You make a great point regarding culture, but knowing the language is still a great tool to recognize your horizon of familiarity. It's also a way to expose yourself to it, should you want to.

There might be some truth to the possibility that american culture is dora the explorer'd a li'l bit, for me. More than ever. And the emerging elements are increasingly less fascinating. I found myself defending weeaboos the other day because I was like "well..? I mean I kinda get it, at this point. Kinda, though".

"Tic-a-tac-a" is an offensive move I know in futbol (it's the "give and go" in american basketball offense), but yeah I got an antenna to watch the worldcup via digital radio broadcast TV on Telemundo because when the american announcers react to a goal, it's literally "and there it is, peter, into the back of the net, for the argentinians, once again, Messi" vs. "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL", like yeah I went and got an antenna for that second option! Hell yeah. No regerts.

I'm in the minority here, actually. City and county wide. Oh no (/s).

Just like with veen, it is more fun to banter with you or other europeans than many of the people I'm supposed to be culturally identically to in God's yt America or whatever we're doing now.