Why exactly are people up north so.... mean?

A lot of challenging opinions being thrown around here. I am concerned because it directly implicates people from my home. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928174454AAvfa1G

Really? I haven't been to the South much (besides Houston and San Antonio in Texas), and I live in New York. I will tell you that the Northerners are a little more crude, but that's because they're under FAR more stress than the South. Also, the Southerners are definitely more racist.
Source(s):
Being a New Yorker.

northerners are a lot ruder and that is a motherfucking fact

being racist is a great stress reliever

no sweet iced tea.

I don't think northerners are that rude but I've never really been to the south. I mean, I lived in Florida but I don't think that really counts. Maybe one day I'll go somewhere in the south and be surprised by how nice ppl are. That would be pretty awesome.

people in the south have a lot more in the way of "manners" ime.

also my main question here is what part of the country is the most stressful to live in

prison

I'm pretty big on manners/politeness and have just always though most ppl are assholes. Maybe I just live in the wrong region.

I'm from CT and I've noticed that people from Rhode Island Are quite snobbish. And people from big cities such as NYC or Boston are just plain mean. You should have visited CT., or at least CT.'s "Quiet Corner". We're nicer :-D

Ian since you're from Rhode Island but live in NY, the lady quoted above pretty much thinks you're an awful person.

I know wtf. I am kind of snobbish and mean though :\

Southern rudeness just goes underground, or gets expressed from moving pickup trucks. Southern hospitality.

Although, to be honest, my friends' parents and folks in Knoxville are all really, genuinely nice and polite and hospitable.

people in the south are nicer in a more obvious and, to my yankee mind, fake way. in the north we don't want to have a conversation with the guy at 711 and he doesn't want to have a conversation with me. he doesn't care how my day is and so he doesn't ask. and i don't especially feel like telling him, so it works out. people in the south are just indifferent, they just hide it better.

some people from the north are suspicious two-faced pricks and it pisses them off to live that way.

y'all have a nice night!

I am from the north and other northerners are always telling me I am too nice.

southerners want to stick their noses into everyone's business. fuck them.

fuck you and the horse you rode in on OH WAIT YOU LIVE IN THE NORTH YOU DON'T HAVE A HORSE BOO YAH

(<3)

a good friend of mine, born and raised in the south, moved to ny for a couple years. when he moved back to texas i asked him if he'd learned any doogie howser-style life lessons while he was in ny. his answer--

"i think everybody should spend some time living in the south to learn some fucking manners, man"

why would we want horses? they poop.

so do neighbors, for that matter

this is how i break it down to an extent:

ppl in the south and west probably have more manners and are more likely more likely to go out of their way being "nice."

but this does not mean ppl in the north are "mean"--maybe they're just more efficient.

ive noticed no particular uptick in manners on my visits to the south - and id like to mention that its rather impolite to point out the bad manners of others

jhoshea! the finest of southern belles <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

i don't think people from the mid-atlantic states are much like new england yankees at all, but i know southerners are very comfortable stereotyping groups so i don't try to enlighten them about the differences ; )

kerm aren't you from scotland or something

kerm /= kerr

i've been around some and you're all a bunch of assholes tbf

the first time i was in new orleans i thought it was pretty charming how everyone i walked by on the street would make eye contact and say good day or whatever but after about the 12th time i just wanted to keep fuckin walking

did anyone say "sir" to you?

no i am not a knight, even in new orleans

A couple of my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddads were from Scotland but we've been in North Carolina for 300 years WHEN WILL YOU ACCEPT US, AMERICA???

What about Midwesterners? Are they "nicer" than Southerners?

maybe a little less nice than Southerners but still nothing like East Coaster Northerers

well I know they are nicer than us mean Yankee bastards.

I was crossing the street and some lady shouted out from her car "are you gay or what, kid?" It wasn't very polite of her.

I blame emo music for the continued emasculation of skinny dudes who don't brush their hair

Maybe she was confused and thought she was up north.

"am i up north? oh well, better play it safe"

midwesterners are more fake and insipid than southerners

really?? i would say the opposite, like every midwesterner i've met is super sincere and nice.

nope that is a cover for their emptiness

southerners whittle all the live long day which explains why they are less tense

FYI the interactions of TVs 'The Golden Girls' tells you everything you need to know about the different regions of America

nm fake is totally the wrong word

it all depends what you mean by nice. someone told me when i moved here, new yorkers are nice. they're not polite, but they're nice. there's a really beautiful outward friendliness in the south and out west that is manners etc which is absent in NY at least, but this is stranger-to-stranger combat. people are fundamentally as nice, it just takes longer for them to show it. and sometimes it is nice that it unravels and is slowly manifested.

we are all reflections of our insipid terrain, it can't be helped

i'm sorry i said a mean thing about midwesterners but i can't help it bc i am a northerner

