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Comment by abduhl | Hacker News Reader

I move around and travel a lot for work - I've lived in 4 states in the last 2 years (CO, WA, CA, TX) - and one of the universal things across all the midwest and west coast that I've found is that while most people like the weather/scenery in California EVERYONE hates people from California, except for the people in California.

I've heard the saying "California would be great if it wasn't for the people" in literally every state I've spent significant time in when they find out that I lived in the Bay.

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Curious about this, what do they hate about Californians? I mean California is very diverse. The main cites (Bay and LA) are very liberal but the restof CA is pretty right leaning. So I imagine you get pretty much every kind of person from California and it would be hard to hate all of them.

When I moved from San Francisco to the Denver area about 10 years ago, the attitude I picked up on wasn't so much personal hatred as it was, "Oh great, another Californian moving here to make our freeways more crowded and drive up the cost of everything".

Sure, there are significant cultural and political deltas, but I think a lot of the disgust for Californians moving to other states is just the simple fact that people generally don't like change in the form of "outsiders" flooding "their" state and threatening the status quo.

Good old NIMBYism

Just like half the statements here, this could be changed to "People from the bay area", "People from LA", etc. California has a lot of great people and beauty but when you equate the whole state with the two big cities, of course it paints a negative picture. The entire central coast I met more awesome people than I have living in Chicago for 20 years.

Echoing what you said, I've never met nicer people or made friends more easily than when I lived in Sacramento.

Sacramento and its surrounding region is filled with a lot of latent demand for people who care about things (let alone think about things) and want to do things, which there aren't a lot of --- probably because it's a government-oriented region, which might lead to a tendency to be reactive instead of proactive.

I moved out of California to Texas a few years ago, and part of the reason (besides housing prices) was that I too was sick of Californians. The idea used to be "California leads, the nation follows" but politically, that's changed, and I frequently hear about how sick of Californians everyone else is. Tired of people from CA moving to their areas and trying to change it politically. I can see their point.

"California leads, the nation follows" and "tired of people from CA moving to their areas and trying to change it politically" don't exactly contradict each other.

Agreed. There's a very special mix of stupidity and arrogance you see in the kids that grew up here. "Swag/YOLO" culture is to blame IMO.

Is there anyone FROM California anymore? I'm guessing that sentiment comes from the type that are attracted to the entertainment industry.

Born in Concord, California, but got out by the time I was 8.

Yes, many people are 'from' California; including myself. California is a pretty big state so keep that in mind. It's not just LA and SF.

Yes. Millions and millions.

Just curious: if you work in the tech industry, is your impression that the tech industry in CA is populated mostly by people who came from outside the state?

From and outsider, yes, that is the impression a lot of us get.

Born there, spent many years there too. Moved out a few years ago.

Of course, they say this about America too....

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