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Comment by tintor | Hacker News Reader

Happier? In a city? Have you been to big US cities? Angry people, crime, homeless, mentally ill people, lack of police.

Yes, it's exactly these (not necessarily wrong, but exaggerated) preconceptions about big cities that drive people to not let their kids outside. Thanks for providing a sample that supports the article's point!

It's hard to understate how shocking it is for someone who grew up in a more rural area it is to be yelled at by a crazy homeless person. I think urban people are just so desensitized to it its hard to understand how big a deal it is to people who have never experienced that.

There's lots of other major culture shock moments too, like finding out public bathrooms in parks are NOT for kids or the general lack of unlocked freely available clean bathrooms in businesses.

> It's hard to understate how shocking it is for someone who grew up in a more rural area it is to be yelled at by a crazy homeless person

Is it? I never struggled with this, been yelled at countless of times by crazy people on the street, both growing up in a very rural area and now living most of my adult life in a metropolitan area. I don't think it's much of a shock to most, we know there are mentally unwell people out there already.

> There's lots of other major culture shock moments too, like finding out public bathrooms in parks are NOT for kids

What? What kind of city would limit the age of who can use the bathroom? Sounds bananas.

> What? What kind of city would limit the age of who can use the bathroom? Sounds bananas.

I think this was another comment about homelessness, not an implication about the law.

Hmm, in what way? How is homelessness related to public bathroom besides the fact that homeless people use public bathrooms? Not sure how that's related to the age of the person using the bathroom, but surely I'm missing something here.

They are saying that homeless people are scary or messy. Or that drug use happens sometimes in a bathroom, etc.

Obviously, this attitude is born from some incorrect assumptions, but it's a pretty standard feast from folks out of town.

So homeless people use bathrooms to do drugs and somehow that means there is a age limit? I'm sorry but this makes no sense, how are they at all related? Why would it matter what someone does before you use the bathroom, it's not like drugs stick around in the air and impact people entering the room afterwards...

The last time I was in a major city with my kids I went to a major, nice park. They had to use the bathroom. There were ample bathrooms but every single one of them was filled with human feces, covering practically every surface, and littered with needles.

There is absolutely no reason to tolerate this in a civilized society, and it’s completely unheard of in the region I’m from, a major culture shock - along with the attitude that I should just get over it.

> There were ample bathrooms but every single one of them was filled with human feces, covering practically every surface, and littered with needles.

What the hell? No offense, but was this in a slum somewhere or something? Not saying it doesn't happen in other places, but I think I've came across that once in my ~35 years, visiting countless of public bathrooms, cities and towns, admittedly mostly around in Europe, South America and Asia, but still...

I don't think that's a "city" thing, that might be very local to the specific city you visited, or the specific area.

I’ve definitely heard that other countries don’t tolerate this sort of thing, but the thread is about US cities. Of course YMMV, my understanding is many European cities have very few or only paid public bathrooms.

Ah, yeah, going back I see the "big US cities", my context was just "big cities" when I was reading the thread, my bad!

> my understanding is many European cities have very few or only paid public bathrooms.

Not my experience living here, but I'm sure it differs a lot based on the country and the city, some will have free public bathrooms, some paid public bathrooms, some no bathrooms at all.

It's also shocking to have someone roll coal or call you a gendered or racist or homophobic slur in the country because you look a little different.

Or seeing the expansive yards filled with decaying cars, appliances, and other metal scrap.

Both urban and rural life have people suffering from poverty, mental health issues, and drug addiction. It just looks different.

>Have you been to big US cities?

Yes, I live in one, and it's a city that often gets used as the poster child for urban crime.

I don't feel in danger. What I am most worried about when walking with my kids outside is them getting hit by a car.

This is funny, as it almost doesn’t pass Poe’s test.

I also find people are much angrier and misanthropic in the suburbs and exurbs as they spend their entire days in metal death cages that dehumanize everyone around them and turn every interaction into a confrontation.

Guess that misanthropy hypothesis gets another check in the anecdata column.

Rural people are absurdly scared of own imagination. And if urban people talked about rural areas the way they talk about cities, we would get 234 think pieces about how inappropriate and out of touch it is.

Idk, I’ve seen Deliverance, plus all those horror movies that start out on some desolate road in the woods at night. Seems likely a fair depiction of country living.

No thank you, I’ll stay in Manhattan and not get kidnapped and murdered by monsters tyvm.

Rural people have all been to the cities and seen what it's like with their own eyes. There's no mystery.

I've been in my city (Seattle) for 40 years. Homelessness has increased faster than population growth. Crime rates are way down. Like half what they used to be.

Mental health is down everywhere, nationwide, and we spend an absurd amount of money on our police.

I love it here, great city. It's not perfect, but I can't imagine living elsewhere.

No one wants to live in cities any more. They’re too crowded, housing is too expensive, and the traffic is too bad.

If you actually look at US statistics, per capital crime rates are often higher in rural areas than urban one. Just, you know, more people in cities so bigger numbers.

It’s not just innocent ignorance of statistics. There’s also deliberate lying in mass media, both for partisan political goals and simply because sensationalism attracts eyeballs.

>Happier? In a city?

Yes.

>Have you been to big US cities?

Whoever said anything about the US?

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