u/Plasmelon

If you actually go outside and talk to people, nothing people say here is out of the ordinary, whether it’s loving your favorite state or hating it. In fact, 99% of what people say here is extremely cliche. If you meet 5 people from anywhere, you’ll hear everything people say about it here.

For those who get triggered when people don’t like your state or city, go outside.

There is nowhere the majority of America likes. The most populous states have a little more than 10% of the country’s people. Most Americans are not going to like what you do and that’s fine.

You don’t need to make up a fantasy about internet strangers just because it hurts your feelings that they don’t like where you live.

Seriously, it’s really sad that people in their 20’s and older have such an adverse reaction to people on the internet liking different weather.

People write paragraphs describing imaginary people to explain how people can have opinions they don’t like. Don’t like humidity? You obviously have no social life and wear a fedora.

Point out how anything doesn’t make sense and some mouth breather will try to convince you you’re triggered, even if it’s about the most random, pointless thing no one could have strong feelings about.

For example, on this relocation sub I frequent, people continuously misinterpret population growth statistics, and if you ever point out people’s misconceptions, they somehow think you’re mad because to them there’s no other reason someone could point out someone is incorrect about something. It’s so boring I barely care as I’m typing it. The fact that anyone could get mad about that and then project that anger is strange.

And the crazy part is half the time people have nothing to say about the actual topic. They won’t even argue with you; they just want to convince you you’re mad because you had an opinion.

It seems like stupid people don’t put thought into why something makes no sense unless they’re mad.

Google it.

In a nutshell, look for stuff which violates building codes and zoning laws but doesn’t look like shit.

Even though Cochise county, AZ is the only place you can build a residence without a permit on paper, many other places will let you do it because they don’t care, they don’t look for it, and/or they have more pressing things to deal with than someone building a cottage without a permit, especially if the county is sparsely populated and their budget is small.

If everything is neat-looking and by-the-book, chances are it’s a place someone will drive out and tell you to take down your stuff. Even if it’s really remote. Don‘t be fooled. I met a dude who built an illegal house an hour off the highway into the woods in Humboldt county on a road no one else lived on, and enforcement still found it and made him tear it down. He still has no idea how they found it.

On the flipside, if you see stuff which looks like it was built by orcs, that’s a good sign tweakers abound. Especially if it’s around main roads.

But there are lots of off-grid communities where the enforcement is pretty lax but cops will still deal with tweakers and thieves. Typically in those places things look neat (because no tweakers) but you still get funky shit like houses built out of several different types of scrap metal, tiny castles made out of adobe, and non-funky stuff which still breaks rules like multiple residences on one lot.

Another good sign is clusters of RV’s with stuff like chicken coops and gardens around them. A lot of places don’t allow multiple RV’s on one lot, so if they’ve been there long enough for people to do agriculture around them, the community doesn’t care.

I have a theory it’s mostly people from suburban sprawl in the northeast corridor. I’m from there and it’s pretty normal to prefer it, but it’s less about being anti-car and more about wanting convenience.

The northeast corridor has lots of walkable towns and cities which had suburban sprawl built around them, so most people deal with traffic but also come across people who don’t have to because they live in one of the walkable spots. So people get jealous. Being next to something vs 2 miles away can mean 20+ minutes of driving and finding parking.

This one time I was at a bar with a friend and some women walked up by us and stood there for a second and then moved on.

My friend said they came up to me and I didn’t do anything, like he was surprised I didn’t recognize it.

But that kind of thing happens a lot. I figured it didn’t mean anything. I mean, there’s only so much space in bars usually. It‘s not a common thing women do, is it?

There’s this weird phenomenon I’ve been noticing on Reddit and other social media platforms. It seems like people are getting more incoherent and losing communication skills. They‘ll write vague stuff which makes no sense because they’ve made a bunch of leaps of assumptions they’re not even articulating.

I think algorithms and intentional circlejerking combined with being chronically online has caused people to have narrow conceptual pools and assumptions and become totally oblivious to the fact others don’t share them. They’re so used to communicating in a vague shorthand with people who already think the same thoughts that they can’t even articulate their thoughts to anyone else.

