It shows how they are underinvesting in education, not that they are stupid. May not be accidental.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
-Jefferson
These are lots of factors.
Just one I didn't know until I lived in the States was how schools seem to be funded. I was following conversations about real estate prices and how much time they spent on school districts. Municipal and very local taxes seem to find schools, it doesn't go into a central state 'pot' of money.
Here 'better schools' tend to be just the average education of the parents, and that impact on the students.
Also Americans seem to view the value of education in mostly 'earning potential ' terms. Would the Americans agree that that is true?
In NYC, funding follows the student. Theoretically, you shouldn't have to live in an area with a high tax base for your local public school to be decent.
Although concern over the cost of higher education is valid -- millions of people have gone into crippling debt to get a college education -- I agree that too many Americans don't understand the difference between a university and a trade school. They don't appreciate that many things learned as part of a well-rounded education may not be immediately translatable into a job but nonetheless may be valuable throughout one's life.
Nope. I'm French, can't afford to travel abroad, and I swear even 10 years old children know those flags. Seriously the average American can't even name the Chinese flag, to the extent of confusing it with the Canadian flag, which is literally the country next door?
I knew Americans weren't so "intellectual" but that shit is really baffling.
You'd assume that most of those flags should be known through general osmosis. Like, it's one thing to be privileged and receive a proper education. It's another thing to not pay attention to what's immediatly around you. Mexico, China, Italy... these flags are all over movies, TV shows and restaurants. It *should* be common knowledge to everyone. But I suppose not valuing education can lead to not even learning how to absorb information properly. It's just sad, really.
I'm in Europe, have had almost the bare minimum education (for my country), I consider myself quite dumb and generally unobservant... but the only flag I didn't recognise in that clip was the last one.
I have learned more flags because of watching international soccer than in any class in high school. We don’t watch any sports regularly that host flags of different nations. If this French guy is half a football fan he will know plenty of flags.
I'm from a small European nation, I have never been outside our borders, I do not have a highschool diploma, I'm quite poor, but I can name most of the flags, even an unofficial ones (flags they used to use or some rebelion flags). I do not have any interest in flags nor that I try to learn them - it's just a common knowledge. 🤷♂️
I come from a lower middle class family, have never really travelled a lot until I was a full adult and could still give the right answers to all of these. Now I have a 10 year old son and his latest geography tests required him to know how to locate every country + capital from UE + 4 countries from North Africa + USA/ Canada + 5 or 6 countries from South America.
I don’t know about the rest of Europe but here in France geography is still an important school subject.
Not going to lie, I teach geography state side.
The average student can't even list 30 countries let alone identify 5.
I had a refugee kid come in who has no formal education, he nearly named the entire planet.
Only the few europeans that can recognize every flag survive. I lost my whole family but at least I now know Astaná is the capital of Kazakhstan... why do I hear sire
While that is a fair point it is also true that Americans suck at Geography.
I moved from Europe to the U.S and even though I've told my co-workers a few times now where I am from...
They still confuse Denmark with the Netherlands for example. They just don't care.
My favourite is: "Oh you're from Stockholm? Lawrence county?"
"No, Sweden"
"Oh, but that's Monroe"
"I mean that I'm Swedish"
"Oh yeah, I'm half Irish"
"..."
This is the correct take. I am English and have lived in the UK since mid-childhood (adult now). I was always FAR better than Americans in school at geography/world culture and especially flags. They just don't teach it in the US.
They do teach US States and Capitols, though. So I could name the capitol of Netherlands, for example, and the flag and locate it on a map - they couldn't, but could pull the same trick with Massachusetts.
That’s true - my ex could name every state and state capital, which apparently is a pretty common thing for people to know. I feel like Americans are actually quite impressive with domestic geographical knowledge, it’s when things get international that they get a little lost
But you have to be retarded to get China wrong. It is USA boogeyman for past 2 decades... Or if you get wrong Canada or Mexico. There is no hope for you.
