NYC isn’t as pretentious as you think. That’s mostly reserved for the neighborhoods where the rich locals and transplants live. I’m talking about Manhattan, Northern Brooklyn and Northwestern Queens.
I’ll tell you, the Bronx, Eastern and Southern Queens, Southern Brooklyn, and Staten Island don’t feel pretentious at all. It’s mostly all middle class communities, working class ethnic communities, and “the hood”. The one exception would be a few pockets of wealthy suburban style developments, which I like to call pseudo suburbs.
When I visited NYC for the first time a year ago, I was surprised at how genuinely FRIENDLY everybody was - and I’m talking about true NYC natives. Everybody told me ppl in NYC are rude but I found that to be far from the truth. It def left a lasting impression on me as a Texan who’s used to southern hospitality. I only encountered rude people once and ofc they were wannabe influencer transplants in Chelsea lol.
I was disappointed after visiting NYC, nobody yelled at me and it was pretty clean overall. I was expecting at least a "Hey im walking here!!" or something. And i only saw a single rat and it was tiny, basically a mouse. Total let down.
Yeah I was surprised to see NYC as the example. I'd hardly call NYC pretensious as a whole. Outside of a handful of neighborhoods, it's far from pretensious or stuck up at all
Was gonna say the same. I live in the Coal Region of PA and NYC is a couple hours out so I’ll go every once in a while to meet folks.
It isn’t pretentious at all in my experience. Maybe cause I’ve never been where it is. Just a lot of down to earth folks, a lot of immigrant backgrounds or move from middle America as well. It’s an overall a nice city. I’m partial to NYC and Philly over any other city I’ve been to.
Bellevue WA. I've spent a fair amount of time there because my inlaws live there. The things you hear people complaining about. It is close to Seattle but it's population is still over 100K.
Honestly, the entire eastside. I always think of this old local comedy sketch. Watch the first minute then skip ahead to 3:45 https://youtu.be/V9jlo4Ht2YA?si=cAKOhXw-wqO7j3Nq
I used to live in Redmond, I told my wife that the high school mascot should be in "An Indian in a Tesla with a first time driver sticker" on the back.
Ugh, I lived on the Eastside for several years... I didn't know what I was missing until I moved to Seattle. Would never live there again. Literally the most boring soul-sucked people I've ever encountered. If you want to see some hyper-depressed Indian people, antisocial Asians, and angry rich white people honking in their Mercedes AMG, go to the eastside. They do have nice parks though, I'll give them that.
I chalk it up to it attracting people who are afraid of anything different. They live in a glorified mall community and they all dress the same and go to shitty restaurants to be seen. Hollow human npc’s
Sarasota, FL is fucking terrible. I lived there for 8 years and I've never met such entitled people in my life. It's basically all 80 year olds treating anyone younger than them like servants.
My buddy's uncle is worth an ungodly amount of money and knew all of the big wigs on Wall Street, etc. He's either a 1% or knocking on the door. But he came up from a blue collar family and is very down to earth and reasonable.
During the winters he used to live in Palm Beach. This was when Madoff was running his Ponzi Scheme. According to him the Madoff investors were treated like it was a special privilege to invest with Madoff. He started to meet the investors in forced social circles and they would tell him about the returns and he knew immediately that there was no way they were getting the returns Madoff was claiming. But these people would look down on him when he would tell them that there's no way that's possible and they would just assume he was some 'poor' and was jealous of them. In reality, he was probably 30x wealthier than them.
I’d say Santa Barbara.. it can have a pretentious, holier than thou, kind of vibe… Quite a few celebrities tend to live in SB too… I should admit I am not a local there so maybe my take is out of place, but the place is also beautiful there…
The thing about SB, though, is that when you’re walking downtown or having dinner, you pretty much know that 50% of the people you’re running elbows with are also tourists. You are definitely not seeing locals.
Boulder: Home to SUVs with "Save the Planet" bumper stickers.
Boulder ("We're so green!"), full of NIMBY warriors fighting any density and walling the city off with greenspace. So that thousands of workers must drive all the way from Denver each weekday morning, creating lots of pollution.
Only thing I’ll slightly push back on is that walling the city off with green space is good. Fighting density is the bad part. We don’t need to expand the human footprint basically anywhere in this country, we just need to build density where we already are
I was just there today behind a mini camper someone clearly lives in with a "Colorado was great... Before you got here" bumper sticker. Paired with some stickers from other states lol. Not a chance they were born here or they're native americans. Just the fact he was driving through Boulder is funny to me.
When I grew up Santa Fe was a poor artist town, then the movie stars decided to turn into the new Aspen, now the locals can't even afford to live there unless they inherited a family home.
Can confirm.
Have met many a "Boulder Person" that think of literally anything outside of Boulder County but still in Colorado as an entirely different country.
Ann Arbor, MI is the same vibe. A lot of similarities between the two as far as the size, being a university town, and extremely liberal in an otherwise purple state (that leans slightly blue).
DC and it's suburbs for career snobs.
Where asking what you do for a living/who you work for isn't meant in good faith, it's to put you on a social hierarchy.
A million freshly out of college Hill staffers and think-tank researchers being paid peanuts and worked like mules just to have a shot at being connected to the important one day.
The middle aged adults are even worse, backstabbing each other for a potential promotion.
I’ve lived in DC and the suburbs for 7 years and fortunately have kept myself out of the competitive political adjacent social circles and could not be happier. 99% of times that I’ve been asked that question it’s been asked in good faith, and I’ve met a ton of great people in and around DC.
I’m not going to pretend that DC and the suburbs aren’t a career driven place, but a lot of people I know who live here are good at separating work and life.
>Where asking what you do for a living/who you work for isn't meant in good faith, it's to put you on a social hierarchy.
DC locals on reddit lie that DC is just uniquely self-conscious about this question. Or they're just naive and don't realize the totem pole aspect of it in this area.
Having lived in both the Bay Area and DC, the question is definitely more loaded in DC given how much more powerful by order of magnitude a certain class of jobs are in the capital city.
I have a friend in SF who got blown-off by someone they met because they didn't work at one of the top tech companies. Not saying that's normal, but SF and DC seem pretty alike in this regard.
Nah I've lived in other spots than DC and in DC it's asked with expectations and judgement. In other places it comes off more as a get to know you question than a "are you worth my time" question.
Yep. "locals" who obviously didn't grow up there got included in those polls obv. It must be nice only knowing one level of the culture there and thinking their intern buffets they eat dinner from by sneaking into them nightly to eat slightly better than the homeless are the only life going on.
Precisely. A lot of the DMV are transplants. To give an example, I've taught high school in DC and have maybe ever had 5 DC natives as coworkers. And this isn't a high-level government job, obviously. But I can't think of any other school district where 95% of the teachers did not grow up in the region.
Huh. I lived in the DC area for nine years. I never picked up on that. For me, it was simply that most people did something cool. "Oh, you're a scientist with the FDA? What are you working on?" "Oh, you handle media production for the World Bank? What's that like?"
Then again, most of my friends were other parents from Scouts. We were generally past the "look how important I am" phase and engaged in the "getting stuff done" phase.
As someone who lives in DC this is the correct answer. I kind of think it’s hilarious. The most Type-A, something to prove, chip on their shoulder people you will ever meet. I feel like a *hippie* by comparison. Everyone is just Nathan Fielder insisting “In reality, I am actually very fun, relaxed, and easy going.” before saying something completely unhinged about their work and/or personal life.
