one of my favorite genres of tweets is extensive, overconfident cultural commentary from people on the complete opposite side of the world (about culture here, not there, obviously)
the internet really fools us into thinking that we can fully understand some foreign cultures by reading some tweets, visiting some websites, and talking to a highly curated group of people. that's not actually the case though
the internet may be a never-before-seen treasure trove of information, but there's still a world of difference between the parts of a culture that are communicated online, and the parts that reside in day-to-day life. what you see here is not a microcosm but merely a facet
one of the reasons for this is sampling bias — who's more likely to have internet access to begin with? to be extremely online? to frequent the same parts of the internet you do? who feels driven to write the content that you read?
then, of course, there are filter bubbles — where are you consuming content from? whose perspectives are you taking in, whose perspectives are you missing? how is this selection shaping your understanding of the culture?
most people understand this in regards to smaller cultures, but there's sometimes this idea that larger cultures (e.g. American) are simply so omnipresent that there's no way you *don't* fully understand them, because surely you've passively absorbed all there is to know