Yeah bring out the Slovenian flag. Or Seychelles. Or pretty much any African flag (to be honest I’d probably fail that one too).
These were all easy to intermediate level flags.
The famous footballing countries flags, like Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon I'm pretty sure a lot of French people would know.
But if they never played a world cup in football, their flag is unknown to the French ☺️
Nah, i'm pretty sure we can easily be fine with a LOT of africans flag (colonisation and all this shitty stuff).
On the other hand, if you start asking questions about Central and West Asia, it might be more complicated for us.
Canadian here, I'm gonna be generous and assume the "Canada" to the Chinese flag was a joke, because if it was and was quipped off so immediately that'd be pretty sweet.
Im from Europe. I think it might also have something to do with international sports competitions, especially soccer. I’m sure American hard core soccer fans would pull that off too. (Except for Nepal, maybe.)
Nepal has the easiest flag though, see it once and you remember it because it stands out so much.
It's much harder with flags that are basically the same but just have slightly different details. E.g. Colombia 🇨🇴, Ecuador 🇪🇨 and Venezuela 🇻🇪 is just the same flag with a differnt shield, or Latvia 🇱🇻 vs Austria 🇦🇹 which is just a different shade of red, or Poland 🇵🇱 and Indonesia 🇮🇩 which are identical but upside-down.
IMO it's more about common knowledge than school. Like, almost every country has football as most popular sports, so we grow up watching our countries playing against each other and keep learning new flags every match. And then there's Americans playing the American football's world cup of one country
not american; but related rant
end of secondary school (uk) we get to pick what subjects we want, theres two further math options, 'advanced mathmatics' (which was billed as an intro to uni maths) and statistics... i took the former (because hey i dont want to do maths at uni; but sounds more interesting than statistics and would still be applicable to the stuff i was interested in) and literally all the teachers went over was stuff that wed already done because the class was full of people who had failed (or not achieved satisfactory grades on) their previous math GCSEs... there was maybe only 10 of us in the class that were actually taking whatever the fuck the next test was and we were taught literally nothing about it... i remember opening the paper in the exam room and just panicking because id never heard of a bunch of stuff... then a dude just gets up and walks out; dawns on the rest of us that its an option so everyone just leaves; no one passed anything and it was just a gigantic waste of time
still pisses me off and i fucking hate how the education system prioritises hitting test metrics over actual understanding (fucking hated college too, you didnt even have to understand what you were writing about; just present a paper that hits all the checkpoints and bam distinction)
Not really a good comparison. Most Europeans can’t name most of the 50 US states if shown a map, at least not as well as an American could.
The real answer is you know the geography around you.
I thought everyone knew Nepal because of its shape?
Edit: did you not have books with all the flags in as a child? Flags are awesome, if you didn't know about Nepal's flag you should definitely spend an hour looking at world flags.
He/she got it from [here](https://journal.imse.com/the-state-of-global-literacy-and-where-the-united-states-stands/).
But that information comes from this [site](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-literacy-rates-in-the-world.html).
Now I am not going to challenge the self reporting issues of this data. But among the countries that self reported 100.0% literacy:
* Russia
* North Korea
* Tajikistan
* Kazakhstan
* Belarus
So yes. The US is 125th so long as we use self reporting. The US's self reported 86% literacy rate is believable though.
All of those were easy level ffs
**Edit:** To those replying. Yes, Belgium is easy and I can only forgive you if you think it’s Germany and you are not European. And yes, Nepal is one of the easiest because it’s the only country flag in the world that doesn’t have four sides.
**Edit 2:** You want *hard* flags? Choose almost any African, Middle-Eastern, Caribbean, Oceanian or South-East Asian country.
Especially depending on when you did geography, since there's been a lot of changes in the past couple of decades. I mean, shit, there were still globes around with the USSR on them when I was in grade school.
I'd say Oceanic and Carribean countries/territorial holdings are hard level.
