How is the existence of a PR/spin industry, the fact that many Americans live way beyond their means, or the proliferation of influencers whose job is to show a specific story not evidence of a society that values appearances and will do a lot to protect face?
> a society that values appearances and will do a lot to protect face
Read my comment again, carefully, and you'll understand that your response is unrelated to my point.
Also: all of these things exist in large, industrialized Eastern nations too. You've clearly never lived in any of those places or even had tangential exposure to their culture. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that - just understand that you are exactly the kind of person who is going to have the hardest time understanding the cultural difference - which is part of my point.
There's no "in my estimation" - this is a well-researched topic and the vast majority of sociologists agree that there is a major cultural difference between the two, starting with the fact that "keeping up with the Joneses" is an individual act of pride vs "saving face" in China not only involves individual pride of an objectively greater magnitude, but also a collective pride that is rare in Western cultures and almost unheard of in highly individualistic cultures like the United States.
For understanding this better - you can try to read the Wikipedia page on the concept of face ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_(sociological_concept) ), but part of my point is that academic/intellectual understanding is a really poor substitute for experience in this domain, and reading a page allows for intellectual disagreement that is literally inconsistent with reality - experience forces you to directly confront that reality.
I'd suggest watching a few hundred hours of media from several different Eastern cultures (I personally like a mix between Japanese, Korean, and Chinese television shows - they each have their own memetics and charm and can be highly enjoyable - but most forms of media should give you the same experience as long as it's diverse enough).
You clearly have both zero exposure to any sort of Eastern culture, and you also didn't read any of the sources in that Wikipedia page - and instead of doing either of those (because you know that if you do, you'll be proven wrong and/or have to content with cognitive dissonance), you're trying to catch me with a gotcha. It's clear you're not operating in good faith - any person genuinely trying to understand would do one of those things, and you're not.
> Maybe you’re picking and choosing media to reinforce your inner biases?
You think that I chose to watch thousands of hours of media, not for entertainment, but specifically to deluse myself into a very specific and niche bias that the vast majority of people don't even have a mental framework to conceptualize and never comes up in casual conversation or has any relevance to my daily life? Congratulations, that's one of the most insane accusations I've ever seen on the internet.
