Most Steemit members today assume that whoever they talk to either are American, or an English-speaker. But did you know that such assumptions will slowly fade away?
When you consider the influence of American culture and politics, an alarming gap exists between the influence and the actual nominal leverage. For example, America's population is roughly 330 million people. But that only accounts for less than 5% of the global population, which is seven billion strong.
Although Steemit is a true, open source social media platform, it's currently bogged down by American hegemony. Again, when we speak to one another, we assume that the other party speaks English. We also tend to assume that they're from America, unless otherwise stated.
The Wrong Demographic
Of course, the American media has been preparing for the end of this hegemony, but they're completely looking at the wrong demographic. Both major political parties are focused on the Hispanic population, or the so-called browning of America. What they should focus on is the yellowing of America, and the rest of the world.
Look at the demographic statistics, and you will have all the evidence you need. More than 55% of the world is Asian. That means that at any given moment, if you picked a person randomly, chances are very high that that person will be Asian.
The trend is even more startling when you consider the gap between Asians and the next biggest demographic, Africans. They represent only 16.2% of the global population, or a near-240% gap to the Asian demographic.
White folks? Forget it. I would estimate it at no more than 15%, if we're talking non-Hispanic and non-Semitic whites.
Power of Hegemony
Yet the vast amount of participants on Steemit and the cryptocurrency assets are Americans, particularly white Americans. What gives?
This is where hegemony comes into play. While whites are nominally a global minority, they roughly split internet and social media engagement with Asians. In other words, whites "play above their heads," to borrow a football/soccer terminology. In contrast, Asians "play down."
That has a lot to do with the fact that most of Asia (this includes India) needs a vast infrastructure boost. The continent actually is behind the western world when you look beyond the Tokyos and Hong Kongs.
The End of American Hegemony
The reason why you see so many Americans and a strong American presence on Steemit is global and historical hegemony at work. For some international Steemit members, this could be an annoyance. However, the hegemony will not last.
Eventually, the Asian demographic will integrate with the digitalization of the world. It's already happening at break-neck pace. Once Asians in general achieve per capita internet integration approaching that of Americans -- we're probably talking about 80% or so -- the entire paradigm will shatter.
I'm talking the complete end of American hegemony, the era when American culture and influence takes a backseat to the eastern hemisphere. Some might get a gut reaction to hearing this, but it's inevitable.
There are simply too many Asians in this world!
It may be good practice to stop assuming that everyone is American, or that everyone should adapt to American ways. This hegemony may fly for now on Steemit and other social media networks, but a day is coming when that will cease altogether.
So are you American or Asian?
Well, it depends on how you ask the question, but the complete answer is American nationality and Asian race. With respect to American hegemony, I speak of the end of the nominally undue influence of American culture, which is not a racial term.
I think Asians are too generalized, because Indians and Chinese for example look very different. But i agree with what you say about the American thing. People often assume that the other people are American, sometimes i get We or our when talking about American topics
You're right...Asian is a very broad category. That said, I think if we just talked about people who "look" Asian, and shifted Indians to a different category, then this new Asian demographic would still be nominally dominant.
Because of this, it's funny that people subconsciously assume "Americanism" in their social media discussions, but the whole "America ideology" is a declining one!
Technically they are in Asia, but should be different. Indian , sri lanka, pakistan is one group, and then Chinese, Korean, Japanese another group.
Yes American ideology is declining. I think it has something to do with Asians buying properties and businesses worldwide
You make a good point. There is a lot of history in Asia, and plenty of animosity stemming from centuries of intercultural conflicts that sets Asian peoples apart.
As to American hubris, a lot of that may be cultural indoctrination, as Americans are provided a very American-centric curriculum in primary school, at least. I don't necessarily think that's solely an American trait, as I expect anyone discussing the group of which they are part will use that same kind of expression.
Edit: rereading your comment I now see you meant that Americans assumed the person they were conversing with was an American. Sorry for my misunderstanding.
hi valued-customer, yes lot's of history and different cultures, and the geographical locations , even food, make people look different in long period of time.
Ну дак в Китае её и нет,подождите...сейчас ANS ещё раскрутят))
Muy interesante : 0
Would it suck if we made a new series called "Off the Mark with @markpluto" ???
Hey, I resemble that remark!
great post
You're probably right. Of course English is the so-called "language of business" so even non-Americans commonly speak English. But if countries like China and India were to gain a massive following on Steemit then English speakers would look more like a minority here.
One of the reasons to support translations services. Korean is particularly well represented on Steemit, and I feel like I'm missing out, because I can't speak a lick of it. Translate function in firefox does work pretty well, but using it dramatically increases the time necessary to read posts, such that my consumption of information is halved, or worse, when using it.
It'd be nice if there was some kind of app that I could throw at posts in other languages, so I could kinda follow along.
Плюс Чарли Ли выдаст" на Гора",..за ним не заржавеет..))
Извини, но я не знаю кто такой Чарли Ли....)
Создатель LTC, и брат в теме..)
330M Americans are less than 5% of the 7B people of Earth.
While you are correct in stating that influence is correlated to affluence, and access to the internet is one measure of affluence, it is not the only measure (for example, South Korea has higher broadband penetration than the USA). American influence is declining due to numerous factors, and affluence is only one of them.
The social compact in America, the presumption of liberty, has eroded to almost the point of incredulity. Americans are now the most incarcerated people in the history of the world. The constant international meddling and aggression undertaken post WWII has alienated and angered many peoples around the world, and this has caused America to lose a great deal of influence as a nation. Resentment and anger is hardly influence.