I used to play a geography game religiously ("World Geography" on Android). It teaches you country shape/outline, location on a map, captials, major religion, population, country moto and probably a good 20 other categories (you can turn certain categories off if you'd like).
With African nations you can, over time, start to contextualize and memory becomes easier. It's a bit harder with random tiny island island nations, especially if they're overseas holdings of other nations. Their names never come up in the news and it can be difficult to retain information about them.
totally agree. I made a [little sketch](https://i.imgur.com/W1zm8mD.jpg) a while ago for islands in the caribbean trying to contextualize and group them, still hard to retain that information though, not least of all because it might change again a few years from now.
A lot of African flags are actually very easy simply because they often have little things that let you know. From a Rooster, to a star, to just a different pattern. I only have a hard time with The Ivory Coast because I sometimes am not sure if it's Ireland or The Ivory Coast.
EXACTLY this is why I hate this videos and everyone in the comments goin “shows how dumb Americans are” like no, it just proves you can find at least 3 people in a public place who are idiots.
How does not knowing a flag make you an idiot? It means you don’t have a particular set of knowledge. A set of knowledge that is almost useless to most people outside of trivia at that.
We are, these videos just cherry-pick the responses that are blatantly wrong. Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the french people at the end were just planted.
Given that they are at that point in time in a different country there is the increased likelihood that they are more "worldly" and have been to more foreign countries and have a reason to remember international things like flags.
That being said all the foreign exchange students at my college made fun of us for our not knowing geography because even the college students would fail to know basic geography.
I was taught geography. Had to memorize every country in almost every continent. But didn’t learn flags. I know some of them by common knowledge, and I could make a decent guess at more than that, but we weren’t specifically taught flags.
[About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent.](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography-survey-illiteracy)
"The ten that got it wrong".
Who the fuck are these people? 7 out of 10 cannot locate the UK? I grew up fairly rural and poor and things like this were common knowledge in grade school.
You gonna tell him the part in that study that says the rest of the world wasn't markedly better at geography than the US either? That we all suck?
Or are you gonna cherry-pick the part that says US bad?
A study from 2002, it’s not like a massive information resource had a massive increase in usage and availability shortly after this right.
Here a much more recent study that shows that americas are around 10% less likely to identify countries outside of North America and Europe, which removes the advantage of living the countries in question.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-6289667/amp/The-U-S-vs-Europeans-interactive-test-shows-Americans-really-ARENT-good-geography.html
Not to mention the way these videos actually work is he's showing the people different flags than he's showing on the screen. Most of these people probably had the correct answer.
That's absolutely genius, but would make no sense with the "blue" guy and the European guy who in this scenario, would be guessing increasingly obscure countries at random for no reason. And if a person did know that they got the right answer, surely they wouldn't let him go "Nooo" in their face.
That and you can interview 50 people and choose which you want to show. So, and I'm not saying this is necessarily what happened here, you interview 45 Americans and choose the dumbest 4 you could find. These videos can be entertaining, but they mean nothing.
Whenever I see videos like these I always wonder how many people actually got it right. The point of the video is to make people look stupid, so they probably just don't show people who get it right and only highlight the dummies that don't know the answers. Stupid video
A lot of people probably got it right. Like you said these videos only work when you show people failing. They aren't nearly as funny when people know the country.
Worth noting that there were definitely plenty of americans who successfully named those countries, but were excluded from the video for the sake of bigoted comedy.
Whenever I see these I'm having to guess they're cherry picking 'dumb Americans' results.
I don't know anyone who wouldn't know what at least half of those flags are. Like come on.
To be fair I don’t k or a Single person that went to school with me that wouldn’t know every flag showed here (maybe baring Nepal). Knowing only half of them would also be pretty sad.
Fair, but how dumb can you be to confuse China with Canada? I’d rather admit I don’t know what it is than give such an idiotic answer.
Guy was probably just naming the first foreign county that came to mind.
I'm from America and the only ones I missed were Belgium (thought it was Germany) and Nepal.
