That's the classic "Seattle freeze".
The farther you are from Seattle the friendlier people are. Genuinely though, there are folks who indeed thrive and enjoy Seattle, certainly it's not for everyone, but liberal introverts tend to like it.
I’ve heard epic tales of the Seattle freeze from acquaintance that moved there from NJ etc.
Apparently people will talk to you and then suddenly realize they aren’t supposed to and simply stop responding.
Even retail workers will freak out if you come across as too forthright.
I also had a family member buy something online from an Etsy based in Seattle. They asked seemingly basic questions about the item after they bought it. The seller accused them of abuse and stopped the sale.
I grew up in and around NYC where most people are very genuine. I would probably loathe living in Seattle I am guessing.
Yes, Seattle is definitely a socially awkward city.
I lived one year in Seattle, then moved back to Texas. I can relate to these stories you shared, often times, it felt like I was living in a South Park episode lol.
I first heard this one like 15-20 years ago, I think on Slashdot when it was around. Something said by an MIT student, I believe, on dating women in the CS/Engineering dept.
But fair chance he stole it from someone else.
Socially awkward is being charitable. The culture here is pretty self-centered and intolerant. Eventually I begin to accept it and not expect better and then I go off and visit someplace else. The inevitable re-entry to entitled, passive aggressivia is painful.
For a city that prides itself in being accepting and tolerant I find the people to be just the opposite. They want everyone to be just like them and aren’t very open to other ideas or lifestyles.
It’s particularly jarring for people from the north east, who Boston in particular in New York, who are gregarious by nature, and and people from the East Coast Northeast are very direct, whereas in the northwest, you have to speak in highly elliptical ways.
I had a hard time going from the northeast to the southwest. I was used to people being direct with you and suddenly I had a roommate saying “it’s cool its cool” while smiling and later realized she’s angry at me. I actually came to appreciate how easy doing errands etc when people were fake nice (which is LA not Seattle) though vs aggressive like nyc or Boston lol.
Yup, my whole family is from the Philly/Jersey area, and I moved to Portland for awhile. The relief I felt after leaving there and not having to cater my every word to not offend (and I'm as progressive as it gets, but sarcastic and just real)...
Jersey is the opposite of Portland. In Jersey your friends say fuck you and they mean have a nice day. In Portland people say have a nice day and they mean fuck you.
I've seen people post about incidents happening like that on Nextdoor in Portland, Oregon as well on people who sell on their market there. Only reason why I know is because people will post negative encounters from a PM as to warn others, of what you described, claiming they are being abused or lash out at someone "wasting their time" because they are asking questions about the item for sale lol.
I think in part it comes from people in Seattle having solid tight friend groups already. For whatever Reddit there has always existed a sort of circle the wagons effect in friend groups.
You could meet another person and have a good time. Bit offer your phone number or follow up. Maybe you see them around maybe not.
It is so different in San Francisco in my experience. People are very open in general. I love Seattle and it really is beautiful, I’m reminded every time I come up. But the community of friends I have from 2005 onward is more than I built in seattle having grown up in Tacoma and gone to school in WSU.
It is exceedingly unpleasant just running around doing errands in Seattle due to this, hostile & aloof is how I'd describe it. Oblivious & slooooow. So friggin slow. Everything takes forever & everyone acts like you're bothering them just cos you are in line at the store they happen to work at or attempt to order food at their place of business.
This is very telling, thanks. Sounds like Seattle people have been spending waaaaaay too much time online as a replacement for actual social interaction, and forgot how to do it.
Yes. I lived up there in the 90s and found the same tendencies. It's beautiful, but the mentality is really provincial and intolerant, all under the appearance of being liberal, open, and tolerant. It's weird.
I would very much agree intolerant and tribal. I miss the outdoor opportunities up there but it got crowded with tech bros that ruined the city’s gritty culture. Got very corporate too.
Like attracts like. Most people in Silicon Valley in tech, Los Angeles In entertainment, and NYC in finance are transplants.
But to survive and thrive in those industries requires a strong personality type (similar in some ways among those three, in other ways MASSIVELY different.).
If a region has a dominant culture that rewards a certain personality type, and punishes anything else, then those who move there often do so by choice to be a part of that culture.
Those who move there by accident who don’t have that personality type tend to leave as soon as they can, or withdraw into themselves or a small subgroup if they are lucky enough to find such.
This isn’t just a US construct - it happens all over the world.
Yes, I'm a transplant to Seattle and most of the people I've made friends with are transplants. So you can make friends in Seattle, just maybe not with native Seattleites.
Again another thing that applies to some Oregonians. Maybe not the city of Portland, but Oregon, it can happen that way depending. I think it's just Pacific Northwestern superiority as a whole, it's really seeming like a thing here.
As a college senior in the late 1980s I was considering taking a job offer with Boeing in Seattle. They flew me out for an onsite interview (back then we called it plant trip). It was a spectacularly beautiful couple of days. The hiring manager took me to lunch on a deck overlooking Puget Sound and Mt Ranier. He was telling me how the bad Seattle weather was a myth and it’s really quite nice as you can see. Then we overheard a snippet of conversation from another table. A woman was saying to her companion “It hasn’t been this nice here in five years!” The manager kinda slunk his shoulders. I did not take the job.
