If someone I don’t know asks me where I am from and I think they mean where did I spend my childhood, I will say Buffalo. Most people know generally where that is. I did not grow up in Buffalo but in a farming town near Buffalo. Neither place is cool and I have no shame about where I grew up, but saying East Hayseed, NY (for example) is pointless since the follow up question to “where is that” is simply “near Buffalo.”

I assume most people don’t really care about the answer and are just being polite. In the case that it turns out the other person is also from “near Buffalo” we have a good time narrowing down our answers and seeing if we know any people/places in common.

Claiming to be from Buffalo or Detroit or Chicago or LA on the East Coast is not a weird flex. It’s just easier to give a basic geographic marker and let the person ask follow up questions if they are actually interested.

I am amazed at the totally stupid topics that get so many pages of responses as if it was real and important.

This one is clearly in competition with the one about hating her husband's brown eyes.

I think the results are neck and neck so far at about 9 pages each, perhaps tomorrow will tell who is the winner of the most pages for the most moronic topic of the day.

I think it depends on context. If I’m travelling and someone I meet at a hostel asks where I’m from, I’d say DC, as I interpret them to be asking where I’m travelling from. Same for people I work with who could be anywhere in the world and are just asking to get a vague sense of what time zone I’m in. But if I’m chatting with another parent from my kids’ school they presumably know I live in DC and are asking what I was born/raised so I give the rough geographic area for that (no one has ever heard of the tiny village in question). But where you’re “from” isn’t clearly where you were born/raised; it can also mean where you came from [to get here]. If you’re super hung up on wanting to know where people were born ask about their hometown.

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Anonymous wrote:A more interesting question than asking someone where they are from, is "what do you think about x or y currently in the news?" or "which book have you read recently that you'd recommend"

I lived in a lot of different places. I have an English accent and spent 20 of my 50+ years in London. I'm not "from" London but that's how people would like my existence to be framed, and I'm happy to oblige. If I've also lived in NYC for 20 years, am I not also from NYC??

No, you're not. You're "from" the place you grew up, as I suspect you well know. Why do people love to play dumb on this issue? So very strange.

But where did I grow up? I was in NYC from age 11. So its there, right? Or London before it up til 11. Please help me out.

Yeah, I would say both. NYC and London is fine to list, so long as it's accurate and truthful. Just "I grew up in NYC and then London"

London is pretty vague. I would need a specific neighborhood. And NYC could be Staten Island. You know, those people.

Ok well, Chelsea and the Upper East Side. But not everyone, especially people from places like Maryland, know those areas.

Why are you so triggered by having to specify?

Do you even know anything about either of those places?

Yes, most people do. Why does it bother you?

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Anonymous wrote:A more interesting question than asking someone where they are from, is "what do you think about x or y currently in the news?" or "which book have you read recently that you'd recommend"

I lived in a lot of different places. I have an English accent and spent 20 of my 50+ years in London. I'm not "from" London but that's how people would like my existence to be framed, and I'm happy to oblige. If I've also lived in NYC for 20 years, am I not also from NYC??

No, you're not. You're "from" the place you grew up, as I suspect you well know. Why do people love to play dumb on this issue? So very strange.

But where did I grow up? I was in NYC from age 11. So its there, right? Or London before it up til 11. Please help me out.

Yeah, I would say both. NYC and London is fine to list, so long as it's accurate and truthful. Just "I grew up in NYC and then London"

London is pretty vague. I would need a specific neighborhood. And NYC could be Staten Island. You know, those people.

Ok well, Chelsea and the Upper East Side. But not everyone, especially people from places like Maryland, know those areas.

Why are you so triggered by having to specify?

Do you even know anything about either of those places?

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Anonymous wrote:A more interesting question than asking someone where they are from, is "what do you think about x or y currently in the news?" or "which book have you read recently that you'd recommend"

I lived in a lot of different places. I have an English accent and spent 20 of my 50+ years in London. I'm not "from" London but that's how people would like my existence to be framed, and I'm happy to oblige. If I've also lived in NYC for 20 years, am I not also from NYC??

