I came across the term in an online article, and it wasn't "Americanophile"
: a person who greatly admires or favors America or things from American culture
Is there an informal term?
Sample sentence:
OMG! He was born in Asia, and lives in Asia, but all he eats is hamburgers,; all he watches is American reality TV; and the only music he likes is LA rap. He is such a / so ________________!
An Internet slang term that has emerged for a non-American who loves America a little too much is freeaboo. This is a somewhat derogatory snowclone of weeaboo, a term popularized online to refer to a non-Japanese (especially, a non-East Asian) person who is unhealthily obsessed with Japan or Japanese popular culture. This term seems to have displaced the earlier term wapanese, a portmanteau of "white" and "Japanese," analogous to the more offensive wigger.
The "free" in freeaboo is a play on the habit of certain American hyperpatriots to equate freedom (at least as they conceive it) to the United States itself. George W. Bush used the word frequently in speeches after 9/11, but it truly became a trope in 2003. To protest the French government's opposition to war in Iraq, Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), chairman of the committee which had power over food service in the Congressional offices, had "French fries" renamed to "freedom fries" on the cafeteria menus.
The move invited a torrent of well-deserved ridicule across the U.S., not to mention abroad, with people jokingly saying things like "freedom kiss" (instead of a French kiss). Since then, "freedom" has been ironically and unironically to refer to American exceptionalism and a sort of reflexive (if unproductive) pride in America, like humorously referring to inches and pounds as "freedom units."
Internet wags have invented an "-aboo" for any number of identities with varying uptake. There are Koreaboos, teaboos, and ouiaboos, and more darkly, Wehraboos.
A Yankee Doodle
from The History of "Yankee Doodle"
What would eventually become a patriotic American folk song, actually began with a disparaging term aimed at belittling the might and possibilities inherent in the early American movement. As the colonists started to develop their own culture and government, across the ocean from their British countrymen, some of them no doubt started to feel as though they didn't need the monarchy in order to prosper in the fledgling America. This no doubt seemed ludicrous to folks back home in the heart of one of the world's most powerful empires, and the colonists in America were easy targets for mocking.
But, as has long since become the tradition in the States, those people who were being ridiculed by the slanderous term took ownership of it and metamorphosed the image of the Yankee Doodle into a source of pride and promise.
Sing it, Jimmy! From the lyrics of Yankee Doodle Boy:
I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy
A Yankee Doodle, do or die
A real live nephew of my uncle Sam's
Born on the Fourth of July
I've got a Yankee Doodle sweetheart
She's my Yankee Doodle joy
Yankee Doodle came to London
Just to ride the ponies
I am a Yankee Doodle boy
Another word closely related, but not exactly related to this concept is "ethnocentric". The Britannica Dictionary definition of ETHNOCENTRICis "having or based on the idea that your own group or culture is better or more important than others"
"Americanized", "enculturated", or "assimilated" all convey the meaning although perhaps not "informally". Very informally (as a colloquialism), "he" has become a "clone" (of American pop-culture). Consider the (less than proper) example below.
He was born in Asia, and lives in Asia, but all he eats is hamburgers,; all he watches is American reality TV; and the only music he likes is LA rap. He is such a perfect Ameri-clone!
