Chat is a text only community for casual conversation, please keep shitposting to the absolute minimum. This is intended to be a separate space from c/chapotraphouse or the daily megathread. Chat does this by being a long-form community where topics will remain from day to day unlike the megathread, and it is distinct from c/chapotraphouse in that we ask you to engage in this community in a genuine way. Please keep shitposting, bits, and irony to a minimum.
As with all communities posts need to abide by the code of conduct, additionally moderators will remove any posts or comments deemed to be inappropriate.
Thank you and happy chatting!
My advice to you is to get the fuck out of the South. I've been gone a long time. Take the plunge.
I think the thing I miss least is the superficial politeness. The first time I saw someone tell someone someone spouting racist shit to fuck off actually blew my mind. I thought you just had to listen uncomfortably and then talk shit about them once they were gone.
Polite does not mean nice. It does not mean good. And it can paper over a lot of ugly stuff.
As shitty as I feel saying it, it would also be nice to try dating somewhere there weren't quite so many ""country"" girls.
As a non American, in very curious to know what this means.
The stereotype he's referring to is someone who is enthusiastically unsophisticated, politically conservative, and staunchly religious, who has the radio tuned to a guy serenading his Ford F-350 Super Duty.
And if you want to lose to a woman in a toxic masculinity contest, she's your best bet. This lady will have you pulling the straw and lid off your soda cup in the car and drinking from the rim. If you know how do the wrong household chore she might call up her sister, mom, half sister, aunt and best friend, sobbing-
Don't get me wrong you can be country and a radical communist, but that image is what he's talking about.
So what you're saying is... I can fix her?
You absolutely cannot
No! 🛑 Don't do it!
no and she'll probably kill you for trying
Buddy not even a communist revolution could fix her
"I love Jesus, [this week's popular Country artist], Trump, and my pitbull ❤🤠"
Consciously country girls fall into one of two categories: Abby Shapiro and "One of the boys." The Abby Shapiro types are similar to "trads" in that they're generally religious conservatives who spend lots of time on domestic tasks and are very comfortable in the 1950s female gender role. The second type fit into the country guy stereotypes, but the difference is that they have a bright pink Jeep instead of a pickup truck. Both expect a very classically masculine southern man: you have to hunt, go mudding in a pickup truck, be conservative, stoic/angry all the time, and a laundry list of stuff that I'm not interested in. They're not all bad people or anything, but they're 100% people that I do not feel comfortable around.
It's like the aesthetic of rural conservatism. I'm from a place where it's pretty stricly an aesthetic so idk how different it gets in the South itself.
i moved here from the deep south. it’s hard to deny it’s better here overall, i don’t feel like half the people i encounter want to kill me on the spot for being visibly trans. but it would also be lying to say this is not a place ravaged by libertarian politics. every imaginable horror of a hands-off government approach is on full display. meanwhile i feel like the south is very much You Get What You See. despite all the lilting from outsiders that southerners are two-faced, i never felt that’s true. i guess it depends on what’s important to you. i felt connected to the land in the south… i could never feel that way here.
that said, check out the colorado climate corps. awesome fulfilling work and the pay is… ok. there are for sure places even in denver you could make it work. and i suspect it’ll set you up well for future, better-paying work and introduce you to people you might vibe with.
but it would also be lying to say this is not a place ravaged by libertarian politics
TABOR was supposed to be a national/multi-state program to kill 'big government' and it's worked so fucking poorly in the only state it was implemented in that nobody else has taken the dive, lmao. Texas and Kansas like their nice roads too much for the rugged FREEDOM of the Colorado way (completely emaciated, rotting infrastructure)
Texas and Kansas like their nice roads too much
Every road in Texas is literally ass. Potholes everywhere and no one fixes them at all for years at a time.
And then when they do they fix every goddamn road at once.
Colorado is totally worth moving to. I'm an hour away from anything I could want to do outdoors. Within a two hour drive I have some of the most beautiful places in the country all to myself. In eight years of constant adventures I've barely left the northeast corner of the state and it made me a whole new level of naturalist.
At least with Texas you're within weekend trip distance. It's a 12 hour drive to Dallas from Denver and there's bus service in the Front Range cities.
I leapt 6000 miles out of the South where I had spent my who life and, yeah. Holy shit. We were NOT subjected to normalcy in our lives.
Leaving is terrifying, or at least for the first three years. I will never set foot back in that shithole again for the rest of my lifw
My wife ran away from home in Waco, Texas and moved to Denver when she was 16. She says she'd recommend it.
Yeah I feel such a reprieve whenever I leave the south. Even getting into Tennessee feels like a static fog has lifted. I don't know how to describe it. It's like in the south people are very concerned with getting in your business. The south has a very ambient threat to it: everyone's walking around wanting to shoot someone. Someone the south invented an oppressive feeling of being both ignored and singled out.
I know accents and aesthetics are not politics, but I also can't stand this "country" persona people have. And it's absolutely a conscious persona they've adopted. It's not simply being a rural person who drives a truck and speaks with an accent. There are normal people like that and that's not what I mean. There's a distinction.