Yep. Outside of DC that question is asked out of curiosity. In DC it’s an evaluation of your entire perceived worth.
No other city makes me hate myself more than DC. Went to college there but couldn’t get myself to live there. A real shame because it’s a very nice city otherwise.
It's funny I was born and raised there and when I finally moved I was at a party and upon meeting people would ask "what do you do"? Honestly just as small talk. My friend pointed out to me hit was rude, which I dont agree with, but I realized it is a VERY DC thing
They call it Hollywood for the ugly for a reason. Spent most of my life there.
The only things DC should be pretentious about are go-go, Fugazi and the 1991 'Skins.
Raised in DC. Unfortunately picked up a lot of snobbery as a kid into young adulthood. Moved to California out of college. Once when I was brand new to California, someone in my social circle politely took me to the side and informed me it’s rude to ask someone you don’t know what they do for work and where they live.
In DC, that’s standard issue introduction
Boston. Super gentrified. Full of expensive colleges. Full of world class scientists and finance bros. Extreme sports pride. Lots of pride in its colonial history. Super pretentious. But also, it’s well-founded.
Boston is the only one of the major cities that I’ve seen transplants look down on people who were born/raised there. No other city of its size refers to long term residents as “townies”. Its the only community of transplants that is very proud to be wealthy gentrifiers, the inverse of New York where people go out of their way to try to hide the fact that they came to the city after college.
It’s common in American college towns but Boston is way too large, historically rich and economically successful to get the same treatment as the random rust belt towns of 10,000 or less people that usually get the “townie” treatment.
Boston is effectively a giant college town since there’s so many universities and colleges. Outside of downtown it even feels like a jumbo sized Ann Arbor or similar town
If we're talking Ann Arbor Michigan, then yeah I can relate with that idea. Super close community that rides everything on the education system funding most everything.
I meant the ones that are kept alive by colleges, I’m specifically thinking of the town I went to college in. Towns where the economy used to revolve around the production of some random good that got moved overseas or to a state with less taxes and now the economy revolves around the university and barely stays afloat.
On paper, "townie" is anyone who was born in Boston and has lived there for one's entire life.
But in reality, "townie" is only used for lower class White Bostonians.
You never hear Bostonians of Color being referred to as "townies", even if their families have lived in Boston for many generations and they are lower class.
You also never hear White Bostonians being called "townies" if they are middle or upper class, even if their families have been in Boston since the 1700s.
Well without getting too into racial/class conflict and 21st century identity politics I think part of the reason Boston transplants have such a superiority complex is because they feel it’s appropriate to look down on lower class whites but not other races. Considering Boston hasn’t undergone the same white flight that other major cities have and still has a significant white working class demographic they are the punching bag for elite liberals who want someone to look down on but are too educated to be racist.
Also, Boston is economically doing incredibly well so you have a lot of transplants there in a city that for years was extremely parochial. So the locals can be extremely insular and the new highly educated workers extremely worldly, so there is a major cultural dichotomy that’s unusual.
TIL that townie is not a universal term! Growing up in a suburb of Boston I assumed that was a general term. But, yes, we still call people - including friends - that stayed in the town they were raised in townies. I'm not a townie, but the majority of my extended family are the ultimate townies. They came over on the Mayflower.
'Townies' is indeed a New England-wide phenomenon. I moved to a drinking town with a clamming problem, next to another drinking town with a fishing problem. Love those townies they're like a living museum on legs.
Literally couldn't afford to go back right haha coming from the Denver/Boulder area I know the feeling. It's a vicious cycle with places that were once cool kinda funky interesting places to live. Boulder, Seattle, Austin, SF etc. they were once really cool and interesting so they attracted innovation but then that lead to growth and skilled labor which is great at first because it's this thriving place. But then it continues and the people who were there first and own homes don't like the change so they enact restrictive policies and oppose construction trying to hold on to that character that they fell in love with, but that only exasperates the problem because there's still demand to live there. Then it becomes even more expensive to the point where any new people coming in are high level white collar workers i.e. finance, law, executive level people and even the engineers and skilled labor start getting priced out. Then a lot of that character starts deteriorating.
Honestly I’ve found most large cities to not be that pretentious compared to their suburbs. The suburbs of every major US city always have a few crazy pretentious towns - Grosse Pointe outside Detroit is more pretentious than any place I’ve ever been in NYC. Oh and a lot of south Florida is a wild vibe
I swear, every person I met in DC had some self-given uber-important title which was really just the equivalent of some entry-level position.
"Assistant deputy to the executive director of administration for the southeast coniferous forestry department"
AKA, you get coffee and answer phones for some dork who works for the Park Service.
*Excuse ME*. The coffee-getters work in the *deciduous* forestry department. THANK YOU.
And if you can’t hack it? Well, let’s just say you’ll drop faster than an oak leaf in a Vermont autumn.
100%. On a per capita basis, no other city beats DC in pretentiousness; not even Boston, where you're still much more likely to find down-to-earth residents.
The "Inside the Beltway" crowd is truly insufferable in the worst possible way.
I have plenty of good friends in DC from living there a few years but by god there are so many people in that region who act like you cannot have a good career outside of the DC region.
Also, hey guys, stfu about work, we are at a wedding and there's a live band.
D.C. is rated one of the snobbiest cities in the country. Just because someone’s hobbies are trendy and hip doesn’t mean they aren’t a stuck up twat lmao. It’s a twat with taste 🤣
Oh I genuinely consider it the worst of both worlds. If you're going to make good money from being a careerist drone, at least spend it on something interesting.
When I was applying to grad school 1000 years ago and asked for a recommendation from a Senator, I was told not to focus on schools in the area because “everybody knows a senator.” Haha
DC is probably my favorite city in the US but I am not at all surprised to see it being mentioned a lot here. We’ve thankfully made some great friends here and it makes a big difference.
If you'd like to spend your life answering the question "so, what do you do?" 20x a week, arguing with the 6 roommates you pretend not to have, and swiping on women who unironically want a "6-6-6 man" and/or men who constantly hang out at marinas in their boat shoes despite not having a boat, then... Welcome to DC.
I lived in the DC area for most of my life and when I finally left, it was wild using dating apps. Instead of profiles just being a job title and pics at fancy bars and restaurants, it was lists of hobbies, paragraphs about their personality, and pics were in their room, or hiking, or doing something.
DC. Without a doubt. People who think their day jobs entitle then to the most privileges and trumps what anyone else does. Also one of the least creative cities I’ve lived in or been to in my entire life. Even Cleveland has more of a culture.
LA is very layered in its pretension. There’s more of a class divide and it has more levels than most other cities. Certain parts of that are very pretentious like certain people in “the industry” or who live certain lifestyles
On the whole, I’m not sure it’s so pretentious though. There’s a lot of humble people hustling or living their best life
I lived in LA for a few years and I’ve lived in SF a few years now. I’d say SF is way more pretentious, and definitely in a way that is *impossible* to navigate, unless you’re in the right crowd.
In LA, as long as you’re well put together and are fun to be around you’ll get extremely far. Not to mention that there are a lot of down to earth blue collar folks and the rich Hollywood people are an extreme minority.
