Rural US people posting online like to say stuff like "we're not insane hillbillies, we're just regular folks! c'mon down sometime, we'll show you real rural hospitality!" but seriously do not fall for this
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Any drive, any nature walk, any perambulation outside the city, if you pass by a house, a lunatic WILL come out and threaten to call the sheriff and/or kill you. I speak from personal experience
rural folks will respond "oh you don't understand, we really are hospitable, it's just that there's RULES for how you approach us" what are you, the fucking fae? apparently the rules include "DON'T BE ON A PUBLIC ROAD" and "DON'T PAUSE TO LOOK AT A TREE"
I cannot count the times I've stopped my car to take a piss in an empty field & some granny clampett looking motherfucker comes screeching out of the moods, filming me with a cellphone "THIS HERE'S MY PROPERTY!!! I'M REPORTING YOU TO THE SHERIFF!!!! I'M WRITING DOWN YOUR LICENSE PLATE NUMBER!!!!"
Rural US people be all "you don't understand, you might be a hostile trespasser, so we have to react like that!" gosh i wonder why all your trespassers might be hostile? could it be b/c you constantly threaten to kill every stranger you see?
and I'm a p nondescript looking white guy! I know a lot of Black and visibly queer people who absolutely REFUSE to go out and experience nature because of the very threat of US yokels. What a fucking country!
So I had a brief stint in US rural politics while looking like a lost vkei bandman and everything you say here is true. I genuinely don't get where the rural hospitality stuff comes from because even a lot of the people we worked with had a very heightened fear of their neighbors.
The funny (sad) thing is that when they say that they think they mean it! They’re thinking of their friends and people they know, not the complete strangers that they’re so fucking terrified of.
Once we went down the wrong back road accidentally when going to visit my aunt (she lives on a farm) and a guy with a shotgun came and talked to my dad. This probably happened when I was like… 13?
Yep, haven’t had recent personal experience, buy I have heard enough people talk about what guns they bring out when someone unknown to them shows up. If your response to a car pulling into your driveway or stopping on the road nearby is to brandish firearms, no wonder you think cities are scary.
Sire, as someone who is regularly summoned into Appalachia against their will, I can tell you that they think anyone who regularly bathes is a hostile City Folk. Even if you live in these isolated hellholes, they will call the cops or try to run you over every goddamn day no matter what.
And the folks who are really itching to shoot someone as a means to feel something know this and spend worrying amounts of time fantasizing about being able to do it.
I remember at one point channers had made a meme out of black people saying they "dindu nuffin" during encounters with police but there's absolutely a rural white version of this called Taking Your Shirt Off and Yelling "I know MAHRAAHTS"
It's my personal crackpot theory that super rural stuff just don't like the unknown. They truly think the culture war stuff is new because growing up, the weird kids ran off to San Francisco/NYC or died to liver poisoning due to drinking themselves to death
So they see someone on TV that is different and they can't comprehend it, because the world is smaller now because of everything, and people being more welcoming, but they still only know the thousand people in town, and that's all they need, Dammit. Tiny island in a massive ocean thinking.
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In England and Wales it’s some kind of civil wrong but the cops can’t do anything generally.
Plus there’s public footpaths everywhere so people are used to it.
In Scotland you have a right to roam anywhere apart from e.g. people’s gardens.