This American YouTuber “can’t” use metric. Here’s why I do now

this is a recent Johnny Harris video called why I'll never use the metric system and you know what I'll be honest that is a very great title good bait definitely comes off as that stereotypical American that's like I'll never use the metric we use Freedom Units but he's actually a very well informed man and I do highly recommend you watch his video If you haven't yet but what caused me to make this video this video response bringing it back was his conclusion 10 meters doesn't mean anything to me what it means is 30 feet divided by three what I've really been doing this whole time is intuitively estimating Things based on the system I know I honestly cannot estimate what 50 meters looks like I can't grasp what running five kilometers feels like and so I'll never use the metric system I don't know how the ship has sailed on changing to metric here in the US for everyday people it'll likely never happen now I do think it's an interesting conclusion and it makes sense in his situation even when he's been trying to raise his kids and teach them the metric Imperials all around them so they're just going to speak imperially classic American imperialism but when I started learning German wasn't until I moved to Munich for a full month and surrounded myself with the language and the culture where I was forced to use it and see it every day until it actually started to stick and I think a very similar thing can happen regarding the metric system and I'm a good case study for this because as an interesting circumstance I was also born and raised in the usoa born and bred in the imperial system a little bit of mix every once in a while and I've moved to the UK which is way more metric and occasionally dabbles in the old Imperial they they put their imperialism behind them but having been entrenched in the metric system for so long do I necessarily agree with Johnny's conclusion for himself and possibly others not really I think it really depends on which measurement we're taking such as first off let's talk temperature I'm now fully on board with Celsius and the UK is too it's not one of those countries where they dabble a bit in both no they are fully on board with the Celsius train in fact I don't think any Brit really understands Fahrenheit at all which is a shame because even though I am now mostly a Celsius guy I I kind of understand why Fahrenheit exists I'm not water okay who who among you can say the same what what do you mean what are you mean uh what I mean is Celsius was made for water zero degrees is specifically tuned to when water freezes and 100 is specifically tuned to when water boils that's convenient but I am not water okay I'm a human and so the fahrenheit system actually does have a perk in that the zero to a hundred mostly makes sense about weather like that's for the most part the weather you're going to experience sure you could live up North and then gosh you're gonna go into the negatives or you could live in areas Zona and it could go so far into the hundreds that you want to die but it still makes a bit more sense for The Human Experience as opposed to only really being able to experience somewhere between negative 5 and 40. it just allows a bit more specificity when it comes to how you're feeling 68 degrees Fahrenheit is a little bit different than 69 degrees Fahrenheit nice now that being said sometime around the seven year mark As in I'd been living in the UK for seven years I switched my brain just stopped thinking in Fahrenheit and actually just went oh we're just going to ditch this information we don't really need to understand what 68 or what 80 or what 50 means anymore we're just going to use the Celsius system which means that when my mom asks me like what's the temperature over there honey I don't know what to say actually I have to be like I think it might be 60 maybe I I just don't know my brain is now thinking 100 in Celsius I'm not translating one or the other and in fact if anything my base is now in Celsius and that's after living here for over 10 years I feel like I used to have a very simple system you'd feel the temperature and be like oh this is light jacket weather or hoodie weather or coat weather but now in the UK as opposed to having it like lined up to being 30 to 60 and 60 to 70. now I just have zero to ten it's a coat 10 to 15. it's a light jacket 15 to 20 maybe a hoodie and then anything over 20 I'm probably on holiday I did get to 38 for one day last year which I will always talk about because it is horrifying when that happens over here the buildings are just not meant for that and neither am I that being said I do still use Fahrenheit annoyingly with one thing and one thing alone body temperature I mean man I was sick I guess a lot as a kid because I know 98.6 degrees this was a thermometer please don't think any 98.6 degrees since the thermometer going in my mouth I don't know what the Celsius is I assume it's like 36 something but I don't know so if I were to take a thermometer out I'd be like okay time to Google it because my brain's still thinking in Fahrenheit but in regards to everything else I'm a Celsius first and that's why I'm gonna have to give this one a tick for the metric system and I don't even go into cooking and which I do feel like Celsius benefits cooking so much more but I feel like cooking actually has even more benefits in the next section let's go to the kitchen see what I'm cooking up don't worry you won't have to wait too much longer to hear about the next topic it's weight now when it comes to weight I have fully switched over to metric and this has been by far the easiest switch of the bunch each and every morning I wake up I weigh myself on my scale and that is in kilograms when I go to the gym all the weights are also in kilograms Sometimes some gyms I've been to they will have the pounds in parentheses but for the most part kilograms is right there on your face and so I know I can squat 80 kilograms it is a lot cooler to say I can squat 180 pounds but that's just because you know bigger number bigger muscles bigger disappointment in myself now Americans may be bullied for using pounds but the UK has an even weirder system for measuring their own weight for some reason people over here will walk on the side of the road and look at a pile of rocks and go oh that's a bit of me right there I'll weigh about 12 stone really wow okay so instead of you know sticking with the metric system they just look at some rocks and they go that's me 12 stone if you didn't know 14 pounds is in one stone 14. I know it's historic but come on guys let's fully switch over to the metric system please the stone stuff absolutely crazy you have no right to bully Americans to not use the metric system while you're still using this Stone