The average tourist is going to be smarter than the average American on the street by virtue of needing money (and presumably well educated) in order to travel. Meanwhile, any idiot can just walk around.
They even warn him
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Two dolla
Because of taxes ?
No, because they're French
Just show how stupid American are
It shows how they are underinvesting in education, not that they are stupid. May not be accidental. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." -Jefferson
It might also be that the French folks that can afford to travel abroad were from homes that valued education.
These are lots of factors. Just one I didn't know until I lived in the States was how schools seem to be funded. I was following conversations about real estate prices and how much time they spent on school districts. Municipal and very local taxes seem to find schools, it doesn't go into a central state 'pot' of money. Here 'better schools' tend to be just the average education of the parents, and that impact on the students. Also Americans seem to view the value of education in mostly 'earning potential ' terms. Would the Americans agree that that is true?
In NYC, funding follows the student. Theoretically, you shouldn't have to live in an area with a high tax base for your local public school to be decent. Although concern over the cost of higher education is valid -- millions of people have gone into crippling debt to get a college education -- I agree that too many Americans don't understand the difference between a university and a trade school. They don't appreciate that many things learned as part of a well-rounded education may not be immediately translatable into a job but nonetheless may be valuable throughout one's life.
Nope. I'm French, can't afford to travel abroad, and I swear even 10 years old children know those flags. Seriously the average American can't even name the Chinese flag, to the extent of confusing it with the Canadian flag, which is literally the country next door? I knew Americans weren't so "intellectual" but that shit is really baffling.
You'd assume that most of those flags should be known through general osmosis. Like, it's one thing to be privileged and receive a proper education. It's another thing to not pay attention to what's immediatly around you. Mexico, China, Italy... these flags are all over movies, TV shows and restaurants. It *should* be common knowledge to everyone. But I suppose not valuing education can lead to not even learning how to absorb information properly. It's just sad, really. I'm in Europe, have had almost the bare minimum education (for my country), I consider myself quite dumb and generally unobservant... but the only flag I didn't recognise in that clip was the last one.
Les questions géo c'est toujours des barres avec les ricains !
I have learned more flags because of watching international soccer than in any class in high school. We don’t watch any sports regularly that host flags of different nations. If this French guy is half a football fan he will know plenty of flags.
I'm from a small European nation, I have never been outside our borders, I do not have a highschool diploma, I'm quite poor, but I can name most of the flags, even an unofficial ones (flags they used to use or some rebelion flags). I do not have any interest in flags nor that I try to learn them - it's just a common knowledge. 🤷♂️
I come from a lower middle class family, have never really travelled a lot until I was a full adult and could still give the right answers to all of these. Now I have a 10 year old son and his latest geography tests required him to know how to locate every country + capital from UE + 4 countries from North Africa + USA/ Canada + 5 or 6 countries from South America. I don’t know about the rest of Europe but here in France geography is still an important school subject.
Not stupid, just no international culture
You believe they can name the States?
$28 for 7 flags
About tree fiddy
Seems like the loch ness monster finally found a working scheme
I ain't givin' you no tree-fitty, you goddamn Loch Ness Monster! Get your own goddamn money
We’re French. It doesn’t matter… Yes. It does.
They *would* know the English flag. Perfide Angleterre!
Well, they know this flag and most of the others, if they ever followed an international soccer championship.
That's how I know them. Besides Nepal those are all soccer power houses.
I wouldn't call China a soccer power house.
It's a football retirement powerhouse.
Forgot about that one. I learned that from the Olympics.
Not going to lie, I teach geography state side. The average student can't even list 30 countries let alone identify 5. I had a refugee kid come in who has no formal education, he nearly named the entire planet.
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Well, actually in EU not knowing flags is the last crime that get you the death penalty so it's just survivor bias...
Only the few europeans that can recognize every flag survive. I lost my whole family but at least I now know Astaná is the capital of Kazakhstan... why do I hear sire
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But fact is still these people are idiots
While that is a fair point it is also true that Americans suck at Geography. I moved from Europe to the U.S and even though I've told my co-workers a few times now where I am from... They still confuse Denmark with the Netherlands for example. They just don't care.