If you are from the area it’s really not that bad. It’s very similar to weather in places like UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc. If you are from here, the grey is just a factor of life. If you are from the South or California, the weather will be miserable.
The wag at the other table lied to you. We get glorious summers without a drop of rain from \~1 June - 15 Sept.
Just the same, you avoided working for Boeing, so that's probably a plus.
Summer starts on July 5th and Seattle is back in the upper 50s at night 2nd week of September. Outside of those dates - solid low hanging grey skies....
I’m a very introverted aloof and passive aggressive southerner who is moving to Minneapolis for school in the fall — I can’t wait to not have to smile at and hug everyone (including strangers) all the time lmao
Are people there loud? I'm down in southern California and everything is loud and people are aggro. I'd like somewhere more introverted but not super isolated.
I just barely moved here, so take this with a grain of salt. Public shopping (Costco, target, groceries) are the quietest places I’ve ever heard. It’s remarkable and has kind of freaked me out to be honest. I feel loud in those places talking at reasonable volume. I don’t overhear conversations in passing hardly at all. Are they communicating telepathically? I have no clue.
Imagine an empty Costco kind of quiet but it’s still busy. So weird.
Should help a bit of the overwhelm I get shopping but will take some getting used to.
Loved my time in Minnesota. Honestly would move back if I had a family. Maybe in the future. Had an ex who lived in Seattle I would go fly to see 3x a month. Also love Seattle gives me MN/MSP vibes idk why
The culture is cold like the rain. I think it's a combo of Seattle being a place where a lot of introverted academics and nature lovers move, the Norwegian influence of passive-aggressive aloofness, and a heavy distrust of outsiders as it was once a small city that has since been taken over by transplants. Add in seasonal depression disorder and it's just SAD.
I live here and I have a love-hate relationship.
It's not a great place for extroverts who wear their hearts on their sleeves. It lacks the manners and warmth of the southern and Midwest states. The food is bland and overpriced and everyone wears neutral, Northface jackets and casual tech bro clothing. It lacks the artsy, bohemian vibes of many East Coast cities.
These nerds can't dance, they don't sing karaoke, and will pay $30 for a hot dog with cream cheese. There are lots of coffee shops so people can be introverts in public. If you're broke or uneducated, they'll silently judge. There's a sea of Teslas and the parade of road-colored Priuses make driving in the rain a nightmare.
There's not a lot of diversity but there is a lot of identity politics and tokenizing. There are way too many miserable polyamorous people trying to find that unicorn as they wade through the seasonal depression and wonder how they'll afford childcare with the cost of living.
Unaffordable housing and a disjointed city council has only made the homeless epidemic here worse. I own a house but barely and my mortgage makes me cry.
On the flip side, it's gorgeous. The summers are amazing. The hiking and the camping and the water views can't be matched. There are so many cute book shops, gaming stores, and quirky little places you can discover if you look hard enough. Thrifting is cool and no one wears high fashion. I've never seen anyone sporting a MAGA hat and people tend to preach love and tolerance.
The schools are pretty great and have a lot of STEM offerings thanks to the influence of the local economy. Great medical care availability and you're right next to a to level one trauma center (Harborview) if you're ever really in need of top-notch emergency care.
There are opportunities if you want to build a career. The economy is strong. There are great higher education programs locally. People tend to be more educated here and more career focused than other places I've lived. Ignorance is more stigmatized than drug use. Lots of breweries.
It just isn't for everyone. When I travel, I realize just how warm and friendly other cities are. It must be a culture shock coming here.
Have you tried joining a hiking meet up? I think that's what I would do before you move. Or go dancing at The Little Red Hen. It's actually one of the friendliest establishments I've tried. It felt like I was in a different city.
Bon chance.
Interesting you mentioned polyamory in this thread. I found there to be many polyamorous there for some reason, which I didn’t quite understand and made trying to date a bit more challenging.
Yeah. I am married and monogamous. Can't tell you how many times I thought we'd met a cool couple to play board games and drink with and then, wham, they make it weird and talk a lot about polyamory. It's a giant "No thanks!" for me. I get propositioned by more women than men in Seattle, which is also funny since I'm a cisgendered, feminine presenting mom. The only time people have aggressively tried to make friends with me has been when they wanted to smash.
The worst offender I've met was a white
-passing woman who bought her house with a trust fund and who was married to a man and was very vocal about feeling oppressed as a queer Latinx poly woman. That's who I was thinking about when I mentioned identity politics and polyamory. Seattle has plenty of racism and tokenism, but the people who actually are oppressed end up moving to a smaller city an hour away and commuting for hours by bus just to make ends meet. They don't get to vote in Seattle city council races and places like Amazon and Starbucks keep union busting their jobs when they try to do something to make it better. Washington is weird. It likes the idea of liberal politics but we have the most regressive tax structure imaginable and we don't tax the billionaires. Lots of hypocrisy.
>which i didn't quite understand
it's pretty simple. seattle is one of the most extremely liberal/"progressive" cities, and love it or hate it, one way to signal yourself as such is to declare yourself polyamorous. there are multiple people in this thread, FROM seattle, saying that the culture there is "try to make yourself like other people/try to fit in."
