Why do Californians have a tendency of getting mad if you say anything negative about California? (San Francisco: rental, to live)

[bruhms]

People in general have a tendency of getting mad if you say anything negative about their home.

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by bruhms

People in general have a tendency of getting mad if you say anything negative about their home.

Except we're not allowed to do that in CA, if we are to believe the hater threads.

[expatCA]

Originally Posted by bigdumbgod

This akin to someone getting in your face yelling obscenities and you reacting, and getting the old "See, look how defensive you get!" It's called inciting, just to get a reaction. CA gets this more than any other state, so yes, it gets old. Usually done by those who live in sad places with nothing better to do, or those self-loathing sad sacks who failed in CA and now want to gather faceless 'friends' to form troll parties to the delight of carnival barkers decrying the heresy rampant in the heathen golden state.

Just like those brat kids that rapped the stick across the fence on the way home from school, just to make the dogs bark. Imagine how bold they would be if the gate opened one day?

They would be glad IF those were very BIG sticks and very little dogs.

[UKWildcat1981]

Most NY's I have have met don't give a flying rat's ass if you hate their city or anything say negative about it, NYers know NYC is an amazing city and they mostly don't care what everybody thinks about it. Lot of LA and SF long time resident I have left just in travels did tend to get upset if you make a mean comment about their cities but California residents are generally really friendly and laid back people and generally didn't get too upset like other places I have been to. Chicago and Boston residents and Philadelphia residents get upset and downright hostile the most at people who don't like their city, all of those cities are really provincial thou.

[SoCalbound12]

Originally Posted by Mach50

I think California's know all the negatives and choose to ignore them in order to justify living there in their mind.

Once you start admitting the negatives and accepting them, you'll move out.

Or some of us accept the negatives like mature adults, and understand that EVERY place has both positives and negatives and some of us decide the positives outweigh the negatives and decide to stay. There is no reason to "justify" living here, I like living here, I have a decent job, and I like my life here.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

Originally Posted by Fiddlehead

First off, California is huge, with a lot of subcultures. Folks from Bakersfield and Marin County and East LA are likely to have a quite different views of their state.

I will speak to the Bay Area culture, which I experienced a lot in Oregon. It seems to reek of superiority, and has a notable lack of self-irony and humor. All the charm of a broccoli salad. I assume that much of this comes from the Brahmin class of NE Yankees that helped found the Bay Area, bringing their humorless self-satisfaction along. Wealthy, private school kids who created their own utopia on the west coast. Their achievements are impressive, for sure, by any measure, but it sure would be nice if they had a softer touch, and did not rub your face in it. It is not helped by the housing bubble, so those annoying vegans are also richer than you, and able to buy all up the nicest homes in your area, take over the city governments, etc. Texans at least usually have a wink in their eye when they brag (endlessly).

But being from the Central Valley, I never detected much of that superiority in my peers. We knew the place was heaven and hell rolled into one enchilada, and having traveled quite a bit, I recall things from home that stacked up against the best of the world (Yosemite, a Tule River swimming hole, a Tulare carne asada burrito) and lots of idiots and reprobates and just hell hole places. So, on balance, I could sure see why some would love, and some hate, the place.

I think the main thing Californians need to do is to listen and show curiosity about other folks from other places, and laugh along with them when they fling a little dirt on the Golden State. We can deal with it, and some of it is deserved. That said, I do think a lot of the trash talk on California is simply a stupid political ploy. California is the librul state, just as Texas is the conservative state, so endless stupid conversations ensue. Thankfully, folks in California, Texas, and just about every place else are far more interesting than those dumb clichés.

Whoa Nelly. Maybe the really rich people in SF act like NE Brahmins, but there are a whole lotta us that grew up in blue collar families here. And what you describe is not so among the class I grew up in, in the east Bay Area - San Leandro to be exact. My dad was an Oakland cop of Irish immigrants from New York who moved to Oakland, and my Mom also moved to Oakland at around 10 years old, from middle class French people from Maine. My French grandfather moved to the Bay Area as an engineer to work on building the Nimitz Freeway, which is now Interstate 880.

Neither the French or Irish sides of my family were rich snobby people.

Really, does it matter what anyone thinks about how evil California is? None of your opinions will make me want to leave it.

I guess some people need to justify their failure here, as somehow caused by unfriendly people?

Don't know. Don't care.

BTW, I hear people in Paris are also unfriendly. And yet, it continues to be a very desirable destination :-)

[dolphin99]

I love California but Californians were always a bit shallow and uncultured and now their overbuilt, overpopulated, multicultural, decadent, drought-stricken, sprawled out paradise has gone down the drain.

So naturally they would get offended by these observations.

[bigdumbgod]

Originally Posted by dolphin99

I love California but Californians were always a bit shallow and uncultured and now their overbuilt, overpopulated, multicultural, decadent, drought-stricken, sprawled out paradise has gone down the drain.

So naturally they would get offended by these observations.

Sometimes the haters make themselves out to be of the unfortunate sort that we gladly see off to other places. (Funny how "multicultural" is a bad thing, btw.)

[MarciaMarshaMarcia]

Maybe native Californians are just tired of having our state raped, to the point of no longer being able to live there.

[njbiodude]

California rocks and the salaries some fields and weather can't be beat. I generally find people in the most career-centric areas like LA and the Bay Area to be a bit less friendly sometimes but I still find people to be a heck of a lot nicer than Boston or NYC. Fake southern manners usually mean very little to fast-paced urbanites.

There seems to be a serious hatred in many areas of the country of CA. It's like a lot of people went in the 70s and 80s after the summer of love to "find themselves." They showed up on LA or SF and got a job at a local coffee shop and subsequently returned home with their tails between their legs. What they found instead of hippie paradise was an expensive faced paced career-centric area similar to Boston or NYC. So everyone with their dreams broken started claiming how it was a "liberal cesspool" and sucked.

In many ways California is ahead of the rest of the USA in regards to infastructure (ie bullet trains, heavy desalinization reliance) and culture. But you have to be able to afford it, and in many areas a salary under 75k+ just won't cut it. There are cheaper areas in the state but they aren't percieved as the "paradise" regions so people moving in avoid them.