Hey Foreigners: Here's Why Americans Don't Pay Attention To You

In my vast travels around the business world and the internet, I've run into a great many foreigners. Yeah, they're everywhere. We even have foreign visitors to this here blog. And one of the things I keep running into is this idea that Americans are self-centered and don't pay attention to foreign countries. Let me explain why this isn't true.

Americans care a lot more about domestic news than they do about foreign news. That's a fact. The evidence is overwhelming. Even here, I can cut readership by 40% just by mentioning a foreign country... Prussia! So there is some truth to the idea that Americans don't pay attention to foreign events. But you know what? We pay a lot more attention than other countries do. The problem is that most foreigners don't understand that just because you pay attention to us doesn't mean we have a reason to pay attention to you.

This is the problem. Foreigners pay a lot of attention to us. Our films and television dominate their entertainment. Our products are everywhere in their countries. Their newspapers and nightly newscasts typically lead off with coverage of America and what we are up to. If you ever check out their papers online, you'll see that most of what they talk about is us. . . our politicians, our economy, our military, our sports, our celebrities. Sooooo, naturally, they assume that we must cover them the same way because if they care about us, then we must care about them, right? Well, no. And when they discover that we don't care about them, they get rather put out. That's when they call us self-centered jerks who only care about America.

But that's not true, and here's why.

Consider London (to use an example outside the US). I will bet you that every paper in Britain is packed with stories about the goings on in London. Yet, the London papers probably don't say Lord Jacksh*t about the happens in Bumfkferdshire. Why is that? Is it that Londoners are self-centered? Probably. But beside that, there's just no room. A newspaper can only cover so much news, so they pick the things that are most likely to matter the most. That means reporting on the movers and shakers, and the movers and shakers don't tend to live in small, out-of-the way places. Not to mention, there are thousands of Bumfkferdshires, so how could London pay attention to them all?

Well, it's the same thing with countries. You pay attention to us because we matter on the world scene, but you don't pay any more attention to Krapistan than we do because they don't do anything that warrants your attention. That means to the good people of Krapistan, you are just as guilty as we are of being self-centered. The only difference is that Krapistan doesn't care if you pay attention to them or not, because you don't matter to them either.

Look, I hate to say this, but most of you live in Krapistan whether you know it or not... you just aren't that important to us. Wow, that sounds rude, but it's true. Is this helping? Anyway, I know the British and the French and the Germans and the Brazilians and the Whatnots all think that they should be at the top of our list of countries that matter, but think about the competition. Think about what countries matter to us directly and indirectly. Do Britain, France and Brazil even crack that list? Let's find out. Here are the countries that impact us directly at the moment:

1. China -- the economic and (possible) military enemy
2. Afghanistan -- we're at war there
3. Iraq -- we just had a war there
4. Iran -- we're planning a war there
5. Israel -- big Jewish lobby here
6. Mexico -- narco-war on our border, we have 11 million of their people here
7. North Korea -- run by lunatic who wants to nuke Austin
8. Russia -- run by closeted homosexual who tries to stop everything we do
9. Saudi Arabia -- exporter of oil and terrorism, houser of American troops
10. Pakistan -- all kinds of trouble for us in many ways

See the problem? That's just the first wave. Those are the countries who are constantly on our news because they do something that poses a genuine threat to us almost every single day. How many people in other countries need to pay attention to ten "hot spot" countries?

Then you have the second tier. These are countries who affect us less directly, but still make our news for one reason or another. This includes Germany, the owner of the Eurozone, Japan and South Korea where we have massive numbers of troops in harms way, and India, the land of outsourcing. This is where Britain finally appears too because we get their television programs. But I still don't see a France, an Italy, a Brazil, etc. even though each of those countries seems to think they deserve to be at the top of the list.

Do you see now why this perception that Americans don't pay attention to foreign countries is wrong? The real problem isn't that we don't pay attention, it's that you don't stand out from the crowd. If you want to get noticed, do something to make us notice you. Nuke your neighbors... turn to terrorism... build an economic bloc and let it collapse. Seriously, if Hugo Chavez can get noticed, then so can you. Don't blame us if you're boring.

In all seriousness, this has been somewhat tongue-in-cheek but the point is valid. Americans pay attention to a lot more foreign news than the rest of the world wants to believe, but since we don't have an infinite amount of time, we focus on the things that matter to us the most -- wars, terrorism, threats of being nuked, economic competitors who inflate their currency and launch cyber attacks on our companies, narco-wars on our doorstep, and so on. Americans are not self-centered... we're just busy.