The Reality of the People (Los Angeles, San Diego: fit in, transplants, real estate)

[NomadicOne]

There's been a lot of talk about the insular / unfriendly nature of Sacramento. It is something I have puzzled over, because the people are pretty "nice" and down to earth, but at the same time no one is really in the mode to meet people. It took me a while to figure it it out.

Sacramento people are pleasant, bland, and passive. They will respond positively to you if you make the first move, but don't expect them to ever take initiative. Just ask them a lot of questions without an agenda and they will open right up. They love talking about themselves, and will instantly like you for taking an interest in them.

What is valued here is positivity, conformity, familiarity, and blandness. The way you get into the social scene here is by frequenting the same events and having the same boring conversations until people have seen you 4-5 times. Any hint of pretension, negativity, or any original ideas or weirdness will get you shunned. The good news is you don't have to do much to be accepted. Just put in the hours, listen to people talk about really boring things, and you will be accepted. NEVER try to impress anyone. Any type of extreme achievement or risk-taking will actually make you a pariah. Just try to fit in with the group and never, ever rock the boat in any small way. Be a follower, not a leader. You don't need humor, just a general positive vibe, which is easy enough to fake.

You will get a very standoffish reception at first. This is normal and it doesn't mean they don't like you. Sacramento people have to get used to the idea of you first before they can have a conversation. As soon as they start getting a skittish look just preemptively end the conversation before they do and go talk to someone else. Next time you meet they will give you a big smile and talk to you a little longer.

That said, people here are pretty easy going and nice, but the whole area feels childish. It feels like life ends at about age 25, and after that everyone is just looking backwards into the past. You can't really go out and have an interesting conversation with someone new who gives you a new perspective or something to think about, it just doesn't work that way. You put in your hours, keep the topics to something everyone is familiar with, and you earn your status that way. Your social status is determined by seniority.

Probably the highest status person here is the pudgy guy with a hairbun, beard, and tattoos. That guy is god in Sacramento. A friend visited me and remarked that it seemed like the people just thought about "getting a funny haircut, and that's all there is to life." I didn't understand him at the time, but it makes sense to me now.

The city itself has better weather and more to do than 90% of mid-size American cities, but the people are just bland. You can know these people for years and not hear a single original thought come out of their mouths. In fact, if you say anything that isn't in the script they will be completely unable to respond to it, and it may end friendships. There's an attitude that any thought that didn't come from the television is a slippery slope to terrorism / racism / goat molestation (or something). All the ideas we need are handed to us by The State, and any original thought is not just wrong, its presence is an indication of mental illness. Shun!

I do not know how this compares to the rest of California or America. I just started really paying attention to people and telling them what it seemed like they wanted to hear, and suddenly I understood. My moment of epiphany was at the TedX conference when the coordinator stressed that everyone should really make an effort to talk to someone new during the break, in a way that a teacher would tell children they needed to share their toys. You don't normally have to tell adults that it's okay to network.

So you will find cool, down-to-earth people that are easy to talk to but won't make much of an effort towards you. The only social life you will have is getting into a clique, and your friends will be very boring people, but you will be accepted. There are worse places than this, but this is what you are getting into. If you feel like you are being ignored, hopefully this will help you make sense of the behavior.

[2sleepy]

wow, a sweeping generalization about the personality of everyone in a metro area with a population of 2.4 million, might I ask how many of that number you have actually spoken to?

Posts like these reveal more about the state of mind of poster than anything else, I sincerely hope you find a place to live where you find people who meet your standards.

[NomadicOne]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

wow, a sweeping generalization about the personality of everyone in a metro area with a population of 2.4 million, might I ask how many of that number you have actually spoken to?
Posts like these reveal more about the state of mind of poster than anything else, I sincerely hope you find a place to live where you find people who meet your standards.

All the ideas we need are handed to us by The State, and any original thought is not just wrong, its presence is an indication of mental illness. Shun!

It's like this: I know a guy in Orange County who owns a website, goes surfing a lot, and doesn't work that much. He's not flashy about it, but he's actually a really nice guy and his lifestyle and success is very highly regarded. I also know a guy in Roseville who owns another website, goes snowboarding a lot, and doesn't work that much. His lifestyle is regarded as dangerous / deviant / basically like he's unemployed even though he has a very good income. The contempt I've seen people treat him with is really startling. (I would guess he makes more than the first guy.) I have seen people here just be sort of dismissive, jealous, and disdainful towards the second guy. (I'm not either of these people.) They live the same life and are both cool guys, but the first one is at the top of the social order and the second one is at the very bottom, just above meth addict status.

[JohnS_15]

What a load of nonsense.

Originally Posted by NomadicOne

So you will find cool, down-to-earth people that are easy to talk to but won't make much of an effort towards you. The only social life you will have is getting into a clique, and your friends will be very boring people, but you will be accepted.

You need some new friends.

Originally Posted by NomadicOne

I do not know how this compares to the rest of California or America.

Right.

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by NomadicOne

All the ideas we need are handed to us by The State, and any original thought is not just wrong, its presence is an indication of mental illness. Shun!

Are you aware that the word 'state' has more than one meaning and that 'state of mind' means something entirely different than what you just said?

state
stāt/Submit
noun
1. the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time. "the state of the company's finances" synonyms: condition, shape, situation, circumstances, position; More
2. a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government. "Germany, Italy, and other European states"
synonyms: country, nation, land, sovereign state, nation state, kingdom, realm, power, republic, confederation, federation
"an autonomous state"

[cb73]

I was born and raised in Sacramento.

I am not nice. I'm also tall.

Therefore, all tall Sacramentans are not nice. Is that how it works?

[NomadicOne]

I have a million more little examples of things that only happen in Sac.

