[Jakob]

That seems to be an isolated standpoint. While the US and UK undeniably have a big influence on global thinking, they are surely far from dominant in any than some specialised categories?

Going through some the biggest countries by population: China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Mexico, Japan, Iran, UK, Germany, France, which one would you say would have a big to moderate US cultural influence? I would say UK, Mexico, and to a lesser degree Germany, and then France, everything else hardly?

Book publishing looks also healthy in a lot of countries https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_...

[infruset]

Random people from all these countries can name of the top of their head a bunch of any of the following:

- US presidents

- US pop artists

- US filmmakers

- US cities

- US CEOs

- US companies

- US TV shows

I stopped there but I could go on for long. Now, take any country X other than the US and ask a random resident of any of the other countries to name just one of each category: a president of X, a CEO, a film, etc... If you think the answer has any chance to compete with the equivalent question asked of the US, well, I think you don't realize how big the cultural influence of the US is. What is domestic news in the US is still news in the rest of the world, but the reverse is simply not true.

[Jakob]

We apparently live in very different societies.

Of course a random Indonesian would know Indian, Chinese, and French presidents, and vice versa. Young people I see hype up Korean bands. Chinese, Japanese, German, French and Indian companies are well known and highly influential (Ant, Tata, Huawei, all car brands, Samsung, Sony, Nintendo, …). Who are US filmmakers that are more known than non-US ones, Spielberg and Nolan?

Your experience is obviously vastly different. Let’s just not state it as fundamental truth.