Duh

Apparently the government has just realized that pop culture is better propaganda than actual propaganda for America. To which I have one thing to say: Duh.
I have friends who had never been in America during Halloween and Thanksgiving, and they asked me if people really dressed up (yes) and if they really ate turkey (yes.) They based their questions on what they had seen in tv and movies. I have a Norwegian friend who has virtually no accent because she watches so much American tv. I'm pretty sure that most of those friends honestly see America as mostly what our pop culture shows us as.
But I’ve also seen this as a bad thing. I know girls who come to America thinking they can live like Carrie Bradshaw, shopping all the time and getting romanced by guys, and they’re totally disappointed when they see how most people’s lives are not like that. (They also usually are surprised to see how dirty most of New York’s streets are.) They also sometimes they have a blind allegiance to what they think is American, which can mean some of our least impressive attributes. (They often think we’re far more materialistic than what I hope most people are like, but sometimes they themselves are happy enough to buy into the culture.) Even sadder, they see America as more homogenized than it really is, when there are lots of smaller groups and some are antagonistic to one another. Also, right now, a lot of foreigners I know dress like hipsters because this is “in,” and although I agree with them it is, I know far more Americans who aren’t hipsters than are.