There was a line of people outside of Ace of Spades, and I was walking along the block. I casually asked two guys "Who's playing tonight?" I was dressed nicely but not like formal, and they looked at each other and paused for a long time before answering. They acted like I was either panhandling them or soliciting sex. Very odd people. I don't know, maybe they were just stoned.

I went to a networking mixer, and everyone just wasn't in the mode to meet new people. There was a couple of girls from out of town, and their behavior could not be more different. Any event you go to will be like a Christmas party. You don't meet new people at a Christmas party, you only catch up with the people you already know. People aren't rude, they just will give you very limited attention, and you have to start very slowly with them.

Time and time again, I meet transplants who have been here a couple years, and they just bounce off the social fabric like Teflon. They usually hang around for a couple years and leave after getting the cold shoulder so many times. Any time I do hit it off with someone, they are always a recent transplant.

Generally, there is just a huge amount of distrust, and appearances don't really help you, unless you are going all out and wearing a suit. In southern California people will sort of sum you up based on looks and how you present yourself. In Sacramento the styles are more ratty and you can't expect people to open up to you just because you aren't dressed like a thug.

So I wouldn't say they are mean or antisocial exactly, but the only way you get to know people is by joining their group. That can happen everywhere, but it's just really magnified in Sac and if you don't understand that you will get a very bad impression. As for me, I just don't have the patience for that and I prefer a more spontaneous life.

[wburg]

If most of your time is spent in Roseville, well, that explains it. Insta-suburbs are seldom seething incubators of creative weirdness. Neither are TED Talks, for that matter--they're pretty much events for business types who want to add a certain patina of creativity but don't want to be considered too outrageous, no matter what city you're in. On the other hand, just a couple blocks from that TED Talk was the Art Hotel event, where thousands of people lined up for hours to visit a short-term exhibit of cutting-edge art in a building scheduled for demolition, and a couple of dozen art galleries and event spaces within a mile of the TED held Second Saturday events a lot farther into the weirdness spectrum than a few hundred suits talking about real estate or the tech market or whatever.

When you said "weirdness" at first I had a mental image of, perhaps, a furry who was upset that showing up at work dressed in their "fursona" wasn't well-received. Admittedly, Sacramentans tend to not have the San Francisco tendency to scream LOOK AT ME I'M A FREAK all the dang time (although hyper-gentrification is slowly shaking all of the freaks into Oakland, or at least slowing their usual pilgrimage in San Francisco's direction, making SF less weird by the day, as it is also doing in Portland, Austin and other traditional weirdness enclaves.) Nor do we exhibit Los Angeles' wealth-facilitating eccentricity or the contrived weirdness of the movie/TV/music industry. Nor do we even exhibit the Stepford-like weirndess of hyper-normality you find in San Jose and San Diego (Liberal Republicans? Weird.) Sacramentans tend to be quieter about their weirdness, like the little old lady who runs a boarding house, poisons her tenants, and buries them in the backyard. Once you get to know us, there's plenty of weirdness in Sacramento--but it's below the surface, rather than being right up front where everyone can see it, like our underground sidewalks.

And you wouldn't be the first southern California transplant to get upset by Sacramento's lack of shallowness; a poster here a while back got infuriated because they drove around Roseville in their fancy luxury car and didn't receive the public adulation he felt he deserved. Another got mad because nobody recognized his designer dress shirt when he went out to dinner. Poor babies! Now, generalizations are dangerous and usually inaccurate, and I'm sure there are plenty of native Sacramentans who are shallow, designer-obsessed greedheads who are only impressed by wealth and fame (or, for example, new sports arenas.) But overall I think most people in this region would take the accusation "Sacramentans don't pay attention to appearances and don't sum you up based on looks" as a compliment. Thanks for the compliment!

[eureka1]

OP, your post makes no sense at all. When you grow up, you'll realize it.

[NomadicOne]

When you said "weirdness" at first I had a mental image of, perhaps, a furry who was upset that showing up at work dressed in their "fursona" wasn't well-received. Admittedly, Sacramentans tend to not have the San Francisco tendency to scream LOOK AT ME I'M A FREAK all the dang time (although hyper-gentrification is slowly shaking all of the freaks into Oakland, or at least slowing their usual pilgrimage in San Francisco's direction, making SF less weird by the day, as it is also doing in Portland, Austin and other traditional weirdness enclaves.)

What I mean is:
-Talking about a book you read.
-Talking about a new theory of physics or human evolution.
-Telling an off-beat joke or having a sense of humor.
-Talking about the state's financial situation in anything less than beaming terms.
-Mentioning your online bank that doesn't charge you overdraft fees. Even in a situation where they can benefit from what you are sharing, they will just look at you like you're crazy.
-A hot investment tip that isn't run-of-the-mill knowledge. Not so much that they disagree, but it wasn't on the TV.
-A new way to make money on the internet.
-Meeting someone at a coffee shop to draw up a business plan on a napkin.
-Encouraging someone to dream big who you believed in, and who already has a little bit of success. This bit me hard. I was not asking for anything and I was not telling them what to do. It was like they felt it would be "uppity" of them to even think in those terms.
-Mentioning a certain school you went to, in extremely understated terms that could not be considered bragging in any way. I had one guy who was a lawyer blow up on me when he found this out. I asked his friends what I did to enrage him, and they said I inadvertently humiliated him.
-Talking about anything other than what was on some reality show last night, or what mutual friends or coworkers did the other week. Every conversation revolves around this.

There is just an extreme indifference and lack of curiosity for anything outside a very bland and limited scope. Life is about getting a funny haircut and working for the state. If you have any thoughts outside that scope, people will be extremely patronizing.