This headline caught my eye today: "Small Town Culture Shocks In America Go Viral, Answers Are Very Accurate." It's based on a Reddit thread entitled "People who moved from cities to small towns, what was the biggest culture shock?"
As the headlines imply, it's a different lifestyle when people move from urban areas to small towns. Here is what people wrote:
- Of course it matters where you’ve moved but when you enter a restaurant or bar everyone turns to see who’s come in. At first it was off putting then you realize they’re just looking to see if it’s someone they know. :)
- After 5pm it’s effectively a ghost town. Nothing open but one 24 hour gas station.
- The dating pool is ankle deep. Someone has to break up, and we all move over one.
- Having to drive 30 miles for groceries.
- When we moved to our tiny town in northern PA, the biggest shock was that absolutely nothing was open past 7pm, or on the weekends. The library's only open until 4pm during the week, and not at all on the weekend.
- Grocery store employees asked me how my dog, Hailey, was doing.
- The only store within walkable distance only sells liquor, snacks, and lottery tickets
- I lived in Vermont for a time and small town life required a lot more planning. The grocery store was a 45 minute drive, so if you went once a week and forgot something you did without it. Four wheel drive was a must. The people were more friendly and tolerant than I expected. Like the big city, no one really gave a sh*t what other people did. People in the suburbs seem a lot more conformist than people in the city or in rural areas.
- Everyone, and I mean everyone, knowing all of your business.
- Not judging, but the high percentage of very young parents (e.g. first kid at 18, 19, 20).
- I moved to a small town and now I know my neighbor’s cat better than my own family. Life is quieter but the gossip is way more entertaining
- Loss of anonymity. Couldn’t go anywhere without running into people I knew.
- More meth than the Hallmark Channel would have you believe.
- Everybody knowing each other, easier to hear about everyone’s gossip/drama, driving 20+ minutes just to get groceries, and some people do not take kindly to outsiders lol.
- Nobody locks their doors or windows.
- Simple things. Places to eat. Running to a hardware store takes an hour and a half. Where i live we have 2 gas stations. A McDonald's and a Subway.
- Everyone knows everyone else’s business. I am a deeply private person, and I hate this.
- In a small town everyone knows everyone and in a big city no one give a sh*t who anyone else is.
- Grew up outside of Dallas, spent my first 4 years out of college as a field engineer. Holy f*ck. The towns I was sent to barely qualify as villages. Less than 1000 people, dying infrastructure, no signs of investment. Maybe a gas station and corner store if they are lucky, a coffee shop that’s only open until 3pm wouldn’t be shocking. You meet people who have never left the state they were born in, a lot of times they don’t know what exists more then a 4 hour drive away It makes you wonder where our education system failed and why society doesn’t care.
- Your reputation actually matters. If you piss off the wrong person, you can find yourself frozen out of a lot of social events and financial opportunities.
- Parking everywhere is free
- Honestly, how many stupid people there are. They don't stand out as much when it's a big city, but when they're the majority in a small town it's really obvious.
- I moved from a town of 100k to a town of 650 as a kid. The biggest shock was that not only did everyone in town already know we were coming, but they knew all of our names, what grades we were in, etc. It was f*cking creepy in retrospect.
- In the cities nobody cares about what anyone else does. In the small towns everyone is in everyone else’s business. (Generalizing of course)
So let's hear from you if you've moved from big city to small town. What kind of culture shock did you experience?
My father's home town qualifies as this. Many of my relatives still live there. And the comment about the only store in walking business selling liquor/snacks/lottery tickets is accurate. Population of the town is about 700.
ReplyDeleteI am in the process of buying my aunt's house (she had to move to a long term care facility several months ago) and plan to spend summers there. I am looking forward to it, as I have visited the town many times and I love the place.
The city library is only open three days a week - and then only mid-morning to 2pm with an hour closed for lunch.
ReplyDeleteNearly all residents go to church on Sunday.
SJ now in California
When we'd go visit my parents small town in Nebraska (from California) we'd end up in the newspaper.
ReplyDeleteHeh. That used to happen to us, too.
DeleteNow I live in that small town, but it's bigger now, and that local village newspaper was absorbed into the city next door's paper.
Moved to a small town when sons were in middle school 12 years ago. My husband and I will always be considered “Johnny come lately’s,” but our sons have been adopted into the community like native sons. We learned this when my oldest had to fight with the state to change laws that impacted his business. His church and local customers rallied around his cause and they won! Small towns will always have my heart.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in small towns - high school graduating class was 26 students. I was very shy because we were the poorest family, but I wasn't bullied or put down, just left alone. Everyone respected my parents because they were honest, hard working people. When I wanted a car loan the president of the bank OK'd it without any collateral because he knew my parents and their ethics. When I got my RN degree and moved to a city it was a novelty for about a year and then the novelty wore off. I live in a small town again - in Montana - and I love it.
ReplyDeleteHere in Europe we can go to library with our library card, even if there is no personnell. So opening hours are way longer, even if the librarien is present only view hours a day.
ReplyDeleteAs a kid, if you mess up--it gets home before you do
ReplyDeletegrew up in small town Iowa. joined navy right out of high school. spent the next ten years in big cities, mainly on the west coast. then moved back "home".
ReplyDeletethe first thing i noticed was how quiet it was, even during "rush hour". the first week I had trouble sleeping because of the lack of back ground noise.
the next thing was how many stars there were in the night sky. after that, all the little things just kind of fell into place.
