
Pizza Effect - polm23
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizza_effect
======
svat
Wasn't expecting to see this here. I created this article about 10 years ago,
when I was a lot more active on Wikipedia. Every time I remember this article
I keep expecting it to get deleted sooner or later, but somehow it's made it
this long. Mostly a matter of finding and adding enough references that
mention the phrase I guess. (Some of the recent additions don't…)

One thing I'll point out is that the effect as originally described is about
things that always existed in their place of origin, but became more popular /
accepted (improved in reputation) after gaining a warm reception/prestige
elsewhere. (The examples here of things popularly associated with X culture
despite not originating in place X are interesting too, though!)

Edit: Sorry for a tangential aside, but I just looked into the history of this
article, and IMO it's representative of many Wikipedia articles (and not how
either the general public or Wikipedia regulars think articles get written):

• Here are the first 3 years, where basically things were cleaned up and a
couple of examples added, but the article was still substantially in its
original (poor) form:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pizza_effect&type...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pizza_effect&type=revision&diff=581515546&oldid=367842361)

• Then a single edit by another user substantially “refactored” it and cleaned
it up:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=585383004&oldid=58...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=585383004&oldid=581515546&title=Pizza_effect&type=revision)

• Another 6 years where nothing much changes fundamentally, except for a few
additional examples:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=943600315&oldid=58...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=943600315&oldid=585383004&title=Pizza_effect&type=revision)

The article has 102 revisions, and all of them have contributed to its present
form… who would we say “wrote” it? See the late Aaron Swartz's “Who Writes
Wikipedia?” at
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia)

~~~
ronenlh
Swartz's article mentioned at the end is interesting, and contradicts Wales'
study, who measured by number of edits per contributor instead of number of
contributed words per contributor.

"When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one
edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking
and reformatting it. In addition, insiders rack up thousands of edits doing
things like changing the name of a category across the entire site — the kind
of thing only insiders deeply care about. As a result, insiders account for
the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all
of the content."

------
franciscop
There are a couple of those I know:

\- White sangria. "Sangria" literally means "bloodletting", and has been
traditionally made from red wine. But white sangria has become popular
overseas and with tourists, and now many Spanish restaurants also offer white
sangria.

\- Eating paella at night. Traditionally in Valencia, the paella was to be
eaten only at lunch time and never at dinner time. This is because it's rice-
based, so it's too heavy to go to sleep afterwards and dinner time is fairly
late. But a lot of tourists want to eat it at night, so restaurants serve it
anytime. There's even light joking among locals when seeing someone eating
paella at night "I'm sure they are tourists".

I'd guess countries where there's a lot of tourism have a lot more of this
pizza effect than others. The inverse would be "Yoshoku" in Japanese, which is
heavily adapting the foreign dishes to local tastes
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dshoku](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y%C5%8Dshoku)

~~~
IanCal
> it's too heavy to go to sleep afterwards

I find this very interesting as I'd class heavy meals as exactly the kind of
thing that would leave you lethargic and sleepy after eating.

~~~
peterburkimsher
I find it interesting because I thought people have a siesta after lunch.

~~~
plafl
Lot of people avoid it precisely because of indigestion. The really good
siesta is before lunch.

------
DoreenMichele
I've largely stopped trying to say anything like "I do x because of y cultural
influence." Like: "My mom's German, so..." I often have no way of knowing if
my mom does that thing because it's a widespread thing in German culture or if
that's just a thing my mom does and it's got little or nothing to do with her
being born and raised in Germany.

(I've run into Germans who do the opposite of something my mom does that I
thought was representative of German culture and been told their way was the
norm in Germany. I threw my hands in the air and made my peace with "not
everything my mom does is representative of most Germans.")

We routinely think X person is from Y culture, so X person is representative
of Y culture and it's frequently just absolutely not true at all. Fascinating
that this fact leads to the works of essentially cultural outcasts coming home
again and being embraced as "one of us" and someone we are proud to claim as a
representative of our culture when they were originally "that loser we want
nothing to do with, so they had to leave the country to succeed."

~~~
rfrey
The one thing I learned from the Ukrainian and Polish elders in my life: the
people in the next village are idiots and have no idea how to make proper
pierogis.

~~~
fit2rule
I have a theory about language, which I've formulated by living all over the
world for 50 years.

