"Whiteflation" is a phenomenon I've noticed a lot in the study of world cultures.
Basically, it means Euros unconsciously inflate something to seem like more than it is.
Note: "Whiteflation" is different from "Eurocentrism", which is euros caring a lot more about their own shit and actively ignoring other ethnicities' stuff. Eurocentrism is actually a bigger problem than Whiteflation, but the latter is more interesting.
If you have an extensive knowledge of UNESCO sites, you'll know that some of the most interesting/ancient POC sites are not designated. While every last inconsequential pillar in Europe gets the status. This is mostly due to Eurocentrism, but some of it is due to Whiteflation.
Whiteflation happens in cuisine too:
Europeans tend to make up lots of extraneous names for very trivial variations in their food. Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_(food)
They could have just called these "strips". But for some reason, they decided to name them something taken from a fever dream.
A beef sandwich that's long becomes a "cheesesteak". But if the beef is corned, it's a "reuben". A sandwich with bacon on it becomes a "BLT". Under Whiteflation, completely trivial ingredient combinations take on a new life of their own, as a new discrete "invention" (even though the "invention" is so trivial that even an infant could make one accidentally)
In Asia this sort of stuff just doesn't happen. People don't have wildly different names for La Mian with beef as opposed to La Mian with tofu. When regional differences do exist, they are referred to as "styles" rather than completely novel objects (IE: Hakka style noodles). And even here the styles are broad general differences rather than trivial discrete hinging on a single ingredient--meaning there are a lot fewer of even these "styles".
In the West, you tend to see lots of different menu items, each one being a trivial combo of ingredients.
In Asia, that same menu would list under ONE single item, with a list of several topping options. Hotpot culture being a great example of this.
It even happens on psychological tests: https://i.imgur.com/2U3DFJi.png Asians chose B, Euros chose A. To me, B simply makes objective sense--the wood can be whittled into a cylindrical shape, it's trivial. On the other hand, blue plastic can never become wood. Feel free to argue.
I feel like the concept between cuisine, ethnogenesis, and architectural heritage are the same.
-A "sub" can be turned into a "cheesesteak" with one simple trivial ingredient switch.
-A "Walloonite" is just a French-speaking "Flanderite" (Europe has way more of these meme ethnicities that a lot of people actually take very seriously)
-A couple of stray pillars are an amazing architectural site all their own, instead of just "another minor Greek temple"
The main reason for the overrepresentation of European stuff is just Eurocentrism. But some small part of it is the Western tendency to imagine something out of nothing, to maintain a long list of names for the sake of an illusion of diversity. AKA Whiteflation
i don't think having more specific names and categories for cultural products, particularly food styles, has to do with essential differences in "eastern" and "western" psychology as much as it does Europe's history of hundreds of competing feudal monarchs constructing regional and national identities for their subjects to more effectively martial them.
It even happens on psychological tests: https://i.imgur.com/2U3DFJi.png Asians chose B, Euros chose A. To me, B simply makes objective sense–the wood can be whittled into a cylindrical shape, it’s trivial. On the other hand, blue plastic can never become wood. Feel free to argue.
I'd go with the left one as I'd go more on shape, which the blue one is closer to. If it was worded as "more similar to the middle object" I'd probably go with the right.
Yea that was my mistake, the white text is my addition. Original question was much less biased:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoDtoB9Abckhere's the proper time stamp: https://youtu.be/ZoDtoB9Abck?t=365
Now, I see what you mean with the original questioning - but idk it seems the shape infers the name to me "dox" (or whatever the fuck that narrator is saying) = cylinder. So when asked "which one is more dox" then I'd answer the blue plastic cylinder more 'dox' than the wooden pillar, like the other westerners. I see what you're saying with plastic =/= wood, but idk!!!
"This is a [made up word]. Which one of these different things is also a [same made up word]?" (She did say "which one is a dox" btw, not "more")
My answer would be idfk because the only think I know a "dox" to be is a cylindrical piece of wood and neither of those are that. That is, if my answer isn't just "wtf is a dox?".
Too late, I'm already writing a twitter essay on it, soon all language will be replaced with variations of "whiteflater" and "tankie"
Arabs: I can't understand this guys dialect one bit but we speak the same language
Euros: I can understand this guys dialect completely but we speak different languages
italian_pasta_diversity.png
About the image choose thing. The question mention "shape" and it might induce a lot of people to understand the question as "which object has a more similar shape than the central object".
Yeah, these questions are difficult to ask and draw too many conclusions from because linguistic comprehension will bias things in a bunch of different ways. I think that there are some interesting ways that cognition can be shaped by culture (many of these are expressed linguistically, in fact!), but a simple question like that isn't going to be an effective test of what those differences are.
Upper class Americans CONSTANTLY name the pasta they cook with. "I made fusilli Alfredo" like shut the fuck up, you made pasta. Nobody gives a shit, literally not even Italians do this.
That was actually my mistake, the text was added by me.
The actual question was:
"The middle one is 'dux' ". Which of these two is dux?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoDtoB9Abck
italian_pasta_diversity.png
Hey making all the different pasta shapes yourself is fun okay!?!?!111
Also if you make your own pasta you can put stuff like lemon zest and pepper in the dough which is cool.
But yeah I get the point, pasta is pasta at the end of the day.
I love pasta, but there is a point where two "totally different kind of pasta bro, trust me bro" should be named the same goddamit.
Monitas vs farfalle vs bowtie pasta struggle session 3000 😎😎😎
"Oh so I can put doritos and mountain dew inside ravioli then fucking fry them in coconut oil, but if I made them one militer bigger then is a totally different thing? Go fuck yourself Renzo"
I agree with what you're saying as regards UNESCO world heritage sites and Eurocentrism, but I think you're off base when you start generalizing that.
I'm thinking of this famous New Yorker cover. I think people always have a finer degree of categorization when it comes to what is familiar to them, and tend to flatten and homogenize the unfamiliar. To the extent that these categories are given outsize importance as a result of Eurocentrism worldwide, I can kind of see what you're saying, but I think it's just a case of a human tendency rather than anything specific to Europeans.
Also the dismissal of any European ethnicity that doesn't have its own state is weirdly nationalistic.
UNESCO and eurocentrism are real issues but this whiteflation sound like "English like to make up bullshit names", like whiteflation.
Like you're doing the thing you accuse euros of doing.
I think you are ironically over-himogynizing nonwhite cultures in a racist way in order to make this point.
Pilaf or pulao, as it is known in the Indian subcontinent, is another mixed rice dish popular in the cuisines of the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, and Middle Eastern cuisine. Opinions differ on the differences between pulao and biryani, and whether actually there is a difference between the two.
Oh lord do not post this on twitter, fb, insta etc. You're gonna get mad Indians (and Pakistanis) in your comments.
Fascinating stuff, and something I have kinda wondered about but never really considered properly.
For the picture puzzle; I would love to know how the question is written/phrased in other languages. I wonder if the ambiguos meaning of the word 'shape' in the question, i.e. shape meaning dimensions or shape meaning the carved object itself, is the same or diff in other languages.