Seattle Freeze/ Washington State Rudeness
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Anonymous
| Maybe everyone is whacked out on drugs? |
Anonymous
I'm from NYC and you can say the same about people from there. |
Anonymous
It could be. Perhaps that's why they had to legalize weed, everyone has to be high to stand dealing with the rude/socially inept citizens |
Anonymous
Have you ever been to California? I see far more there. Like...WAY more. |
Anonymous
Tons in SF, but SF is a draw for street youth. |
Anonymous
Minnesota is very polite, but cold. Minnesotans are hard to get to know. |
Anonymous
Also lots of Asian influence which has a similar introverted/unfriendly culture, in some respects |
Anonymous
| We moved recently and now live outside seattle. People are super nice, both newcomers and people who've lived here for a long time. People are more apt to chat while in line. People working in customer service are just friendlier. I've lived all over the east coast and in the south. I'm Asian so I've found people are more accepting. |
Anonymous
Your experience is....not the norm, to say the least. |
Anonymous
What? No, let's not make this a "foreign" thing, Donald. |
Anonymous
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Hmm.
There seems to be a pattern of areas with a highly educated population corresponding with increased reputation for rudeness, coldness and standoffish behavior. Seattle, San Francisco, Boston especially, NYC, New England in general, Minneapolis, and even our beloved DC, all rank high on the unfriendliness reputation scale. I'm sure sociologists will explain why this may be the case more accurately than I can but I suspect the connection (if any) is that highly educated people are less likely to look to their broader community for friendship or companionship, instead preferring to resort to their immediate social community of peers (coworkers, friends, common interests etc). Because they don't see much of a connection to the broader community, they are less likely to make the small chat or exhibit the small social cues that mark public friendliness. And likewise they don't expect the same from others. The larger the educated population is, the more reinforced this behavior becomes so it becomes unconscious and accepted as the norm without much thought about it, so it's no longer even viewed as rude. Ok, feel free to rip this theory to threads 
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Anonymous
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This is all very interesting to me. I lived in Seattle for two years, my DH for six. Granted, this was back in the 90s when a lot of newcomers were just starting to come to Seattle - to work at Microsoft and the other tech companies. DH worked for MS for those six years. I've lived in eight cities in the US - east coast, west coast, midwest, southwest, and southeast! I found the people in Seattle super friendly. In fact I used to marvel at how laid back and friendly the people who worked in my industry were in Seattle compared to other cities. People were very accessible with the notable exception of the super brilliant techies that DH worked with who were socially awkward and couldn't talk about anything other than technology or science fiction! But they were from all over the world - not just the NW.
The drivers were painfully polite to the point I thought everyone drove way too slow and stopped to let everyone in all the time! Maybe that's changed now, but we go back to visit friends and relatives there once a year and I haven't noticed rude drivers. The one group of people that the natives held a lot of contempt for in the 90s were Californians. So many were moving there and the natives thought they were driving up the cost of living and pricing them out of housing market. They would openly remind Californians that Interstate 5 ran south too. |
Anonymous
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Former Washington state resident here. I always called it the "Pacific Northwest sense of superiority." People who live there, especially who are from there, believe it to be the greatest place in the world and if you disagree well F You. Also, if you're not from there, F You.
I got away as fast as I could and that was 15 years ago. With the Seattle boom in sure it's worse now. |
Anonymous
Homelesssness is out of control in Seattle. Tents are all over city sidewalks and shanty towns with 100+ homeless spring up under highways and illegally in city parks. The city spends $50,000,000 on the homeless AYEAR and the only thing to show for our $$$ is more homeless. Just recently the Seattle city council voted to give more rights to the homeless than the police. It is absolutely crazy!!!! Why and how Seattle tax payers continue to vote in near Soviet Communists onto the city council is mind boggling. |
Anonymous
| It's because they are all California transplants. Natives are very kind. |