modern city life is bullshit. It's not organic. It's controlled by developers and politicians that hoard land and use their city's real estate as a store of value for oligarchs that don't live there.

Your local underground art & organizing space is part of a developer's plan to artwash a neighbourhood as part of their plan for gentrification.

Spend all day commuting and working and competing with consoomers that will do whatever it takes, compromise anything, just to stay in the city. All for what? Access to better bars + clubs for 2 hours of fun oblivion at the weekend? Access to theaters and galleries you don't have time to go to? Access to interesting people? Cafe life at the weekend or something?

fwiw, living rural is difficult if you've lived in a city for a long time. pay is much shittier, it's difficult to integrate, it's conservative. People are less open, imo. But the massive increase in time and agency must count for something. Please tell me it means something lol.

City life, as it's developed, is a tourist facade, and buying into it is supporting the ghouls that control the markets. The same ghouls that keep an apartment in the city, but would never live there.

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    So this is just me and if you're in a rural area deliberately, I won't harsh your vibes. Some people dig nature and that's cool. I live in an urban area now after growing up in a rural area. I hate it but I hated my hometown even more, so there's gotta be some balance there. I only have to drive 30 minutes to work rather than driving over an hour to another town completely. Also 20% of my rural hometown died of covid both because of vaccine brainworms and poor access to healthcare (the nearest hospital is an hour's drive away and there are literally no ambulances). I'm glad I don't have a yard because I refuse to mow a lawn or do any sort of land maintenance for as long as I live.

    Also I prefer the daily, dull overbearing threat here more than the more immediate panic threat I felt out there. In my hometown, there are just so many proud, overt, and visibly armed bigots. Confederate flags everywhere. People with bumper stickers on their giant stupid pickup trucks that say "Muslim hunting license". It's a horrifying atmosphere and I'm always on edge when I visit.

    At least in the city I get a more honest overbearing threat, it's that of capitalism. "Work and consume or die you tiny disgusting insect" That's something I can at least make an attempt to confront. The most dangerous armed bigots here have the courtesy to wear a uniform and a badge with their name on it. Also there's a bus here...and sidewalks.

    • MathVelazquez [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Western leftists on the internet, especially on this site and the lefty reddits, really romanticize rural life. Talking to my leftist nonbinary lesbian friend who literally grew up on a farm, it's way more hard work than any urbanites are prepared for. And the environment can be actively hostile to people who are different.