There are many viral videos on YouTube showing a person interviewing people on the street asking basic geography or math questions. They show them struggling or failing to answer. As an American, do you think this is an accurate representation based on your experiences?

25 comments

1. Of course not.

   Those videos are edited. Taking advantage of nervous people. Sometimes completely manufactured. Etc.

   You can make those exact same videos for people on the street in every country in the world.

2. No, because I grasp the very basic concept of editing for comedic effect

3. American answers 10 out of 10 geography questions correctly isn’t as interesting of a video now is it

4. No. They’re just trolling for views. There are smart and dumb people in every country.

5. No. I think it’s a lot more fun than seeing people get the correct answers to easy questions tho.

6. These videos do not reflect reality. There’s so many of them because Europeans love them.

7. No, and it would be reasonable to assume they’re not accurate representations of Americans, no more than *Jeopardy!* is. What you’re missing are the majority of other Americans who answered the questions correctly. A better question would be to ask why there are so many who are ready to believe these are accurate representations of Americans.

8. A certain percentage of any population is going to lock up and basically forget how to talk if you randomly shove a microphone in their face and ask them questions on camera. Any compilation will make something seem more common than it actually is.

   On top of that, idiots are out there.

   This is a human thing, not an American thing

9. Cherrypicking at its finest.

   Most Americans have basic arithmetic skills. I also think it’s ridiculous that Europeans look down on average Americans who can’t point out every random country on a world map. I’ll eat my words when random people in France show that they can point out Nevada on a map of the US.

10. Interviewing dozens if not hundreds of people and only publishing the 2-3 who give you what you’re looking for is pretty standard in videomaking and journalism

11. No, those are edited to appear that way. Does not reflect reality at all.

    Also, a lot of people freeze when you put them on the spot. Like, if someone shoved a microphone in your face and asked you a random question, it’s not uncommon for your mind to go blank.

12. No, it’s not. They’re going to edit out the people who know the answers because that doesn’t get the views that a “haha, Americans are dumb” video gets.

13. They are only showing the people with the most obviously incorrect answers.

    Even then, being asked random facts on the street by a guy with a camera hoping to make you look silly won’t make a lot of people look good.

14. I’m not American but they’re clearly cherrypicked. You see the same in the UK: go and interview e.g. some Brexit supporters with the aim of showing they’re all thick and whatever, so pick people who can’t name the PM or give any information about the EU.

15. No like everything y’all ask on here it’s incredibly biased and exaggerated

16. they are heavily edited to make the people appear ignorant, there have even been multiple channels exposed for doing this

17. No they aren’t. I have a engineer friend who got interviewed for one of the late night shows on pointing to countries and he asked the interviewer when it would air. The guy said to him don’t worry about it we won’t use you because you got them all right.

18. I’d say they’re right due to our education system when it comes to geography. Most of our textbooks are from the era when Yugoslavia was a country. We learn African geography one time in high school and we forget it after the test. Also during that we learn that not everyone in South Africa is Black. Yeah we learn that *that* late. Before that I knew Darfur was a city due to Christian missionaries but that’s about it. Oceania and Central America… We just know the Bahamas exists because a lot of Americans visit there. Specifically in my state we only know that Haiti exists due to a famous Baseball player, outside of Earthquakes of course. Forget any other Island nation that’s not as big as Australia, Cuba, Madagascar, or New Zealand. Math on the other hand… More Americans know basic Math. Math hasn’t changed since the late 1900s so unless if someone has number dyslexia (I forgot the word) or has issues learning Math… Then you won’t find that as often as you do in those videos.

19. No. They’re cherry picked to fuel the European hate boner that exists for Americans.

    I’d love to see someone go up to a European and ask them to name the fly-over states and point then out accurately on a map.

20. No. The strategy is they go out and interview say…50 people. They ask the same questions, and 48 out of 50 will get all the questions right. They take the two that aren’t and use those for entertainment/views/clicks.

21. Not at all and I have anecdotal evidence to support it!

    I was stopped in New Orleans a few years ago. A guy asked me a few questions, and I admittedly don’t remember all of them, but I remember he asked me to locate Egypt and Georgia on a map. I was able to answer most of the questions and find both nations quickly.

    The thing is this was on Bourbon Street. People were either drunk, getting drunk, or on their way to get drunk. He was just looking for marks.

22. Those videos are deliberately edited to fit a certain agenda, they are not a reflection of reality. People answering mundane geography questions correctly don’t make for an interesting video.

23. God no, at least not in the contexts a lot of those videos like to portray as a narrative. So many of those videos like to cherrypick responses or edit answers.

24. When you stop people on the street unexpectedly, jam a microphone and camera in their face, and then ask them a question, a certain percentage of the population will freak out, panic, get confused, and be unable to think straight. It has nothing to do with general knowledge, and everything to do with the context.

    I mean, the obvious counter to those videos is to watch an episode of Jeopardy.

    [Here is the best example to demonstrate this effect that I know of](https://youtu.be/bzDlS6JPUtE)

25. Could always test people’s geography skills—here goes:

    1) What state looks like a flaccid penis?
    2) What state is the dead duck lookin’ state?
    3) Where is Yogi the Bear from?