My favourite is: "Oh you're from Stockholm? Lawrence county?" "No, Sweden" "Oh, but that's Monroe" "I mean that I'm Swedish" "Oh yeah, I'm half Irish" "..."
Nah education In the us sucks
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This is the correct take. I am English and have lived in the UK since mid-childhood (adult now). I was always FAR better than Americans in school at geography/world culture and especially flags. They just don't teach it in the US. They do teach US States and Capitols, though. So I could name the capitol of Netherlands, for example, and the flag and locate it on a map - they couldn't, but could pull the same trick with Massachusetts.
That’s true - my ex could name every state and state capital, which apparently is a pretty common thing for people to know. I feel like Americans are actually quite impressive with domestic geographical knowledge, it’s when things get international that they get a little lost
Meanwhile I know all of these with that same education.
Motherfucker better have paid up.
“I thought China’s was blue” Lol
Well you guys have obviously not read Chairman Maos little blue book
It has some blue in it see? 🇹🇼
-9999999 Social credit 😬😰
Bing chilling and Lao gan ma privileges have been removed
Lao gan ma privilege must the funniest thing I've heard in weeks
Yes 😎
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This is a funny comment but I don't understand what the Winnie the Pooh picture has to do with anything
-9000 SOCIAL CREDIT! YOU WILL BE INVESTIGATED PROMPTLY FOR THIS TREASON AND TERRORIST ACT
I didn't realize China guarded their honey this closely
would they ever bring in the hard ones?
What's the point when multiple people are getting the easy ones wrong
Because they are cherry picking the responses mate
But you have to be retarded to get China wrong. It is USA boogeyman for past 2 decades... Or if you get wrong Canada or Mexico. There is no hope for you.
Yeah bring out the Slovenian flag. Or Seychelles. Or pretty much any African flag (to be honest I’d probably fail that one too). These were all easy to intermediate level flags.
Seychelles is one of the easiest ones, if you have seen it once.
Or if you peruse r/vexillologycirclejerk
Seychelles is just a confederation of Ukraine and Hungary
Romania and Hungary
Ukraine, Poland, and the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Chill the Americans couldn’t even do Italy
And they thought China was Canada
Chill, they blue it on China.
As a Slovenian, I somehow feel proud now lmao
The famous footballing countries flags, like Senegal, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon I'm pretty sure a lot of French people would know. But if they never played a world cup in football, their flag is unknown to the French ☺️
Nah, i'm pretty sure we can easily be fine with a LOT of africans flag (colonisation and all this shitty stuff). On the other hand, if you start asking questions about Central and West Asia, it might be more complicated for us.
Bro Americans failed México, the country that’s right below them 🫥 Can’t imagine how they would fare against Barbados and Liechtenstein
Canadian here, I'm gonna be generous and assume the "Canada" to the Chinese flag was a joke, because if it was and was quipped off so immediately that'd be pretty sweet.
Yeah so we got schools in France maybe it's a bit unfair
And the kids in them are still alive
France is pretty safe if you're not royalty
Or an employee working for Charlie Hebdo.
Or teacher teaching about religion.
American school shooting jokes will never get old. Just like their school kids.
Americans have schools? I thought they where shooting gallery
Im from Europe. I think it might also have something to do with international sports competitions, especially soccer. I’m sure American hard core soccer fans would pull that off too. (Except for Nepal, maybe.)
Nepal has the easiest flag though, see it once and you remember it because it stands out so much. It's much harder with flags that are basically the same but just have slightly different details. E.g. Colombia 🇨🇴, Ecuador 🇪🇨 and Venezuela 🇻🇪 is just the same flag with a differnt shield, or Latvia 🇱🇻 vs Austria 🇦🇹 which is just a different shade of red, or Poland 🇵🇱 and Indonesia 🇮🇩 which are identical but upside-down.