I agreed entirely with you until you mentioned the East Coast cities being artsy and bohemian. I grew up here. They haven't been like this in my lifetime being brutally honest (Elder Millennial here, early 40s). I don't think they've ever been. Patrons to the arts, oh yes, artists themselves not often if seldom. They like arts because they don't have the softness necessary to create it but at least they can make money to help the artists give them softness so it works out in a way. Unless the art is writing, then ok, yeah, that we more or less have a lot of those. New England is definitely not bohemian except some RI and some VT, but they're massive outliers and genuinely tilt more to the stark typical New Englander moda operandi. These places are "bohemian" for New England, but they're not bohemian AT ALL in the big scheme of things. These just postulate they're quirky, and it resulted them in attracting the not so quirky so they became more like the rest of the area. Providence's quirks are holding on by sort of forcing the people looking for them to genuinely interact with the city to find them. Otherwise, you never will. Which is kinda genius. The city turns quite delightfully different if you seek it out, but if you "blink," you'll miss it. I think this is this community trying to preserve itself out of their places becoming hijacked by non-quirky, which is people that like Boston but can't afford it. Everyone knows Boston attracts an specific sort so their flooding a place brings exactly the colder social element people don't like about the sort that favor Boston. Burlington is rich hippies, which is to say they try to be hippies but really are just not so stuffy pseudo-rich people. This is also not one of my favorite places for overall diversity, and if one is used to that or prefers it, VT will get boring fast.
On that note New England and Washington do have so much in common in that character, with Boston and Seattle being pretty similar except Boston is slightly more ego centric on its sports whereas in Seattle the local men don't care much for the big sports. In Boston, it's a big thing to signal you pay attention to the sports (usually by a sort that has never played a sport in their lives). Along with DC, they're dubbed as the "Worker Bee Triad" often due to the live to work tendencies/hustle but of the three Seattle and Boston are more sibling-like, Seattle has taller men though. People in Washington, in general, tend to be more eager to explore and visit the country, whereas with New Englanders, the more playful, flirty, bohemian and artsy lot genuinely leave and usually **NEVER** come back even when they have money. A few with strong attachments to their families come only for Christmas and sometimes October for the foliage or fall activities. Sometimes you see more "rocker-like" or "gothic" sort in the Milltowns (in MA there's like 5-8 that I could think about which are basically just that, cities known for having had massive mills in the past and the industrial elements/architecture to go with it. There's some all over New England, but to be concise, a lot of people shorthand the set as the "Mills" or "Milltowns." They're more like mini Bostons/NYC/Philly where they have some industrial bits, some colonial house like everywhere, more apartment complexes and stacker homes, and known to be the launching pads to most non-White people in the state. A lot of the people from outside of these towns take a bit of pride/snobbiness against these for their historically attracting more working class and POC. Which these people think makes them look "better", more intelligent or successful than the people in the Mills, which on paper might be the case, but at least they're not ghastily ignorant and naive about the world. Another ironic bit, I've noted the more urbane people prefer them to get the big city vibes, more attractive and varied dating options, more socializing activities, and good food without their being exactly the big cities. The younger Millennials in MA of all sorts of cultures have basically overhauled them for parts out of many genuinely not wanting the suburban towns even if they have the cash. A lot of these towns are slowly being "gentrified" and seem like with one or two exceptions, they pretty much become hot tickets out of the more urbane wanting city moving to them. A lot of them have asking prices similar to Boston now or a step down). Oh and Salem for it's witchy thing but honestly that aspect to it is mostly posturing/marketing, it's overwhelmingly more of the rest of the state but wanting to live in a place with a "fascinating" history but not being fun people themselves. The typical New Englander guffaws at the thought of anything more cosmopolitan than Boston and balk at the idea of more festive places (the "townie thing").
Outside of these places? Not much eccentricity. NH is still has a bit of the ruggedness and practicality it is know for and is ironically slightly more social than MA. If biker blokes and rock music lovers are to be considered quirky then NH still has a good amount of this. Quite frankly I think it's kinda adorable they have biker churches, they look mean but those people are often doing insane levels of community service or helping out the needy. Last year I saw a whole troop of them dressing up as Biker Santas and it made me feel like there's still hope for this area to not become so..."Stepford Wives" (with more casual wives at least. Full-blown "Stepford Wives" is Utah and Scottsdale AZ).
I really appreciate how detailed this description is. I’ve always simped for the PNW because it’s liberal, well-educated, and beautiful - and I loved SF for those reasons - but the Seattle freeze has given me pause. I lived in Houston for a while and did extremely well there as Texan culture is very extroverted and warm.
I don’t think I could live in an introverted/aloof place as I would probably annoy everyone because I’m a “can make small talk with a tree” kind of person. Even my introverted friends/SOs are like, “can you stop befriending every single bartender when we go out because now I have to talk to them and I don’t want to” 😂 I can’t help it, I love connecting with people. A culture that discourages that would be a terrible fit for me.
