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In your opinion, which cities would you say are pretentious and which cities would you say are unpretentious? For example, you might say that Seattle, Washington is a pretentious city and you might say that Buffalo, New York is a unprentious city.
Pretentious = Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle (West coast Cities)
Unpretentious = Cleveland, Detroit, St Louis, Chicago (Midwestern Cities)
That's a good answer in my opinion. Cities with a higher percentage of office jobs rather than those built on manufacturing tend to be more pretentious. Also, the more of a liberal slant a city has, the more pretentious the reputation seems to be. Makes me think of the "Smug Alert" Southpark episode.
From my understanding, pretentious refers to someone or something that thinks it is more important than it is. This is a vague term, and there are multiple types of pretentious places.
One, is class-envy pretentiousness. These are usually areas full of upper-middle class suburbanites who wish they were rich. They have well-paying jobs, a strong sense of entitlement, and a lot of credit card debt. They drive big vehicles, think their snot-nosed children can do no wrong, and throw fits in restaurants when they don't get the table they want. Politically they want lower taxes and less government, as long as their schools and roads don't see cuts. Irvine, CA; Scottsdale, AZ; Plano, TX; Reston, VA; Barrington, IL; and Eden Prairie, MN come to mind.
Then there's wanna-be-cool pretentiousness. These areas were the hip parts of major cities about ten or twenty years ago, but they're now populated by yuppies who think that living in an area that used to be cool would make them cool and hip. Prices are high and local business tend to come and go quickly. Politically, the people who live in these areas vote Republican, but lie about it to their friends. Wicker Park, Chicago; Williamsburg, New York; Uptown, Minneapolis; and Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco fit the bill.
And the last kind of pretentiousness that I can think of right now is the stubborn-political pretentiousness. These tend to be rural areas or college towns and are filled with people who have opions of the far left or far right, but they have no sense of how to actually be persuasive or how American government works. Case in point, when Alabama thinks that it can tromp a federal court decision, that's pretentious. Also, when a bunch of college kids in Ithaca, New York think that standing around with protest signs could tear down capitalism, that's pretention too.
On the flipside, more working-class parts of the country as well as places with well-earned importance are unprentious.
Last edited by Dawn.Davenport; 03-18-2015 at 02:40 PM..
Working-class areas often have their own pretenses, typically relating to how "real" they are. You're not a real citizen of an area if you didn't attend high school there. You're not a real football fan unless you cheer for a team that hasn't won anything in over 50 years. You don't get the local culture if you don't like the local cheap beer. If you haven't been to this bar before, you don't need to be here. And if it's not country or classic rock, then you need to turn that ***** music off.
Take anyplace east of the 100th meridian that's within 200 miles of the 40th parallel, at least 90% white, and has a median household income under $50,000, and you'll encounter plenty of working-class heroes and other pretentious proles at some point.
Unpretentious = Cleveland, Detroit, St Louis, Chicago (Midwestern Cities)
St Louis is pretty pretentious, and in the last 15-20 years Chicago has simultaneously become more pretentious and less unique/interesting/worth being pretentious about.
Also, the more of a liberal slant a city has, the more pretentious the reputation seems to be.
Is it liberalism that makes pretentiousness or just that most urban areas tend to be liberal and the pretentiousness just comes with being urban?
All cities have their own form of pretentiousness, whether it be based on power, income, fashion, race, religion, or what have you. Even some of these Rust Belt cities that people are saying unpretentious have some form of it (often racism).
I would say the most classic and in your face kind of pretentiousness I've witnessed was from BosWash corridor cities such as NYC and DC. Washington, DC in particular is like a magnet for Napoleon complexes. It's like opening a jungle storybook and all these locusts and flies come shooting out of the book with these loud screeching noises. You have to slam the book shut real fast. Like whoa.
Another thing I tend to notice is that the most pretentious people in any given city tend to be the TRANSPLANTS who come there to fulfill an agenda, thinking they are supposed to be that way.
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