It goes like this: If you have two villages, maybe separated by a lake, or by
a mountain, and one village has goats, the other has sheep - or maybe one of
these villages has brown goats and the other just white goats - or maybe there
are a couple of cows in one and a coal mine at the other - then it doesn't
matter how close these villages are, they will fight for their own dialect,
which will eventually become a new language.

(Austria problems.)

------
mrspeaker
I overheard a US coworker explain that "Australians say 'dollar-y-doos'
instead of 'dollars'" \- because they'd heard me say it a bunch. But I got it
from The Simpsons making fun of Australians... so now it's kind of actually
true.

(there's still no truth about Fosters Beer or "Bloomin' onions" though!)

~~~
ConsiderCrying
I'd wager the same is true for the "drop bears" meme, right? I've seen it on
Reddit and trying to google it turned into a rabbit hole of Reddit threads
that all eventually resulted in "it's a joke, duh" but with enough time
passing, I'm sure some Australians have picked it up as a joke in real life.

~~~
whatusername
drop bears pre-date reddit by decades..

~~~
ConsiderCrying
Oh, didn't realize that, sorry. Point still applies, though, I suppose - an
internet meme ascending its initial uses to become widespread.

------
scott_s
My personal favorite example of this is when any character in The Simpsons,
other than Homer, says _D 'oh!_ They don't say it because Homer said it. They
say it because Homer said it, then _our entire culture started saying it_ , so
it's only natural for other characters in the show to say it.

~~~
krallja
Dan Castellaneta told Conan that the script is written “d’oh” when anyone
other than Homer says it. Homer says “(annoyed grunt).”

~~~
mikewhy
It's even baked into at least one episode title:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala(...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala\(Annoyed_Grunt\)cious)

------
mirekrusin
My favourite is salmon sushi which was introduced by norvegian
marketing/business guy in 80s and now it's pretty much a symbol of japanese
sushi.

~~~
dkdbejwi383
Same thing with Bailey’s (the whiskey cream liquor). It was invented by a
marketing consultancy in London’s Soho. About as Irish as bratwurst.

~~~
seanhunter
It's made with Irish whiskey. It's pretty definitely more Irish than
bratwurst.

~~~
dkdbejwi383
You can make bratwurst with Irish pork ️

------
avelis
Another good example not listed is the burrito. The burrito in the US isn't a
thing in Latin America. However, it is pinned as being Latin food vs Latin-
American food. I guess the disqualifying difference is most don't travel to
Latin America looking for an amazing burrito.

~~~
p1necone
That's only really true because the areas of the USA where the Burrito is
common were part of Mexico until very recently. Burritos are definitely a
Mexican invention.

~~~
BigBubbleButt
> That's only really true because the areas of the USA where the Burrito is
> common were part of Mexico until very recently.

Texas and California were made states over 150 years ago, and Arizona and New
Mexico were made states over 100 years ago. In the scheme of American history,
this is not "very recently" at all.

[https://www.vox.com/2015/5/1/8525335/burrito-history-
inventi...](https://www.vox.com/2015/5/1/8525335/burrito-history-invention-
america)

In fact, it seems plausible (if not probable) the burrito was invented after
all of those states became part of the US.

~~~
readarticle
In the scheme of human history it’s very recently, doubly so for an isolated
population distributed across massive swathes of land that are far away from
DC and DF alike.

~~~
BigBubbleButt
It's very recent in terms of human history, but we're talking about American
and Mexican history. The American Southwest wasn't settled by Mexicans until
~400 years ago.

------
lizardking
I wonder if there is a growing influence from the American craft brew scene
back onto Europe. Last time I was in Italy I went to a place that made their
own "American IPA".

~~~
fnord123
I'm not a beer historian but I think the American craft beer scene is a
'thing' because home brewing was legalized in 1978 and it took this long for a
fabric of breweries in the US to develop to mirror what already existed in
Europe or any other country.

I think the influence of American IPA is quite limited and only adding to the
selection rather than altering how others do anything ("influence"). That
said, Duvel has a triple hop beer which tastes awful, so maybe I'm wrong and
the hop fetishism is contagious.

~~~
thequux
Duvel triple hop is, indeed, vile, but there are other Belgian breweries that
are taking on the IPA and doing an outstanding job of it; Brussels Beer
project comes to mind immediately, but I'm sure that there are others. I'd
take a BBP Delta IPA or Dark Sister over nearly any American IPA.

