Honestly I don't meet the Yanks all that much regularly. I have a couple friends who I see semi frequently, and they're obviously ok. The Americans here at Hexbear are super cool. Since Covid lockdowns are breaking, I've been seeing more of them randomly. And in the conversations with them, I'm seeing a lot of mean-ish comments along the lines of "haha, you did something I'm not used to".
For example, in the past month, I've gotten called out for:
- asking a guy at a literal commie beer event if he was a "comrade"
- using the metric system
- moving away from a boring conversation topic by asking a person what their job is, without a good convo transition
- saying colonisation changed African countries
- saying conservatives care more about aesthetics
- joking that I pray to Lenin every morning (thank you lib for pointing out that this isn't what socialism is)
Honestly sarcasm is good and fine with friends. Like, if the love is clearly there, then ya tease me a bit. Dunno, but it feels like these people treat conversations as a competitive sport. Oh ya, these people are all massive libs as well.
A lot of Americans are just waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk. You can see the impatient expression on their face while the words are bubbling up inside them. People here frequently interrupt others or start talking over them. It's frustrating if you're a normal person who knows how to converse. There is definitely an element of "points scoring" if there are other people around to virtue signal to, and that's probably where the snark comes in. When there's a lot less people around, thanks when you can get people to really talk about weird stuff. The less witnesses to commiting a social no-no like asking if someone believes in aliens, or something like that, the better. That's when they get racist, sexist or political on you though. It's like they know they shouldn't have these opinions and are low key embarrassed about it.
Just my experience working blue collar jobs my whole life.