It’s like many people‘s communication styles have shifted away from concretely and specifically defining things to people vaguely referencing their own unarticulated assumptions.

For example, I once said pro-life people don’t seem to care about babies after they’re born and someone told me “they do, but someone with views like yours about gender wouldn’t understand.” They didn’t even explain what my views were or why I wouldn’t understand. I see stuff like this more and more.

Every highly populated region gets hated on here.

Bring up the PNW and people complain about the grey, the homeless, and the social environment.

Bring up the Bay Area and people complain about the homeless, the crime, and the weather (depending on the location).

Bring up NYC and people complain about noise, traffic, smells, expensiveness, and abrasive people.

But if you complain about the sprawl and heat in Houston and Phoenix, out come the crusaders who are butthurt that some imaginary collective of people disproportionately hates the sunbelt.

Mysteriously they never complain when people hate on LA even though that’s in the sunbelt.

More and more of this place is getting crapped up by these butthurt sunbelt people. Just accept that some people don’t like heat. You look insane making up myths about how this entire forum must be fat dorks to not like Phoenix.

But then again, Reddit is the place where dorks try to convince themselves they’re not dorks by calling other people dorks.

This is a lesson in statistics for everyone who acts like it’s ridiculous people aren’t overwhelmingly praising cities with the highest growth rates.

Anyone anywhere can hate a city, but only so many people can move there or even want to.

The US has over 300 million people and only 25 million of them relocated last year.

Supposing all 25 million of them moved to a certain city (and assuming they all like it), there is plenty of room for the vast majority of the country to hate that city.

I haven’t gotten the hang of how the whole thing works.

Women come near me, make eye contact with me, and their butt seems to run into me a lot, but I can’t tell if it’s an accident or not.

They usually linger for a minute or two and try to sneak glances at me before moving on.

Some people live in bubbles and don’t realize it and have trouble integrating new information from a wider array of people. They think their niche opinion is the default and everything else is strange and/or inauthentic.

People point out a bunch of different opinions they only hear here and don’t consider that maybe it‘s because they interact with more different people here.

I’ve read a lot of angry essays from people about how some imaginary collective of people here hates or loves x place and some crazy theory to explain why, when really it’s something that’s common unless you live in a bubble and the individual who wrote the essay is having trouble accepting people liking something else.

What’s the value of discussion here if any opinion you don’t like is dismissed as not real?

Presumably most people aren’t going to agree with you here. If you feel the need to outright dismiss or minimize any opinion you don’t like, why are you here?

So many posts here about how people from x place suck and that’s why people can’t make friends.

No, it’s you. Something about your personality is shitty or you are in the wrong place and don’t click with the local culture, but that isn’t an issue with the people there.

It’s like 99% of the time people disparage “typical redditors,” it’s over something imaginary or something normal which they just think is weird because they’re chronically online.

They want to prove they’re not chronically online, but they can’t.

It seems to infect every sub and happen over the most random shit.

People come up with all sorts of theories as to why they see opinions they don’t like here when it’s really just they’re interacting with an assortment of Americans for the first time.

If you travel and/or moved around and talk to people who did the same, nothing is really out of the ordinary here.

If you stay in a bubble and convince yourself everyone wants to live where you do, then this place is gonna frustrate you with opinions you find unusual due to your lack of experience with people from around the country.

People will not notice the irony in being like “I only see people recommend [city in the top 50 in population out of thousands of cities] on reddit. It’s because people here are out of touch.”

Or “people here don’t like the type of weather I like. They must be out of touch because obviously everyone who isn’t a dork only likes one type of weather.”

It seems like many people don’t realize no city or state contains the majority of people and on a national level, there is room to have a popular place also be unpopular.

Lots of people love LA. Lots of people hate it. They’re just not in LA, so people who love LA are going to see people hate it here more than they do irl.

I suspect I’ll get some response about how everyone wants to live in x place and you only see “everyone” say otherwise here because of politics, introversion, social awkwardness, lack of understanding of the world, etc.