled as not knowing where a single prominent country is located.

Come on people, Arabia is next on the list... if it is so 'nothing', then start the Fun Ingorant Negative jabs against Arabia, then we will continue down the line.

 

[Fife]

I saw a segment on The Daily Show about kids being taught Chinese and how the district thought it was making them communists... Really??? Middle school agents to China?

 

[Ergo Sum]

Love this thread. Pointless nationalism (to be fair, all nationalism is pointless) to defend debasement of country, then juvenile complaints about anti-americanism.

As you can probably tell, I have very few qualms about those lines, even though I've been a lifelong resident of the U.S.

 

[Fife]

It was meant as a joke.

 

[tom2050]

Sure, Ergo Sum you may be 10 years old yourself, but they singled out a specific country. Was not done to any of the others.

I checked the others, and would have done the same thing if they wrote a bunch of garbage about another country.

You don't know if the writer meant it as a joke or not.

So does anyone mind if I start the Fun jabbing session against the next civilization on the list, Arabia?

Something like:

Why are camels called "Ships of the Desert"?

Because they're full of Arab seamen

Of course an obvious joke, and not a civ-style jab. Aztec's are up.

 

[Fife]

Maybe... I haven't much of that though.

 

[aziantuntija]

"Was this really necessary?"

Well i could ask you the same question but ill just add one more word to it and then it looks like this: "Was this thread really necessary?"

 

[tom2050]

Oh! You all are right! It is fun! Remember, it's nothing to Firaxis and nothing to us... as everyone has been telling me (I finally get it and agree!)

Some on the French:

What does "Maginot" mean in German?
Welcome!

Why do French naval ships have glass bottoms?
To see all their other ships.

What's the difference between a dead skunk and a dead Frenchman In the middle of the road?
There are skid marks in front of the skunk.

Maybe we should PM Greg and have some of the community jabs added in for other countries... Civ 5 can become one big insult jab fest!

 

[PieceOfMind]

"Was this really necessary?"

Well i could ask you the same question but ill just add one more word to it and then it looks like this: "Was this thread really necessary?"

This thread would have been made my someone eventually. It is a pretty obvious cheapshot. Many won't care about it, but obviously some do. It's not very professional coming from 2K.

Anti-American slurs I consider to be on a similar level to sexist slurs. Many people consider them to be acceptable but many also don't.

I'm sure it will be changed very soon and this thread will disappear, as you probably want.

 

[tom2050]

Oh, wait! They add this quote in for USA:

One can hardly guess what will happen to it in the 21st.

But Greece gets off scot-free? How funny. Greece has self-imploded, perhaps Firaxis should be wondering what will happen to Greece in the 21st century instead; yet their summary is:

It is difficult to overstate the impact that Greece has had upon Western culture and history. Classical Greece has given birth to some of the greatest artists, philosophers, scientists, historians, dramatists and warriors the world has known. Greek warriors and colonists spread their culture throughout the Mediterranean and into the Near and Far East. The heirs to Greece, the Romans, further promulgated Greek thought throughout Europe, and from there it spread across the oceans and into the New World.

Oh, how wonderful an Overview!

 

[Earthling]

Hmm, this seems to be against civfanatics rules given recent discussion even

 

[tom2050]

They are just jokes... Firaxis is doing it, and everyone convinced me it is nothing wrong... just having some fun. Fun isn't against the rules.

Besides, I sent PM's to mods to make sure first.

 

[Gelvan]

the argument that america "only" is 200 years old or something like that (have no idea and am too lazy too google it, is a bit strange), since many civ's are quite young if you think about it I mean look at switzerland: the oldest democracy on this planet goes back to 1291 BUT switzerland has been built 1848 (or something like that, I really can't remember the exact date), so what is it? 150 or 700? sure enough france and english and german has been spoken for many years, but go back 500 years and you really would have difficulty to translate "your" language. china with mao as leaderhead is maybe 50 years old. I really don't think the years a civ exists or has existed should be the point, but more the cultural impact it had. greece HAD an enormous impact on world history, as had egypt, spain, germany, and last but not least: the USA.
that said, I really think most people in the "western world" have NO clue at all, about the ottoman empire (I for sure don't ) and if you replace "american" with "western" the sentence wouldn't be as offensive, but just true. most people don't know much about anything, safe what they learned in their school, but that's mostly science or economy and not so much about history and society. I'm the proof of that somehow, and I have to admit, that I learnt from the civ series much more, than from the school, even if (and that's no big "if") the civ series wasn't completely right about all those things in the civilopaedia. still, better than school...
and why would one replace "america" in that sentence with "western"? because that's a cold fact. sure we european have our own languages and political systems, but if you look at the CULTURE: it is clearly hollywood, macdonalds, capitalism - american culture.
this really isn't meant as an offense, I'm just trying to ease you a bit on this sentence. the western culture has it's flaws (they know not much about the region between greece and china), and it has it's good sides (social market or however that's called in english).

