Why Are So Many Californians Mean, Rude, and Snobby??

[kansaslady]

Whether or not someone is perceived as rude, snobbish, etc., can be based on the personality of the perceiver. For example, typically snobs do not consider other snobs as being snobbish, etc.

I grew up in the So CA area and have also lived in MO and KS. I have found in all three states friendly people, snobs and rude people. I will say that in smaller towns in MO a lot of residents are clannish; and by that I mean outsiders are the last choice for employment...and locals are at the top of the list. Not all people in small towns are that way; however, too many are.

Also, in both MO and KS I have experienced first-hand that many people are more two-faced than in CA. What I mean by that statement is that in CA if a person is going to be a jerk, you will know it upfront. But in KS/MO, they are more likely to be nice to your face and stab you in the back as you walk away. Or, they will be all sugary to your face and then talk against you as soon as you leave the room. So, from my experience, I find that in CA you pretty much know from the get-go and don't have to second guess.

And...not all people are jerks, in any area of the country. So before anyone gets their dander up, please realize this fact.

I have not lived or visited the NE portion of our country. But I have talked on the phone with many in NY, PA, NJ and unfortunately found too many are very curt, aggressive and abrasive with their speech. And again, as a disclaimer, there are people who are rude on the phone who live anywhere.

There are so many people relocating to every section of our country anymore that sometimes, without detecting an accent. it is difficult to know where they hail from. Therefore, to state that all resdients of the NE for example are rude, or that all people from CA are snobs is not accurate.

Do I think the rich are snobby? Some are indeed. There are sections of the county I live in that have very expensive homes and sadly many of those residents believe they are better than the residents who live in low-cost housing.

[BlueEyedDevil]

I dont think we try to be rude, its just us californians are very buisy and always in a hurry. Theres alot going on, all the time.

[kansaslady]

Originally Posted by BlueEyedDevil

I dont think we try to be rude, its just us californians are very buisy and always in a hurry. Theres alot going on, all the time.

I would never consider anyone rude/snobbish if they didn't gush all over me; I would just think they are TCB (takin' care of business); and I'd much rather have someone just "being themself" such as you mentioned vs someone being a two-faced phoney.

[Malcolm]

Originally Posted by redwhiteblue

California is just like anywhere else there is nice and not so nice people.
I grew up in CA and lived in two areas 3 hours apart and they were like night and day. The town I grew up in is full of jerks and nobody appears to have any manners. On the other hand the town I moved 3 hours north to had very nice down to earth people for the most part. So you can't really talk about an entire state having the same attitude, especially one the size of CA.
I am sure the people in San Fransisco are a little different than those in Redding.
I also have experienced some super rude and unfriendly people in a small town in Idaho where you would think everyone would be a little nicer.

yeah I agree 100% with you. I have seen super rude people in a small town too but it just wasn't happening almost every other day. In So Cal it was happening almost every other day. Not just to me but from my observations with others on the roads too.

There are nice people in So Cal I won't deny it. Not EVERYONE in So Cal is mean or selfish. Most of the time when the people do get nasty is on the freeways and road ways. I'm sure anywhere that is overpopulated with a lack of infrastructure roads etc is going to have the things I saw. But I really believe the fights I saw and road rage is cause by stress and I think, for the average person, it is easier to get stressed out in So Cal than it is in Iowa.

I work now with a person that moved to Iowa from the east coast and she moved our to Iowa for the exact same reasons I moved here. So So Cal isn't alone when it comes to bad traffic/bad drivers - that's a given.

[Malcolm]

Originally Posted by DeniseC

Dear Malcom and Charles,
I am sure sorry you had to move to feel cared about and appreciated but you two did not have the pleasure of knowing the very dear people that I have had the joy of knowing and that is very sad indeed. My prayer for you both is the very richest lives filled with wonderful folks that will always make you feel at home, always. Best to you and yours!!!
Denise

Hey Thanks! I know there are great people in Cali. I knew people that where great. But more often than not, I observed and witnessed a lot of rude idiots. Most of it was on the road.

Didn't you read my previous post and how my life and my family's lives were threatened on the road almost every other day? I didn’t move from So Cal to be appreciated, I moved because I didn’t want my kids killed because of a drunk driver or because of someone's lack of patients running a red light or because of young racer punks on the freeways. That crap isn't in Marion Iowa. People get speeding tickets for going 5 MPH over the limit and the Police presence is known out here. I didn't get that in So Cal.