thing like you're in the stone ages anyway when it comes to weight one thing the metric system absolutely kills it for being alone is cooking Jesse let's cook because with cooking this is by far the biggest benefit you can get from switching to the metric system whenever I cook or bake a cake or something I am using a scale and measuring everything in grams because I'm not a barbarian sure there are a lot of American Cooking YouTubers out there who have an insistence to use the imperial system going oh yeah yeah you want to make this cake uh just put in I don't know half a cup of butter half a cup of butter I I'm sorry how much do I jam it in there there's like air gaps how is that supposed to be precise you could have half a cup of butter one day half a cup of butter the next day they could be off by at least I don't know 10 by weight you could have densely packed sugar I'm sorry I had a recipe the other day literally for this cake that was like use a half cup of densely packed brown sugar how dense are you just switch to the metric system luckily a lot of these cooking YouTubers they have put the Celsius they have put the grammage they have put the volume in the corner for us normal folk who like I don't know Precision because cooking isn't art sure but it is also very much like a science do you really want to replicate that recipe to make it exactly as they do well you know what would make that easier if you had the exact same ratios as they do as opposed to just kind of going I hope this I don't know three half eighth cup tablespoons of butter is enough no it is indefensible that is my Hill I'm dying on some Hills today tablespoon half cup eighth cup what are you doing even if you're an American this is one thing I just find indefensible there is no defense for using this weird wacky imperial system when it comes to cooking and if you're an American and you've had issues with baking and cooking and following a recipe I can tell you it's not your fault it is your system's fault I'd like to believe there's some sort of alternate timeline in which I never left the US and I think that version of Evan would actually be agreeing with me right now but only in regards to cooking but when it comes to cooking if you really just want to make sure there is no room for error there is no reason to use the Imperial because using that system measurement we'll be making an imperial big mistake and show in regards to wait I can't help but give the metric system a really big tick for this one and though I do understand both systems of metric and Imperial when it comes to weight I guess you could say I go both ways please do not subscribe all right time for some cake I hope you can appreciate it I've been working on my audio quite a bit recently so even in a big room like this you don't have to crank up the volume too much that's right we're talking about volume but the other kind the UK and the US dabble in the metric system and the Imperial both they're both very very guilty here when a British person is driving they'll buy their petrol by the leader as opposed to the us where we buy it by the gallon and it's gasoline but when it comes to the shops oh boy it gets even more confusing you'll want to get some soda in the states how big do you want it a two liter or a 20 ounce what they mix it up in the UK it's similar except it's two liters and liter okay we're sticking on the metric and then of course when you get a small can of soda it's 330 milliliters cool the metric system makes sense 330 is a bit obscure though you can tell that's probably just translated from the U.S company's Imperial measurements but it makes sense where it stops making sense and starts to fall apart completely is when you're starting to talk about alcohol and milk the two favorite drinks of Brits but here's where the imperial system in both countries gets very screwy you'd know about this if you watched my video on Us versus UK grocery prices but let me just break it down for you in the U.S eight fluid ounces is in a cup the imperial measurement we all decided to use in the UK it's actually 10 fluid ounces but things get even more weird because in the US it's two cups a pint two pints a quart quart is short for quarter gallon so four quarts to a gallon you're done in the UK even though they invented the system it's actually a bit more different in that it is two cups to a pint they ignore quartz nobody I've met here even knows what a court is and they go uh the four pints actually just just sell milk by the four pints which is a half gallon but yes half gallon rarely will I ever see a gallon but I guess they say America likes it big and so we've got the gallon and then I guess if you think about it the half gallon here is a little bit more than a half gallon in the states so hey but I think that you UK should get on board with the court I find it so interesting that so many Brits they are aware of pints in terms of how much can get them pissed or how much milk to buy at their shops but they don't understand anything about the Imperial besides Pines that being said I do still think a lot more in regards to the metric system because it's just so much Superior when it comes to cooking for volume and so therefore I'm going to have to give myself a big tick for the volume for metric just because I am not measuring using cups and half tablespoons and anything that is just jokes and I know we've talked a lot about the Imperial and that's just because I do still have a full understanding of it in regards to volume with temperature I got a little bit iffy with volume oh no I understand both but my brain is sticking with the metric for the most part in terms of what my first thought is on how much is in something it's not fully though it's definitely got a little bit of like how many cups is that still in the brain in the old Noggin anyway I'm gonna eat this cake and then I'm gonna go for a run and the final category we're going to be talking about today is distance and speed this is another one that didn't really come naturally to me because so much of my brain was really wired towards the Imperial but it wasn't until I got into fitness and running that it really just started to click I wasn't doing a couch to 3.2 K was I it's a couch to 5K so when I bought my first Apple watch it defaulted to the metric system which initially annoyed the heck out of me but the thing was I was trying to run 5k so I tried to force myself into the metric even though I just felt like it was an inferior and shorter mile but the more runs I went on the more I started to understand oh okay that's about a six minute distance away if I were running the more walks I'd go on I just see kilometers all the time until my brain just started to get it now that being said I'm about to say the most American thing you've probably