Americans Will Use Anything Except The Metric System
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About
Americans Will Use Anything Except The Metric System is a catchphrase commonly used whenever an example of a measurement is given for an object that isn't in Imperial or Metric units, particularly those that use seemingly outlandish things for measuring. Examples of measurements being given in nonstandard units have existed online since before the phrase was made and attributed to them, and often include using other nonstandard items (such as washing machines) to describe the size or weight of something else (like a sinkhole).
Origin
On October 6th, 2015, one of the first examples of nonstandard measurement was uploaded to the /r/Funny subreddit by Redditor[1] ijkirl in which a picture of a deer is shown supposedly from a library book, explaining that a deer is as tall as a bicycle and weighs as much as 800 hamburgers. The caption on the image states that this is how things are weighed in America, with many comments calling out America's perceived reluctance to use the Metric System (shown below).
The phrase was first used by the Twitter user @Ralphium[2] on August 10th, 2019, as a QRT to a news report by @KSHB41 News, which used "roughly six to seven washing machines" as a way to describe how large a sinkhole was that formed on the road in Kansas City, Missouri. This QRT received over 250,000 likes and 67,000 retweets within four years (shown below).
Spread
One of the first images to have a variation of the "Americans Will Use Anything Except The Metric System" catchphrase was uploaded to the /r/Me_Irl subreddit, using the Nobody format of having the British attempt to explain that they developed the Metric System, while the response is Americans using the Deer photo as an example of what they do instead. This example was uploaded on February 4th, 2020, by Redditor OfficialLuxxy,[3] accumulating over 10,000 upvotes in three years (shown below).
On April 13th, 2020, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Polk County in Florida used an alligator as an example of an appropriate social distance estimator, which was used in a news report on the topic of social distancing. This example was captured and uploaded to the /r/Dankmemes subreddit by a now-deleted Redditor[4] with the average length of an alligator being variable depending on the sex and species (shown below).
Various Examples
Top Comments
Commodore V
Aug 22, 2023 at 11:57AM EDT
Imabigfish
Aug 22, 2023 at 10:18AM EDT