I also didn't really move for 'feelings'. I moved because of a few things like my kids were bullied in school (Iowa has anti-bully programs in school. If a kid in 1st through 12th grade is bulling for the fourth time he/she is suspended). Try that in So Cal. Parents can help in bulling but it starts to get bad when you have to actually be your kid’s body guard. My little sister turned in a 4th grader for bringing crystal meth to school and that caused a chain reaction in arresting the original drug runners that are 200 pound grown men in gangs. And the school didn’t do anything about it and my sister eventually was home schooled. That crap the school put on wouldn’t last out where I live now in Iowa.

Other reasons I moved was just because I wasn't making it in So Cal. Even after a few degrees working as an engineer. Pay wasn’t the best and cost of living wasn’t any better. My wife and I were constantly threatened on the freeways by racer punk kids, or drunk drivers (1 out of 10 in So Cal is drunk). I was driving a 180-minute commute because of the horrible traffic and thus never saw my kids. Living in So Cal was really aiding in the breakdown of the normal family in my case and in others too.

So I didn't move to feel appreciated or because of a lack of care, it was more like respect in the case of my little sister or for the lives of my 2 month old daughter and wife, horrible schools, and a fast paced self-centered society.

I'm sure not everywhere in Cali is like that and that stuff is everywhere but I have to say it is more common in So Cal than Iowa.

[jjeffner]

Originally Posted by RIGirl

From another quote - I don't know what I did but it didn't print as such: I was born and raised in California and I have lived in many parts of it. The obsession with looks and rude attitudes have turned me off from many of my fellow Californians. Honestly, when I was visiting Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada, people were just nicer and did not have an attitude. However, I have found that being kind and refusing to fall into the prevalent rude culture has turned some people around. They are surprised that I refuse to be obsessed with my looks and still smile and say hello to people. I found that Crestline, Ca and Big Bear, Ca are both great locales in Southern California. I also enjoyed visiting with people in Idylwild and Wrightwood, Ca because mountain people just seem to be more down to earth. On word of caution, Lake Arrowhead is beautiful, but the people have a true attitude of California looks and snobbiness and I would avoid living there if you can. People can be rude everywhere in the world, but I actually have met people from New York, the South, Northern California, etc who had less of an attitude. Many of my former friends used to tell me how my boy did not look Californian etc. Now I try to look for people who have not be zapped by the California look bug. I think the mountains locations I listed are more down to earth and slower pace. Plus the air is better up there than in LA or San Bernardino.

M comments: I look forward to the answers to this question. I am a New England native who moved here last December but now find myself considering going home. I do love CA but find a lack of substance in people as well. I do find Californians to be a friendly lot but there is not much beyond that. I hate to stereotype and I know there are many people who must not fit the mold but I have yet to find them. I have been out and about quite a bit myself and interacted with people from all walks of life here (I think anyway) and find this appearance obsession to be prevalent.

I wonder too if there are other parts of California where this is not so. I don't want to leave but find myself leaning that way. I would love to hear from anyone who can provide some insight. Are there other east coast natives who have felt this way and if you chose to stay, how did you overcome it?[/quote]

[jjeffner]

Thank you. I have been out here for 10 years now and am missing the east coast so much....CA will never be "home" to me I'm afraid

[pgordon5446]

I ****ing hate LA. I grew up in Orange County, but I spent a ton of time in LA, and I can conclusively say that it is the worst city I've ever spent any time in, short of Tijuana.

There is something to be said for pride in your home town, but eventually you have to realize that you just might live in an enormous hellhole. It's not just the smog, either (although Riverside, just 10-20 miles to the east, has the worst air quality in the nation). Let's break it down:

1) Traffic. I want to stab myself in the eye with a fork when I hear anyone complain about traffic in other cities. LA's urban planning looks like someone dropped a plate of wet spaghetti on a road map. There is no fully appropriate metaphor to describe the freeway system other than a botched abortion of concrete and steel, because there is zero logic to it. Driving across town? Give yourself an extra hour, because you never know when the 110/10/5/405 will lock up. This completely ****s one of my biggest personal tenets: BE ON TIME. BE SOMEWHERE WHEN YOU SAY YOU WILL BE THERE. LA traffic makes this impossible, because it could take anywhere from 20 minutes to 3 hours to get ANYWHERE. This is true 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as I can attest from the four-hour delay I once hit driving home from the Bay Area at 1 A.M. on a Sunday. And of course, every once in a while this is the result of...