Hahahahaha oh man. I like to tell the story about going to what passes for a chi-chi ladies' cocktail party last summer at the yacht club and someone had brought a slab of brie, which was AWESOME, but it was served COLD and with the rinds cut off. Because that's how we do it in Michigan.

yeah that's what i mean. people are just so satisfied with stuff that kind of sucks. i didn't really believe in people being different based on geography before i spent 3 yrs in ohio and then i started to understand. they always thought i was weird, like "how did you know about that" kind of thing xp

i don't mean like material things because i like cheap stuff too

like cheap safeway coffee!!!!!

rite

you get to the land of strip malls and WalMarts and stuff, and then you might as well be in Ohio.

ime this is like anywhere outside of urban centers

yeah everywhere's like that now

shopping plazas w/ a wal-mart, target, best buy, stop n shop, dick's sporting goods etc are pretty much everywhere. u find that shit off i-95 right outside of NYC

in the northeast there is much less of that which is one of the good things

yeah they are everywhere but the number/density of strip malls in ohio was kind of shocking

i think i recall a northeastern poet somewhere, discussing driving past a stop and shop when it's late at night though

could be just that i wasn't familiar with the suburbs as much as in ny but if i ever went through them it was like wasn't i just here, am i going in a circle

in ny and boston the inner ring suburbs are older and not all subdivisiony - many of them are quite lovely in faact

I'm from a town so small that we don't rly have strip malls or WalMart or that kind of thing. It's a mixed blessing. A) you just cannot GET shit there unless it's grown or made locally or something, but B) you can get shit that's grown or made locally.

We have one strip mall, but it's by the highway where no one goes except to take the highway. It's cool because being a town that borders on two lakes means that growth is clustered around the waterfronts, and the expressway doesn't GO to the waterfront. So the town is mostly focused on an area that isn't built up, and kind of CAN'T be built up.

Anyway the point is that even the Midwest has many levels of being northern vs eastern vs Great Plains-y.

yeah my town used to have no big chains at all but they just built a monster strip mall right over the border in the next town--my mom works there now.

xp yea that's definitely true. i've met people from nebraska who are all 'f that, ur not from the midwest, ohio is a great lakes state'

nebraska gets pretty western in some parts

Ohio & Indiana are weird because, well, IN has about 3 miles of coastline and the rest of the state is cornfields, and Ohio has lots of Lake Erie coast but I know nothing about its beaches or waterfront quality of life, I have the impression a lot of it is industrial or post-industrial? The entire rest of the state is the heartland of the Rust Belt.

yea, and there's places in s. ohio that feel really, really southern xp

xp there are a few boating areas w/ marinas and all that and some summer homes but one of the big tragedies of, say, cleveland is that the water front is so underdeveloped

or was developed into industrial zones instead of recreational

rustbelt.jpg

http://studentweb.cre8vty.com/art335w08students/project2/wood/images/development%20photos/rustbelt.jpg

ohio history is v. interesting imo http://www.coalcampusa.com/rustbelt/oh/oh.htm

it'd be cool to check out a bunch of industrial ruins in a way

i can oblige anyone a tour of industrial ruins if you buy me beer

also, believe or not, Lake Erie is the largest fresh water fishery in the world

Yeah, now that it's safe to eat fish from there again. o_O

price of perch is ridic though

that site harbl posted is pretty fascinating

too cold to be mean here

cold doesn't make you meaner?

no you have to expend all your energy on not dying, so you arent left with luxuries like sneering and baby-kicking

fair enough!

I was crossing the street and some lady shouted out from her car "are you gay or what, kid?" It wasn't very polite of her.

― morning bells are ringing, zing ban rong zing ban rong (Curt1s Stephens)

Ha Curtis I wanted to post that last night when people were talking about the friendly south but you weren't online and I didn't want to do so without your permission/couldn't remember exactly what happened.

If you're a skinny dude anywhere outside a couple of cities, people call you a "total homo". American M E N must be fat, ugly, and stupid, and they most certainly shouldn't dress passed the age of 6 years old

uh

burt?

that troll attempt was fat, ugly, and stupid.

more like speculum

"total homo"

In the south people are very friendly, unless you don't resemble them, and not just in dress. If there is anything about you that they might think of as being "off", they might still be friendly towards you, but it won't be honest.

I've worked all over the south in the past 3 years and i found this too be true of almost every state I have lived in or been passing through.

people are exactly the same everywhere

equally dumb, equally mean

or equally smart, equally nice

im an optimist

hence

When I lived in NYC , strangers who I shared nothing in common with friendlier than southern people; and at least the ones who weren't, didn't pretend.

the first half of that is definitely my exp. of nyc, the last half is definitely not