Mike Stone's Liked Comments
I happen to live in a rural area (the nearest town has a population of 300), where we see a fair number of immigrants from other parts of the country.. usually Chicago and LA.
I can tell you in two minutes whether an 'outlander' will merge into the community or not.
The ones who don't make it are all about urban pride. They seem to think that people who live in large cities automatically know how to run the world better than people in small towns, and rarely miss an opportunity to tell anyone listening how to make [wherever they are] more like [wherever they came from]. It happens often enough to be a cliche, and our usual response (once they've gone to spread the light of civilization somewhere else) is, "if where they came from is so great, why did they come here (and why don't they go back)?"
Let's face it.. nobody likes being told how their home is inferior to somewhere else. Those of you who live in large cities would probably dislike someone who moved in from, say, Paris, and could be counted on to tell you how American food is crap at every meal.
That goes double for the local conditions. If you can't handle gravel roads, bad cellphone reception, two channels of TV on a good day, and the nearest shopping mall being 50 miles away, *don't* *move* *here*. It isn't like we keep any of it a secret. There's a direct correlation between poorly maintained roads and $300/yr property taxes. If moving to the area was an informed decision, you knew and accepted the tradeoffs before you came, so please don't bitch about them now. If you didn't know about the tradeoffs, and therefore didn't make an informed decision when moving here, we have no interest in hearing you whine about your own stupid mistake.
Another thing people from large cities tend not to understand is the loss of anonymity. If you live in Chicago or LA, you don't know 99.9% of the people around you at any given time, and they don't know you. If you act like an asshole to the clerk at the gas station, the clerk at McDonald's will probably never know.
In a small town, you're never more than about two degrees of separation away from anyone. I got a black eye in a rather silly way a couple weeks ago, and by the end of a week the voice through the intercom at the drive-through was saying, "so what's this I hear about your eye?"
People who recognize that lack of anonymity tend to be a bit more guarded and private.. it isn't so much unfriendliness as trying to control what gets posted on this week's billboard.
There's also a sort of standoffish politeness that comes from knowing you'll see someone on a regular basis for the next fifteen (or fifty) years. Have you ever stopped going to a restaurant because one of the waiters was a little too aggressively friendly? Now imagine that there are only three restaurants within 50 miles. You tend to move slowly and carefully when running away from your mistakes is expensive.
Yeah, when I moved to this area I spent about three years nodding when nodded to, and not pushing the conversation. Those are the manners appropriate to this kind of place. After a couple years of not seriously pissing anyone off, and sharing the occasional friendly comment, the community decided it could be friendly to me without risking major trouble. Now everyone is teasing me because a little girl tagged me a good one by accident.
Events like that crop up over time, so the question is whether you have the patience to give them time.
If you aren't willing to settle into a small community gradually, you're basically demanding that a few hundred people adapt themselves to you, on your timetable. That comes across as arrogant and rude.. not the kind of person I want to be around for the next fifteen to twenty years.
I can tell you in two minutes whether an 'outlander' will merge into the community or not.
The ones who don't make it are all about urban pride. They seem to think that people who live in large cities automatically know how to run the world better than people in small towns, and rarely miss an opportunity to tell anyone listening how to make [wherever they are] more like [wherever they came from]. It happens often enough to be a cliche, and our usual response (once they've gone to spread the light of civilization somewhere else) is, "if where they came from is so great, why did they come here (and why don't they go back)?"
Let's face it.. nobody likes being told how their home is inferior to somewhere else. Those of you who live in large cities would probably dislike someone who moved in from, say, Paris, and could be counted on to tell you how American food is crap at every meal.
That goes double for the local conditions. If you can't handle gravel roads, bad cellphone reception, two channels of TV on a good day, and the nearest shopping mall being 50 miles away, *don't* *move* *here*. It isn't like we keep any of it a secret. There's a direct correlation between poorly maintained roads and $300/yr property taxes. If moving to the area was an informed decision, you knew and accepted the tradeoffs before you came, so please don't bitch about them now. If you didn't know about the tradeoffs, and therefore didn't make an informed decision when moving here, we have no interest in hearing you whine about your own stupid mistake.
Another thing people from large cities tend not to understand is the loss of anonymity. If you live in Chicago or LA, you don't know 99.9% of the people around you at any given time, and they don't know you. If you act like an asshole to the clerk at the gas station, the clerk at McDonald's will probably never know.