That said, the IPA style was originally British; it's called an "India" pale
ale because they added a ton of extra hops to preserve the beer well enough to
make the trip to India. It then got brought to the US, who picked a metric
(IBU) and optimized it beyond repair, and the American take on IPA has
certainly made it back to the UK (e.g., a good half of Brewdog's repertoire)

~~~
fnord123
They stopped making Dark Sister. And that was more in line with an English
Porter.

------
1-6
Psy - Gangnam Style is a classic example of the pizza effect. Koreans like Psy
before his hit and he was just a simple comedic singer. He's a legend now.

------
Angostura
This one surpised me:

> The Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City was inspired by an event in the
> James Bond film Spectre, which was fictional at the time of the film's
> production

~~~
jordigh
Yep! Mexican here, I added that example! And I think it's really cool! Day of
the Dead has an interesting, very modern history. The celebration keeps
evolving, traditions being born before our very eyes.

I'm pretty sure the coolness of skull face-painting in DotD is also a recent
foreign influence, but I can't find a clear source for it. I just remember the
first time I saw it was in 2008 during a Halloween party and I thought, wow,
that's like the sugar skulls from Day of the Dead, cool! I didn't recognise it
as a tradition but as something new.

~~~
yellowapple
Day of the Dead is one of my favorite holidays for very similar reasons. It's
fun watching it evolve and expand in real time year after year. It's that
perfect intersection of novelty and tradition, and all the while reframes
mortality in a refreshingly positive light.

And besides, who doesn't love dead bread?

------
jedberg
There's a whole bunch of Chinese food that was invented in America that is now
being imported back to China. Basically all the deep fried items.

~~~
4cao
Other than "General Tso's chicken" and "Chop suey," what else do you have in
mind?

~~~
jedberg
Fried wontons, orange/lemon chicken, Crab rangoon, egg foo young. All of which
seem to be available in China now.

------
jdtang13
Yep. It's so true when it comes to Indian philosophy. There is a ton of
revisionism and strange understandings where people pretend an idea invented
in 1800s is ancient. It's also somewhat true for China and Japan.

~~~
throwaway17_17
Do you have any quick sources for the Indian perspective. I was arguing with a
co-worker the other day about some of the, to my mind, odd statement they had
made about Vedic practices and yoga, but didn’t have a concrete citation
ready.

~~~
jdtang13
Advaita Vedanta is the keyword to use for most modern day, Neoplatonistic
Hindu philosophy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advaita_Vedanta)

My understanding is that, although this teaching was technically formulated in
the 8th century AD, it became popular and gained widespread resurgence in the
West around 19th century. Hare Krishna movement and Theosophical Society come
to mind.

My guess, as a hobbyist historian, is that most everyday Hindus practiced
normal, layperson devotions to humanized gods rather than truly believing in a
universal soul that underlies the entire universe.

Basically, any time someone tells you that Indians and Chinese people believe
in "philosophy" rather than "religion", they are probably bringing in a
Western orientalist bias. Actually, unsurprisingly, Eastern people are
actually just religious. There is no woke philosophy going on except for the
elite scholars and religious monks.

------
bristleworm
I've got a question regarding the Pizza story: where in italy is "american"
pizza supposed to be considered a delicacy?

~~~
timendum
Answer: nowhere

------
thedogeye
What about Apple buying Next to get the operating system created by Steve
Jobs?

------
chinesempire
Except that pizza has never been a poorman's food in Italy, it was a kind of
bread.

Still mostly is a popular inexpensive food, in many places is also a
traditional food, not a delicacy as the article says.

The only contribution to pizza toppings from America has been tomato, that
arrived to Europe after Cristoforo Colombo went there, specifically in Central
America.

Before that pizza was white, but not less flavored, we have historical
documents that date back pizza before the year 1000 in a place in Italy
(Gaeta) which is well known for its olives (and consequently olive oil)
mozzarella cheese and fresh vegetables, besides having one of the most idyllic
seaside in Italian's west coast.

Pizza in North America has never been a thing before late XIX century.

------
Yhippa
> The Day of the Dead parade in Mexico City was inspired by an event in the
> James Bond film Spectre, which was fictional at the time of the film's
> production.

I had no idea. I honestly thought this had been going on for years prior to
that movie.

~~~
205guy
That intrigued me as well, so I went to read some Wikipedia
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Dead)).

Day of the Dead is a southern Mexican celebration that evolved from the
assimilation of native culture (Maya and meso-American) into the Catholic
calendar (all Saints/all Souls days). It wasn't celebrated much in Mexico City
and northern Mexico until recently, pushed on in part by the government
celebrating more indigenous culture and creating a national holiday, and then
the movie.

