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What’s so interesting about Britain?

J.J. McCullough | June 3, 2026



Let’s talk about a bunch of weird things that they have in the UK. This video was sponsored by Incogni. Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code JJMCC at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/jjmcc

England is a funny place. Let’s look at ten themes of British culture under the clearest of blue skies.

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HASHTAGS: #uk #history #england #london

Written by J.J. McCullough

Comments

This post currently has 39 comments.

  1. @bnthern

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    when you spoke of the UNDERGROUD as b eing a "class" equalizer – I remember riding the "STAR" ferry in Hong Kong (then a britist Crown colony ) and that it had NO CLASS devide!

  2. @willku9000

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    This is honestly a fascinating video. First off Mr Blobby Mentioned. Sick. I’ve loved that obnoxious, Diseased looking freak since I (an American who hilariously was born around that time) first learned about him through a random YouTube video a few years ago. Second, London isn’t the only city that sells merch featuring local Public Transit iconography. I actually own a pair of Socks with the Washington DC Metro map on them.

  3. @itryen7632

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    Mr. Blobby is to the UK like what Uncle Sam is to the US, what the Jade Emperor is to China, what Bernd The Bread is to Germany, and what Marianne is to France

  4. @aprilkurtz1589

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    I worked in a brutalist style building at the Rebecca Crown Center building at a top ten University in NE IL. Additionally, the building was also designed to help prevent damage from rioters in the '60's. It was designed by Walter Netsch, Jr., of the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. He was a major proponent of Brutalism. It was a concrete box with tall, skinny windows that couldn't be opened. The windows had these big, concrete slabs dangling over them like shades, or something. The buildings he designed got rave reviews. I think they're fugly as all get out.

  5. @shavono8402

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    20:46 The US absolutely had a socialist movement. Particularly in the early 1900s, there was a strong push for worker's rights and unions led by people like Eugene V. Debs, who even ran for president as a socialist in 1912. However, this movement and much of this history has been beaten out of us by the likes of Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller. Furthermore, the Red Scare solidified the US's opposition to anything remotely socialist in the zeitgeist since the 60's.

  6. @delusionnnnn

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    The Commodore 64 was common in the US and UK, but there, they used cassettes pretty frequently, and in the US, we set those aside for 5.25" floppies pretty quickly. Still, if you pirated games from "warez" BBSes, you'd get a lot of British imports. Since the electricity was 50kHz over there, most unconverted games (or converted only to the degree of letting them work on PAL instead of NTSC), most unofficially and even a few officially converted British games ran noticeably faster here than in the UK, which made many of them more frustrating than the Brits experienced. Having said that, Dizzy Egg was one I played a few times, and it definitely felt like it was "for someone else", unlike, say, the British hit space exploration, combat, and trading game Elite, which was ported to every system possible and which I felt very at home with. Ed: VIENETTA! We used to have that in the US in the 80s and I and a lot of people who remember it miss it dearly.

  7. @Therealsaulgooseman

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    10:32 Its not just England, you can find telephone booths like these everywhere in the UK, and i mean EVERYWHERE, even the mots secluded and isolated Scottish village in the highlands, you can find like 1 or 2 of them, and ofc there are a couple in Edinburgh as well

  8. @christophercole8114

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    With how "prim," "proper" and "keep a stiff upper lip" the British are stereotypically portrayed, it's their humor that sticks out to me the most. I think you briefly touched on it citing Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean and Fawlty Towers and saying it's introducing a chaotic element. I think British humor is based more on absurdity that can only exist within a somewhat rigid framework. Monty Python's Flying Circus introduced us to things like the Ministry of Funny Walks and "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" but that influence carries over into more modern programs like Keeping Up Appearances and The Vicar of Dibley. It's a style of comedy that isn't really that prevalent in the United States or in Canada as far as I can tell. The only person I can think that's even come really close to being a British-like comedian in the US or Canada is Conan O'Brien.

  9. @nharris

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    Me and my Texan family observe our very best attempt at a British Christmas each year. We’re fans of GK Chesterton’s love of and reasoning for such traditions, and I can attest to the very cosyness of it. Even the family members who don’t like plum pudding by default will eat some for the experience alone.

  10. @WolfOfWalfas

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    Mentioning the blue police phoneboxes without making a Doctor Who reference?

    As the show itself has pointed-out a few times, more people nowadays (especially outside of the UK) recognize the TARDIS – the protagonist's time-machine/spaceship disguised as a police phonebox – than the actual Police Public Call Box.

  11. @jonathanstensberg

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    Re American Socialism: Milwaukee was run by socialists for the majority of the period 1910-1960. Wisconsin in general was quite the hotbed of socialism for quite some time. The most famous of Wisconsin politicians “Fighting Bob” LaFollette ran a strong socialist-backed campaign for US President in 1924, winning 16.6% of the national vote and 13 electoral votes. Though often forgotten, his was arguably the second most successful third-party campaign after only the 1912 showing by Teddy Roosevelt.

  12. @chortler

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    Being a Canadian and a Brit, and having grown up in London in the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s, I don’t recognise your gaming references. Either I lived in a cave, or you have picked out some very obscure things.

  13. @ayemorelocks

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    the british have an intense hierarchical class system and attitudes that they exported globally. this is the most important part about british culture with respect to humanity

  14. @noaholson9047

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    One thing I’ve noticed is that most nature documentaries always have a British host or narrator, which is interesting because the Isle of Britain itself doesn’t have a whole lot of wilderness left from previous errors such large megafauna or old growth forest
    I wonder what’s the reason

  15. @StevenMolnar-d3f

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    Can you please make a video about Hungarian culture too? I see a lot of overlapping here, in regards to poshness for example. Like our bath and gyógyvíz culture, budapest underground, the Hungarian Royal TV (magyar királyi 1/MTV – even though we dont have a king since the 40s), Dualist Era products, végvári vitéz and hussar symbolism, maximalism and sírva vigadás(finding joy and celebration in the tragic, loving to complain), but also ruin pubs, retro cartoons, which often reflected society and family structure.

  16. @bvzv

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    Cassette tape games were broadcasted in pirate radio stations for listeners to copy on their own cassettes during first few years of post-communist Poland as IP protection laws weren't in place yet.

  17. @challi5109

    June 3, 2026 at 9:28 am

    This video is really interesting because it highlights British society's values from an outsider perspective in a way that actually feels quite accurate, contradictions and all.

    In the UK, the term 'british values' has become a bit of a political buzzword, based on vague things like tolerance and freedom which kids are taught in school in a very bland watered down way in ungraded PSHE lessons, and people lament that we are losing these values that id argue are never very explicitly instilled in us in the first place but seem more like a performative ideal rather than what society tends to present it's values as. Hyper consumerism is definitely a British value

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