I grew up in a small rural town and unfortunately was in a very dysfunctional family with poverty and mental illness. We stuck out and were treated very badly, I’ve had offers to practice medicine as a rural small town physician and, my gosh, I just can’t. Although those communities need care, I don’t think I’ll ever recover from the gossip and people up in your business. It’s never harmless.
ReplyDeleteGrew up in NYC, now live in a town of 3000. It's different in some ways, but in others, not so much. I find that people love to gossip whether it's a small town or a block in NYC. There are some ignorant hicks here which there aren't in NYC but the town has many good qualities.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, very different.
ReplyDeleteNews spreads fast, don’t talk bad about someone behind their back cuz they’ll hear about it.
Sometimes town is closed off to welcoming newcomers, sometimes welcoming.
You’ll want to call the tiny grocery store in town before you drive all the way over to see if they carry an item you want. You find out they don’t but they tell you how to make it from scratch at home.
When you head into the “big city”, plan ahead and run all the errands you can think of so you don’t have to go back too soon.
You asked for responses from those who moved from a big city to a small town and the culture shock, but I went the other way and back again. I much prefer a small town!! I would rather have a lot of people know me and be "up in my business" than be an anonymous nobody in a big city. I had the privilege of growing up in a small town that is largely made up of sincere Christians, however, so your mileage may vary. The smaller town I am in now doesn't have the same distinction, but I still far prefer being "known" than not. And don't get me started on traffic! And noise! And light pollution! And huge buildings that block the sun! Oops, guess I got started...
ReplyDeleteOur town is 4,000 and 55 miles from anything larger (and 200+ from any town over 25,000).
ReplyDeleteYou have to plan town trips, but they are worth it for the lower prices.
We have a hospital in town - owned by the county and subsidized by taxes. And you only go there for minor stuff!
Jonathan
I grew up in a small town, went to a city for college, married a man whose degree was only applicable in small mining towns, and moved back to my home town. Mining became very unstable and we have spent 53 years alternating between small towns and cities.Your list made me laugh -so true! I much prefer the small town, but retired to a city for medical care which is lacking in most rural areas here in AZ.
ReplyDeleteOnly lived in the city for a few months; didn’t like it. Spent the rest of my life in small towns and rural areas; I much prefer rural areas. I don’t care for how much small town folks enjoy judgement and gossip, and will always be an outsider (I was even in the small town I was born in, where my mother grew up and her father could trace his roots all the way back to the founding families). I’m not real tickled with the meth either (that’s just as bad out in the country, but at least it’s farther away).
ReplyDeleteBut they know me and my kids down at the school house, and in 2025 I still feel as safe as anyone can sending them there. Our doctor knows (and treats) my whole family. And honestly, I just plain don’t like people much, so less of them is better.
You couldn’t pay me to live in a city again. I hope I never have to.
The key to understanding small towns is that most people who live in one has family going back generations. So almost everyone winds up related to each other over time. Fresh blood does marry in and those people are accepted because they became family.
ReplyDeleteI come from this. It was really special going to school with classmates whose parents went to school with my father. I even had a textbook in grammer school he had used 3 decades earlier. Back then we were issued textbooks at the beginning of the year and were responsible for keeping them in good condition. We all did and they lasted.
Alas, my mom was a city girl and finally packed us all up and hauled us away from the country so that we could enjoy ( the horrors of) real life in a big city. It crushed my father and was devastating to our family, but she was happy.
I moved back home not long after growing up and have never regretted it, but in many ways rural life is a lot harder than city life.
Just be careful what you say to anyone from a small place about anyone else. The person you're speaking to is kin to who you're talking about, so. Only say sweet things about them.
And unless who you marry is from a similar background from your own, think twice and maybe even three times about it first. Not everyone can adjust to the nitty gritty of a spouse from an opposite lifestyle.
Small towns can be quite bigoted if you were not born and raised in that town or if you happen to be the wrong religion. For instance I moved from one smallish town to an even smaller town when I was 10, the vast majority of people in my new town belonged to one religion, I live in southern Idaho so you can guess which one. I was treated horribly in school because I was not part of that religion. My parents became friends with those who were not the predominant religion and enjoyed their life there, but they were constantly judged and mistreated by others because they weren't part of the predominant religious community. Even 20+ years after leaving my childhood town, I still despise my childhood and how awful myself and others like me were treated there. One of the first things I look at before even considering moving or living somewhere is what the people are actually like and what the predominant religions are, if the local people are awful and not accepting of your religion or lifestyle, then no matter how cheap a place is, it's really not worth the stress of dealing with it. Plus it's true, everyone knows everyone and everyone knows everyone else's business, and if rumors start, then they spread fast whether it's true or not. The other downsides of small towns is usually the school system is awful, they get the worst of the worst teachers and there is practically no medical care without driving a long ways, not bad if you are a younger healthy person, but if you have health issues, that can be fatal. And one thing many people don't realize is that drugs are a huge problem in small towns, especially meth, which leads to problems with theft. So if you move to a small town or the country, have a locking gate and always lock up your stuff, there will be druggies that will steal anything to get money, including livestock.
ReplyDeleteMoving from a city to rural 3 years ago, my best change? Every home is armed. Every individual is polite.
ReplyDelete