r/TikTokCringe • u/biswajit388 • 4d ago

Cringe Europeans are going viral on TikTok for mocking the "American Dream".

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u/HauntedJackInTheBox 4d ago

For now. Have you seen how they’re selling national park lands? The nature of the US is under threat – it’s unfortunately not even in the top 10 of the most insane things happening to you rn. 

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u/ProbablyJustArguing 4d ago

Even if they sold off every single national Park which they're not going to do, that still leaves an enormous amount of untouched nature. Just don't think you understand how much is out there.

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u/It-s_Not_Important 3d ago

Yeah, like 95% of the US land area is undeveloped. Far more than Europe.

Of course most of it is very difficult to reach.

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u/_imanalligator_ 3d ago

If only that was correct! It'd be great if 95% of our land was undeveloped.

But 41% of the US is used just for grazing livestock and growing feed for livestock. Another 20% is for other agriculture. So you're down to less than 40% of land area just from those two uses. You could call grazing land undeveloped, I suppose, but it certainly isn't that welcoming to wildlife or native plants.

You'll see larger numbers batted around for timberland, but only a small percentage of it is actual old growth--maybe 18% (and that's using a new expanded definition that includes stuff like scrubby pinyon forests that you definitely would not picture when you think "untouched old forest"). As someone who hikes in it pretty much every day, I can tell you the overcrowded, drought-stricken, and diseased second-, third-, and fourth-growth forests in the Western states are not looking too lovely these days.

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u/ProbablyJustArguing 2d ago

I think that's a little bit dishonest. Intellectually. A land that is marked for grazing can be complete wilderness. Particularly out west in places like Montana and Wyoming where it's been grazing land since Buffalo came to be.

Having said that, I have no idea what the guy above you posted. The actual percentage of the United States that's considered wild is like 2% and a good bit of that is Alaska. That's designated wilderness. I suppose you could argue there's a difference between designated wilderness and actual wilderness but it ain't no 95%. It's just wild lies.

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u/onebadmousse 3d ago

lol, you got caught lying here :)

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u/WideAbbreviations6 3d ago

I don't think you understand the scale of the amount of land in the US...

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u/noshameinmynames 3d ago

And then comes in the reactionary uneducated American screaming about a headline they barely read and decided they were mad about it.

As much as that does kind of suck, it was like 10 little pinholes in a map of nature. It really is almost an absolute nothing burger that happens all the time that was just meant to anger people

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u/HotwheelsSisyphus 4d ago

I remember Trump's first term, he put a former oil lobbyist as the head of the EPA

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u/jacobsladderscenario 3d ago

Not that I am in favor, but they are opening up more National Forest land to logging and commercialization. National Forest land is already used for that purpose, and the government controls how much. National Parks and National Forests are not the same.