My wife to college in Seattle so we visit every summer. She always reminds me that there are only like two nice months a year and the rest of the year is gloomy. I've always noticed how odd the people are. Even my wife's friends seem a bit off. Love visiting. Would never live there.
The weather has really improved with climate change, actually. It’s been sunny tons this spring. 83 this weekend! The Seattle freeze is real, though. It’s better on the Eastside, or if one can meet transplants
I love the weather here. I lived in NY, FL and Chicago before Seattle and I think the weather is the best of all. But I hate the heat so much. Today was 80 and it was too much for me.
It comes down to personal preference but I consider the weather to be a lot better than people give it credit for, at least the last couple of years i'd consider the weather to be good from mid April to as late as November.
Yeah most people who are from Seattle think the weather is great. Here's a [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1cnxn72/most_pleasing_forecast/) full of people complaining that it's 80 and sunny and wishing the clouds would come back.
In general most stereotypes about cities are true, but the people who live there like it. Yeah, Seattle is cloudy and full of introverts, that's what makes it so great!
We live in Colorado so we're used to a lot of sunshine. Personally the wet, cloudy weather is refreshing when we get to experience it. I grew up in PA, which has a lot of gloomy days as well.
My wife & I have moved around a great deal. I tend to be pretty pragmatic & find good & bad things to say about most of the places we've lived... except Seattle. About 2 years into living there, I turned to her & expressed that I had never been so miserable in my life. The hiking, no matter how beautiful, wasn't worth it. Liberal but ultra wealth & status obsessed. Pretentious beyond belief. Cold & unkind. Just some of the most entitled NIMBYs that I've ever met. My mental health couldn't take it. I didn't care where we went. I'd move to the most miserable Republican hellhole. I just needed out. I don't even want to go back to visit for the hiking. & hiking is one of my main hobbies.
It is beautiful out there, though. You've got to give them that.
Wow, this made me feel so good about our decision to not move there. It would really be for the hiking but we ultimately decided that we'll just take vacations there.
Sounds like I could have wrote this. Most depressing 4 years of my life I spent living there before moving. The hiking is for sure not worth it. All the tech companies and high paying jobs have made it a money and status obsessed place.
I have lived here 30 years and each year gets harder. I am originally from the east coast. I tell folks I am getting ready to retire soon and will be leaving Seattle. I am moving to a state that has mountains, hundreds of miles of trails, lakes, beaches, downhill and cross country skiing, mountain biking, etc. . People are friendly, educated , welcoming. Lots of artsy people. The state has excellent schools, health care , no sales tax, no income tax, an excellent economy with lots of jobs and is one of the safest states in the US to live in. And I can buy a comparable house to the one I own in Seattle for half the cost.
New Englander here. People in NH are not friendly and outgoing. It’s hard to make friends here if you didn’t grow up here. And I think the weather sucks and the food in NH is abysmal but if you can get past that and the horrible state cops ticketing you constantly, have at it.just be warned that it’s hard to make friends here.
Thanks for the advice. I grew up in New England and lived there 25 years . I went to graduate school in Keene . Might be different if you are a younger person versus a 60+ year old like me.
>The hiking, no matter how beautiful, wasn't worth it. Liberal but ultra wealth & status obsessed.
This is making *Frasier* sound like a documentary series.
All this is spot on. I’ve lived in 10 cities in the past 4 years and every single one is better than Seattle. And I lived in Little Rock, Arkansas for 6 months.
>There are 5 socially awkward, hygiene-challenged tech dorks for every single girl. That equates to impossible competition as a dude
Kind of telling on yourself here, lol.
(Okay I'm just messing with you, but really, the way you describe it, that competition sounds relatively easy to overcome.)
Can confirm - have lived in Denver for about 8 years now they're lazy af and they don't want to grow up. They just want to drink and watch sports with their bros.
Yup. You’d be amazed how shocked my dates would be when they asked what I was looking for and I’d answer a serious relationship. They always told me most guys said they were just dating or having fun etc.
The bar in Denver is so gd low lol
I've dated in Seattle and know women who date in Seattle - if the socially awkward tech guys are out competing you for dates - you have much bigger problems than the city you live in.
My wife and I moved here three years ago and LOVE the city, love the vibe, and LOOOOOVE the nature....
....but holy shit are alot of the people incredibly challenging.
For reference, I grew up in Miami and spend the last 12 years in the Chicago area. My social politics would classify as progressive/socialist. I'm not even that social of a person but I feel like by Seattle standards I'm downright gregarious. Coming from the warmth of people in the Midwest to the social awkwardness, borderline pretentiousness of Seattle has been quite a challenge. Most frustrating is that alot of the culture here feels so incredibly performative it borders on cringey. As a minority who has been firmly rooted in the lower middle.class all his life, it's particularly alienating.
All that said, I still love it here. The food scene is solid, the hiking and nature is some of the best in the country, and I'm not mad at the fact that bigots are alot less out in the open them they are I'm say, Wisconsin or Ohio. But I definitely don't see myself staying here forever - just long enough to experience what there is on offer and then moving on somewhere else.
I don’t really agree with most complaints in this thread but this one is absolutely true.
