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Pop Culture

A viral post argues East Coast folks are better people even if they aren't as 'nice' as those out West

It's sparked a "nice vs. kind" debate from people across the country.

OnlMaps/Twitter, Jordan Green/Twitter, Mike DeAngelo/Twitter

Having lived in small towns and large cities in the Pacific Northwest, Southwest, and Midwest, and after spending a year traveling around the U.S. with my family, I've seen first-hand that Americans have much more in common than not. I've also gotten to experience some of the cultural differences, subtle and not-so-subtle, real and not-so-real, that exist in various parts of the country.

Some of those differences are being discussed in a viral thread on Twitter. Self-described "West coaster" Jordan Green kicked it off with an observation about East coasters being kind and West coasters being nice, which then prompted people to share their own social experiences in various regions around the country.

Green wrote:

"When I describe East Coast vs West Coast culture to my friends I often say 'The East Coast is kind but not nice, the West Coast is nice but not kind,' and East Coasters immediately get it. West Coasters get mad.

Niceness is saying 'I'm so sorry you're cold,' while kindness may be 'Ugh, you've said that five times, here's a sweater!' Kindness is addressing the need, regardless of tone.

I'm a West Coaster through and through—born and raised in San Francisco, moved to Portland for college, and now live in Seattle. We're nice, but we're not kind. We'll listen to your rant politely, smile, and then never speak to you again. We hit mute in real life. ALOT.

So often, we West Coasters think that showing *sympathy* or feeling *empathy* is an act of kindness. Sadly, it's really just a nice act. Kindness is making sure the baby has a hat. (s/o to breenewsome and BlackAmazon)

When you translate this to institutions or policy, you'll see alot of nice words being used, & West Coast liberals/radicals are really good at *sounding* nice. But I've seen organizers & activists from other places get frustrated because nothing happens after ALOT of talk.

Nothing happens after the pronoun check-ins and the icebreakers. It's rare we make sure that people's immediate needs are addressed. There's no kindness. You have people show up to meetings hungry, or needing rides home, and watching those with means freeze when asked to help.

As we begin to 'get back a sense of normalcy' or 're-calibrate' to what people in Blue States™ think is Right™ and Just™, I want us to keep in mind the difference between Niceness and Kindness. If something sounds nice, doesn't mean that it's kind."

Of course, there are genuinely kind and surface nice people everywhere you go, so no one should take these observations as a personal affront to them individually. Generalizations that lead to stereotypes are inherently problematic, and broad strokes like "East coast" and "West coast" are also somewhat meaningless, so they should taken with a grain of salt as well.

In reality, a small town in South Carolina is probably more culturally similar to a small town in Eastern Oregon than it is to New York City, and there are some strong differences between various subregions as well. A more specific cultural comparison, such as "big cities on the West coast vs. big cities in the Northeast" might be more accurate as far as generalizations go, but regardless, many people related to Green's observations based on their own experiences.

To kick things off, a slew of responses poured in from people describing how New Yorkers can be cold on the surface while simultaneously reaching out their hand to help you.

Several people explained that the hustle required to afford the expense of living in New York explains why people skip the niceties. It's about valuing people's time; wasting it with nice words is ruder than just quickly helping out and then moving on.

Many people chimed in with agreement with the original post (even some Canadians confirming that their East/West differences aligned with ours).

"No sense of urgency" is definitely a West coast vibe, but is generally viewed a positive out here. And "inconveniencing everyone around them" might be a subjective observation. Maybe.

Plenty of people with bicoastal experience weighed in with their stories of how their experiences lined up with the basic premise of the thread, though.

Though certainly not universally true, the tendency for West coasters to be more hands-off might extend back to the frontier days. The pioneer and gold rush mindset was necessarily individualistic and self-sufficient. In my experience, West coasters assume you don't need help unless you directly ask for it. But people don't ask because of the individualistic and self-sufficient thing, so automatic helpfulness just hasn't become part of the dominant culture.

Things got even more interesting once the South and Midwest entered the chat.

But the takes on warm/nice/kind thing varied quite a bit.

One thing that seems quite clear if you read through the various responses to the thread is that specific states and cities seem to have their own cultures that don't break down as simply as East/West/Midwest/South. There's an entire book about how the U.S. can actually be subdivided into 11 different regions that are almost like nations unto themselves. Even this map from 1940 included 34 different cultural regions in the U.S.

And don't even get a Californian started on the differences between Northern CA, Southern CA, and the Central Valley. "Culture" can even be narrowed down even to specific neighborhoods, and people's experiences and perceptions vary for all kinds of reasons, so once again, generalizations only go so far before they fall flat.

