Italian households throw the thing on the stove without such meticulous (and time expensive) ceremony every morning, so this falls under the classic “American can’t cook” gag

I don’t even know if the guy is American, just anecdata from my Facebook feed

He's English, not American, and became a coffee influencer like this after winning the World Barista Championship in 2007. This is, in fact, a "world" championship, not like the MLB World Series which is really just American. It's been held in the USA a few times, but also all over Europe, Australia, Japan, and Korea. Making coffee meticulously is hardly something specific to Americans or even typical of Americans. It's very weird you would even have this stereotype when the very word "barista" is Italian, the WBC itself started in Norway, and Europe in general is usually far more associated with fine cuisine and caring about craftmanship in food and drink than the US, which is associated with hot dogs, light beer, and deep frying everything in butter.

>the very word "barista" is Italian

now hol' up

in English, we have a suffix -ist for a person who does something: machinist, pianist, flautist. In Italian, they instead use the suffixes -isto or -ista to mean the same thing (which suggests English got "ist" from Norman French)

what does this particular -ista do? stands at a bar, that's why they are bar-isti. What's a bar, in Italy? well, "bar" not an Italian word, they borrowed the word from English.

Speaking as an Italian who has had coffee up and down the country... just because "Italian households throw the thing on the stove" doesn't mean they're getting a good brew. In my experience, a high-quality espresso in north america is by far better than the swill that ordinary Italians burn in their mokas.

He is obsessive and meticulous about coffee, that's kind of the whole point of his channel. I came to mostly the same conclusions as him through trial and error while trying to get consistently rich coffee with it. It's actually quite easy to end up with something that tastes burnt, obscenely bitter, or metallic. It tastes delicious when you get it just right, but it can end up tasting considerably worse than good old set it & forget it drip coffee if you are careless/clueless.

Kind of weird this became a meme, since Italians are stereotypically supposed to really care about good coffee. My best guess is that for many households, the Bialetti is their version of Mr Coffee that they fire up in the morning to get out of the house before work and don't have the time or inclination to care about how it tastes. If they want something fancy and delicious that's what the 50 cafes within walking distance are for. That or their following a sub-optimal family tradition for how to brew with it.

Anyway, I only watched the video once but from what I recall the only thing that seemed especially over the top was the trivet to buffer the heat of the stove.