While you equate being American to being white, this is less and less so, and the influence of caucasians is not being diminished concomitantly with being American. In every survey I am aware of people of every race view caucasians of the opposite sex more positively than any other race, for whatever reason (statistically. Not everyone feels this way, but a majority of them do). This is not even remotely true if the question is asked about Americans, rather than whites.
China, as the most populous nation, has begun recently to surpass America in various technical fields, such as quantum computing, supercomputers, and paleontology, and is at least hard on American heels in almost any field you name. China has 5 times as many engineers as the USA, so this trend is likely to continue.
I made a typo, thank you for pointing that out.
As far as the first part of your comment, listing A truth does not negate other truths. Plus, to be honest, I'm not going to waste my time writing an entire exegesis of American influence on a Steemit article.
For the second part of your comment, you're listing points based on a strawman argument. I NEVER equated being American to being white. I believe that you know this. In the future, I would very much appreciate it if you would not attribute false statements to my name.
You are of course quite correct about one truth not negating others. As I am quite comfortable wasting my time with superfluous exegeses on Steemit, I wrongly assumed everyone else is too. Apparently what they say about assumptions is all too true, at least about me (not implying it would apply to you in this example =p) so I thought I might add a bit to the reasons for the real decline you reference.
There were several comments in your post that dealt with race, and perhaps I misunderstood your meaning.
This "This is where hegemony comes into play. While whites are nominally a global minority, they roughly split internet and social media engagement with Asians. In other words, whites "play above their heads," to borrow a football/soccer terminology. In contrast, Asians "play down."", since your post was about American hegemony, seemed to equate whites with Americans.
I did not intend to misrepresent your statements. However, from your response to my comment, I clearly misunderstood them. Given that I must have misunderstood the quoted statement to equate whites with Americans, I now don't understand how it relates to American hegemony, at all, as it references only race, yet uses the language from the title of your post referencing hegemony.
Perhaps you could clarify it for me?
Edit: I just want to point out that I am in no way racist. I reread my comment, alarmed at your reply, and see that it might easily be misinterpreted by some folks to be some kind of white supremacist claim of superiority.
I did not intend it to be so, but rather to emphasize the dichotomy between the two major topics I noted in your post, racial and American hegemony.
To be frank, I wanted to articulate that I did not equate American-ness with whiteness because I don't want people to accidentally or inadvertently assume that I'm against white people, or that I have an agenda against white people. The best people in my life happen to be white! :)
Now, if my argument was poorly communicated, that is a criticism I will gladly address. By hegemony, I refer to the "American way" being assumed upon others, or being referred as a default assumption.
Where race comes in is that the reality of American hegemony is, and looks, completely different from actual reality. This is a VERY simplified version of a complex topic -- and as you now know, I hate wasting time on an exegesis of any topic! :) -- but if world dynamics were simply tethered to nominal strength, Asians would dominate the discourse simply because there's so many of them.
Right now, in terms of social media dynamics, Asians and whites of all nationalities roughly split integration. However, as per capita integration grows internationally, I believe that the dynamics will definitely shift eastern (Asian).
In that situation, American hegemony loses its teeth. Although this hegemony doesn't have a color, so to speak, it is definitely western influenced. But the broader point is that the eastern influence is growing rapidly, and thus the assumptions of the "American way" will likely (in my opinion) fade significantly several generations from now.
This is admittedly an inelegant way of communicating my thoughts, but I hope I helped clarify. Also, my video brings further details to this general discussion.
I confess I am rather a reader than a viewer of videos, and apologize that I didn't even notice you have a video up there! I'll watch it now..
Still at sea regarding the language that seemed to trip me up, but I gather from your reply that we are on the same page, at least. China, particularly, is poised to recreate the world order in it's image (I just hope they adopt a rational alphabet, suited to keyboarding. Chinese script is beautiful (is it also a form of kanji? I believe that word applies to scripts of the type...) but I don't have room for a keyboard with thousands of keys!).
Just one point to add @valued-customer ... I did NOT think that your original post was racist, or had racist undertones. I also do not think anyone else took it as a racist remark (although obviously, I can't speak for anyone but myself).
In reality, I wanted to make sure that you didn't think I was racist towards whites; that's why I wanted to clarify my arguments! :)
Well, at least we aren't racists! /me looks around the room suspicously...
Being English I only speak English, at school they only taught french which I had no interest in; nothing against the french but I don't consider it to be an important global language.
If I was going learn a language now it would be between Russian, Chinese, Brazilian/ Portuguese and German in that order.
Don't a lot of Indians speak (broken) English?
I never have a problem with using translate to reply to people in another language, one of the internet's main uses is to connect with people from around the world.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts bullishmoney👍
May I say something a little rude? French is not an important language; they just think it is! :)
Ahhh, that's terrible, sorry! Anyways, yes, I agree -- the internet is supposed to be about connecting with people around the world. Part of the motivation of why I made this video was that I took exception to what I perceived as "American hubris."
I truly think that our time pushing American hegemony as if it was a God-given right is shortening.
Maybe 200 years ago French was an important language, maybe in 200 years people will say the same for the English/ American language (not that French has ever been as wide spread as English).
On parle Francais encore en beaucoup des pays! L'Algiers, Cameroon, etc... Les milliards se parlez la belle langue.
Mais pas moi. Je ne peut pas parler Francais non plus.
Edit: terrible spehling
Je ne dis pas que le français n'est pas une belle langue, je dis qu'il n'est pas largement utilisé et, par conséquent, pas aussi important que certaines langues des pays plus vastes (et non pas les Englands, un grand comté).
Je ne savais pas que Camaroon parlait français, apprenait quelque chose de nouveau tous les jours
Bien sur!
👍
that's some fine response.
Asia is definitely the future................Mandarin anyone?