Pick-me American

A Pick-me American is someone who feels insecure or ashamed for being an American citizen and dunks on the US and fellow Americans to get validation from people in other countries. Some will make videos on social media, blanketing the whole US as a monolithic hellhole with no diversity in state, culture, or ethnicity. They harmfully project their personal experience like it's true everywhere in the States. This creates a false view of Americans abroad, even if it's skewed by Pick-me's self-hatred, causing prejudice or misunderstanding about Americans or the US. Pick-me's have a rose-colored lens when viewing the world vs. the US and tend to cherry-pick topics. They think culture (European)abroad is only authentic. Ignoring cultures like Appalachian, Cajun, Tejano, and indigenous people whose history is older than the founding of the US because it's not Eurocentric. Nothing validates them more than having Europeans agree with them while they bash other Americans. Some pick-me's try hard to show how un-American they are, but when they say something stupid or false and get called out, they say, "I'm just an American🤪" to save themselves.

Americans who want to travel or move abroad are fine. What's wrong is Americans who go abroad and say they're Canadians, bash fellow Americans, or apologize for being born in the US. The US and its people aren't perfect, but what you see online can be skewed to show the bad and wrong, ignoring the good aspects, of which there are many!

Pick-me American examples

Vanessa said calmly, " I don't know why the US always has to be different from the rest of the world. Unlike other Americans; I use metric, not imperial!"

Other Americans watching this pitiful display." Who is going to tell her that we actually use a mixed system like Canada and the UK and use Metric for things such as science, etc, and use US customary, not imperial."

An American Tiktoker trying to earn pity points"Stupid Americans, it's so horrible how they want to put hot sauce on a schnitzel they paid for!"

only to delete her post after getting called out by others.