Eastern Europe is not real

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That makes sense too. Not to mention anything from the "East" is often stereotyped as "mysterious and exotic". Especially the stuff regarding Asians and Arabs.

That's probably the whole reason why using words like "Oriental" or "The Orient" are no longer acceptable.

Yes..."the Middle East" is a really odd concept. Odd because...for starters...what is it in the "middle" of?

Originally Europeans and Americans would talk about "the Near East" (which meant Turkey, North Africa, Arab countries south of Turkey, and maybe Iran). And then there was the "Far East" which meant China, Southeast Asia, Korea, and Japan. And the Middle East was...well...some sources say "Iran", and some say India was "the middle east".

But either way ... at least there was logic to what was pegged as near or middle or far (with respect to Europe).

But since WWII the Arab-Israeli conflict and later the war on Terrorism have dominated headlines. And the media all refer to the Iran/Arab/Israel/Egypt part of the world "the Middle East". You rarely hear "near east" anymore.

So today "the East" is divided between a "middle" and a "far". There is no "near". The subcontinent of India (which could be called "middle") has no equivalent "east" label. And since there is no longer a "Near East" in common parlance (because what was the near east is now the middle east) the Middle East is no longer in ...the middle of the "east", but is the near part of the east!

That does make sense now. Just like how I pointed out the way outsidera often refer to Africa as if it is just one big country when it's actually made up of several countries any many types of people.

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This is the understatement of the Century.

"Several countries"????

Africa has fifty four friggin countries (almost half of the UN). Each one has diverse ethnic groups.

Not to mention the fact that at almost 12 million square miles Africa is bigger than the whole 8 and half million square mile former Soviet Union (the Sahara by itself is equal in size to the contiguous US 48 states).

If you watch the video he never attempts to say Europe has no eastern portion, only that for the residents of the eastern portion of Europe there's no cohesive identity and that the concept of a cohesive eastern European identity is largely one imposed by outsiders on peoples who typically either identify with Central Europe or with the Baltic.

To be clear: I'm mainly being a smartass here. I get that it's more self-identification you're referring to. I would watch the vid but my phone has been refusing to load YouTube links on this site for a while.
I have to feel Russians and Ukrainians and Byelorussians and even people from the Baltic states would consider themselves some kind of Eastern European. At the risk of making you repeat what's said in the video, I think it's more that "Western Europeans" care much more about their "Western"-ness than "Eastern Europeans" care about their "Eastern"-ness. Lord knows how many Europeans refuse to shut up about how great it is to be from the "West" and how being from the "West" just makes you like things like freedom and equality way more than those freedom- and equality-hating non-Westerners.