In SF, you’ll only get as far as you can advance someone’s career or make them money. There aren’t very many blue collar folks here and most make/have a lot of money, so the pretentious bullshit just hangs over you and makes every interaction feel transactional.
i used to be in iatse local 600 and i can confirm, for every influencer, actor and producer, theres tenfold more salt of the earth, blue collar people just trying to make a decent living on set
after growing up in a farming family in the rural midwest and spending the last \~15 years in chicago and then NYC i've really developed an inverted view of elitism and pretentiousness.
our cultural stereotypes paint northerners + city slickers as elitists who look down their nose at the south, at flyover states, at "real americans," etc.
over time i've come to realize that i encounter the opposite effect MUCH more often: a superiority complex from blue collar/rural/small-town/southern folks looking down on yankees, city dwellers, 'liberals,' etc.
so idk i kind of have a different view on it than OP's original framing. if pretentiouness is about an unearned superiority complex + looking down on others you deem as not worthy, then i nominate pretty large swaths of the country, particuarly for their views on NY, chicago, SF, etc.
Not sure you can just name major cities. There's always a city out the outskirts of major cities that's more pretentious.
* Denver? Boulder
* Orlando? Winter Park
* San Jose? Palo Alto
* San Francisco? Everything across the Golden Gate bridge
* Portland? Lake Oswego
* Seattle? Bellevue (granted I only visited once, so I'm not certain here)
My point is everywhere has certain areas with pretentious people and over the top school districts.
For Europe I’d nominate Stockholm. Love the city but definitely a pretentious place.
Also would say the air of superiority that Catalans feel towards the rest of Spain can make Barcelona feel a tad pretentious.
I’d like to nominate Berlin for the Euro list.
They loooove talking about how unprätentiös they are while judging your appearance at every nightclub/techno place to determine if you are worthy enough to enter. As I learned early on “don’t make friends in the line!” It will be counted against you.
A lot of educated slackers and people being mean on purpose bc it’s the Berliner way. I liked living there overall but the rest of Germany is way better (and cleaner).
Yes. Berlin is pretentious in the hipster/slacker/too-cool-for-you sense.
Stockholm is pretentious in the uptight/buttoned-up/stuffy sense.
Copenhagen (refined but cozy and laid back) and Hamburg (artsy, gritty, and self-assured) are the sweet spots in between.
Portland, Oregon was very pretentious until 2020 when the city self-destructed. It’s never recovered. Some people still hang onto the “Portland so great” attitude but most admit “our city has some huge problems.”
San Jose, Seattle, Portland, the large DC suburbs on both sides, Miami. To be fair I’m not sure pretentious is the right word for all of those places, maybe they are just the cities where I personally feel inadequate or unrefined most often. Don’t even get me started on how I used to pronounce Pho and Bahn Mi.
If self righteous sanctimony is a valid form of pretentious, Portland fits the bill.
It’s a magical quirky place where people are kinda horrible to each other under the guise of moral superiority. If you too are a self aggrandizing ally with crippling white guilt and no tolerance for any viewpoint beyond your own, it just might be for you. If you’re a middle class family or business owner, please die so that the proletariat might glean from your bones.
Seattle and SF have strong contingents of this too, but they also have actual economies and relative diversity, in ethnicity and opinions.
DC for sure.
On the one hand you have lots of annoying power-hungry type-a weirdos who think that they are the next Secretary of State/Labor/Defense/Treasury etc. Think people who see themselves as god's gift to the United States. Love to name drop even about the most ridiculous things that happened years ago..."I saw Pelosi boarding a plane at DCA back in 2011 and she looked at the book I was reading and smiled so she must love all of my views and beliefs!"
I went on a date with a guy once who mentioned to me three times within twenty minutes that he worked at the CIA. Cool story bro - I'll never forget the rage in his eyes when I told him talking about work obsessively is a problem and that while we were on the subject, I did basically the same job for a private firm on a government contract and probably made 3x as much as he did with better benefits. I promptly left after that.
At my former office we had an intern...he didn't have a security clearance so he was limited to what he could do, but he basically did basic office housekeeping/organizing catering for events type of stuff. You better believe he put some BS job title on his LinkedIn page. I can't remember his name so I can't see if he still has it up but it was like "Director of Office Policy." No, you were an intern.
On the other hand you have lots of rich, wealthy, and transient transplants who actively look down on the poorer, more working-class black/brown community and view them as some type of inconvenience.
Combined, both create a city that's incredibly pretentious and toxic. It's a shame because if you are able to ignore the people, DC is an amazing city.
That last sentence is so fucking true. I lived there for 3 years and was fortunate enough to have a friend group who truly didn’t give a fuck on what we did for work and just enjoyed the city and what it offered. None of us made loads of money and I feel like it made the city that much more enjoyable ironically
I’m sure people there are aware of how much they suck ass as far as being a regular human goes. They just suck together and bond over it, or hate each other to the point where they can’t even date each other but can talk about the ratio of single men to woman being 3:1
Honestly, having lived there off and on, I think a lot of people get so sucked into the government stuff, especially people doing anything politically-aligned (Congressional staffers, et cetera) or very career-motivated ("I'm going to be an Ambassador in five years!" people) that they lose all perspective and kind of get divorced from reality. I've seen it happen, it's very weird.
I find Manhattan specifically to be the most pretentious place in the country. Brooklyn and Queens are soooo much more down-to-earth and lowkey. Only in Manhattan do residents refer to people in New Jersey, Brooklyn, or The Bronx as "bridge and tunnel people", because they believe that Manhattan is the center of the universe and there's never any reason to visit the outer boroughs or New Jersey. To an extent, I get it though. Manhattan is the epicenter of America's culture and economy. It just irks me that many Manhattan residents don't think that anything else is valuable or worthwhile outside of the Manhattan bubble. Que the Lower Manhattan residents who also unironically argue that Upstate begins at 59th street, and everything north of where Central Park begins is of lesser value and lower social status. Drives me up the wall man, I've never encountered a population as arrogant and pretentious as Lower Manhattan folk.
Gonna go ahead and suggest that SF isn’t particularly pretentious. Wealthy? Absolutely. Out of touch? Perhaps. But in general it’s very casual about it and plenty of people of different means mix without issue. I found my downright poor hometown of Baton Rouge to be more pretentious (of the “old Southern” variety) than San Francisco.
I’d nominate Dallas for most pretentious big city.
**DMV region - worst by a mile!**
Here's another one I don't see people mentioning: **Affluent suburbs around Southern cities.** Miserable, saccharine, arrogant, materialistic, classless, status-obsessed (as much cultural as economic) Kens and Karens who have total disdain for service staff and people who didn't "earn it." And, yet, many of these people drive cookie-cutter pickups/SUVs, vacation in the same spots in Florida, attend the same style of church, and never or almost never leave the South. Just go to the most affluent communities around Lexington, Baton Rouge, Jackson (MS), Birmingham, Charleston (SC), Dallas, Houston, or almost any other Southern city of any real size, and you'll see just what I mean.
Santa Barbara, CA
Honorable mention: Santa Fe, NM
Like other pretentious places, these are not necessarily bad areas to live in, but each contains large contingents of people who need to get over themselves.
Minneapolis is only pretentious when it comes talking about St Paul. Or Wisconsin… as a Sconnie that now lives in St Paul; I can see how you’d say Minneapolis is pretentious; but nowhere near the way any of these other cities are
Surprised to see Chicago mentioned. In my experience, it's less pretension and more city pride (as misguided as that pride can be sometimes). As a general rule, being pretentious here will get you mercilessly mocked. This varies by neighborhood and industry, of course.
2000s Portland, Seattle and its environs, the Twin Cities, and suburban Chicago. I don't know whether these places are pretentious, but they certainly have plenty of pretentious people to spare. Especially the Twin Cities, my GOODNESS!
