Ameritrash vs. Eurotrash

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I had heard "Eurotrash" as applied to European disco music as far back as around 1975-1976. I'm not just trying to "one-up" anybody. This is what I heard.

ABBA itself is not seen as being "Eurotrash"--but music similar to it might be see as such. This music is seen as being superficial, without substance, and perhaps decadent.

There was somewhat of a similar reaction to European synthesizer music by rock-n-roll purists circa 70s-early 80s.

"99 Luftballoons," done in 1984, has been referred to as an example of "Eurotrash."

Okay. Never heard it applied to music. I think that Alan Dershowitz, and the band Cracker, are the only two places I have heard the term at all. Both used it to mean a type of person.

HAH!

Just googled "Eurotrash". Google took me to "the Urban Dictionary".

And the FIRST definition it gives is a "subspecies of person":European jet setting world weary types who either have, or affect affluence, and so on.The women have over bleached hair, and breast implants...both genders great each other with air kisses... Basically my definition.

The top definition is people, and not a type of music.

But down the list of "euro" terms they list in the margin where you can click there is also the term "Euro Trash Sex Music". Apparently you have to stick the word "sex" into it to mean a type of music.

I clicked it and it says that its awful sounding kind of music originating in Europe. But doesnt describe it.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 12 Aug 2016, 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Whenever a European disco song would be played on the radio--and, especially, if it only had six words for lyrics throughout the whole song, like Donna Summer's "Love to Love you Baby"--somebody would intone: "Oh no, not that Eurotrash again!"

Usually, people who said this would believe that "disco sucks."

Another word comes to mind when it comes to Eurotrash: "Tacky."

Eurotrash was to me jet setting rich guys wearing speedos and black sunglasses, laying around the Riviera all day speeding around their Ferraris doing nothing

Eurodisco was produced by Italians and Germans like Georgio Meroder not as gospel and R&B as American Styled Disco, more pop and synth based then American Styled Disco. Amanda Lear, Sylvester, Silver Convention, Donna Summer "I Feel Love"

I guess that back in the Seventies only one person on the planet used the term "Eurotrash" to mean a kind of disco music, and that one person happened to be Krafty's college roomate! Lol!

Everyone else understands it the same way I do to mean a type of person.European idle rich types.

I was only in high school then.

But that's what I heard. Maybe it was a local thing....who knows?

I didn't go to college until 1997.

My mother's side is all white trash and my dads side is Italian but not eurotrash. They are that hard working immigrant type. My husband's family is society descended from landed gentry aristos in England. Not nobs, unfortunately but gentry. They don't much care for me, but I know how to behave like a lady and the white trash comes out only sometimes.

I've dated both American white trash and a few Euro trash and the differences to me are that Euro trash guys smell better and dress better and go to a lot of effort to make people think they aren't. Also Euro trash usually has ways of getting money or has more on hand than white trash redneck boys do. Euro guys tend to really believe that they are more than they are or have opportunities that they don't have while white trash American boys know how to pretend it but don't really believe it.

If I was young and single I'd rather casually date a Euro trash guy cause they know how to act in public and know what's nice and what's tacky, American white trash does not usually without going to the effort to learn it. My mother went to that effort AMD made sure that even though I came from it,I didn't act it all the time.

Euro trash boys will roll the sleeves up on their expensive (usually obtained by some sort of can or theft) silk button down just to the elbows and then only when having to do something like change the tire on the girls car they are driving or looking for a vein to shoot dope in. American white trash will immediately roll up the sleeves on their WalMart button down shirt above the elbows and then push them up the moment they put it on. Eurotrash guys will wear nice jeans or pants AMD expensive shoes with it and even nice socks. American white trash will wear their tennis shoes or work boots with dress pants even though their mothers bought them good shoes to wear. My sons picked up a lot of the white trash redneck traits from living in this town and also because they are bloodline makes them prone to it. Although they aren't so much trashy by blood because they only have 1/4 real white trash blood. But we live in redneck central.

Not all rednecks are white trash and not all white trash are rednecks. But all crackers are white trash. Also American white trash, like rednecks, believe that a ball cap is appropriate in almost every place they go and will wear it. They also tend to call every other man "boss" or "bossman". Spider web tats on the elbow is another outward sign of American white trash, as is willingness to fight over the honor of their favorite band, wrestler, or even, yes, football team.