2) Televised car chases. These happen with alarming regularity. In 8th grade I remember coming home from school just in time to see a guy stop his truck on the 10, delaying thousands of people for two hours, and then set the vehicle on fire with his dog in it. This was just before he blew off his head with a shotgun. On live television. For about two weeks all the TV stations were contrite about showing a graphic scene of real-life violence to an audience of the hundreds of thousands of kids who were undoubtedly watching. Then like a month later they aired another one that ended in a motorcycle slamming into the back end of a bus. You stay classy, KTVU.

3) Size. The city itself is ENORMOUS even for the number of people who live there, spreading in a more or less uninterrupted stream of low-lying industrial buildings from Thousand Oaks to San Clemente. You can walk across San Francisco or Boston in like two hours in any direction. Try that in LA and you'd better bring a week of rations and a bulletproof vest. This means more time spent on those beautiful freeways.

4) Pollution of all kinds. Everyone owns at least one car, since the public transportation system is virtually nonexistent. Sports practices are occasionally canceled due to "air hazards." Nowhere else outside of Mexico City have I heard of this. Furthermore, a good 50% of the beaches are contaminated by some variety of toxins and the ocean has the appealing color and consistency of a can of watery pea soup. Not only that, everyone goes on about the weather like it's not virtually identical to what's found anywhere from Cabo to San Francisco - and you can't get lung cancer just by being outside in other places on the West Coast.

5) Sports franchises. Expect fair-weather Lakers flags every time playoff season rolls around, and expect the seats at any sporting event to be filled with a combination of a) Justin Timberlake, Cameron Diaz, and equally abhorrent celebrities on the lower levels and b) bitter Raiders-tattooed vatos in the upper deck waiting to get drunk and stab someone. In the absence of an NFL franchise, the football fans, too, are like homeless divorcees – blindly wandering around, searching for something new to glom onto, pretending they don't care about their loss. They're also all Raider fans – imagine downtown Oakland on game day except without the benefit of an actual football game being played.

6) Violent crime. Parts of East LA make "Falling Down" look like a fairy tale, except with much less English. Feel unsafe in New York? LA's murder rate is TWO AND A HALF TIMES AS HIGH. You have to go to the South or Detroit to find a comparably violent city.

7) The women. The thing with LA/OC producing swarms of hot girls is true, but most of them don't end up staying in Los Angeles. They all either move to San Diego or end up going to school at ASU, U of Arizona, or Colorado. Most of the women I've met there that are around 22 or older are attractive enough, but they look so beat and used-up they'd probably feel sticky if you touched them.

8) Culture. This is a place where Ryan Seacrest can get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the home of "Us Weekly." This is a city that has put on the mantle of the American film industry and then used it to give us "Soul Plane," "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter," and "Cheaper By the Dozen 2." This is the Mecca for faded jeans, metrosexual douchebags and pink drinks. Everything about LA is saturated with an insatiable drive to impress the perceived yokels from Middle America with shiny pretty things. Furthermore, the residents tend to look down on the rest of the country through their Chanel sunglasses like they're the world's authority on anything pertaining to style or entertainment. If you need barely-legal fetish porn or a man-purse, welcome to paradise.

Plus, all this trendier-than-thou attitude is thinly spread over a giant proletariat of Mexican immigrants that grows larger by the day. I can't wait for ten years from now when the entire valley becomes a war zone. When the Battle of Dominguez Hills is fought I'll be watching from the Bay Area or someplace and thinking "****, I hope my parents are okay. Good thing they laid that minefield in Garden Grove back in '08."

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by FrenchAmerican0721

L.A. and San Fran. are definitely cities that are not known for their hospitality.

According to whom?

San Francisco is one of the most visitor-friendly cities Ive ever been to. That's one of the reasons why so many visitors rate the city so favorably on all those tourist polls.