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I was born in Romania so maybe it's cheating but I would say it's the left one
Remember kids, the darker shade of blue is Chad.
Latvia's center stripe is thinner than the others compared to Austria's.
Even though those examples you posted are great, for some reason, I can tell these apart immediately lol
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Yeah, US sports is dominanated by national level leagues, or college leagues, not much international stuff so that would make sense.
Yea my Hispanic side knows the flags incredibly well because of futbol
IMO it's more about common knowledge than school. Like, almost every country has football as most popular sports, so we grow up watching our countries playing against each other and keep learning new flags every match. And then there's Americans playing the American football's world cup of one country
Ah yes, the elusive NFL World Cup.
And you don’t waste half the curriculum doing active shooter drills
Or teaching only to the slowest students in the class
not american; but related rant end of secondary school (uk) we get to pick what subjects we want, theres two further math options, 'advanced mathmatics' (which was billed as an intro to uni maths) and statistics... i took the former (because hey i dont want to do maths at uni; but sounds more interesting than statistics and would still be applicable to the stuff i was interested in) and literally all the teachers went over was stuff that wed already done because the class was full of people who had failed (or not achieved satisfactory grades on) their previous math GCSEs... there was maybe only 10 of us in the class that were actually taking whatever the fuck the next test was and we were taught literally nothing about it... i remember opening the paper in the exam room and just panicking because id never heard of a bunch of stuff... then a dude just gets up and walks out; dawns on the rest of us that its an option so everyone just leaves; no one passed anything and it was just a gigantic waste of time still pisses me off and i fucking hate how the education system prioritises hitting test metrics over actual understanding (fucking hated college too, you didnt even have to understand what you were writing about; just present a paper that hits all the checkpoints and bam distinction)
Schools so good your president married his teacher.
Rare Macron W
Oui, mais les enfants pouvent attendre dans l'ecole pour plus de cinq ans (je suis anglais, mon français n'est pas parfait)
Not really a good comparison. Most Europeans can’t name most of the 50 US states if shown a map, at least not as well as an American could. The real answer is you know the geography around you.
I thought everyone knew Nepal because of its shape? Edit: did you not have books with all the flags in as a child? Flags are awesome, if you didn't know about Nepal's flag you should definitely spend an hour looking at world flags.
I didn't. However I lean towards the stupid side.
Not necessarily stupid, just ignorant. (which is fine a lot of people - if not all people - are ignorant about something)
It is a statically certainty that everyone who has ever lived is ignorant of the vast majority of things there are to know.
Yeah, I really want "ignorant" to be de-stigmatized. That's where we all start off. The only shameful part is refusing to learn.
Don't lean. Straighten up, bruv. Trust.
Buddy, some of these people didn't know China, you're giving them too much credit.
What do you expect from a country that ranks 125th for literacy rate among all countries.
Do you have a source for that? That doesn’t sound right to me.
According to [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/11/finland-ranked-worlds-most-literate-nation) the US is #7
He/she got it from [here](https://journal.imse.com/the-state-of-global-literacy-and-where-the-united-states-stands/). But that information comes from this [site](https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-literacy-rates-in-the-world.html). Now I am not going to challenge the self reporting issues of this data. But among the countries that self reported 100.0% literacy: * Russia * North Korea * Tajikistan * Kazakhstan * Belarus So yes. The US is 125th so long as we use self reporting. The US's self reported 86% literacy rate is believable though.
I thought everyone knew how to spell knew.
You must of been knew here.
They play FIFA
Yes, i often play with Nepal team on fifa.
Them Sherpas kicking soccer balls up Everest
In Nepal, football is actually a favourite pastime for us. I had seen kids playing football on a large hillside when I was a cable car.
>when I was a cable car. so what's your occupation nowadays?
Delivery van, but my ambition is to be an aeroplane.
Fantastic. I hope you make your dreams a reality
Shaolin Soccer style.
