Some guy will post a picture of a pretty standard looking pepperoni pizza and say: "Imagine not living in new york." And then there's the whole bodega discourse, which is also funny. "For you non-new yorkers, let me explain: a bodega is not a corner store. It's a place where you can buy gatorade, toilet paper, AND eggs." Thank you sir for explaining that to a slack-jawed yokel such as myself.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: New Yorkers that need to tell strangers about their high standards and about how exceptional and unique and grounded and worldly and tough and cosmopolitan and sophisticated and cultured they are for being from New York are insufferably boorish.
If I watch a stand-up comedian and they mention New York within the first few minutes of their performance, I'm out. I don't want to hear it again.
I've met way too many like this when I lived in Upstate New York. You'd get the transplants who lived in the city and then came back acting like they were above everybody else. The people actually born and raised in New York City almost never brought it up.
One of the most obnoxious people I ever dated in my college years spent one semester in the UK and came back with Standard Issue Posh British Accent Used By Generically Sexy Love Interest Scientist In Almost Every SyFy Channel Original Movie.
She'd drop it when distracted or off her guard but she insisted it was "natural" to her. :sus-deep:
Confession time? Confession time:
I used to be someone like her. I'm from a small town in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest but I claimed to be from Chicago (closest major city people give a damn about) only went there once every few years. Basically the stolen valor is about trying to feel like you're from an important place and to make one seem less "normal".
Eventually I grew up when I realized no one really cared either way. Where I grew up does not make me interesting, and there's a ton of racist people in the "cool" places in California and New York. Conversely, one really cool guy I met in college came from deep red Texas. Accent and everything. He understood where I was coming from but he helped a lot in getting me to just own it. Yeah, I say "ope" and call soda "pop", that doesn't make me a "dirty racist normie"
Yeah, my childhood was kinda boring. But that can't be helped.
This is kind of a tangent but everyone says "ope" I don't know why the Midwest acts like they're the only ones. Grew up in florida and heard it, heard it when I lived in Pittsburgh, heard it when I lived in Boston, haven't heard it with any greater frequency now that I'm in the Midwest myself
It's because the Midwestern oafs spread out
Huge wagon trains of Germanic folks heading in every direction with their smoked sausages and folksy wisdom
I'm starting to feel like thats just what happens when people move somewhere. Like something about being a transplant to a city suddenly makes you way more likely to talk about how thats the best city ever and how nowhere else is like it. Kinda like when people convert to a new religion and become really devout to it, compared to people who were born and raised in that religion.
What really bugs me is that they brag about their open-mindedness, but call anyone they deem a "dirty redneck" who moves in a gentrifier and thus not welcome in the city as if a good chunk of people living in Brooklyn at any given moment aren't "small town rednecks" themselves.
Not that they themselves are the problem, it's landlords, real estate "investors", and the "muh property values" types.