If you're curious about what the data says about all of this, a cursory search of surveys about which states are the kindest brings up a fairly mixed bag, but people seem to find Minnesota quite friendly. A Wallethub ranking of charitability by state based on 19 factors including volunteerism also placed Minnesota at number one, followed by Utah, Maryland, Oregon, and Ohio. Pretty hard to make a regional generalization with those states.

Then again, there's the whole "Minnesota nice" thing, which brings us full circle back to the original thread.

So many elements go into the culture of a place, from population density to the history of settlement to the individual personalities of the people who make someplace their home. And nothing is set in stone—the atmosphere of a place can change over time, as anyone who's visited a city a decade or two apart can attest.

One thing that's true, no matter where we live, is that we play a role in molding the culture of our immediate surroundings. If we want where we live to be friendlier, we can be friendlier ourselves. If we want to see people help one another, we can serve as that example. We might stand out, but we also might inspire others who yearn for the same thing.

"Be the change" might seem a bit cliche, but it truly is the key to shifting or world in the way we want it to go, no matter what part of the country—or the world—we live in.


This article originally appeared on 01.22.21

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culture
Joy

Read the powerful, viral note this dad wrote to his makeup artist son's bully.

Internet, don't you dare mess with Manny Sr.





This is YouTuber and makeup guru Manny Gutierrez.

Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for People.

He's taking the beauty world by storm, one tweet at a time.

Maybelline just recruited Gutierrez to be the face of its new mascara campaign — the very first time the role has ever been given to a man.

From a promotional standpoint, the move was a smart one. Gutierrez has amassed millions of social media fans who follow him for his expert makeup advice and hilarious online presence.

Photo by Charley Gallay/Getty Images for Maybelline New York.

But with all the extra fanfare lately, Gutierrez, who is openly gay, has attracted some unwanted attention too.

On Jan. 6, 2017, conservative blogger Matt Walsh tweeted out a photo of Gutierrez, writing, "Dads, this is why you need to be there to raise your sons."

Dads, this is why you need to be there to raise your sons.pic.twitter.com/8ybirgppKi

Needless to say, Walsh's tweet — which racked up nearly 5,000 favorites and over 1,600 retweets — encapsulates a whole lot of bigotry and ignorance in less than 140 characters.

Walsh's rhetoric wasn't just harmful, though, it was factually incorrect too.

Gutierrez's dad, "Manny Sr.," has been there for the social media star.

In fact, he's been one of Gutierrez's biggest supporters.

After Walsh's example of fragile masculinity went viral, Manny Sr. — who works for his son and is "so proud" of him — decided to throw in his two cents. He wrote a message addressed to Walsh and asked Gutierrez to share it on his social media accounts:

My dad is a fucken SAVAGE, I can't with him pic.twitter.com/iWceEmZ6L4

"Not only am I proud of what [my son] has accomplished, but I'm more proud of the person he has become," Manny Sr. wrote.

"I know the words you speak are from lack of knowing anybody from the LGBT community," he wrote. "If you did, you would soon realize they are some of the most real and kind hearted individuals that walk this planet of ours."

Fortunately, Manny's tweet with his dad's message has spread much further than Walsh's original hateful comment, garnering more than 12,000 retweets and nearly 60,000 favorites.

Gutierrez's dad's love for his son reflects a broader shift in parents who are accepting and supportive of their LGBTQ children.

While the popularity of same-sex marriage doesn't necessarily indicate progress on all queer issues, it does serve as a general barometer to gauge Americans' evolving attitudes on LGBTQ rights. And in that sense, we've come a long way.

Not only has national approval of marriage equality trended upward in recent years — surpassing 60% in 2016 — but, more specifically, parents of a certain generation are coming around to the idea too: A 2016 WedInsights study found that 60% of married same-sex couples reported having emotional support from their parents — up from 46% in 2013.

There are many more Manny Sr.'s out there.

In response to the letter, fans applauded Gutierrez's dad.

Whether it was through an abundance of exclamation points...

...attempts to recruit Gutierrez's dad for public office...

Can we have your dad for president?!

...or sending him a simple message of love via hug.

Fans loved Manny Sr.'s message of inclusion. And that message, of course, wasn't lost on Gutierrez either.

"He's the best," Gutierrez wrote in response to one fan. "[I'm] so lucky to have him."


This article was originally published on 1.18.17


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Pop Culture

A Twitter user asked people to share the most random facts they know. The answers didn't disappoint.

