No it's not. The French, British and Italians for example all have extreme amounts of nationalistic pride and show it throughout their economies, the pride they hold regarding their history and culture. Scandinavia is very proud of its broadly tremendous standard of living and their well run welfare states, etc. - and Scandinavians are never shy about bragging about it online in my observation, you can hardly get away from it. The Chinese and Japanese are extremely nationalistic, and that's downplaying how nationalistic they are, extremely doesn't do it justice. I also find any time India has an accomplishment that gets global attention, Indians take a massive amount of pride in it, and you can see that pour out on HN or Reddit for example (and I don't think there is anything wrong with that).
The chant may be a quirk of the US, the nationalism it represents is absolutely not.
But it is the chant we are talking about. I can't think of anywhere else I've been where someone starting to chant the country's name in response to the actions of a single company wouldn't lead to embarrassed looks and face-palming from people around them.
This is not about there not being nationalism elsewhere, but about how US nationalism gets expressed in contexts that is not seen as representative of the nation elsewhere. This doesn't mean nationalism elsewhere is weaker - just that there are cultural quirks to how it gets expressed, and what actions are seen as representing something of the nation.
E.g. most places I've worked I'd expect quite a few people would be offended if you started shouting the country name instead of e.g. the company name as taking away glory for the teams achievements.
But in general chanting is perhaps rarer in many European countries outside of sports arrangements. I can't remember a single big work-related success where anyone started chanting anything. Cheering and clapping and popping champagne, sure, but not chanting. I think most places the latter would be seen as tacky more than anything. So the cultural quirk might be more about the level of exuberance considered appropriate in the workplace.
You're thinking about SpaceX as just a random company in a random industry. It's not. SpaceX is the space company. On PR area they compete with NASA, the space agency. I can imagine that for many SpaceX employees, their work is synonymous with getting America back into space exploration game.
Why wouldn't an American company, doing business in America, funded mostly by American government contracts and helping carry out American space priorities, and THEN doing it in a way that brings about the first major advance in spaceflight technology in generations not be a place where they might chant the name of the country that this is all happening in, by and for?
> I can't remember a single big work-related success where anyone started chanting anything. Cheering and clapping and popping champagne, sure, but not chanting.
Have you ever worked at a place that did anything within even an order of magnitude of what SpaceX has done?
I'm an American and we don't chant USA at the end of an IT contract delivery, or because we set up a database well or something. But if I put something in outer space, then brought it back down to earth and landed it on a robot ship in the middle of the ocean at night, I'd sure as hell be chanting something.
I'm not saying they shouldn't. There's nothing wrong with it per se. I'm saying it seems bizarre from my viewpoint, and that it seems like a cultural quirk.
> I'd sure as hell be chanting something.
The question isn't whether or not there'd be celebration, but whether or not that celebration would involve chanting a country name or similar. As I wrote: Cheering and clapping and bringing the champagne out, sure. Chanting a country name? To me that's something people to at football (soccer) matches, and that would seem ridiculously out of place.
Company settings or not, I have never chanted a country name in any setting, or been present while it's been going on other than people doing it to stereotype Americans.
> I have never chanted a country name in any setting, or been present while it's been going on other than people doing it to stereotype Americans.
I think this may be more of a personal quirk of yours and/or your immediate social circle. National chants pretty much abound throughout the world, especially in nations that perceive themselves in high competition with others.
and yes, many are from sporting events, but I've heard people shout their nation name or some national slogan outside of sports enough times to know it's pretty common (but not universal).
(I notice you live in/near London from your profile, don't you ever notice the conspicuous displays of "Britishness" all over the place? I certainly did the few times I was there. I wasn't bothered by it, and though it did take different forms from the way we do it in the U.S. felt it was okay as a demonstration of national pride.)
Chants are just a show of strong emotion. Something the professional life generally abhors - that's why it feels weird. People are not supposed to be that happy about their success, and especially not to connect private business with national pride.
But space industry is a bit different, and SpaceX is a very different company - they're honest-to-god driven by the idea, not profit.
(This chanting irks me a bit too, tbh., but I know it's because I'm not American and I want to picture SpaceX's successes as something done for all mankind, not just one group of people I don't belong to. A funny psychological bias :).)
We British would never dream of claiming our country was the best at everything - we might grudgingly admit that we get by all right considering - and my impression is that the rest of Europe is similar. Whereas Americans seem to get offended if you suggest there might be anything that another country was better than theirs at. Not to say it's necessarily good or bad but there is a real cultural difference there.
> We British would never dream of claiming our country was the best at everything
That's kind of silly. The British are widely known for claiming to have the best in many things. And I've watched enough TV in the U.K. to know that even currently extends into Science and Technology education.
