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A comment on SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by Strom on Friday April 08, 2016 @06:02PM (#11458434)
It's not that offensive, but it did have a bit of a jarring effect. I was all happy with the success and saw it as a human achievement. [1] The cheering was wonderful. But then the USA chants made me feel left out, because I'm not a US citizen. I guess I just wished these people would share my view of it being a human achievement and not limited to USA with its 4% of humans. It's likely plenty of them do think that, but the USA chanting sure sends a different emotional signal and diminishes the moment a bit.

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[1] I probably wouldn't think much of a USA chant during a Facebook or Google product launch. While these companies do plenty of wonderful things, I view space travel as several tiers of importance higher.

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Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by MichaelGG on Friday April 08, 2016 @08:43PM (#11459285)
I'm not American and I think it's great. Anytime I read stories of American engineering (like about the SR-71, or the Manhattan Project[1]) I feel a kind of pride for them. Strange feeling. But they accomplish some amazing stuff and there's no reason they shouldn't express joy for their own country.

1: Granted, that had some key foreign influence.

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Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by adventured on Friday April 08, 2016 @07:26PM (#11458950)
It's a US achievement and it's an achievement that will benefit all of humanity. There's no contradiction between those two things.

America gets bashed non-stop about pretty much everything, no matter what choices it makes or what direction it goes. The criticism is overwhelming sometimes, I get sick of browsing many sites like Reddit for example because of the extremely common US bashing. Quite frankly, I'll take the cheers and USA chants on this one.

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Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by datamingle on Friday April 08, 2016 @07:19PM (#11458901)
A human achievement. Competition among teams is good though, team USA is ahead. Hopefully team <your country> can push themselves to move forward.
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Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by Klathmon on Friday April 08, 2016 @09:27PM (#11459421)
That's kind of funny that you would find a USA chant at a Google product launch less "jarring".

In this context it didn't phase me at all (I am a US citizen though...), but at a Google press event, it would be really unsettling.

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Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by sjwright on Friday April 08, 2016 @10:05PM (#11459551)
It's probably a cultural thing. From my vantage point outside of America, chanting support for your country like a sports team feels awkward and myopic. It's not something most other civilised countries do — I associate it more readily with failed/fascist/dictatorial regimes.
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Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by Klathmon on Friday April 08, 2016 @10:26PM (#11459611)
I think it is a cultural thing, but thinking about it now it would sound really similar to how you describe if they were chanting "America" instead of "USA".

I don't know, but the point is that I can see where you are coming from. I think that the "USA" thing has become "normalized" to me because of other things in the media (sports, wartime, etc...) that it doesn't phase me, but changing the wording makes it pretty clear.

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Re:SpaceX Launch Livestream: CRS-8 Dragon Hosted Webcast by endgame on Saturday April 09, 2016 @02:20AM (#11460176)
If you're interested in reading/thinking more about tribalism and people reacting to displays like this, I found this essay really interesting: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/05/19/nerds-can-be-bees-too/
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