 

[tom2050]

Every culture has flaws, and w/e flaws USA has could be considered minor compared to some other 'cultures' out there.

Firaxis did not give a fair round of culture bashing to all... but singled out America, and disrespected the Ottomans by making some of the Overview a bash session. That is the point...

To say American's don't know where Ottoman Empire is... is stupid. I could say Turkey doesn't know where the Ottoman Empire is There probably are many who don't know. It's the blind spot in their brains. It's just a stupid comment. I want to know who wrote or translated that garbage, and I doubt useless 2K Greg will phone home and find out and let us know (although he should know, since they are One and the Same). So far the 2K info provided is nothing we don't already know.

They don't care anyways, Take 2K attacked their own modding communities for Porn they put in their games (with no warning) that had little kids playing.

If they wrote something like that against certain other countries, there would be a huge outlashing against it, which is fact. But with USA and the West, most of the world agrees; so no need to worry for them.

 

[_random_]

If you want mockery of all the other civs, Google "Conan O'Brien Hates My Homeland" and be done with it.

 

[Gelvan]

okay I know where turkey is, but you see there are many (?) American who confound Sweden with Switzerland and why should we blame them? I also have no idea where exactly Alabama lies in the USA, becaues it's far away! I know where Bombay is because I've been there, not because some school teacher teached it to me. the western culture IS more about "being friendly to your customers, while ripping them off" or "how to lease a car" than about humanistic traditions (Greek invention by the way), so if someone wants to blame someone, blame the setting of priorities we have in the west (which is called the Occident by educated people like Hermann Hesse). But being angry because somebody made a joke of that? where's the point? and clearly all the civ descriptions are somehow humoristic, take germany:

Factoid:
There are over 1,300 beer breweries in Germany, making almost 5,000 different kinds of beer. The Germans consume the 3rd largest amount of beer per year, after the Irish and the Czechs, roughly 31 gallons per person per year.

this isn't meant as an offense!

porn? well, I have no idea what your talking about, but maybe the whole planet (not only the west) could use a bit of relax concerning sex. but I'm sure that kind of talk is not allowed by the forum rules, so we shouldn't dig deeper... ^^

mockery can be funny - take Ephraim Kishon for a good example of mockery - this isn't bad at all, but instead it may switch a geared point of view to a more relaxed point of view.

 

[PieceOfMind]

this isn't meant as an offense!

lol of course not. Most these days would consider it a compliment.

Mockery can be funny. But anti-Americanism (if that's what it's called) is usually in poor taste and only occasionally funny. When a mockery is close to the truth, it's often not funny either.

 

[Krill]

Not only that, but out of all the descriptions of all the civ's, America's is obviously written in a degrading manner:



If this is what 2K and Firaxis have become, I can for sure say they can go **** themselves.

What? Both points you bolded are true.

 

[ICNP]

It is true that the Ottomans get ignored quite a bit in American schools. After taking "Modern World History" (meaning Modern Western World) and "AP European History" I had learned very little about the Ottoman's. The Modern World class basically spend all of an hour on them just before WW1.

I would love to know more about how they got their start, but really the Ottomans don't get a lot of good press from the West. I think the Crowning moment of Awesome article on TVTropes only mentions 2 good things about the empire:
-They held out at Gallipoli
-They captured Constantinople

The rest is just illustrating how badly they lost at Vienna and other places. They could have mentioned their political or cultural history but rather chose to discuss the fact that only 10% of American's could define roughly where there borders were, given a map. I'd wager less than 20% could figure out that the Ottomans and Turks are the same thing but whatever.

 

[Gelvan]

the truth? what exactly would you call truth? that most people all over the world are have to have a go at earning enough money so they can buy cloths, that they need to get married one day, so the are not alone and can pay the taxes, accomodation, cars - so they can sometimes play a game or go on holiday? that is true - and still it isn't because life is more and less than all the things people do - and know - and learn - and see. mockery can be hard, it can be harmful, and by harm you get to know more about the life than by a safety bubble which gives you the illusion of having any control at all. life is like the wind and the planets flying with a huge speed around their suns. it is more and less together. being a human is to learn to laugh, to cry and to be angry and hateful and to love and to appologize and to forgive. so mockery can lead you to all of these feelings. anti americanism - hell yeah, some descicions of your presidents like napalming Vietnam were just crazy, and if we - as a planet - ever want to be ONE planet, we have to learn to just forgive - ourselves, "the american", "the german", your boss, your aunt. because by forgiving we learn to forgive ourselves for lost opportunities for not being a star or whatever craves our mind at the moment. encore une fois: Ephraim Kishon. He understood nearly a much of the human beings as Hermann Hesse did. just try to take it seriously and you will fail to have fun in life.