Why do people even know this stuff?

via PixaBay / Twitter

People started a viral thread about the most random facts they know

Certain people have an innate ability to remember random facts. They are great at trivia but can also be insufferable know-it-alls.

So why are some people better at recalling random facts than others? Researchers in Europe believe that it's because their brains are more efficiently wired than other people's.

"We assume that more efficient networking of the brain contributes to better integration of pieces of information and thus leads to better results in a general knowledge test," biopsychologist Erhan Genc, from Ruhr University Bochum, said according to Science Alert.


Brittany Packnett Cunningham, an MSNBC contributor, activist, and co-host of Crooked Media's "Pod Save The People," wanted to harvest the mind hive on Twitter and find the most random fact that anyone knows.

"I mean RANDOM random," she wrote.

The answers ranged from the utterly pointless to the truly amazing. There was also a generous helping of utterly disgusting answers thrown in the mix.

Almost every answer deserved the follow-up question: "Why in the world do you know that?"

Here are some of the most random responses to Brittany Packnett Cunningham's question: "What's the most random fact you know?"

Most were utterly useless, but somehow still fascinating.

Muhammad is statistically the most common first name on the planet while Wang is the most common last name on the planet. But I still haven’t met anyone named Muhammad Wang.

The only word in the English language with all vowels+Y in alpha order is “facetiously”

Queen Elizabeth is one of the only people in the world who doesn’t need a passport to travel. Everyone else in the royal family does.

NYE goes hard

In DNA, mushrooms are more similar to animals than they are to plants.

Some were pretty darn cool.

London Tube platforms have different tilings because when the Tube was originally built, a lot of people who used it were illiterate, and the different tilings helped them know what station they were at.pic.twitter.com/Yw8e04zCJA

Some were thought-provoking.

You've never seen your own face. You've seen a reflection, and you've seen pictures, but you've never actually seen your own face!

When you look at a flower, some of the photons that entered your eye just ended a 100,000-year journey from the center of the sun. Nobody else sees them. Just you. 10% of THOSE will give up their energy to cause a chemical reaction that—literally—makes them a part of you.https://twitter.com/MsPackyetti/status/1221992423905202176 …

Elephants are the only animals other than humans who have something like funerals. They cover the dead elephant gently with leaves and branches, then stand around in a circle for hours making sad noises.

There was a day when your parents put you down and never picked you up again.

Others were disturbing.

Humans have a coccyx (aka a tailbone) which is the remnant of, you guessed it, a vestigial tail. One of our several vestigial features.

The act of touching glasses to cheers comes from medieval suspicions of poisoning each other, so youd slam mugs together to spill each others drinks into your own to show trust you werent trying to kill them. Europeans man...

Male dolphins can ejaculate as far as 10' and with such force it can kill a human if that human was foolish enough to attempt zoophilic relations with dolphin.

Artificial raspberry and strawberry flavoring comes from the anal glands of a beaver.

And some could be helpful down the road. You just never know.

If you are attacked by a gator and your arm is in its jaws, push, don't pull. If you can push the flap open at the back of its throat, water rushes in and it starts to drown and will open jaws, hopefully releasing you.

The Phenomena: "The Doorway Effect" When you forget the reason you enter a different room. To retrieve the reason, walk backwards w/o turning around. It can trigger the memory.


This article originally appeared on 02.06.20

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random facts
Identity

Mom has the most hilarious response to her daughter's gay friend asking to sleep over

The mother handled it fabulously.

Image created from @maymaybarclay Twitter page.

The courage to speak up to join in the fun.

Meet Mason Brian Barclay, a teen and self-described "very homosexual male." He recently wanted to attend a sleepover at his "new best friend" Houston's house, because teens are gonna teen. But he's a boy, and everyone knows boys aren't allowed to attend girls' sleepovers, because of cooties/patriarchal norms.

So he behaved more maturely than most adults, and crafted a long text message to Houston's mom, Mrs. Shelton, in which he politely asked for permission to attend Houston's sleepover.


"I think the common meaning behind only allowing the same sex to share sleepovers is due to the typical interest in the opposite sex, when, in this case, I do not like the opposite sex," he explained in the text.


Mrs. Shelton's response was so good that Mason tweeted it out and it went viral:

"Hmm. Well my husband is hot. Should I worry?" she responded.

via GIPHY

Evidently Mason found Mrs. Shelton's text hilarious. So does Twitter.

And others are just wondering if the sleepover is on, or not??

Others need to know if Houston's dad lives up to the hype:

This article originally appeared on 11.26.18

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