Small Town Culture Shocks In America Go Viral, Answers Are Very Accurate

Just how different are small towns from life in the big city?

I was cruising through Reddit Monday morning as I sipped on my black coffee (straight black with nothing in it, of course), and I stumbled upon a fun thread.

As you all know, I'm a big fan of Reddit. You never know what you might find. Well, this is one of the most fun we've read in a long time.

Reddit thread about small town culture shock goes viral.

A person just had to ask one question to get things rolling:

"People who moved from cities to small towns, what was the biggest culture shock?"

Things got very entertaining quickly from there. Read some of the responses below, and let me know your thoughts at David.Hookstead@outkick.com:

• 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)

These answers are fairly on point, and it's one of the most entertaining threads that I've read in a long time. Now, I didn't move from a big city to a small town. I grew up in the tiny working class blue-collar community of Randolph, Wisconsin. I then left to live in Bozeman, Madison and Washington, D.C.

I had the opposite experience, but as someone who grew up in a tiny town I can say with complete confidence many of these claims are true.

The amount of knowledge you have on people in town is wild. Everyone knows everyone to a point that it gets a bit over-the-top.

We also had one grocery story - a Piggly Wiggly - and extremely limited dining options. The gas station getting a Subway felt like the biggest news in the world at the time. Everyone is also armed. Everyone I knew had guns in their house and many in their trucks and on their person. You felt safe. That much was for sure.

We also have cool views like this one.

Do you have any experiences in small town America? Let me know at David.Hookstead@outkick.com. I'd love to hear them, and I have plenty more to share.