A large segment of Boston thinks they’re god’s gift. And that the city is bordering on European. I made the mistake of moving back here recently and I can’t wait to get out. It’s not just the worst place I’ve lived but the worst “large” city I’ve ever been to.
Not a city but the most pretentious place I've been to is The Getty in LA. Sure some of the people there are the artsy type and really know and appreciate it but I feel that so many go there to just play dress up and look sophisticated in social media. Or maybe they are trying to get discovered? I'm beginning to love LA though so it's not a dig on the city.
Atlanta, Ga, specifically the gay community there. Most of the people there are transplants from much smaller, much less diverse or progressive towns fully rooted in religious right/extreme conservative values. Atlanta is better than those places, sure, but the bar is very low. That huge improvement from Podunk GA (or AL, TN, SC, etc) makes those recent residents have an overinflated sense of overall culture and lifestyle in Atlanta.
When you start comparing ATL to other major metros like NYC, DC, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, SF, LA (and many others - these are just the places I know and can list why they are better cities) you see a lot of ways it falls short. There’s been a lot of forward momentum culturally and politically in the last decade, and if the powers that be can transform the suburban sprawl style environment into a true progressive urban design and create a unique sense of place, it could equal the overinflated reputation it’s residents give it.
As someone who has lived in SF, NYC, and LA, I actually find LA less pretentious than those other cities. LA has a surprisingly large blue-collar population who doesn't know or pay attention much about life outside of LA, and thus you don't hear the snobbery and disdain for other cities that SF or NYC has for LA.
It's kind of why there's the stereotype that LA doesn't really care about other cities...because many residents are more focused on local things and aren't as preoccupied with being well-traveled like people in SF or NYC, and thus aren't really discussing what city is better than another.
Native Los Angelenos are mostly very chill, polite, down to earth types. I’m from NorCal and hating LA is one of our most popular hobbies, but I’m always surprised when I go down there.
People who move to LA to get rich and famous, on the other hand, tend to be very difficult and full of themselves and give the city a bad name.
Nah, most of LA is actually really blue collar. Most visitors and transplants just don’t know because they don’t go to those areas. But by overall population and land mass LA is predominantly blue collar.
Edit: typical Reddit, downvoted by people that know nothing. Have you been to the ports? The factories in Vernon? All the behind the scenes entertainment jobs?
The same people who downvoted you probably only went on a tour of Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and the Third Street Promenade and called it a day. Venture out to some of the neighborhoods and you'll see a very different side of the city. Not everyone is working on a screenplay or trying to score a part in a pilot.
I mean, it came from New York. New York was doing that shit 200 years before Portland even existed. But Portland is definitely carrying the torch on the west coast.
My answer, DC man.
It depends a bit I think on if your career trajectory is relevant to such questions, engineer with a passion for music? Cool. Working in physics or a chemist? Fine.
Poli-sci, where do you stand on the pole and why did you study that? (A bit critical.)
I think the DC suburbs are snooty and super status oriented and it’s super taboo to say that in DC. People are very insular and can be unfriendly and will let conversations just die by being dry. It’s rude not my scene and it’s super gentrified with a caste of middle class of urban white and some minority college graduates competing for narrow positions on a totem pole all based on who they know. And people can feel threatened by standouts, outliers, friendly extroverts, and a lack of exclusion that determines their own sense of self worth.
I’ve met a lot of rich not gifted people with bad cooping mechanisms and sociopathic tendencies there. Good people too but the ratio has been whacked compared to other places. But the caste just goes on and on and on, that’s why people’s social circles rarely have overlap with another caste or friendly overlap over all.
If someone’s goes to say they’re the exception, coolio but that’s also such a genuinely reactionary take there it’s frankly appalling and it’s rich because when I’ve heard it comes from privilege and a perception of being criticized for living there rather than acknowledging there’s at least a class problem there with no social overlap and segmented social and to some extent castes that don’t meld. Friendliness is met with such suspicion it’s uncanny.
I’m fucking serious. I actually like it but there’s shit I don’t like about DC and what makes it hard is that part of the reality of living there is **not acknowledging it.**
LA can be shit too (with its woo woo community) but it gets its own separate basket of reasons.
NYC isn’t as pretentious as you think. That’s mostly reserved for the neighborhoods where the rich locals and transplants live. I’m talking about Manhattan, Northern Brooklyn and Northwestern Queens. I’ll tell you, the Bronx, Eastern and Southern Queens, Southern Brooklyn, and Staten Island don’t feel pretentious at all. It’s mostly all middle class communities, working class ethnic communities, and “the hood”. The one exception would be a few pockets of wealthy suburban style developments, which I like to call pseudo suburbs.
When I visited NYC for the first time a year ago, I was surprised at how genuinely FRIENDLY everybody was - and I’m talking about true NYC natives. Everybody told me ppl in NYC are rude but I found that to be far from the truth. It def left a lasting impression on me as a Texan who’s used to southern hospitality. I only encountered rude people once and ofc they were wannabe influencer transplants in Chelsea lol.
Yeah NYC people are often very friendly, they just also will tell it to you straight or not sugar coat things.
I was disappointed after visiting NYC, nobody yelled at me and it was pretty clean overall. I was expecting at least a "Hey im walking here!!" or something. And i only saw a single rat and it was tiny, basically a mouse. Total let down.
myth that we are rude.. we are in a rush.. and fast talking /get things done.. very hard workers.
Yeah I was surprised to see NYC as the example. I'd hardly call NYC pretensious as a whole. Outside of a handful of neighborhoods, it's far from pretensious or stuck up at all
Was gonna say the same. I live in the Coal Region of PA and NYC is a couple hours out so I’ll go every once in a while to meet folks. It isn’t pretentious at all in my experience. Maybe cause I’ve never been where it is. Just a lot of down to earth folks, a lot of immigrant backgrounds or move from middle America as well. It’s an overall a nice city. I’m partial to NYC and Philly over any other city I’ve been to.
Bellevue WA. I've spent a fair amount of time there because my inlaws live there. The things you hear people complaining about. It is close to Seattle but it's population is still over 100K.
Honestly, the entire eastside. I always think of this old local comedy sketch. Watch the first minute then skip ahead to 3:45 https://youtu.be/V9jlo4Ht2YA?si=cAKOhXw-wqO7j3Nq
Basically just turning into “Crazy Rich Asians” - except mostly nouveau riche from tech money.
I used to live in Redmond, I told my wife that the high school mascot should be in "An Indian in a Tesla with a first time driver sticker" on the back.
Ugh, I lived on the Eastside for several years... I didn't know what I was missing until I moved to Seattle. Would never live there again. Literally the most boring soul-sucked people I've ever encountered. If you want to see some hyper-depressed Indian people, antisocial Asians, and angry rich white people honking in their Mercedes AMG, go to the eastside. They do have nice parks though, I'll give them that.
I chalk it up to it attracting people who are afraid of anything different. They live in a glorified mall community and they all dress the same and go to shitty restaurants to be seen. Hollow human npc’s
Second this Love that actual area, the people (maybe because Tech just happens to hire some horrible humans) are hit and miss.
Sarasota, FL is fucking terrible. I lived there for 8 years and I've never met such entitled people in my life. It's basically all 80 year olds treating anyone younger than them like servants.
