All of a sudden, I see at least a few posts a day on TikTok of people showing how “trashy” parts of Paris are or how the “real” parts of whatever, whatever German city are worse than American cities.

Lots of captions say things like, “They say that Berlin is nice but the rats are worse than NYC and the people are terrible. They HATE Americans there! Don’t bother going!”

I just - idk. This feels like some type of propaganda. I want to see honest reviews of people’s experiences, but it’s odd that I am suddenly seeing all these negative posts online.

• And btw, I’m not saying that I believe that some utopia exists outside the US. I understand that every place has its problems, and moving to the Netherlands, Japan, or Brazil won’t save me. I’m simply pointing out a phenomenon that I’ve been noticing.