I cannot believe I am having a Twitter argument over small-town values.

[alarimer]

All of this started when I replied to a tweet from Richard Dawkins. All I say was, "Sadly, in small-town America, curiosity and intelligence might as well be a mark of the beast." Admittedly over the top, but it has been my experience that curiosity especially is frowned upon in many smallish places, probably not just in America.

Dawkins retweeted this, which was nice (I'm stuck in Twitter jail with like 20 followers) and was retweeted and favorited a bunch of times. This made me feel internet famous for about five minutes.

And I tried to really have a reasonable conversation about this. I really do feel that some people elevate small-town values as superior to any other, when really, there is a deep negative side to those values. which was really my point all along.

Somehow this has devolved into a discussion of why living in small town is better than anywhere else. I just fail to see it. Unless that small town has an university associated with it, there is almost nothing to do in many small towns (or even smallish towns, like this one of 25,000 people). Young people, if they are ambitious at all, have to leave to find careers. Decent jobs just aren't there.

Here at least, it is an hour to a movie theater, decent shopping or museums (if you are into that), but at least that isn't very far away. But this small town is also damned expensive compared to the suburbs. Despite the fact that there are several grocery stores here (including the hated Walmart), groceries are expensive. I can save money by driving an hour to Trader Joe's, even counting the gas.

Rental housing is more expensive because there is less of it. I haven't tried to buy a house, mostly because I think it will be damned hard to unload it when I do finally move.

I think that old song "Harper Valley PTA" got it about right with regard to small towns. For everyone preaching small-town values, you'll find a mayor on the take or a police chief sleeping with his deputy's wife or some such.

And, what irks me most (and this may be particular to southern towns, although I don't really know) is that the first question people asked of me when I moved here is where I go to church and were appalled when I said I didn't.

No, I see nothing superior about living in a small town at all.

[pipi_k]

1. I live in one of those small towns...

and what I like about it is that even if you don't know your neighbors, if they're walking down the road while you're driving by, you both wave to each other.

If you get stuck in snow or need help, someone passing by will stop and help. In stark contrast to times I've had a flat tire in the city (once in a parking garage) and numerous men just went right by, watching me struggle trying to get it changed. Which I eventually did...all by myself, but it wasn't easy.

I go to breakfast at the same little family owned restaurant each Sunday AM and see the same people and we have a blast chatting and cracking jokes. It's something I look forward to each week.

It's cool to know the fire and police chiefs, to sometimes see them at breakfast or run into them at the town market.

And yes...people here are VERY curious. And intelligent. People are interested in politics, and not just on a local level, either.

People in a small town know that their safety...even their very survival sometimes... depends on working together with others.

That's what I can say about living in a small rural town. Granted, it probably wouldn't work for everyone, and there are good things about living in a city, too, like being close to various resources.

I just prefer living here in a place where city people often come a few times a year to enjoy peace and quiet. I get to be here all year long.

[alarimer]

2. That has not been my experience

In fact it has pretty much been the opposite.

Trying dating in a small town as a woman with a Master's in science. It is beyond bleak. I'm not so desperate, though, that I will dumb myself down, just to appeal to small town redneck assholes who hate smart people.

[MiddleFingerMom]

10. I lived in a small-town area 20 miles outside of Philadelphia for almost 20 years.

.
.
.
For several of them, I had a fantastic FWB situation with a woman I still miss (she left for
Connecticut to get married). When I met her, she was going back for her THIRD Master's
in Psychology (clinical, social, occupational). She had worked in the first two and burned
out pretty quickly.
.
After a while, she told me that most men would disappear once they found out that she
had that education and background -- afraid that she was "diagnosing" them all the time.
.
I laughed and told her that, WHATEVER their education level, most folks who knew me
knew that I was... different, if not... special.
.
I told her there was probably nothing she could tell me about myself that I hadn't heard
many times over.
.
She was doing a thesis on aphrodisiacs and I was her unofficial "test subject".
.
.
.
JEEBUS, but I miss that woman!!!!!
.
.
.

[trof]

3. I live in a town of 18,000. I wonder where you are?

The closest multiplex movie theater is 15 minutes away.
Granted, we're near a destination vacation area (Gulf Shores, AL) so that does make a difference.

Our mayor and city council run unaffiliated (neither dem or repug) but I have a good idea of how they lean.

I am the campaign treasurer for the first black woman elected to the council.

And she was unopposed in her last election.


I couldn't judge if our 'values' are any better or worse than big cities.
That's kind of a subjective call anyway.
I'm in a VERY red county in a red state.

I grew up in Birmingham. Since I left the 'big city' I've lived in small towns.
Crystal lake, IL (near Chicago), Merrimack, NH (near Boston), and now Foley, AL (near Pensacola and Mobile).

So the small towns I've lived in were always in fairly close proximity to larger cities.

[alarimer]

4. In a small town in NC near the VA border.

Va. Beach is about an hour away. Kitty Hawk is an hour away. Not that those are insurmountable distances. But I love having things close by. There isn't even a bookstore in this town. It has a high crime rate (I don't believe small towns are safer than the suburbs, for instance). I know nothing about politics here and, honestly, I am not interested in anything that goes on here. When my atheist friends are afraid to be "out" about either their politics or their atheism, well, that just says it all to me.

Personally, I could care less about fitting it. I don't date anyone who lives here because I don't want to get stuck living in this dump. I've lived in other small towns. I went to college in Alabama and no one could ever pay me enough money to ever live there again.

