That makes sense. However, as we’re exposed to American media arguably as much as our own—and it’s the same language—my contention is that I can easily hear extremely distinct differences between, say, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Cornwall, so just calling it a “British accent” and attaching connotations of pretension and upper class to it makes no sense in my mind. For example, does the character Daphne in Frasier sound the same to an American as James Bond? Does Harry Potter’s accent sound the same as Tommy Shelby’s? To me absolutely not, but perhaps it is because im more attuned through living here.

Tell me about it - i live in Shetland, which is wildy different from our closest neighbours in Orkney, which to my ears sounds like Welsh!

I take your point, which was why I added the next sentence acknowledging the variety of US accents. I’d argue that the Mid-Atlantic accent that most (but certainly not all) movie stars use is the closest thing to said generic accent.

So we should abolish all laws because some people don’t follow them?

Funny thing is, there are thousands of UK accents that are as different from each other as they are from the generic American accent. Granted, there’s variety in the US as well, but the concentration is higher in the UK, as we’ve had towns and villages for thousands of years within 20 miles of each other that had their own unique way of speaking that often only locals can understand without effort.

So yeah, when you say ‘British accent’ that means basically nothing to anyone in the UK.

The billionaires have really done a number on you guys. I live in the UK, and this dystopian view of my country being pushed by Musk etc and swallowed by people in the US is absolutely wild. Yes, there’s problems with immigration, but this idea that we’re some sort of Islamic state, overrun by knife-weilding jihadist peados is laughable. Source: I’VE FUCKING LIVED HERE FOR 48 YEARS.

I used to use VPN location settings and ad blockers, but I’ve got them on quite a few devices and that became a bit of a hit-and-miss ballache. So instead, I subscribed. Of course, they believe I live in India, so I pay about £2 per month. I do not live in India.

I’m happy mate, and I enjoyed the world cup. There are positive people here as well - and this is from a Scotland fan :-)

I enjoyed it, and usually I don’t follow league football closely at home. There are plenty of sports I don’t particularly enjoy watching, but I’ve dialed down my Edgelord ‘What’s going on with the Sports Ball?!’ schtick as I don’t think it was doing me any favors.

I kind of hate it. I’m interested in other people’s opinions and like to learn new perspectives, but some people, especially here, tend to aggressively misinterpret comments and go hard with angry emotional responses. It happened to me recently, and I just responded and blocked the guy outright. You can usually tell from the outset when someone is immediately insulting. I used to push back, but block them before they can get their claws into me.