ever heard me say I may have adjusted to the metric system when it comes to distances and such but I still use football fields as a referential point it just makes a lot of sense to me I even said it in a travel Vlog in Madeira the other day cave number two and this one is 200 meters long two football fields for you Americans out there it just allows me to understand a bit more and even when I'm talking about height I feel like I also go with basketball nets a basketball hoop is about 10 feet or three meters high so I can kind of gauge it or if something is shorter than that I usually go with a me system I'm about two meters a little bit less so how many means is it is it one me laying down is it half of me is it two and a half of me does that make sense I feel like that is more referential and so is better than in the Imperial and the metric in terms of intuition but I do default to the metric still it's just the me trick system is better pause for playing pause for plane that is a big plane now if you thought for a distance this was going to be a complete wash for the metric system you'd be wrong sure on foot I do prefer the metric system it makes more sense but as soon as you get me behind the wheel of a car it all goes out the window of the car I do not understand what a kilometer is as soon as I'm driving because I've not really driven in many metric countries I have but I'm translating it constantly also I don't even know what a mile is 5 000 yards or something that's not very intuitive and yet that's just what I think of when I'm driving like how many miles how long until I get to this whereas as soon as it's like 110 kilometers per hour I genuinely don't even know what that's supposed to be like I've driven in some countries like that but 99 of my experience has been New Jersey or California or Louisiana doing road trips in the states so that's just the way my mind works and I'd have to drive a lot more in a metric country before that would change and as the UK isn't a metric country on the roads I don't know about that pause for boat pause for crime oh my God is that a seal and so for this one I think I'm definitely gonna have to give a tick to both the metric and the imperial system just because that's the way my mind works I use each for a different reason and I am actually translating it so I can't give the full point to the Metro System so I understand where Johnny's coming from a bit more now it is a seal oh my God look at him oh my God hello oh my God that's so cool and so the part of Johnny Harris's video where he concludes that it would be impossible for him to switch the metric system because he's constantly switching back and translating the numbers from metric to Imperial and he didn't even know what 5K meant and he was Translating that my only reasoning with that could be I don't think he really tried like I know he says he tried but I just the 5K thing I'm like that but either way it's not really his fault he's working against the grain in a country that it is impossible for him to immerse himself in the language of metric with so it was really not going to be easy either way so it doesn't really make sense for him to keep trying but when Johnny concludes that the ship has sailed for Americans switching to the metric system I've gotta strongly disagree if the US government did switch the metric system and join the rest of modern day Society most Americans which I know this is going to hurt you to hear it aren't that special compared to everywhere else there's some sort of American exception them going on where it's like oh it wouldn't work for Americans because we're just different no everybody else also switched and guess what everybody got used to it and experienced all the benefits and Americans are no different they would experience it just like I did moving to the UK they would be annoyed at first to be like I don't understand this Celsius thing and then eventually they'd be like oh wow I can cook finally I just think it's a really bad take to say the ship has sailed when the ship is still moored to the dock but if you've moved from any Imperial country pretty much the US to anywhere else I would love to hear from you in the comments if you have a very similar experience but Johnny and I actually have more in common than you'd think for instance well this week we're actually both sponsored by the same company incogni I feel like every other month or so I get an email telling me that my private date has just been sold on the dark net by some guy named Shrek I actually don't know if that's his name but I remember there being onions involved but it just gets frustrating at this point I deal with enough spam emails and Robo calls no matter how much I try and protect my data so I've just kind of given up at this point because even though we do have the right to request these private companies and data Brokers that have all been just basically collecting all of our private data to use it for marketing purposes we have the right to request they deleted there's just so many of them and they're always popping up here and there and somehow they've gotten my data that it's just a bit overwhelming but that's why the video sponsor incogni has actually stepped up to provide a solution all you have to do it's this simple is give them consent to request a leash on your behalf and they are immediately hopped Off to the Races they've already gotten 50 Brokers requesting to delete my data from their servers and I just saw lined up within a couple days so that's kind of crazy and the way that incognitive works is it's always on a recurring basis so that way when any of these new ones pop up to try and get your data well no no you've got your data secure and don't worry income has a 30-day risk-free guarantee so if you do not like it well you can get your money back and if you do be sure to click my link in the description to get 60 off at a planet in Cockney wow what a deal anyway thanks economy for sponsoring let's wrap up the video hope you guys enjoyed this one I just found out from my YouTube analytics that the majority of people watch my videos on a TV which makes me so happy because I've been spending so much time making the production really good the fact that it's no longer mobile but TV oh thank you so much I very much appreciate it hope you're enjoying what you're watching I don't use the Imperial much I use it rarely in fact I use the metric on The Daily not scary don't let Johnny Harris make you wary at least use it in the kitchen please thanks for watching

Channel: Evan Edinger

Views: 1,021,394

Keywords: johnny harris, metric system, metric, imperial, evan edinger, jonny harris, 2023, vox, metric vs imperial, evan, edinger

Id: u5iOSIUhVzk

Length: 18min 12sec (1092 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023