I assume it’s largely due to stuff such as their stinking rich economy before WW1, first language being english, population size, propaganda etc. but I’ve never seen a succinct explanation as to how the country basically became the absolute cultural giants they are today.
You basically cannot escape the USA and their influence everywhere you go, and in a sense they have overtaken us over here in the UK in terms of cultural relevance. Why isn’t this the case for other English speaking countries such as Australia and Canada?
Edit: Using the term ‘In a sense’ has riled up quite a few people. Yes, the USA is definitely far more culturally relevant than the UK nowadays.
Second Edit: Thank you all for your replies! I’ve learned quite a lot tonight 🙂
In: Other
short answer: Hollywood and money
longer answer: Both Radio and Motion Pictures were invented in the US and so naturally our entertainment industry got them up and running on a large scale to export before europe did. also after WWI and WWII much of europe was devastated and effectively de-industrialized while America was untouched (thank you oceans!) which gave us a HUGE post-war economic advantage (since europe re-industrialized on the backs of american industry). Thirdly outside of Communist china and maybe soviet russia nobody had our population or industrial/commercial capacity so the center of the western world’s commerce moved from paris and london to New York. Even now the only political entity that has our industrial and commercial power is maybe the EU (china is increasingly being exposed as a paper tiger and india hasn’t gotten fully up to speed yet, but mark my words they will) so since we were handling most of the world’s business we’d natrually start exporting our culture
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