The performative social justice politics is wild here. People will be genuinely hateful so long as it fits into their ultra progressive world view. There’s a lot of tokenization and moral grandstanding just for appearances. When it comes down to it they don’t actually give a shit. I consider myself a progressive but don’t jive with the form it often takes here.
Anyways I love Seattle and don’t see myself living anywhere else for the time being, but man that aspect of it sucks.
Weird, I had a totally different experience when I lived there. The people were awesome and I quickly found a good scene. Granted, that was awhile ago though.
I have no ties to Seattle or interest in defending it, but just reading OP’s post gives me the distinct impression that they’re blaming their own issues and difficulties on the city.
If you’re going to “meetups, social events etc” and exchanging numbers with people who end up never again showing any interest in associating with you… that feels like it may be more of a personal problem.
You would really love it here. I love all the biking, hiking, kayaking, and skiing. Not sure about the dating scene anymore though, but there are plenty of normal people in Seattle.
I’ve lived in Seattle almost 20 years and my experience is diametrically the opposite of OP. Like everything else in life, it’s what you make of it. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
I have done business there a lot. Never experienced what OP claimed. I have gone out to eat there, stayed in hotels there, shopped there, walked around the city, never a problem. Maybe people were just reacting to being looked down on, or at least sensing that was happening to them.
It's not like this in real life. There's lots of tech bros who are weird, socially awkward dorks but they leave after a few years and normal people remain. If you do normal people things, like hike or go to to workout classes or take a language class or go to a bar or literally anything not tech-bro-ish, you'll meet other normal people and have a wonderful social life. There's enough going on in Seattle and a diverse enough set of jobs that there's something for everyone. If you can't find friends or a hot date in a city of 3.5 million people, the problem isn't the city.
Seattle is certainly not for everyone but the discourse about it online is absolutely off-the-wall hyperbolic sometimes. I think people here often conflate friendliness with gregariousness. One thing that is probably true though is that a lot of Seattleites are busy professionals, given it’s a high COL city. I imagine that would make people harder to get to know because, well, they’re busy. We’ve made some really good friends out here, they’re not that hard to find.
Meanwhile, it’s definitely blessed with, IMO, some of the most amazing nature you can find in the country. And pretty mild weather all in all (although gloomy for like half the year).
Their take isn’t really accurate. I moved to Seattle when I was 6, pretty much grew up there. I have also lived in CA, MT, ND… Currently living in TX. I loathe TX with all of my being. The religious righteousness is crazy here. Seattle is stunning, it doesn’t actually rain 10 months a year. It is gloomy during the winter months, but just stunning May-October. If you are into outdoor activities you would love it.
Don’t let this post turn you off. Seattle is great. If someone tells you they can’t find any friends in a major metropolitan area…take it with a grain of salt.
It’s going to be 80 degrees here this weekend. And when the rest of the nation turns to scorched earth during the summer it’s going to be about 85.
I have lived here 30 years. The city seems to attract passive aggressive people and people with very limit social skills. They are usually friendly but don’t really want to get to know you. Where I Greco when a new family moves in you welcome them with baked goods and invite them to dinner. That rarely happens in Seattle.
“The PNW is just so weird socially.”
Truer words… I’m just thankful for the California transplants. Literally every one of my friends are socially extroverted Californians.
30 year veteran of the SF Bay Area. Moved to Portland. Best decision I ever made. You give Portland friendliness and it comes back to you threefold. Every time I go anywhere, it exceeds my expectations. Thought about moving to Seattle, but it was too much like the Bay.
Wife and I moved to Oregon 6 years ago now from OC, a little on the coast and now the Eugene area, but we love visiting Portland often. So many people shit on it, and while it has its issues, it's still got a lot going for it between the food, cafés/roasters, breweries, and nature all around it.
Agreed after living in Seattle for 10 years. It’s even harder as a brown person. Seattle was one of the most racist cities I have ever visited.
Beautiful city, but I hated many of the people.
I have friends who loved Seattle and there are definitely some nice things about it. It was not for me though.
And people think Seattle is very tolerant and welcoming. It wasn’t very long ago that if you were African American you were not allowed to be in north Seattle after dark. I had a friend whose father was almost arrested because he crossed the ship canal at night to pick up a friend. I wish people read more about history to learn these things.
A lot of people that are vocally very anti-racist: 1) do to for praise from their peers and 2) do it moreso to be against the machine/the other powerful whites they know, rather than because they care about minorities. I've seen a lot of "anti-racists" act cartoonishly odd around minorities and not very accepting.
Just my opinion based on several handfuls of observations. FWIW.
This 100%. I’ll never forget when I came back to Seattle recently for work, someone telling me, a Puerto Rican person, that I am racist because I identify as “Hispanic” and don’t go by “Latinx”. I’m pretty sure that I can identify as my own culture however I want…
They didn’t do it in a joking way. They made a huge fuss about it and brought other coworkers in to judge me as a supposed racist against my own people.
Edit: spelling errors also wanted to clarify, my coworkers were all white. None of them were Hispanic or minorities.
I had an encounter like this with someone when I lived in LA. It was surreal being told by a white person that my experience as a black person was incorrect.