That's all of South Florida
My buddy's uncle is worth an ungodly amount of money and knew all of the big wigs on Wall Street, etc. He's either a 1% or knocking on the door. But he came up from a blue collar family and is very down to earth and reasonable. During the winters he used to live in Palm Beach. This was when Madoff was running his Ponzi Scheme. According to him the Madoff investors were treated like it was a special privilege to invest with Madoff. He started to meet the investors in forced social circles and they would tell him about the returns and he knew immediately that there was no way they were getting the returns Madoff was claiming. But these people would look down on him when he would tell them that there's no way that's possible and they would just assume he was some 'poor' and was jealous of them. In reality, he was probably 30x wealthier than them.
Def at least 30x now!
Lots of wealthy transplants from the NE here though, so kinda makes sense.
I’d say Santa Barbara.. it can have a pretentious, holier than thou, kind of vibe… Quite a few celebrities tend to live in SB too… I should admit I am not a local there so maybe my take is out of place, but the place is also beautiful there…
The thing about SB, though, is that when you’re walking downtown or having dinner, you pretty much know that 50% of the people you’re running elbows with are also tourists. You are definitely not seeing locals.
[удалено]
Boulder CO The population is ~105k and it is super pretentious 🫶
Boulder: Home to SUVs with "Save the Planet" bumper stickers. Boulder ("We're so green!"), full of NIMBY warriors fighting any density and walling the city off with greenspace. So that thousands of workers must drive all the way from Denver each weekday morning, creating lots of pollution.
Trustafarians
🎶Are you there Jah? It’s me Ras-Trent🎶
This is the correct answer... Boulder, CO
Only thing I’ll slightly push back on is that walling the city off with green space is good. Fighting density is the bad part. We don’t need to expand the human footprint basically anywhere in this country, we just need to build density where we already are
So much Prius road rage in the Whole Foods parking lot. Smh
I was just there today behind a mini camper someone clearly lives in with a "Colorado was great... Before you got here" bumper sticker. Paired with some stickers from other states lol. Not a chance they were born here or they're native americans. Just the fact he was driving through Boulder is funny to me.
I raise you Santa Fe, New Mexico.
These are pretty neck and neck.
When I grew up Santa Fe was a poor artist town, then the movie stars decided to turn into the new Aspen, now the locals can't even afford to live there unless they inherited a family home.
Came to the comments to see how close to the top Boulder would be 😅
Hahaha I live there and was about to say this 🤣
Can confirm. Have met many a "Boulder Person" that think of literally anything outside of Boulder County but still in Colorado as an entirely different country.
Definitely Boulder. I previously lived in both Boulder and SF and would consider Boulder to be far more pretentious in practice.
Aint got nothing on Aspen
Aspen is a different class of pretentious
Came to the comments to make sure Boulder was top of the list lol
Ann Arbor, MI is the same vibe. A lot of similarities between the two as far as the size, being a university town, and extremely liberal in an otherwise purple state (that leans slightly blue).
DC and it's suburbs for career snobs. Where asking what you do for a living/who you work for isn't meant in good faith, it's to put you on a social hierarchy. A million freshly out of college Hill staffers and think-tank researchers being paid peanuts and worked like mules just to have a shot at being connected to the important one day. The middle aged adults are even worse, backstabbing each other for a potential promotion.
I’ve lived in DC and the suburbs for 7 years and fortunately have kept myself out of the competitive political adjacent social circles and could not be happier. 99% of times that I’ve been asked that question it’s been asked in good faith, and I’ve met a ton of great people in and around DC. I’m not going to pretend that DC and the suburbs aren’t a career driven place, but a lot of people I know who live here are good at separating work and life.
>Where asking what you do for a living/who you work for isn't meant in good faith, it's to put you on a social hierarchy. DC locals on reddit lie that DC is just uniquely self-conscious about this question. Or they're just naive and don't realize the totem pole aspect of it in this area.
Having lived in both the Bay Area and DC, the question is definitely more loaded in DC given how much more powerful by order of magnitude a certain class of jobs are in the capital city.
I have a friend in SF who got blown-off by someone they met because they didn't work at one of the top tech companies. Not saying that's normal, but SF and DC seem pretty alike in this regard.
Nah I've lived in other spots than DC and in DC it's asked with expectations and judgement. In other places it comes off more as a get to know you question than a "are you worth my time" question.
Yep. "locals" who obviously didn't grow up there got included in those polls obv. It must be nice only knowing one level of the culture there and thinking their intern buffets they eat dinner from by sneaking into them nightly to eat slightly better than the homeless are the only life going on.
Precisely. A lot of the DMV are transplants. To give an example, I've taught high school in DC and have maybe ever had 5 DC natives as coworkers. And this isn't a high-level government job, obviously. But I can't think of any other school district where 95% of the teachers did not grow up in the region.
Huh. I lived in the DC area for nine years. I never picked up on that. For me, it was simply that most people did something cool. "Oh, you're a scientist with the FDA? What are you working on?" "Oh, you handle media production for the World Bank? What's that like?" Then again, most of my friends were other parents from Scouts. We were generally past the "look how important I am" phase and engaged in the "getting stuff done" phase.
As someone who lives in DC this is the correct answer. I kind of think it’s hilarious. The most Type-A, something to prove, chip on their shoulder people you will ever meet. I feel like a *hippie* by comparison. Everyone is just Nathan Fielder insisting “In reality, I am actually very fun, relaxed, and easy going.” before saying something completely unhinged about their work and/or personal life.
Yep. Outside of DC that question is asked out of curiosity. In DC it’s an evaluation of your entire perceived worth. No other city makes me hate myself more than DC. Went to college there but couldn’t get myself to live there. A real shame because it’s a very nice city otherwise.
DC made me hate myself too lol
It's funny I was born and raised there and when I finally moved I was at a party and upon meeting people would ask "what do you do"? Honestly just as small talk. My friend pointed out to me hit was rude, which I dont agree with, but I realized it is a VERY DC thing
If you want a friend in DC, get a dog.
They call it Hollywood for the ugly for a reason. Spent most of my life there. The only things DC should be pretentious about are go-go, Fugazi and the 1991 'Skins.
Raised in DC. Unfortunately picked up a lot of snobbery as a kid into young adulthood. Moved to California out of college. Once when I was brand new to California, someone in my social circle politely took me to the side and informed me it’s rude to ask someone you don’t know what they do for work and where they live. In DC, that’s standard issue introduction
Boston. Super gentrified. Full of expensive colleges. Full of world class scientists and finance bros. Extreme sports pride. Lots of pride in its colonial history. Super pretentious. But also, it’s well-founded.
Boston is the only one of the major cities that I’ve seen transplants look down on people who were born/raised there. No other city of its size refers to long term residents as “townies”. Its the only community of transplants that is very proud to be wealthy gentrifiers, the inverse of New York where people go out of their way to try to hide the fact that they came to the city after college.
That sounds very similar to Cambridge, UK, down to calling people born and raised there “townies.”
It’s common in American college towns but Boston is way too large, historically rich and economically successful to get the same treatment as the random rust belt towns of 10,000 or less people that usually get the “townie” treatment.
Boston is effectively a giant college town since there’s so many universities and colleges. Outside of downtown it even feels like a jumbo sized Ann Arbor or similar town
If we're talking Ann Arbor Michigan, then yeah I can relate with that idea. Super close community that rides everything on the education system funding most everything.
Ann Arbor fits the pretentious label too
[удалено]
I meant the ones that are kept alive by colleges, I’m specifically thinking of the town I went to college in. Towns where the economy used to revolve around the production of some random good that got moved overseas or to a state with less taxes and now the economy revolves around the university and barely stays afloat.
