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by mfer 1745 days ago
> Am reading through the comments and I have to say westerners really think all news is about them.

As a westerner, I've discovered that we forget that we are less than 20% of the global population. Bringing that up in conversation can surprise people.

1 comments

For news, is global population the best metric to use? Wouldn’t you want maybe the “origin of things that will effect everyone”?

What percent of the global economy? What percent of industry/invention? What percent of entertainment? What percent of military?

Edit: No one wants to address military

"Wouldn’t you want maybe the “origin of things that will effect everyone"

No, our media is fucked.

UK media is obsessed with random news from USA, if Sarah Palin says something dumb it will be all over the papers, but if poland gets a new president it might not even be mentioned. In the past year my local news has never printed the name of my local MP but has printed maybe 100 of donald trump's tweets.

It's really interesting to look at, from the US perspective.

The UK and Canadian media seems to be obsessed with US politics, yet here we barely talk about either countries. Why is that so?

I have the feeling your response just highlights the misconceptions from another angle.

From my personal experience living abroad, we westerners highly overestimate the consumption of our entertainment (movies/shows/music/games) in the non-western world. E.g. log into your favorite western online game in Japan and see what players you end up playing with. Hint: It's basically noone Japanese.

Regarding economy: based on the wikipedia data available here [1] USA+EU+Australia (with GB i think still included in EU there) makes up less than 50% of the global economy, tendency downwards.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy

Not a good example. Japan is famously insular and large enough to support a domestic audience.

Virtually every smaller country in Europe and Latin America consume American media voraciously.

You just cited Western countries. I think you may have missed the point of the GP
Eastern Europe isn’t included with in “Western countries.” Hence the name, Eastern.

I really wouldn’t consider Latin America to be in the West either.

Eastern Europe and Latin America is generally considered to be part of the West. Your argument is unconvincing because I could say the same about Eastern Canada.

Generally the dividing line between West and East is the Ural mountains.

Definitely kinda proving the above commenter’s point; here, rather than dissuading it...