How Observing American Tourists Taught Me a Brutal Lesson in Hyper-Individualism

<p>A few weeks ago, I saw a lady bawling her eyes out in an Italian airport security queue.</p> <p>At first, I thought perhaps she had just said goodbye to someone she won&rsquo;t be able to see again for a long time. Or she was&nbsp;<em>really</em>&nbsp;sad to leave the country where you can buy a bottle of decent wine for just a few euros.</p> <p>But she continued to cry for long enough to get people around her looking increasingly startled and worried.</p> <p>Eventually, one of them asked if she was all right.</p> <p>She replied, in an unmistakably American accent, that she&rsquo;s sure she&rsquo;ll miss her flight because of long queues.</p> <p>&lsquo;Well&hellip; you can just&nbsp;<em>ask</em>&nbsp;people to let you through?&rsquo; they said back to her.</p> <p>The American lady froze in confusion. But a group of people in front started to make way for her to pass, and so she snapped out of it, grabbed her backpack and went ahead without saying a word.</p> <p>Even after her figure disappeared in the sea of travellers, I couldn&rsquo;t stop being confused at her confusion, though.</p> <p>I&rsquo;ve travelled a lot, mostly around Europe and mostly pre-pandemic, yet I never worried that a lengthy airport security line would make me miss my flight &mdash; if you&rsquo;re short on time, you can ask people politely, and they will let you through. I queue-jumped more times than I can count and not&nbsp;<em>once</em>&nbsp;had an issue.</p> <p>But then I started thinking about all the other times I came across American tourists or expats here and noticed a repeating, and quite depressing, pattern.</p> <h1>The &lsquo;Ugly American&rsquo; stereotype</h1> <p>Americans are, generally speaking, quite hard to miss.</p> <p>Mostly because of their big and blindingly white smiles, love for running shoes &mdash; sorry,&nbsp;<em>sneakers</em>&nbsp;&mdash; and the fact they often look like they&rsquo;re going to the gym even though they probably aren&rsquo;t.</p> <p>But sometimes, it&rsquo;s not just that.</p> <p>If you&rsquo;re from Europe &mdash; or any other place they like to flock to &mdash; you&rsquo;re probably familiar with&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugly_American_%28pejorative%29" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the</a>&hellip;</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/the-no%C3%B6sphere/how-observing-american-tourists-taught-me-a-brutal-lesson-in-hyper-individualism-59a66953e93d"><strong>Learn More</strong></a></p>