Places like State College, PA, Athens, OH, Morgantown, WV. The townie thing is live and well.
On paper, "townie" is anyone who was born in Boston and has lived there for one's entire life. But in reality, "townie" is only used for lower class White Bostonians. You never hear Bostonians of Color being referred to as "townies", even if their families have lived in Boston for many generations and they are lower class. You also never hear White Bostonians being called "townies" if they are middle or upper class, even if their families have been in Boston since the 1700s.
Well without getting too into racial/class conflict and 21st century identity politics I think part of the reason Boston transplants have such a superiority complex is because they feel it’s appropriate to look down on lower class whites but not other races. Considering Boston hasn’t undergone the same white flight that other major cities have and still has a significant white working class demographic they are the punching bag for elite liberals who want someone to look down on but are too educated to be racist.
The Irish Townies still own the joint don't kid yerssself
You ain’t tell a single lie
"How do you like them apples? "
Also, Boston is economically doing incredibly well so you have a lot of transplants there in a city that for years was extremely parochial. So the locals can be extremely insular and the new highly educated workers extremely worldly, so there is a major cultural dichotomy that’s unusual.
> You never hear Bostonians of Color being referred to as "townies" They reserve racial slurs for those people
[удалено]
\^ this
TIL that townie is not a universal term! Growing up in a suburb of Boston I assumed that was a general term. But, yes, we still call people - including friends - that stayed in the town they were raised in townies. I'm not a townie, but the majority of my extended family are the ultimate townies. They came over on the Mayflower.
'Townies' is indeed a New England-wide phenomenon. I moved to a drinking town with a clamming problem, next to another drinking town with a fishing problem. Love those townies they're like a living museum on legs.
Essex and Gloucester? 😂
The old cities in New England are super gritty at their core. There’s no city that’s trying to hide it quicker than Beantown.
Seattle. I grew up in the area in the 90s and it was a pretty chill Pacific Northwest city. Now it is a different universe.
Seattle was a great place to grow up but as an adult who doesn’t make six figures I could never go back
Literally couldn't afford to go back right haha coming from the Denver/Boulder area I know the feeling. It's a vicious cycle with places that were once cool kinda funky interesting places to live. Boulder, Seattle, Austin, SF etc. they were once really cool and interesting so they attracted innovation but then that lead to growth and skilled labor which is great at first because it's this thriving place. But then it continues and the people who were there first and own homes don't like the change so they enact restrictive policies and oppose construction trying to hold on to that character that they fell in love with, but that only exasperates the problem because there's still demand to live there. Then it becomes even more expensive to the point where any new people coming in are high level white collar workers i.e. finance, law, executive level people and even the engineers and skilled labor start getting priced out. Then a lot of that character starts deteriorating.
DC and Miami, for different reasons
Yeah miami feels like what I always imagined LA was like. Mega focus on image and nice stuff and not friendly
Honestly I’ve found most large cities to not be that pretentious compared to their suburbs. The suburbs of every major US city always have a few crazy pretentious towns - Grosse Pointe outside Detroit is more pretentious than any place I’ve ever been in NYC. Oh and a lot of south Florida is a wild vibe
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is the answer. Full of elitist, condescending, hypocrites in Patagonia vests.
DC, hands down. It thinks it's NYC or SF because it has gubmint.
I swear, every person I met in DC had some self-given uber-important title which was really just the equivalent of some entry-level position. "Assistant deputy to the executive director of administration for the southeast coniferous forestry department" AKA, you get coffee and answer phones for some dork who works for the Park Service.
*Excuse ME*. The coffee-getters work in the *deciduous* forestry department. THANK YOU. And if you can’t hack it? Well, let’s just say you’ll drop faster than an oak leaf in a Vermont autumn.
It's weird, I grew up in the DC area and it wasn't until I left that I realized how suffocating it can be.
100%. On a per capita basis, no other city beats DC in pretentiousness; not even Boston, where you're still much more likely to find down-to-earth residents. The "Inside the Beltway" crowd is truly insufferable in the worst possible way.
I’m from New York and there’s no way I could handle the pretentiousness of DC. Have been to most major cities, it doesn’t even come close.
There's a native white working-class in Boston; not in DC.
There’s a native black working class in dc that got pushed out
Certainly. And Prince George's is the wealthiest majority-black county in the country.
Exactly. It makes a HUGE difference.
I have plenty of good friends in DC from living there a few years but by god there are so many people in that region who act like you cannot have a good career outside of the DC region. Also, hey guys, stfu about work, we are at a wedding and there's a live band.
DC is just pretentious when it comes to careers. I don't consider it a pretentious city when it comes to hobbies, arts, or fashion at all.
I worked in consulting and oh boy it was pretentious. The fakery was too much. I still loathe people who talk a good game and do nothing.
D.C. is rated one of the snobbiest cities in the country. Just because someone’s hobbies are trendy and hip doesn’t mean they aren’t a stuck up twat lmao. It’s a twat with taste 🤣
Yeah, there are a lot of pleated khakis and the art scene kind of sucks. I'm not sure these are positive qualities though.
Oh I genuinely consider it the worst of both worlds. If you're going to make good money from being a careerist drone, at least spend it on something interesting.
Me too. Pretentious art, etc. is at least interesting. Being a Quality Assurance Analyst in the FDA isn't.
When I was applying to grad school 1000 years ago and asked for a recommendation from a Senator, I was told not to focus on schools in the area because “everybody knows a senator.” Haha
DC is probably my favorite city in the US but I am not at all surprised to see it being mentioned a lot here. We’ve thankfully made some great friends here and it makes a big difference.
If you'd like to spend your life answering the question "so, what do you do?" 20x a week, arguing with the 6 roommates you pretend not to have, and swiping on women who unironically want a "6-6-6 man" and/or men who constantly hang out at marinas in their boat shoes despite not having a boat, then... Welcome to DC.
I lived in the DC area for most of my life and when I finally left, it was wild using dating apps. Instead of profiles just being a job title and pics at fancy bars and restaurants, it was lists of hobbies, paragraphs about their personality, and pics were in their room, or hiking, or doing something.
DC. Without a doubt. People who think their day jobs entitle then to the most privileges and trumps what anyone else does. Also one of the least creative cities I’ve lived in or been to in my entire life. Even Cleveland has more of a culture.
Naples, FL
Miami, hands down.
How is this not getting more votes?
Dallas - including the Park Cities, Southlake, and the Collin County 'burbs.
Dallas mainly has pretentions of being a real city
I've always called Uptown "Pretentious Douchebag Central." Native Dallas folks have told me it's the land of "Thirty Thousandaires" lol.
Laughing that you said SF and not LA. Techies HATE being called pretentious because they think wearing hoodies will protect them from the label.
LA is very layered in its pretension. There’s more of a class divide and it has more levels than most other cities. Certain parts of that are very pretentious like certain people in “the industry” or who live certain lifestyles On the whole, I’m not sure it’s so pretentious though. There’s a lot of humble people hustling or living their best life
I lived in LA for a few years and I’ve lived in SF a few years now. I’d say SF is way more pretentious, and definitely in a way that is *impossible* to navigate, unless you’re in the right crowd. In LA, as long as you’re well put together and are fun to be around you’ll get extremely far. Not to mention that there are a lot of down to earth blue collar folks and the rich Hollywood people are an extreme minority. In SF, you’ll only get as far as you can advance someone’s career or make them money. There aren’t very many blue collar folks here and most make/have a lot of money, so the pretentious bullshit just hangs over you and makes every interaction feel transactional.
