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I live in DC, and I think its much worse here than NYC as far as people being pretentious. We have a lot of hill staffers who think they are big and bad and then we have the big shots on K street.
I think that its more diverse in NY and you get to meet a lot more cool people. DC in my opinion stands for douchebag city.
Plenty of cities are like this. I don't know why. Its not only NYC and DC, but I have heard the same about San Francisco, Boston, and even Chicago. In some parts of America job situation is pretty bleek for young people coming out of college so coming to a place like NYC, DC, SF, Boston, Seattle, you're bound to run into plenty of pretencious folks who are not native to the general or surrounding areas of a city. Plenty of young college people are fighting over these top well to do jobs, if its Technology in SF, IT in Seattle, Finance in NYC, Politics and lobbying in DC, banking in Charlotte, Education and Health in Boston. I understand that some of these people come a far away from the Dix to the gritz, glam and grit of Urban America but their is no need to rub it in peoples faces.
Insecurity? They actually haven't realize that value of money doesn't equal respect? You're being a jerk to them? They have lots on their money trying to make it?
I don't know, pick one. I don't think that's because of NYC.
Its bull**** to claim that "Native" New Yorkers have some sort of native mentality. Please, a well to do person who lived in the Upper East Side (whose parents have a beautiful home in the suburbs, upstate NY, or Florida) would not even speak to someone from Brownsville, the most ghetto neighborhood in the city.
Even people of color discriminate against people from the worst neighborhoods in the city. To imply that homeowners in Staten Island, Eastern Queens, or the North Bronx share a mindset with housing project people is absurd! They have very different levels of education and perspective.
Also, a lot of people born in NYC identify strongly with their ethnic origins and don't call themselves New Yorkers (though they were born here). I know plenty of people who call themselves Albanian, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Panamian, Colombian, Chinese, Thai, etc. For whatever reason these native born New Yorkers identify with their ancestry far more they do with New York.
Parts of Far Rockaway have a very tight knit Jewish community (its an upper middle class area full of beautiful homes. Those people behave very different from those in the Rockaway projects.
Maybe people should stop with the nonsense that there really is a significance to being a native New Yorkers when whole groups of people born in the city want NOTHING to do with each other. The white well off New Yorkers would much rather deal with newcomers from wherever with money than Section 8 scum.
Let's not pretend the early 90s was a walk in the park in NYC. Several generations of welfare dependents had turned big parts of Manhattan into one open drug den. The West Village, LES were heroin/crack infested hell holes. Because of all the drugs, Aids was wiping out large numbers of people. Muggers were running wild, and you had nasty skank hos openly selling their diseased wares in broad daylight.
So Giuliani himself, a man born in NYC, lead a police crackdown and decided he would rather have WORKING people from WHEREVER live in these neighborhoods, instead of lazy MOOCHERS who want the government to do EVERYTHING for them.
And btw, I was born in NYC. But I'm not married to the idea of NYC and I am certainly not going to pretend that the early 90s was some glorious time. In fact, I'm leaving the city (I've been to plenty of other places in my time) and actually packing this weekend. (leaving next month)
Think I know the answer but I'd like to hear from people that live there/spent extensive time in the city.
It's the way the dream of living in NYC has been presented in our society. Take the TV shows for instance. We have so many television shows that have promoted the hipster-like, pretentious mindset of living in NYC, particularly Manhattan. I don't think it is just NYC though. The self-important way-of-life is seen more often all across the country.
That doesn't make them jerks. I think some of the lower classes here have inferiority complexes and assume all the people who appear to be well off must be mean. That isn't necessarily the case.
I think the OP and many of the others are talking about the people who display pretentious attitudes and are douches.
People are going the other way with this topic and it just shows how sensitive some people are. The classic defense mechinism when people single a group out is why do you care so much... It's not about that. If I'm just going about my daily life trying to get by but at the same time have eyes and ears where I can see from a mile away if a pretentious prick has a condescending way of being for whatever insecure reason that pops into his/her head, i'm going to take offense to that. No one person is any more important than the other due to job position, wealth, college degree, etc.
And true class, dignity and self-respect comes from working hard and being successful without the added arrogance. Anything showing the opposite, just shows that they have no more class if not less than that working class joe schmoe they seem to be judging constantly.
Also, to be fair, where I mainly find this is the problem isn't with the successful, because in most cases, people with class and money know how to act... Where I see this the most is with the new transient population where many of them probably make less than I do but have a complex that would suit a multi millionaire. Mainly yuppies and hipsters which I think is who the OP was in part describing...
Again, this isn't all of them, but unfortunately as we do with any group, if the majority of people that fit a certain stereotype act a certain way, our opinion when dealing with these kind of people is that they are all the same until the stereotypes are proven false. This is unfortunate for the few that truly are down to earth and classy but it is what it is...
I totally know what you are talking about and I don't think you presented your original question in a hypocritical way.
I live in Kentucky, but go to NYC often. Here in Kentucky, we have our own group of folks that have a "My-****-doesn't-stink" attitude because of some some surging areas of our city. I like to have a good time and like to be financially secured. So, I don't think you, I or anyone else has a problem with that. I think that we simply feel the vibe that snobbish and douche-like people put off. People like you say are telling you or others to mind their own business. You just asked a question and it is no different than what happens every day: people notice ****ty attitudes and can't understand the reason for it.
I also agree with the others in that it doesn't seem to be native NYers that act like that. It seems to be the "transplants" that moved up there. I think the whole image of living and working in the City creates a pretentious mindset in some of those people.
Actors and writers' pretentious attitudes bother and worry me the most because they garner a lot of influence over society, people who fawn over them and believe that everything they say or write about in their shows is true, even though they don't have credentials and say things about STEM careers that they don't have experience in- it's insulting to people who actually work in those fields.
It makes me appreciate who my uncle was- growing up near NYC, even though he was a STEM grad, he didn't act like a pretentious know-it-all; he liked owning and working on his old cars and lived in a middle class neighborhood, so I didn't even know that he earned a lot of money.
Many here should get out more...leave NY for awhile...the world exists outside of your little corner. I love NY...worked there...played there...visit there...but there's an entire world beyond NY.
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