[Tobin S.]

5. I can see why you are in an argument now.

[noamnety]

6. It sounds like you've taken your personal experiences

and made them into stereotypes that you're having a hard time shaking now.

I had the same values when I lived in a small town as when I lived in a bigger city. Same with my daughter. I don't know where you got the idea that people are more likely to have affairs or abuse their power or be criminals based on the size of the town they live in, but it seems pretty ridiculous to me, right up there with deciding whole groups of people are lazy, or criminals. People are individuals.

The only thing that's really different that I've seen in small towns (at least rural towns) that relates to values is that people are more self-sufficient. We are more likely to grow our own food, and therefore more likely to know how to process that food to put it up for winter.

And because of community size, things are likely to run a little differently - more based on personal connections, less on structures of authoritarianism. (See Dunbar's Number.) That doesn't change the morality or values of people, but smaller communities do change the nature of how people interact.

Stereotypes, though - those are bad things and you should make an effort not to promote them.

[hobbit709]

7. Depends on the small town.

If you're new in some towns where everyone acts like Gladys Kravitz it can get pretty bothersome.

[truegrit44]

8. Oh man I can relate!

I live rurally near a small town of 3,500 and it being in a redneck bible belt area it is NOT good.

I have been here 10 years and only know a handful of people and most just because they are clerks in the stores. My husband and I are pretty well very reclusive, but I have heard the same rumors of the local cops doing tons of illegal things, they courts, banks etc all have the good ol boy mentality and don't favor those that aren't well known or have grown up here.

We do go to garage sales at times and have been asked first off many times what church we go to. When I say we don't do church (wouldn't dare saw we are atheists) they take 2 steps back and discontinue any conversation. I have lived near other small towns also but again in more the south and find it to be very unfriendly. Now when I lived out west and again always very rural but the nearest small towns there we not near as bad.

Just my own take on it from personal experience.

[hunter]

9. I've lived in two small towns that were okay but both had ancient non-USA cultures.

The ordinary small towns USA I've lived were not so nice.

My favorite experience as a kid was when I'd gotten mouthy with a teacher. Since our family didn't have a telephone this teacher stopped by the house to chat with my parents. They had a grand time, like some sort cultural exchange.

I've also been a clueless but innocuous white guy living on an Indian Reservation. Not bad. Worst they found an empty wine box in our trash. Oops, sorry, we drank it all ourselves, didn't share, and we bought it in Albuquerque. We won't do that again. And we didn't.

As a teen my sister once spent the summer with our small town USA cousin. My sister says the kids drank, had sex, and pretended to be virtuous in the church community. She was appalled. She bought condoms for the most clueless. Oh, she's from California. Slut. That explains it..

Religious hypocrisy is born in environments like this. The boys only talked about cars and trucks, even when they were talking to girls. Small town guys are stupid. Any brains at all they'd have talked about horses. Most of the women in my family are horse women. I'm absolutely certain the first horses were domesticated by women. Any mean horse that might have killed me pays attention to the women in my family. I still don't know why. But I pay attention to the women in my family too. It's magic.

This small town cousin later fled for big city California, just like my mom's parents during World War II. My pacifist grandpa refused to hold a gun so they put him to work building Liberty and Victory ships, double shifts. My crazy grandma was pretty good with hot metal too, so by day she worked as a welder, and in the evenings as a party girl dancing with sailors. Party girls and prostitutes were my mom's "daycare."

This cousin's brother still manages the family homestead, but she lives in Hollywood with her character actor spouse. Her dad still owns the old homestead but is, like all of our family. an outsider to the predominately small-town Mormon community. He'd rather be teaching people to ski.

One of my ancestors was a mail order bride imported by the Mormons from Europe. But she didn't like being a second wife so she ran off with a U.S. government surveyor and established a very matriarchal homestead. Sending a bunch of single non-Mormon males out Wild West (even, horrors, Catholics and Jews) was a U.S. government plot to dilute the influence of the emerging Mormon empire. New homesteads here, Mormons need not apply.

My dad's family was Wild West too, but never small town America. They jumped off ship and became entirely new people in Western cities or mines. My dad's dad was a Montana miner and his mom's family Great Earthquake surviving San Francisco. My Montana great grandpa is a mystery. He created himself. He claimed to be of Manx origin, but there are some holes in his story. I think theres a lot of Blarney there. As a moron young tourist I've kissed the Blarney Stone too.

Apparently many of my ancestors jumped off the boat, swam to shore, and ran like hell into the wilderness..

"Nope, never heard of him."

In the days before fingerprints, photographs, and computer databases a person could get away with stuff like that.

[Brigid]

11. I used to live in a small city 70 miles from here.

It isn't exactly a small town, but the small-town vibe is there. Everybody seems to know your business, there is no cultural life (unless you count redneck bars in that category), and no jobs (you don't even want to get me started on my experiences job-hunting there). You can't even get a cab on weekdays because they're all tied up with Medicare runs. The young people with any ambition leave after finishing school; after 40 years of that, there's nothing left but morons. All this has, to put it mildly, shaped my views about small towns.

[white_wolf]

12. I live in a smallish town with university and I still hate it.

I've already decided I'm moving to New York City when I'm able because 1. I love NYC and 2. I am so sick of small towns I could scream. 24 years in one is more than enough to last me several lifetimes.