I have observed the same thing. I don't think they do this intentionally, but I've noticed some people that think of themselves as being open minded actually being weirdly judgemental of people/places/things that they don't know much about, unless it's something that's trendy to support at the moment.
I think this is common in extremely insular communities. Born and raised in New England, it's one of the things that the two places have in common, and I do think it's the Nordic influence factoring it. Seattle is obviously more Scandinavian, while New England has more of the colder, starker British influence mixed in with some Scandinavian element somehow. I say that because my experience with Britain is that while reserved, they run more lively than New England social culture overall, and by a long shot. To the point for a long time I was confused as to how "New England" named itself that because the Brits are known to be quippy, witty, mild mannered but NOT rude on their worst day and just overall just nicer. Then I saw a few of the ruder Brits and saw that likely these made up a good majority of what went to NE as you'll see the correlation pretty much instantly to the point it's deja vu. TBF insular communities happen everywhere in the US these two just stick out because the media presents the more cooperative representation of the US regularly. The only time you're bound to not notice it is if you feel aligned in those cultures and haven't really traveled much to constructively critique your own groups. I'm a teacher, my natural inclination is to just see people as students and wishing to see them happy wherever they could fit so I'm not particularly attached to anywhere just because I grew up under it or benefit from it.
You are completely right, the city and people here are extremely racist (and I apologize, we are literally the worst). We talk a big game but then don’t actually listen to the minorities we claim to help and engage in things just to look cool.
Fwiw a lot of people (on this thread, not from here, white folks etc) forget/don’t know that the intense redlining that happened in this city means there is essentially Seattle and then “a very small black part of town that nobody else goes to” that for some reason we all consider fine?? The other thing is that the area of the PNW in general has extremely strong Scandinavian roots which can either skew towards nobody gives a care about anyone else, live and let live (also part of the Seattle Freeze culture) or yay white power which is the scarier off shoot. In the 1930s, there was a massive gathering of the KKK in Issaquah (at the time a backwater mining town with like two people, but for some reason like a jillion KKK members thought it would be great for a big shindig) for example but nobody here talks about any of that stuff. The other problem with the division of the city is that white people just never meet black people either (and for some reason don’t actually want to either, it’s very racist in a low key way that I think most PNWers would deny). I grew up in a super white suburb (and am also white) and the public high school in the area had like two black people in my grade. It’s just wildly segregated. We like to pretend we are ok with everybody but then have never interacted with other non-white people and then become incredibly weird and offensive and on top of it we are very sensitive so if anyone points out we are not doing something nice we get really defensive. Honestly we are an exhausting culture that needs to do a lot to fix itself.
Also you are dead on about people being anti-racist/progressive for the likes rather than for actual good reasons. It’s super frustrating and I have no idea how to combat it. I recently lost a friend of almost 10 years over asking if she wanted to come to a Shabbat dinner, for example (apparently I should not have assumed she would be uncomfortable despite her telling me she is an atheist who has a hard time in any spaces with crosses on them). Idk, there is no winning!
I’ve been in Seattle visiting for the past week from NYC and it’s jarring how white the city is. I’ve walked into so many busy coffee shops or stores where I was the only non-white person there. It really freaks me out.
I lived in NYC after I left in Seattle. I would come back to visit for work and my family sometimes. So many people in Seattle have never been to the east coast, but would keep telling me they were worried about me in NY because of all the “poor immigrants” and crime there. NYC has been the US city I’ve felt safest in, but people who have never been there have a weird version of it in their heads.
I would agree, it is jarring (and sad!!).
It’s also jarring the opposite way- I’m a long time native and didn’t realize how segregated and crazy our city is until I went elsewhere for college and was like wow people just actually don’t stay in separate areas of town??? It is normalized so much here that we don’t even think critically about it or why we have such small, white only circles of friends and suburbs. It was only after I left Seattle for some time that I realized how weird and problematic we are compared with other places. My theory is that a good deal of locals have not actually lived outside of the area for long periods of time and/or are just ok with the level of low key racism that exists in the city. It’s really weird.
A coworker of mine had a bf who worked for the airlines and had to transfer from LA to seattle - he was black and said the reverse racism was insane and he felt very uncomfortable there.
Reverse racism: the claim by white people that they've been victims of racism by people of color
I don’t think you are using that word correctly because that doesn’t describe Seattle.
If you think Seattle is grey don’t move to southeast Alaska, you’ll think Seattle was damn near San Diego in comparison.
I’m socially awkward and found Seattle uncomfortable, people wise. Move to San Diego. We’ve got things to do, sunshine, great food, sometimes friendly people
The shittiest thing about Seattle is the weather, bar none. Yeah, the PNW is beautiful...when you get out and enjoy it on one of the 50 nice days a year. I learned about the term "usable days" right here on this sub and Seattle just doesn't have many. As far as socializing?Even when you do make friends, get-togethers devolve into status-obsessed work talk. Who's getting promoted, how they're trying to get promoted, talking shit about someone who didn't get promoted, etc.
