As a guy, I never really felt comfortable saying those things to anyone irl.
Coming from the Midwest I don’t think I ever felt uncomfortable expressing any emotions. I could kind of rattle off whatever I wanted to say without too much thinking.
But having lived in Los Angeles for roughly 10 years now I’m afraid to be open at all. When I first came here I was accused of hacking people’s credit cards twice because here knowing about computers means you’re a hacker. I learned to keep my mouth shut and become a robot; toxic/fake positivity is everywhere here and if you don’t play along then you’re quickly cast aside.
I spent some time in the midwest and you nailed it exactly. People in the midwest aren’t nice, they’re fake nice.
Sounds like they meant LA was worse
I can believe it a bit. I feel like LA gets influenced quite a lot culturally from Hollywood, and it’s morphed into a lot of fakeness, a competitive atmosphere, and lots of people trying to front being wealthy or coming from money.
I don’t think that’s everyone, but some of my friends that moved to LA struggled with the clicky-ness of the place and another I visited had friends that all were money focused and wanting to flex their wealth or their family’s wealth.
