Have to actually experienced this? What you want is for people to be familiar and nice, what you actually get is the banker telling everybody your account balance, the whole town talking about that time you showed up to church hungover, and the viciousness of national politics (or mean high school girls) applied to every aspect of your life.
Don’t wish for universal non anonymity unless you really know what it’s like, especially if you’re not willing to join the local moral majority.
Indeed. A small town is nice and welcoming if you are sufficiently like them, and agree with all the stuff your neighbors are on about.
If you deviate from that in some small way, it gets a lot harder. That includes being from the wrong class, or religion, or ethnicity or political leaning.
>If you deviate from that in some small way, it gets a lot harder. That includes being from the wrong class, or religion, or ethnicity or political leaning.
Or just being suspected of being something you're not. Some people in Salem in the 1600s learned the hard way what happens when these wonderful small town people aren't so nice...
I could also say that big cities are (outside of certain expensive neighborhoods and business districts) burnt out hell-holes full of organized crime, refuse, homelessness, pollution, traffic, soulless concrete buildings, and people who don't give a damn about you.
Even though there's truth in all of that (cities are plagued by these problems) it's an overly pessimistic take and is not equally applicable in all cases.
Don’t wish for universal non anonymity unless you really know what it’s like, especially if you’re not willing to join the local moral majority.