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Comment by microtherion | Hacker News Reader

"low judgmental environment"? You have not grown up in a rural environment, have you?

Having grown up in a village of ~250, I can assure you that it's about as judgmental (and conformist) as it gets. And if you want to step it up a notch, try moving to a village of that size in the mountains.

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Albany, the city referenced in the article, has a million people in its metro area. Yeah, rural areas tend to be ultra-conformist in most places; mid-size cities, less so.

It also has several universities between itself and nearby spots like Troy. That tends to help these types of cultures flourish.

Although when I lived there *mumbles* years ago it seemed like a lot of the stuff was driven by kids from towns like Cohoes

There's a massive spectrum between NYC and a tiny village. Almost every place you can live is in between. Why bring up such extremes when the author is talking about more common places?

Author's example of Newmarket is over 80k people. They just mention Tiny town goths as an idea that does exist - not something extremely common.

I think parent was trying to make the point that it is not linear progression, but more bathtub curve where very small places and big cities are similar dead zones. Goth town sweet spot is in the middle.

I ascribe to the Rent Theory of Everything. People can afford to be weird, where they don't have to be perfect corporate people in order to pay rent.

At least in Colorado, living in the mountains was so you could live a little more freely. I will say living in a large city certainly has different freedoms. It’s far easier to find your people for example.

SLC Punk! Is a “good” movie about subculture conformity.

See also the Law of Jante which seems to be a universal phenomenon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

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