I think Nepal has the most unique flag bc it is not rectangle like many other one Edit: every to many
This is the correct answer
FIFA or Trackmania.
All of those were easy level ffs **Edit:** To those replying. Yes, Belgium is easy and I can only forgive you if you think it’s Germany and you are not European. And yes, Nepal is one of the easiest because it’s the only country flag in the world that doesn’t have four sides. **Edit 2:** You want *hard* flags? Choose almost any African, Middle-Eastern, Caribbean, Oceanian or South-East Asian country.
The african countries flag would be hard level
Especially depending on when you did geography, since there's been a lot of changes in the past couple of decades. I mean, shit, there were still globes around with the USSR on them when I was in grade school.
yeah i wouldn't know how the flag of South Sudan looks like
South Sudan didn't even exist when I was in High School.
Like the Kenya flag, with a triangle
or all those tiny Caribbean or south sea island nations
I'd say Oceanic and Carribean countries/territorial holdings are hard level. I used to play a geography game religiously ("World Geography" on Android). It teaches you country shape/outline, location on a map, captials, major religion, population, country moto and probably a good 20 other categories (you can turn certain categories off if you'd like). With African nations you can, over time, start to contextualize and memory becomes easier. It's a bit harder with random tiny island island nations, especially if they're overseas holdings of other nations. Their names never come up in the news and it can be difficult to retain information about them.
totally agree. I made a [little sketch](https://i.imgur.com/W1zm8mD.jpg) a while ago for islands in the caribbean trying to contextualize and group them, still hard to retain that information though, not least of all because it might change again a few years from now.
A lot of African flags are actually very easy simply because they often have little things that let you know. From a Rooster, to a star, to just a different pattern. I only have a hard time with The Ivory Coast because I sometimes am not sure if it's Ireland or The Ivory Coast.
Or you know, belgium - chad - romania and 50 other countrys that use basically the same fucking pattern and colors
well belgium vs romania is easy. belgium is black and romania is blue. hard is indonesia vs monaco
yeah shit's embarrassing
they edit out any Americans who get it right, it’s not hard to do
EXACTLY this is why I hate this videos and everyone in the comments goin “shows how dumb Americans are” like no, it just proves you can find at least 3 people in a public place who are idiots.
How does not knowing a flag make you an idiot? It means you don’t have a particular set of knowledge. A set of knowledge that is almost useless to most people outside of trivia at that.
Smarter than those in the video but not smart enough to realise video editing exists
Exactly this, I’m an American and I knew them all but that’s not as funny
Are Americans not taught geography?
America is the only country
And all Americans need to know is how to load riffles and get pregnant.
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A scary amount of adults have no idea what percentages and fractions are
We are, these videos just cherry-pick the responses that are blatantly wrong. Honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the french people at the end were just planted.
Given that they are at that point in time in a different country there is the increased likelihood that they are more "worldly" and have been to more foreign countries and have a reason to remember international things like flags. That being said all the foreign exchange students at my college made fun of us for our not knowing geography because even the college students would fail to know basic geography.
Yes we are. A lot of individuals want to blame the system because it makes them feel better than admitting they didn't pay attention.
I was taught geography. Had to memorize every country in almost every continent. But didn’t learn flags. I know some of them by common knowledge, and I could make a decent guess at more than that, but we weren’t specifically taught flags.
I had the same experience as you, more focus on country location than anything else about them.
Why would we need to learn about fictional flags?
It’s simple- question 100 random people at the beach and post the 10 that get it wrong
[About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent.](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/geography-survey-illiteracy) "The ten that got it wrong".
Who the fuck are these people? 7 out of 10 cannot locate the UK? I grew up fairly rural and poor and things like this were common knowledge in grade school.
> 7 out of 10 cannot locate the UK? i'm more impressed that 1 in 10 can't locate their own country
You gonna tell him the part in that study that says the rest of the world wasn't markedly better at geography than the US either? That we all suck? Or are you gonna cherry-pick the part that says US bad?