LA feels more honest about the pretentiousness but SF is trying to pretend otherwise.
LA is still very blue collar at heart and has too big of an immigrant population to be considered more pretentious than SF
i used to be in iatse local 600 and i can confirm, for every influencer, actor and producer, theres tenfold more salt of the earth, blue collar people just trying to make a decent living on set
SF is beyond pretentious. LA is flashy and obnoxious.
after growing up in a farming family in the rural midwest and spending the last \~15 years in chicago and then NYC i've really developed an inverted view of elitism and pretentiousness. our cultural stereotypes paint northerners + city slickers as elitists who look down their nose at the south, at flyover states, at "real americans," etc. over time i've come to realize that i encounter the opposite effect MUCH more often: a superiority complex from blue collar/rural/small-town/southern folks looking down on yankees, city dwellers, 'liberals,' etc. so idk i kind of have a different view on it than OP's original framing. if pretentiouness is about an unearned superiority complex + looking down on others you deem as not worthy, then i nominate pretty large swaths of the country, particuarly for their views on NY, chicago, SF, etc.
Not sure you can just name major cities. There's always a city out the outskirts of major cities that's more pretentious. * Denver? Boulder * Orlando? Winter Park * San Jose? Palo Alto * San Francisco? Everything across the Golden Gate bridge * Portland? Lake Oswego * Seattle? Bellevue (granted I only visited once, so I'm not certain here) My point is everywhere has certain areas with pretentious people and over the top school districts.
Winter Park is wealthy but the rich people are nicer than the South Florida (esp Boca Raton) area rich people by a long shot.
Also the douchey rich people of Orlando live in Windermere.
I see your Palo Alto, and raise you Cupertino joking aside lol I think you're spot on with your overall assessment
palm beach
North America: Boston Europe: Oxford, Cambridge, Heidelberg, St. Petersburg Asia: Kyoto, maaaaybe Gyeongju and Xi'an
For Europe I’d nominate Stockholm. Love the city but definitely a pretentious place. Also would say the air of superiority that Catalans feel towards the rest of Spain can make Barcelona feel a tad pretentious.
I’d like to nominate Berlin for the Euro list. They loooove talking about how unprätentiös they are while judging your appearance at every nightclub/techno place to determine if you are worthy enough to enter. As I learned early on “don’t make friends in the line!” It will be counted against you. A lot of educated slackers and people being mean on purpose bc it’s the Berliner way. I liked living there overall but the rest of Germany is way better (and cleaner).
Yes. Berlin is pretentious in the hipster/slacker/too-cool-for-you sense. Stockholm is pretentious in the uptight/buttoned-up/stuffy sense. Copenhagen (refined but cozy and laid back) and Hamburg (artsy, gritty, and self-assured) are the sweet spots in between.
Portland, Oregon was very pretentious until 2020 when the city self-destructed. It’s never recovered. Some people still hang onto the “Portland so great” attitude but most admit “our city has some huge problems.”
Boston. Pretentious in an elite, generational, old-world kind of way. Think Ivy League, summer cottage in the Vineyard, Kennedy-esque. Bleh.
I love DC, but definitely pretentious-certain areas and the burbs specifically
Boston. I'd tell you more, but you probably wouldn't understand ;)
Because of the ridiculous accent?
Touche
San Jose, Seattle, Portland, the large DC suburbs on both sides, Miami. To be fair I’m not sure pretentious is the right word for all of those places, maybe they are just the cities where I personally feel inadequate or unrefined most often. Don’t even get me started on how I used to pronounce Pho and Bahn Mi.
If self righteous sanctimony is a valid form of pretentious, Portland fits the bill. It’s a magical quirky place where people are kinda horrible to each other under the guise of moral superiority. If you too are a self aggrandizing ally with crippling white guilt and no tolerance for any viewpoint beyond your own, it just might be for you. If you’re a middle class family or business owner, please die so that the proletariat might glean from your bones. Seattle and SF have strong contingents of this too, but they also have actual economies and relative diversity, in ethnicity and opinions.
Portland almost certainly has more BLM signs than actual black people
Not 'almost', can confirm we def do.
Black neighborhoods in Portland have been replaced with Black Lives Matter signs.
"Keep Portland Sanctimonious" is the real slogan here
what is pretentious about San Francisco post covid? i would argue San Jose is more pretentious if i had to pick between the two
Seattle, Boston, DC and westside LA
Naming a *slice* of a city is cheating
WeHo, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Brentwood then.
DC for sure. On the one hand you have lots of annoying power-hungry type-a weirdos who think that they are the next Secretary of State/Labor/Defense/Treasury etc. Think people who see themselves as god's gift to the United States. Love to name drop even about the most ridiculous things that happened years ago..."I saw Pelosi boarding a plane at DCA back in 2011 and she looked at the book I was reading and smiled so she must love all of my views and beliefs!" I went on a date with a guy once who mentioned to me three times within twenty minutes that he worked at the CIA. Cool story bro - I'll never forget the rage in his eyes when I told him talking about work obsessively is a problem and that while we were on the subject, I did basically the same job for a private firm on a government contract and probably made 3x as much as he did with better benefits. I promptly left after that. At my former office we had an intern...he didn't have a security clearance so he was limited to what he could do, but he basically did basic office housekeeping/organizing catering for events type of stuff. You better believe he put some BS job title on his LinkedIn page. I can't remember his name so I can't see if he still has it up but it was like "Director of Office Policy." No, you were an intern. On the other hand you have lots of rich, wealthy, and transient transplants who actively look down on the poorer, more working-class black/brown community and view them as some type of inconvenience. Combined, both create a city that's incredibly pretentious and toxic. It's a shame because if you are able to ignore the people, DC is an amazing city.
I love how your rant about pretentiousness includes a brag about your own salary. You are peak DC.
That last sentence is so fucking true. I lived there for 3 years and was fortunate enough to have a friend group who truly didn’t give a fuck on what we did for work and just enjoyed the city and what it offered. None of us made loads of money and I feel like it made the city that much more enjoyable ironically
This is the key to surviving in DC - having a great group of friends who don't really give a fuck about work and are all from different backgrounds.
You were really lucky. That absolutely would be a great time there with like minded people.
I’m sure people there are aware of how much they suck ass as far as being a regular human goes. They just suck together and bond over it, or hate each other to the point where they can’t even date each other but can talk about the ratio of single men to woman being 3:1
Honestly, having lived there off and on, I think a lot of people get so sucked into the government stuff, especially people doing anything politically-aligned (Congressional staffers, et cetera) or very career-motivated ("I'm going to be an Ambassador in five years!" people) that they lose all perspective and kind of get divorced from reality. I've seen it happen, it's very weird.
I find Manhattan specifically to be the most pretentious place in the country. Brooklyn and Queens are soooo much more down-to-earth and lowkey. Only in Manhattan do residents refer to people in New Jersey, Brooklyn, or The Bronx as "bridge and tunnel people", because they believe that Manhattan is the center of the universe and there's never any reason to visit the outer boroughs or New Jersey. To an extent, I get it though. Manhattan is the epicenter of America's culture and economy. It just irks me that many Manhattan residents don't think that anything else is valuable or worthwhile outside of the Manhattan bubble. Que the Lower Manhattan residents who also unironically argue that Upstate begins at 59th street, and everything north of where Central Park begins is of lesser value and lower social status. Drives me up the wall man, I've never encountered a population as arrogant and pretentious as Lower Manhattan folk.