In a small town, you're never more than about two degrees of separation away from anyone. I got a black eye in a rather silly way a couple weeks ago, and by the end of a week the voice through the intercom at the drive-through was saying, "so what's this I hear about your eye?"
People who recognize that lack of anonymity tend to be a bit more guarded and private.. it isn't so much unfriendliness as trying to control what gets posted on this week's billboard.
There's also a sort of standoffish politeness that comes from knowing you'll see someone on a regular basis for the next fifteen (or fifty) years. Have you ever stopped going to a restaurant because one of the waiters was a little too aggressively friendly? Now imagine that there are only three restaurants within 50 miles. You tend to move slowly and carefully when running away from your mistakes is expensive.
Yeah, when I moved to this area I spent about three years nodding when nodded to, and not pushing the conversation. Those are the manners appropriate to this kind of place. After a couple years of not seriously pissing anyone off, and sharing the occasional friendly comment, the community decided it could be friendly to me without risking major trouble. Now everyone is teasing me because a little girl tagged me a good one by accident.
Events like that crop up over time, so the question is whether you have the patience to give them time.
If you aren't willing to settle into a small community gradually, you're basically demanding that a few hundred people adapt themselves to you, on your timetable. That comes across as arrogant and rude.. not the kind of person I want to be around for the next fifteen to twenty years.
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)
A word of caution to the Neatorama crew: Click-baiting headlines like the one on this article, not to mention the amount of front-page space devoted to a post that basically says, "I yanked people's chains, some of them called me on it, and now I think those people suck" do nothing to enhance this site's reputation for aggregating links to neat stuff.
Ask yourself this: if this little drama were playing out on some other website (and I'm sure you can find a dozen examples if you really want to), would you link to it? Is this article Neat(tm) enough to be approved on its own merits, or is it getting special treatment because it's an internal matter?
I come to this site because it has a good track record for aggregating links that I'd be willing to pass on to a friend. I don't come for self-referential opinion posts and "ooh! ooh! click me!" headlines.
I find the whole line of discussion proper to this thread uninteresting in the extreme. My only reason for posting is to remind you that you have a good reputation for aggregating stuff I do find interesting, and to warn you about the dangers of making drek like this regular fare
Ask yourself this: if this little drama were playing out on some other website (and I'm sure you can find a dozen examples if you really want to), would you link to it? Is this article Neat(tm) enough to be approved on its own merits, or is it getting special treatment because it's an internal matter?
I come to this site because it has a good track record for aggregating links that I'd be willing to pass on to a friend. I don't come for self-referential opinion posts and "ooh! ooh! click me!" headlines.
I find the whole line of discussion proper to this thread uninteresting in the extreme. My only reason for posting is to remind you that you have a good reputation for aggregating stuff I do find interesting, and to warn you about the dangers of making drek like this regular fare
Abusive comment hidden.
(Show it anyway.)
WRT to the idea that the bible loves segregation of things, I'd make a couple of points: the first is that the words 'sacred' and 'sin' both have their origins in the word for 'separation'. That which is holy is that which is set aside as having special value. The root of 'sin' goes back to the concept of unnecessary separation. The second is that the kosher law regarding separation of meat and dairy is stated as 'don't cook the calf in the milk of its mother.'
These observances are symbolic, and a lot of them don't make sense unless you actually know the historical context. One of the best illustrations I can think of is in Kyle Baker's _King David_, where Saul is telling his son about the point where he lost God's favor. He says something to the effect that he staged a raid on a neighboring village/country and killed everything down to the last woman and child.. the only things he left alive were the cattle. His son says something to the effect of "Oh wow," and Saul says, "I should've killed the cattle."
Baker does a great job of explaining why that makes sense, and I heartily recommend _King David_ to anyone who can find it. Otherwise, ask a rabbi.
Face it, most people in the US can't even give a decent explanation of the sociopolitical forces behind the Revolution or the Civil War. Hell, most can't even explain the net of political alliances that led to WWI, or how the humiliation of Germany made WWII more or less inevitable. Don't presume to expect immediate and transparent understanding of events from two or three millennia ago, in a culture whose mindset was decidedly different from our own.
Do *not* go up against people who've spent the past few thousand years arguing over exactly what all the laws of Judiaism mean om the strength of thirty seconds of not knowing Jack about it. It's a gross discourtesy if nothing else. Do something more constructive, like joining in the YouTube commentary over the authenticity of the moon landing videos.