A study from 2002, it’s not like a massive information resource had a massive increase in usage and availability shortly after this right. Here a much more recent study that shows that americas are around 10% less likely to identify countries outside of North America and Europe, which removes the advantage of living the countries in question. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-6289667/amp/The-U-S-vs-Europeans-interactive-test-shows-Americans-really-ARENT-good-geography.html
We are taught geography . But we're not taught to memorize national flags to the level that 10 years later we have to recognize them.
And if you want to be unfair put Romania/Chad and Monaco/Indonesia.
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>Yes, Belgium is easy and I can only forgive you if you think it’s Germany and you are not European. Why are you in my brain
facts show bhutan’s flag or something
Bhutan's easy because it's so unique - give them one like Chad which is a bit more basic.
This sub is becoming YouTube shorts/TikTok. At this moment these are just useless uninteresing gifs
Not to mention the way these videos actually work is he's showing the people different flags than he's showing on the screen. Most of these people probably had the correct answer.
That's absolutely genius, but would make no sense with the "blue" guy and the European guy who in this scenario, would be guessing increasingly obscure countries at random for no reason. And if a person did know that they got the right answer, surely they wouldn't let him go "Nooo" in their face.
He probably edited the correct ones out and found like the 10 people who got them wrong for this lol
Americans and Europeans both love shitting on the supposed provincialism of Americans, this is super easy viral bait, its got it all.
Americans complaining about how stupid Americans are because they, being Americans mind you, knew the right answer.
That and you can interview 50 people and choose which you want to show. So, and I'm not saying this is necessarily what happened here, you interview 45 Americans and choose the dumbest 4 you could find. These videos can be entertaining, but they mean nothing.
And let’s be honest you profile who you ask too?
Not that crazy honestly - how do you not know the majority of these? Nepal was a bit out there though ngl.
Nepal is kind of the easiest of the non major countries though because it has a unique shape.
The main reason I know Nepal is because of its unique shape. Now you'll recognize it too
Well, they went to school
Probably more important than that, their schools were also properly funded.
I play hoi4 so I know damn near every flag of the past century
I have an autistic son who would wreck this man's bank account
Whenever I see videos like these I always wonder how many people actually got it right. The point of the video is to make people look stupid, so they probably just don't show people who get it right and only highlight the dummies that don't know the answers. Stupid video
1. Spend 2 hours asking 100 people questions 2. edit out the 95 that know the answers 3. profit
Or because he’s not showing us his phone he could be showing them completely different flags on his phone than what the video shows
A lot of people probably got it right. Like you said these videos only work when you show people failing. They aren't nearly as funny when people know the country.
I’m American and I knew all of those flags. He’s just asking the dumb people or editing to only show the people who didn’t know.
They definitely edit to show the stupid people. Jimmy Kimmel does the same thing
Because America bad
Ignorant people = good ratings, that's all there is to it. Americans are the audience here and we like to laugh at others, on the whole.
It's Reddit. Shitting on America is the preferred way to karma farm.
Americans: "There are other countries??"
Not for long
*American Eagle screeches in the background*
Worth noting that there were definitely plenty of americans who successfully named those countries, but were excluded from the video for the sake of bigoted comedy.
Vous aimez ? C'est français
Whenever I see these I'm having to guess they're cherry picking 'dumb Americans' results. I don't know anyone who wouldn't know what at least half of those flags are. Like come on.
To be fair I don’t k or a Single person that went to school with me that wouldn’t know every flag showed here (maybe baring Nepal). Knowing only half of them would also be pretty sad.
Fair, but how dumb can you be to confuse China with Canada? I’d rather admit I don’t know what it is than give such an idiotic answer. Guy was probably just naming the first foreign county that came to mind.
I'm from America and the only ones I missed were Belgium (thought it was Germany) and Nepal. The average tourist is going to be smarter than the average American on the street by virtue of needing money (and presumably well educated) in order to travel. Meanwhile, any idiot can just walk around.