Stereotypes exist to satisfy the human need to put things into boxes.
Humans love labels and organization and ways to compartmentalize. It's one of the only luxuries afforded to us by our brains to make our lives easier.
That being said, sometimes stereotypes actively harm large groups of people. They can contribute to racism and sexism and homophobia. They are not always useful.
u/superglobal asked:
What stereotype is completely wrong?
Here were some of those answers.
Straya
That Australia is super dangerous, sure we have deadly animals but the chance of encountering one in suburbia is highly unlikely and dying from one is next to impossible, real danger is at the beach but if there's a dangerous jellyfish the beach will be closed anyways. Only time I've ever encountered a snake in the wild was once when I was 16 and it was a carpet snake and once when I was 5 and it was a constrictor, I've lived here 20 years.
Apparently 1.5 people die from snakes a year in Australia, that's basically 1 in 23 million chance better chance at winning the lotto. And last person to die from a spider was in 1979.
More people die from horses and cows due to accidents.
Brains And Beauty
Just because I have a southern accent does not mean I'm a dumb redneck. I graduated engineering school with honors. I like to think I'm a kinda smart redneck.
Freudian Slips
"Men think about sex every 3 seconds on average" factoid actually just statistical error. Men think about sex twice a day on average. Sigmund Freud, who lives in a cave and thinks about sex millions of times per second, is an outlier and should not have been counted.
Spicy Mayo
British people don't like spicy/flavourful food. We used to invade countries for spice and a tikka masala is one of our national dishes. Having a curry is a staple takeaway food for most families.
Nursing Vs. Doctoring
I've often heard nurses on reddit complain that patients tell them thing like "oh you're too smart to be a nurse" or "oh you should have been a doctor". As if nurses are just failed doctors instead of intelligent, hard working people who chose their own careers.
'Murica
That Americans or America in general is just like what you see in films and on TV. There are more stereotypes than I could even list. Just spend some time checking /r/askanamerican for the eye rolling posts every day. People who genuinely believe a complete falsehood about us.
The Harvest
Farmers being poor uneducated hicks. All the farmers I know are also the smartest people I know, they work with millions of dollars worth of equipment and use drones to track their crops. They use satellite data for weather and crop patterns and set up gps so they can automate some things like driving a harvester and take every little bump and hill into account. Gone are the days of a small farm, farmers now have thousands of square acres that they plant on
Millennial Culture
That child-free people hate children, have loads of free time and money, and spend our days riding around on jet-skis.
We do hate bad parenting, social and peer pressure to force people into being parents, and being judged for not following the "LifeScript".
But Boomers Do Vote Poorly
That Boomers don't care about the environment or the future of younger generations.
Earth Day was established by our generation in 1970 in response to choking air pollution in LA and East Coast, Rust Belt cities; water pollution when the Cuyahoga river in Cleveland caught fire" at least 13 times, most famously on June 22, 1969. Our generation pushed for a new cabinet position, the EPA which was from pressure of our generation and established in 1970.
Then there was the sexual revolution; birth control pills; doctors were only allowed to prescribe them to married women; my wife couldn't get them until after she was married. We opened the door to de-puritan-ize sex.
Then there was Vietnam and the Draft. Our generation was extremely successful in stopping forced induction into military service.
Lastly, we have children and grandchildren we love and care deeply about what kind of future our loved ones will inherit. Stereotypes about immigrants, racial ethnicity, gender preference, religious beliefs are now all unacceptable, lumping a generation with stereotypical subjective anecdotes is just as ignorant.
Other Pathways To Wealth
College education is the only route to wealth. I went to trade high school instead of normal high school, learned welding. I went through a few different fields within it like structural welding, and power generation. Now I weld jet engine parts for a major manufacturer and have made almost $90,000 this year alone at 25.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/d8kr58...
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A1