Eurotrash is much sneakier than American white trash, mainly because many Americans don't know all that much about Europe and many have a willingness to believe that the Eurotrash guy is some uncrowned or deposed royalty or disgraced nobility. If a Eurotrash guy finds the right American white trash girl whose family has acquired a little bit of money and she has access to it he will think he's in heaven. I learned quickly, but someone clued me in. So I dated the guy and enjoyed myself but never gave him money and guarded everything I had like a German shepherd. He was much more fun to date than American white trash.

And trash doesn't mean you're garbage. It's just a term to describe those at the bottom of the social ladder.

^

Well, there ya go.

Great rundown of the differences between the two species of "trash", by a longtime close up observer of both. Lol!

Wow I just lost an entire damn post due to the log-out glitch.

But I was going to say, I just have never been able to get my head around how calling anyone trash isn't exactly the same as calling them garbage, because those two things literally mean the same thing in their normal usage.

I can't see it as anything but an unnecessarily horrible term to use for anyone based on very vague and bizarre criteria. I just do not get it. I can't wrap my head around this being an okay thing to call someone.

Garbage, in the US, is considered "dirtier" than trash.

Garbage is rotted fruit, rotted food, period, stinks up the whole joint, Leaves stains, hard to clean up aftewards, moist yucky stuff in general

Trash is more like paper, dry things, nothing rotting. Doesn't stink. Doesn't leave stains.

I know trash/garbage is "rubbish" in the UK.

But what is rotted fruit, rotted food, yucky stuff in general called?

What is dry, nonyucky stuff called?

I terms of my conception of "Eurotrash," I plead guilty to being "behind the times."

Not to being wrong.

I never heard it applied to music except the song Eurotrash Girl. I assumed it applied to trashy Europeans like those guys in the pointy shoes,shiny shirts and entirely too much cologne that think they are doing you a favor to sleep with you and who want to borrow money from you all the time and who do up everybody's drugs and drink everybody's booze AMD then either leave or sleep on the couch and stay for days.

I lived almost half my life in the US but I never came across the information that people there consider garbage to be dirtier than trash. If that's so, I have no idea how I missed out on discovering that in a quarter of a century living among Americans. Seriously, I'm unaware of this being true -- or not. To me, garbage and trash has always been the same thing, and I can't recall an American telling me otherwise, until now.

In the UK, I gather there is only "rubbish." I'm unaware of any other word that makes a distinction between dry rubbish and messy, stinky rubbish. There might be one but I've never knowingly heard of it. But then I never heard of the distinction in the time the US was my home, either.

Be that as it may, "trash" is still, none the less, something you throw away. Something useless, no longer wanted, discardable, an item nobody keeps, values or wants around. Even if it's "dry and non-stinky."

It's still something you're disposing of because it has no use and would be littering up the place to not throw away.

I still hold the view that being that trash is something to be thrown away and not valued, it's a horrible thing to call a human being.

I would never call anybody trash----unless he/she is an unrepentent child rapist or something.

I have heard people talk about "garbage" as what I've described, and "trash" as what I've described. Not making this up. I'm not creative enough for that.

Maybe it's like "spigot" vs "faucet." I grew up with "faucet" in NYC. Never knew what a "spigot" was until I was an adult.

Maybe a localized thing.

"Sliding pond" for "slide" is another New York peculiarity. Also: we call the subway "the train," and the commuter train "the railroad." In London, the Tube would be the "train," and British Rail would be "the railroad." Except, in the UK, the "railroad" is called the "railway."

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 13 Aug 2016, 8:41 am, edited 2 times in total.

Actually when I was a kid I was stunned to learn that in the waste disposal business there is actually a difference between "garbage", and "trash". Trash is basically dry paper, and garbage is more the mixed food,metal cans, and wet stuff.

But both things are stuff you throw away (both in the business, and in common parlance). So either word is rather derogatory to say the least.

Oh I'm not saying you're making it up (to kraftie) and naturalplastic, that's interesting that the industry makes the distinction and also that you didn't know either, up to the point you learned that. That makes me feel better about never having heard of it too until now.

I'm not denying it's true, I just genuinely never heard the distinction made by anyone. I just heard people say "don't forget to put the trash out." And "there's the garbage truck now!" Which took away....the trash.

Yes, I just feel like the very fact that both of these words means something nobody wants and thus throws away puts these words inherently into a derogatory department when applied to people and not items.