Being "country" consciously monitoring oneself and others in a horribly petty and judgemental way, combining the worst excesses of toxic masculinity with confused American evangelicalism. It's a costume adopted by the worst assholes imaginable as a shield. It's a game they're playing. Willful ignorance, scathing racism, and goofy masculine pride gender performance. I don't know how else to describe it.
What kind of work? Remote work simplifies things a bit, with some different risks potentially.
I'd say go for it, having no idea what that looks like logistically. I uprooted before, meeting new people wasn't as difficult as I thought, and I'm demographically similar.
i hate the south, i fully think people in the north east are just as racist but California was a dream. everyone was freakishly nice it was amazing. i dont know where i want to settle i think i need to travel more first but who has the vacation days.
i hate the south
Made me think of Absalom, Absalom!
“’Now I want you to tell me just one thing more: Why do you hate the South?’
‘I don’t hate it,’ Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately. ‘I don’t hate it,’ he said. I don’t hate it he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark: I don’t. I don’t! I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!”
hahahahahaha its me when i went to boston, nowhere should be that cold.
My only regret would be leaving behind all my friends and family
Literally the main reason I stay where I am so I completely feel you
The only way ide be able to make a move somewhere is if I was living illegally so I could afford rent. That's my hurdle. I don't want to live that life.
One wrong move that loses some income and I'd be fucked since I can't seem to make more than 14$/h even though I've been working for 15+ years and usually well liked by my employers.
System working as designed, too poor to do anything but work.
You get used to seeing overgrown, dilapidated buildings dotting the side of the road pretty much everywhere you go.
I love the kudzu farmhouse ruins - so prevalent but always unique..... (insert the fucking hans moleman boourns simpsons emote I KNOW WE HAVE. someone will post it below and dazzle me with whatever it is named)
it should just be fucking :boourns: I literally searched "I was saying" too but the emojimart's search isn't intelligent enough to find it without the hyphensMaybe try finding a local job that can be done either in-person or remote. Start off in-person, then switch to remote when you move. And if you find moving was not for you, just move back and the job is still there.
I've always thought of Colorado as 'South', most of the state is extremely reactionary and in the livable parts the rent is like $3k a month or whatever.
I mean this definition can also apply to states like California, Illinois and New York tbf
No joke, go visit Boston, New York City, or across the river in Jersey, San Diego, LA, etc. The south kind of sucks, haha. People in New England are generally a lot more realistic and actually polite. Boston is a nice city, much less trash and ruins around, even in the "bad" neighborhoods. If I had a choice to live anywhere and not quit my career, that would be it.
People in New England are generally a lot more realistic and actually polite
Big fucking massive caveat here, northern nice is not even close to the same as southern nice. Realistic is also a kind way of saying extremely blunt which is definitely the case lol. Very different vibes from Texas. You will experience culture shock wherever you go, so give it time if you don't immediately love it.
I do love Boston though and miss the beautiful parks, transit, food, and museums. Top tier place if you can afford it
Southern nice is where they serve you iced tea then casually say the N word
I was born in Colorado and moved to the south around 9 years old. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I also made a trip back to Colorado this summer to see my childhood home and to see how the areas changed. Great trip and if any of you get the chance to visit it you will not be disappointed. It really is sad though visiting because being in the south makes you forget that it doesn’t have to be as hard as it is. So many small things slip by you that you don’t even realize is a problem until you see somewhere different. I will say though even though I was born there I have lived in the south long enough comparatively that I’m definitely a southerner now. Southern people got that dawg in em that people from other places don’t. It can be a good and bad thing, but it’s mostly good I think. It makes me appreciate who I am, but I do wonder who I would have been if I had stayed.
I moved from a big California city to a "big" Southern city for school and can say that the South sucks in a lot of ways and can be unexpectedly great in others. I'm a white cis het man so I'm not subjected to racism, but I am subjected to other random white people, who I do not know, saying racist shit around me and then expecting me to nod or agree and not 
, which was fucking surreal to experience. The infrastructure is dog shit no one knows how to build a fucking road the concept of a turnout for busses is foreign to them and the drivers down here are the worst in the world and actively rundown bicyclists. "Southern nice" is bullshit from anyone under 80 and even then it might be, they detest their neighbors and will absolutely not help them when fucked by a natural disaster. Also the cost of living being lower is largely bullshit the produce down here is way worse than CA and is 50% more expensive, car insurance is 3x what I was paying in CA, and cars are the same price. Gas, housing, and eating out (except for "exotic" food) is less expensive but not by enough to compensate everything.
The good does not outweigh the bad, but the food scene and startup businesses thrive better here because the cost to rent a building is cheaper, there is higher turnover because so many don't make it but the variety is nice. There are also a ton of businesses (bakeries, pizzerias, BBQ) run out of homes where you get food to go, which is neat. There's a decent sized group of anarchists and communists who run public fridges throughout the city and we were able to get community garden going in the poor part of downtown because the local government doesn't give a shit.
I did want to move down South for a bit in my younger years, but the jobs I was applying to never materialized so I stayed in the boring Midwest. Probably not the worst thing ever, mind you. Specifically I was eyeing up Louisiana, tempted by food, music, and maybe hunting nutria for the local DNR.