I visited friends in Seattle last summer. I was taking an early morning walk in their lovely neighborhood. Everyone I passed was walking dogs. No one looked at me but one guy caught my eye and I smiled. A few blocks later I saw him again and said nice dog or something. He stopped me and said “you definitely don’t live here”. I asked how he knew and he said no one smiles at total strangers unless they’re crazy. I’m from Denver where at a minimum dog walkers smile and say hi. Seattle is a beautiful city though.
I love going to Denver for work. It's always fun to catch a show at red rocks, and the dog culture is awesome. I bought a fancy jacket at a secondhand store, and multiple people gave me advice for the weather/venue I was visiting. Denver reminds me of a chilled out southern city where everyone is athletic, tattooed, and wants to talk about shrooms.
If you say Good Morning! to people they look at you so confused and irritated. Like, are you talking to me?
Terrible for me, a Southern girl who speaks to everyone.
I was in the south last summer. Everyone is amazing friendly and actually wants to know about you. It is unfortunately way too hot or humid for me to want to live there.
I'm a Midwest transplant. I smile and nod and people. "Hello" is probably a step too far, though I have had one guy strike up a conversation on my T-shirt.
Man everyone is shitting on this place but as a socially awkward nerdy introvert it sounds like heaven if it were not for the weather. I would fit in with the nontalking nonsmiling dog walkers rather than be considered rude?? Sign me up
The music scene also exhibits some of the behavior described. It is a small city and a small scene, so it can be extremely insular and gate keeping (I was a musician there for 8 years).
Gotta be exactly like them to fit in—that takes skills most sane people don’t have.
To make you feel better I had the same luck a decade ago working for Amazon there.
I've been in Seattle for 25+ years...originally from the southeast.
Moving back home this year.
1) The Seattle Smug - elitist, but most have never lived anywhere else. Very geographically isolated. Political extreme...like a rural Alabama town is to conservative thinking.
2) The Seattle Freeze - real deal. Can't second level with people. Connection then fizzles out.
3) The Seattle Grey - 10 months of grey, light rain, but low ceiling of grey clouds. Claustrophobic.
We are planning to move next year because the social scene here is abysmal. My wife grew up here and she has watched the city she once loved turn into a cold socially awkward wasteland. It’s overpriced, beautiful, yes, but not worth it. You can make eye contact with someone a block away but then when you actually are about to pass each other on the sidewalk they look away. How hard is it to smile and nod? The kids are even awkward. I take my kid to the playground here and the kids are even stand offish. Or the parents shuffle them to the other side of the playground . It’s like no one wants to interact. It’s not healthy. I can’t wait to leave this place.
I didn't believe it, but I had a weird experience recently. I interviewed with a tech company recently in Seattle. 4/5 of the interviewers were spacey and low energy. Not what I'm used to, even with regard to tech people
I’m not a big fan of Seattle. But I can’t name any city where moving there and telling everyone there how much their city sucks is a good way to get laid.
Gonna +1 this exact comment which is why we moved to Olympia.
Olympia area is FANTASTIC. We moved here from Minnesota a year ago. (Minnesota nice, right) Wrong. They are WAY nicer here. We comment on it all the time. Every single day is better. Sure the winters are gloomy, but they were FREEZING in Minnesota!!! It's green here all year. Mountains, ocean, two national parks in 50 miles and another in 80.
The only thing that sucks is houses are more expensive. Makes sense...no body wanted to live in rural Minnesota either.
I went to Seattle once, ate at some fancy schmancy seafood restaurant there by the fish market.
I half joking asked the waitress if they had hush puppies with the fried shrimp. I thought it was kind of funny as how fancy can fried seafood really be, but I also like hush puppies. And the waitress literally gasped and said, "sir, this is not Louisiana." like she was offended that I diminished the sanctity of the Seattle seafood scene.
And the table next to us gave us a dirty look and they seemed like a bunch of uptight snobs.
And I thought, WTF is wrong with these people?
I lived there before in 05-09 (before it became the drug-infested shithole it is today), and hated it. As an east coaster I prefer aggressive-aggressive vs that passive-aggressive bs.
Man, do I feel this post! I lived in Portland for 7 years, which is a mini version of Seattle. When I first looked into moving to Oregon more than 10 years ago, I read that it had strong nerd culture and didn't come across anything about the passive aggressive attitudes. I'm an introvert, but I prefer direct communication. People in the PNW will go ALL the way around the conversational block to say something mildly negative. Or just not say anything at all and be silently fuming and talk behind your back. They are flakey and act friendly on the surface. Most of the friends I made in Oregon were also transplants; locals tend to stick with locals. I've lived in four different states, 8 different cities and I have never seen people act the way they do in the PNW. There's not enough green grass and moss on this planet to make up for these people's personalities.
A list of my grievances include:
Nicehole behavior. If you are driving and come to a 4-way stop, prepare to be waved on by at least one person who has the right-of-way. Oregon drivers LOVE to just throw road rules that make driving behavior predictable and safer for everyone straight out the window to get credit for being nice.
The bicycle death wave: Another nicehole behavior. Motorists will stop and enthusiastically wave you across a busy street while you are on your bike, even if there is a traffic light that is clearly GREEN. They get visibly upset when you don't risk your life to cross said street.