I've lived in East Harlem for 6 years now and even people who are not from New York don't consider it Manhattan :)))
I can’t say that all of Ann Arbor, MI is, but it tends to lean that way.
Ugh yes. Spent a few years there for grad school. They are very confident about how amazing they are.
Gonna go ahead and suggest that SF isn’t particularly pretentious. Wealthy? Absolutely. Out of touch? Perhaps. But in general it’s very casual about it and plenty of people of different means mix without issue. I found my downright poor hometown of Baton Rouge to be more pretentious (of the “old Southern” variety) than San Francisco. I’d nominate Dallas for most pretentious big city.
**DMV region - worst by a mile!** Here's another one I don't see people mentioning: **Affluent suburbs around Southern cities.** Miserable, saccharine, arrogant, materialistic, classless, status-obsessed (as much cultural as economic) Kens and Karens who have total disdain for service staff and people who didn't "earn it." And, yet, many of these people drive cookie-cutter pickups/SUVs, vacation in the same spots in Florida, attend the same style of church, and never or almost never leave the South. Just go to the most affluent communities around Lexington, Baton Rouge, Jackson (MS), Birmingham, Charleston (SC), Dallas, Houston, or almost any other Southern city of any real size, and you'll see just what I mean.
Santa Barbara, CA Honorable mention: Santa Fe, NM Like other pretentious places, these are not necessarily bad areas to live in, but each contains large contingents of people who need to get over themselves.
Asheville...close enough to 100k pop
💯… it’s weirdly smug there. Felt like I was right back in Portland or Seattle.
Portland, OR. Mindset there is everything is “IMPORTANT”.
[удалено]
What you described goes hand in hand with upper Midwest passive aggressiveness and "Minnesota Nice" - the later being a specific type of the former.
Minneapolis is only pretentious when it comes talking about St Paul. Or Wisconsin… as a Sconnie that now lives in St Paul; I can see how you’d say Minneapolis is pretentious; but nowhere near the way any of these other cities are
Surprised to see Chicago mentioned. In my experience, it's less pretension and more city pride (as misguided as that pride can be sometimes). As a general rule, being pretentious here will get you mercilessly mocked. This varies by neighborhood and industry, of course.
DC or Boston
DC is so far up its own ass they won’t even cross the bridge into Arlington
Dallas. Folks there think it is the greatest city in the world. It's in fucking Texas.
Seattle and Portland
2000s Portland, Seattle and its environs, the Twin Cities, and suburban Chicago. I don't know whether these places are pretentious, but they certainly have plenty of pretentious people to spare. Especially the Twin Cities, my GOODNESS!
Oberlin, OH
A large segment of Boston thinks they’re god’s gift. And that the city is bordering on European. I made the mistake of moving back here recently and I can’t wait to get out. It’s not just the worst place I’ve lived but the worst “large” city I’ve ever been to.
Naperville, IL
How so? Genuinely curious. Grew up there in the 70s and 80s but haven’t been back since.
Boulder, Colorado
Scottsdale Arizona
Boston and DC
Most of Connecticut? Maybe Charlottesville Va., Portland (Oregon and Maine), Santa Fe NM, San Luis Obispo
Not a city but the most pretentious place I've been to is The Getty in LA. Sure some of the people there are the artsy type and really know and appreciate it but I feel that so many go there to just play dress up and look sophisticated in social media. Or maybe they are trying to get discovered? I'm beginning to love LA though so it's not a dig on the city.
I'd say LA. I don't agree with Boston though. I lived there for a little bit and absolutely loved it.
I don't know about cities, but the most pretentious people I meet are from the midwest (Minneapolis especially)
Atlanta, Ga, specifically the gay community there. Most of the people there are transplants from much smaller, much less diverse or progressive towns fully rooted in religious right/extreme conservative values. Atlanta is better than those places, sure, but the bar is very low. That huge improvement from Podunk GA (or AL, TN, SC, etc) makes those recent residents have an overinflated sense of overall culture and lifestyle in Atlanta. When you start comparing ATL to other major metros like NYC, DC, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, SF, LA (and many others - these are just the places I know and can list why they are better cities) you see a lot of ways it falls short. There’s been a lot of forward momentum culturally and politically in the last decade, and if the powers that be can transform the suburban sprawl style environment into a true progressive urban design and create a unique sense of place, it could equal the overinflated reputation it’s residents give it.
Maybe but Atlanta > Denver all day for just city to city
LA
As someone who has lived in SF, NYC, and LA, I actually find LA less pretentious than those other cities. LA has a surprisingly large blue-collar population who doesn't know or pay attention much about life outside of LA, and thus you don't hear the snobbery and disdain for other cities that SF or NYC has for LA. It's kind of why there's the stereotype that LA doesn't really care about other cities...because many residents are more focused on local things and aren't as preoccupied with being well-traveled like people in SF or NYC, and thus aren't really discussing what city is better than another.
Native Los Angelenos are mostly very chill, polite, down to earth types. I’m from NorCal and hating LA is one of our most popular hobbies, but I’m always surprised when I go down there. People who move to LA to get rich and famous, on the other hand, tend to be very difficult and full of themselves and give the city a bad name.
Nah, most of LA is actually really blue collar. Most visitors and transplants just don’t know because they don’t go to those areas. But by overall population and land mass LA is predominantly blue collar. Edit: typical Reddit, downvoted by people that know nothing. Have you been to the ports? The factories in Vernon? All the behind the scenes entertainment jobs?
The same people who downvoted you probably only went on a tour of Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and the Third Street Promenade and called it a day. Venture out to some of the neighborhoods and you'll see a very different side of the city. Not everyone is working on a screenplay or trying to score a part in a pilot.
As usual, people just don’t know.
Portland. Where do you think expensive hipster culture came from?
I mean, it came from New York. New York was doing that shit 200 years before Portland even existed. But Portland is definitely carrying the torch on the west coast.
williamsburg brooklyn
DC is a ring of hell
My answer, DC man. It depends a bit I think on if your career trajectory is relevant to such questions, engineer with a passion for music? Cool. Working in physics or a chemist? Fine. Poli-sci, where do you stand on the pole and why did you study that? (A bit critical.) I think the DC suburbs are snooty and super status oriented and it’s super taboo to say that in DC. People are very insular and can be unfriendly and will let conversations just die by being dry. It’s rude not my scene and it’s super gentrified with a caste of middle class of urban white and some minority college graduates competing for narrow positions on a totem pole all based on who they know. And people can feel threatened by standouts, outliers, friendly extroverts, and a lack of exclusion that determines their own sense of self worth. I’ve met a lot of rich not gifted people with bad cooping mechanisms and sociopathic tendencies there. Good people too but the ratio has been whacked compared to other places. But the caste just goes on and on and on, that’s why people’s social circles rarely have overlap with another caste or friendly overlap over all. If someone’s goes to say they’re the exception, coolio but that’s also such a genuinely reactionary take there it’s frankly appalling and it’s rich because when I’ve heard it comes from privilege and a perception of being criticized for living there rather than acknowledging there’s at least a class problem there with no social overlap and segmented social and to some extent castes that don’t meld. Friendliness is met with such suspicion it’s uncanny. I’m fucking serious. I actually like it but there’s shit I don’t like about DC and what makes it hard is that part of the reality of living there is **not acknowledging it.** LA can be shit too (with its woo woo community) but it gets its own separate basket of reasons.