:|

Ignorance needs to be fixed. I love Austrailia! Not a great origin, but there's SO many awesome things over there. The coral reefs, the wildlife, the adorable animals and cool people. Even the Aborigine are super interesting, especially the art. I remember having to make an aborigine-style sculpture once. It was so much fun. :) It depends on where you live in America. If you talk to someone in the Dakotas vs. someone in the city, you are going to get very different responses. I'm personally from Pennsylvania and we've never gone in-depth on Australia but I at least some some things about it (even if I learned the first few from Finding Nemo :P )

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but Australia isn't tiny... Australia is the biggest island in the world, and size wise, we're almost as big as the USA, lol.

hahaha. I'm sorry you met this person xD First of all, even Americans who are that uninformed usually like Australia. People who don't know shit about politics know Australia is an Especially Important Island Slash Continent because it has Unique Animals We Like. Even Kindergarteners know stuff about and like Australia because not many other animals start with a K, and your accents are fun :)

The multicultural part might be true. I didn't learn about the aboriginals and stuff until I was older--they teach us that Britain used the place as a penal colony, so I had always imagined it as desolate and uninhabited before that.

I read The Week magazine, which has excerpts from multiple media outlets, including international ones. I like it because the news tends to be pretty biased and belligerent here, and they summarize multiple different coverages of the same story. So yeah, I read stories about you guys regularly enough to realize you're not like a nonentity, but unfortunately the average American doesn't keep up with international news too well :/

However, politically, we consider Australia an ally of the US. As for AustraliaNS, we do stereotype you guys heavily (our brains go Australia --> Crocodile Hunter. Mine included, at least first and foremost) but public opinion of said stereotypes is high. (I know a guy who got out of being attacked by a gang because he amped up his Aussie accent and played dumb. Then he said he was lost and they told him how to get to a nicer neighborhood. xD)

This was a wordy way of saying even ignorant Americans "give a shit" and more than "tolerate" you. There are assholes in every country :P

HAHAHA. Thanks for linking me here! This made me laugh. A lot of people I have met usually think we ride kangaroos everywhere in Australia and that there are no cars. :/ It's quite sad. I wonder if your friend knows about New Zealand.

Aussie Aussie Aussie! OI OI OI!

Also, awwwwwwwwwwwwww :3

LOL most people I know would LOVE to go to Australia. I've never seen someone so passionate about not caring about something pahahaha

It's not that all of us Americans are like that. Some I'll say think America's like a world of its own and all countries they see as "lower" than them owes us something while we wouldn't give anything back (or some say we give too much back while other countries don't give us much of anything, so they get angry when other countries are mentioned in some cases). Same for any cases something happens, if something happens in this country that's caused from people from another country then it's a big deal and something should be done with those people, while it's okay for Americans to go to other countries and harm other people since the people from those countries "deserve it" (or they'll give some sort of excuse as to why it's a rightful act to begin with). If that makes sense. They only care and see for what's going on with this country and when it comes to the news saying stuff about other countries (mainly ones we were at war with), they'll think the people from those countries are bad and all involve terrorism that would try bombing this whole country. Though that's not really saying about Australia itself, but the whole immigration thing probably has something to do with that even though we have quite a bit of people that immigrate here too. That's one major factor why America seems a bit populated. As far as saying they never knew Australia existed, they're either sarcastic and being a bit of a jerk or really just never seen the world map before since that's how much they even travel... Personally I never seen any kind of problem Australia has on the US if anything, so I don't know what the hell they're talking about. Though this is some of what stereotypes are held on us Americans (though sadly there are people like this, some not so accepting when it comes to stuff about other countries and all) but there's many of us can be accepting and know stuff that's from other places other than here. Best to ignore people like that if they're going to say stuff just because you're from a different country.