No, you're not. You're "from" the place you grew up, as I suspect you well know. Why do people love to play dumb on this issue? So very strange.

But where did I grow up? I was in NYC from age 11. So its there, right? Or London before it up til 11. Please help me out.

Yeah, I would say both. NYC and London is fine to list, so long as it's accurate and truthful. Just "I grew up in NYC and then London"

London is pretty vague. I would need a specific neighborhood. And NYC could be Staten Island. You know, those people.

That’s right! We don’t want PP passing herself off as a West End girl, when she’s really from Stepney. The nerve of her!

Anonymous wrote:Sometimes because it’s shorthand/easier - they don’t feel like explaining what their unheard of town is near.

Because of the cool factor sometimes.

To hide wealth (or exaggerate wealth)
sometimes, depending on context.

I work in art and have heard more than one trust funder from grosse pointe, birmingham or bloomfield hills (very white, very wealthy michigan suburbs) as being from Detroit. It’s puke. But in the art world, Detroit is cool, and being a basic white girl with a dad high up at General Motors is not.

They are from Detroit. And no one outside of Michigan knows Bloomfield Hills, for god’s sake.

I only know a couple of people in my friend group who lived in one place for their whole childhood. My spouse lived in 3 states by 10 and moved from where she was born at 1. The where are you from question is hard to give a straight answer to and isn't the best way to make small talk with people you don't know. People give broad and generic answers to most small talk topics.

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Anonymous wrote:I am not aware of anyone I know in DMV lying to me about where they are from … and even if they did m, I would not know or care. I have a few friends who grew up here but most of us come from other states or countries …

The locals rarely mix with the unwashed masses.

Two of my closest friends are locals and another one is the husband of a good friend. They have no issue with it at all. Why would they? So many brainy, talented and civic minded people in DMV come from other places …

Exactly my point.

???

I am not talking about acquaintances but close friends.

Why are you creating drama out of nothing?

No one lies to me about where they are from because it is not a big deal to me or to anyone else I know.

OP, myob.

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Anonymous wrote:I am not aware of anyone I know in DMV lying to me about where they are from … and even if they did m, I would not know or care. I have a few friends who grew up here but most of us come from other states or countries …

The locals rarely mix with the unwashed masses.

Two of my closest friends are locals and another one is the husband of a good friend. They have no issue with it at all. Why would they? So many brainy, talented and civic minded people in DMV come from other places …

Exactly my point.

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Anonymous wrote:I am not aware of anyone I know in DMV lying to me about where they are from … and even if they did m, I would not know or care. I have a few friends who grew up here but most of us come from other states or countries …

The locals rarely mix with the unwashed masses.

Two of my closest friends are locals and another one is the husband of a good friend. They have no issue with it at all. Why would they? So many brainy, talented and civic minded people in DMV come from other places …

Anonymous wrote:I am not aware of anyone I know in DMV lying to me about where they are from … and even if they did m, I would not know or care. I have a few friends who grew up here but most of us come from other states or countries …

The locals rarely mix with the unwashed masses.

I am not aware of anyone I know in DMV lying to me about where they are from … and even if they did m, I would not know or care. I have a few friends who grew up here but most of us come from other states or countries …

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Anonymous wrote:Why do people lie about the city they grew up in? I live in a major city with a very high transplant percentage and it's amazing to me how many people will beat around the bush to say they're from "here" when the truth is they grew up in Duluth, Minnesota or Astoria, Oregon or whatever. Is it because they want to seem more cosmopolitan? What is the pathology at ⏯️?

I spent the first 17 years of my life not in D.C. and have spent the last 30 here in D.C. At a certain point a person is entitled to claim to be from where they've spent their entire adult life.

I mean... not really? Where you're "from" doesnt change, no matter how much people may want it to. Why do you have the desire to "claim to be" from somewhere else?