~~~
yellowapple
Sounds a lot like how Yule and Saturnalia (among others) got rolled into what
we now call Christmas.

------
Ididntdothis
At least the Italians took pizza and made it into a very good dish compared to
the US version which is way overloaded, cheesy and greasy :)

~~~
anthonypasq
Anyone that trashes US pizza has no idea what they are talking about.

Dominoes is not American pizza as much as McDonald's are not American burgers.

Go to an actual good pizzeria in New York and if you still complain about it,
im going to assume you are lying.

~~~
zoonosis
Just an single data point, but this Italian thinks pizza from Naples is way
better than pizza from New York [1].

[1] [https://youtu.be/OUo4MUSY0v4?t=149](https://youtu.be/OUo4MUSY0v4?t=149)

~~~
RandallBrown
Kind of a weird video. It basically comes down to "This isn't Neopolitan Pizza
so it's not as good."

Neopolitan pizza has a whole association that certifies restaurants and
Lombardi's isn't on that list. It's no surprise that the pizza will a
different style.

It's also pretty funny he mentions that in Italy they fold their pizza, when
that is practically _the_ defining characteristic of New York style pizza.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Neapolitan pizza is one thing, Roman pizza is another, and much more akin to
New York-style pizza. One type is made in big rectangular pans and sold by
weight, it's similar to Focaccia. There is also a round style that is thinner
and crispier, which is the best IMO. Fold and eat.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_pizza](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_pizza)

While I do enjoy a good old-fashioned Neapolitan pizza, I much prefer the
Roman style, specifically the round thin style and by extension the NY style.

------
chrysoprace
This makes me wonder if there's a similar term for things that are created
outside of the country that it's associated with that doesn't get reintegrated
into said country.

For example, I (a Danish person) had to ask my Australian friends what an
"Apple Danish" was as it's similar to, but quite unlike anything you'd find in
Denmark.

~~~
microtherion
When we moved back to Switzerland, we encountered an example of this: During
the Mad Cow epoch, alternatives to beef like kangaroo and ostrich meat became
somewhat popular here.

So in a Mexican restaurant in Zürich, we saw "Kangaroo Fajitas" on the menu, a
dish that has the distinction of being unknown in both Mexico and Australia.

~~~
chrysoprace
That's really interesting! Always good to see unique new fusions.

------
mc32
Something maybe related but different is cultural divergence and ossification
among home country and emigrant cultures and language.

Often the culture or language in the home country progresses but the emigrant
version resists change or changes slower.

But it also depends on degree of assimilation by emigrants to the dominant
culture in their adopted countries.

~~~
joshdick
There's a good example of this in my South Philadelphia neighborhood: The
Italian-Americans here speak Italian with the accent of a southern Italian
from a century ago, frozen in time. Italian accents have progressed in Italy
over that time, but not among the immigrant communities here.

~~~
RandallBrown
I've read articles claiming the American accent is closer to what the British
sounded like at the founding of the United States than what they sound like
now.

~~~
tidenly
Things like the spelling of cheque are prime examples of this. We mock the
Americans for their simplistic spelling, but in actuality we took "cheque"
after America had split off already in an attempt to sound more French and
eloquent. American drawl accent is also closer to older English than lots of
modern English accents.

------
btilly
My favorite example is that Caesar salad was invented in Mexico by an Italian
named Caesar Cardini.

------
csours
Can you think of any of these for programming languages?

~~~
officemonkey
Ruby became far more popular in the US. Especially after Rails kicked adoption
into high gear.

~~~
viklove
Rails didn't take a good thing and make it popular. It took a shit thing and
gave people a reason to put up with it. There's a reason no one uses Ruby
outside of Rails...

~~~
twic
Most Rubyists i know have the opposite opinion - Ruby was great until the
great unwashed horde of Rails devs showed up.

------
DonHopkins
They have New York Pizza in Amsterdam. How long until they re-re-import it as
Old New York Pizza in New Amsterdam?

[https://www.newyorkpizza.nl/](https://www.newyorkpizza.nl/)

------
troymc
If you like learning about the history (and science) of the world's foods,
check out the podcast _Gastropod_.

[https://gastropod.com/](https://gastropod.com/)

------
pmarreck
Could this possibly happen at an individual/personal level too, such as when
an actor does a role that they get completely typecast by?

------
mgraczyk
Interesting and good to have a name for this thing.

This seems to happen all the time in tech as engineers and ideas bounce
between big companies. Some examples that come to mind:

* Stories from Snapchat to Instagram, back to Snapchat with replies * App switching UIs iOS -> Android -> iOS with gestures * Home UI Facebook -> Twitter -> Facebook (current beta)

------
anonu
This concept is about the globalisation project which has been growing
steadily for the last century but has been stopped by the rise of populism.
Somehow the coronavirus reminds us that we are still way more connected
globally than politicians would like us to be.

------
Lucasoato
Is it true about Pizza? :/

~~~
moron4hire
I think it's really hard to say much of anything about the influence of
different cultures on food, especially anything regarding flatbreads.

Every culture has some form of flatbread. Every culture has figured out "we
can put other foods in/on-top of this flatbread". They figured it out
thousands of years ago. Once you have the basic mechanic figured out, do the
exact inputs matter that much, especially when you consider how varied the
inputs can be within a specific, arbitrary category?

There is the common, bad-highschool-history meme of "(The Earl of Sandwich/his
personal cook) invented the sandwich". Or, every culture has a tradition of
picking up food with bread, for thousands of years, and it's not that big of a
deal. A grilled cheese sandwich is just a Western European quesadilla!

One of my favorite ways to get people to scoff at me is to call polenta
"grits". Yes, yes, "different strain of corn". But honestly, there are so many
other variations in polenta/grits preparations that the specific strain of
corn is really a minor drop in the bucket, and mostly amounts to regional
availability. I know folks who will go nutso-spendo over "shrimp on a bed of
polenta" but think "shrimp and grits" is cheap-food.

~~~
davidw
My wife is from the heartland of 'polenta' country in northern Italy, and it
is absolutely "commoner food".

~~~
moron4hire
Yeah, I live in Northern VA. We have a lot more dollars than sense here. We
also like to white-wash southern food. Here in the DC area, for how it's
prepared in dishes, polenta is definitely "rich-person's grits".

~~~
davidw
You can combine polenta with something quite fancy, and that's not unheard of
in Italy. But it's also something that was a staple for the poor.

------
tus88
Like reverse culture shock.

------
wesleybatista
Today a Chinese friend told me that people from China are getting the Corona
Virus on other countries instead of China. Could this be considered a Pizza
Effect as well or is there a better word for that?

------
duke360
sorry for the scarcity of intelligence of this comment but ... LOL

------
76543210
Italy was seriously disappointing for food. Small and expensive quantities.
The food was quite simple but they had big emphasis on the ingredients. I
still found it lack luster on most occasions.

~~~
hugi
Pretty much the opposite of my experience.

One might even go so far as saying Italy is large and diverse and has many
different areas with multiple restaurants of varying quality.

~~~
magic_beans
I was given cheese and buttered bread on a short regional flight in Italy.
Leagues better than any cheese or bread I'd ever had in the United States.

------
eecc
Uhm, sorry but no. Pizza has never been looked down in Italy. Because most
Italians have most often been poor and miserable wretches that couldn’t afford
to look down onto any kind of food in the first place.

Perhaps just during post-WW2 we had some form of cultural colonization and
shame of the past that - peaking in the ‘80s - made us love and ape anything
Made in USA.

Food, music, movies... just look here
[https://youtu.be/fJ8o26ovKjM](https://youtu.be/fJ8o26ovKjM)

But no, even thinking that the “origin culture” is just claiming as own
American-made derivations is frankly shameless hubris

~~~
vraivroo
You misunderstood. It's not "Pizza" that was looked down upon in Italy, it was
"toppings on pizza".

There are 3 official types of Neapolitan pizza, for example, and none of them
have any of what Americans would traditionally consider "toppings".

Putting anything other than tomato sauce, mozzarella, and seasonings on a
Neapolitan pie is, simply, "looked down upon".

~~~
viklove
> Neapolitan pie

It's a bit ironic you would put these two words together in your comment. No
one would call a Neapolitan pizza a pie -- that word probably originates from
deep dish (aka Chicago style) pizza, which actually resembles a pie.

~~~
RandallBrown
Pizza pie was used for decades before the invention of the deep dish.
[https://www.crustkingdom.com/why-is-pizza-called-
pie/](https://www.crustkingdom.com/why-is-pizza-called-pie/)