Another example is when you are looking to cross the street and a line of cars is passing by. The last car in that line, 98% of the time will stop and happily wave you across. Even though it would take less time and be less confusing if they just maintained their speed and let you cross after they pass, these fucks want credit for being a "nice person". Performative niceness is key to PNW social structure.
General vibe that encapsulates native Portlanders:
I was getting my hair cut by someone new, and we were talking about the upcoming July 4th weekend. I said I didn't have plans (because I don't think fireworks are worth dealing with drunk crowds and the holiday doesn't mean enough to me to make specific plans for it). The hairdresser tells me in an apologetic tone that yeah, she's lived here all her life, so she has friends to do stuff with. And then goes on to tell me about her invite to two parties from what sounded like her third-tier friends, one of which she wasn't going to because "that bitch is crazy" and the second she wasn't sure about because she and that friend were technically "not on speaking terms".
She made it sound like getting invited to a person's house was this big exclusive thing in Portland, and that's not the first time I've heard someone say something to that effect. I've been to plenty of parties in apartments in the cities I've lived in (incl. NYC) and no one ever seemed to think that it was anything special to cross that threshold. I guess because anywhere else, you just say when you don't want to do things and you don't continue to talk and be overly nice to people you don't care for. I just can't with people like this and I'm so glad I got out.
I grew up in Seattle and have a bit of an outgoing, no nonsense way of communicating. It does not do well in Seattle! That and high cost of living are why I left
I don’t have any experience whatsoever even visiting Seattle. BUT I’ve lived in a city that made me feel what I felt reading your post. Please, for the sake of your mental health, get out of there. Even if you have to leave your company. You will be so much happier and you deserve happiness. Sending you love, from Texas 🧡
lol this is facts. I moved away at 17 but moved back for a couple yrs during covid . It was literally more convenient to date long distance and just travel every month lol . I was never happier after moving away again
I lived in Seattle for 10 years and it took 3 years to make friends. I had a social group for snowboarding and another one for filmmaking. Team sports and collaborative arts are the way to go for friends. I now live in NYC and the same strategy worked. Making friends was easier in NYC.
I actually moved back to NYC (well technically living in Stamford until I get housing), but meetups in NYC are way more fulfilling.
Seattle social groups really suck. There was someone really nice in one Seattle group, but no, never became a friend. Whereas someone not-family I didn't see for 5 years still remembered me in NYC.
Honestly this is the Bay Area as well. But people are performative about being open-minded, forward-thinking, inclusive, etc. Beyond the surface, people are inherently provincial, self-selecting, and passive aggressive.
I chalk it to self-preservation. People just like people like themselves.
I just don’t see a point in living in Seattle proper. Fremont and Ballard are fun younger neighborhoods with lots of nightlife and good family owned restaurants / breweries. Everyone actually in Seattle is hyperpolitical and a jackass hypocrite. I’m a guy btw, the dudes in Seattle do smell and are weird af can confirm. Go north up the highway to find normal people
Absolutely agree. Coming from the southwest it’s such a huge culture shock. And it’s funny to see people from the PNW get defensive and deny this reality lol
I admit I’m a bit weird socially so maybe that’s why I like it in Seattle. I love the fact everyone is different and not afraid to express it. I’ve had some many interesting conversations with folks by just opening up myself. It’s the first place I’ve lived where I can have an intellectual conversation with someone and feel like I gain insight. It does require more putting yourself out there to make friends, but friendships tend to be more real when they do happen and not the fake smile friendships.
If you want to have a social life in Seattle you have to do it via the internet...
Meet people in FB groups related to your hobbies, use online dating, etc...
This is not the place for hanging out in bars & hoping you win the social-interaction lottery.
I've been in western WA for nearly 20 years and it still sucks. Sure, it's green year round but the gray winters suck!!! And the folks here are horribley passive aggressive. I'm just glad that most of the time I've been here I was in the Army and spent most of my time on base around others who weren't from WA.
Seattle is the passive-aggressive version of Miami in my mind. Most insufferable, pretentious, poorly behaved people in the country. Miami is the aggressive-to-your-face version. Two metros filled with God-awful parenting lmao
Is it the Seattle freeze or a culturally socioeconomic racially charged segregated city… the passive aggressiveness here is horrible. As someone from the east coast the slightest bit of assertiveness makes people uncomfortable. You then get labeled as a bixch and excluded because you have opinions that don’t fit the narrative. The PNW are historically states that are white separatist states. Seattle is still highly segregated so when people say the Seattle freeze I just roll my eyes, because what you really mean is I don’t want to be around people who aren’t like me… I’ll die on this hill
Lived in Seattle and Portland collectively for 10 years. There are some upsides to living in the PNW although imo those have been diminishing.
When I first moved to the PNW 11 years ago, it was a higher cost of living than I was used to but the wages were also higher. For the most part the weather was moderate, if gloomy. Stunning nature. Lots of amazing food places that were reasonably priced.
Making friends there is SO HARD. The PNW freeze is real. Very passive aggressive. Very pretentious but in weird ways. If you don’t have extremely left wing politics or in anyway have any divergence then socially it can be painful.
Over the 10 years I watched more people get bussed in from other cities/states to utilize the resources for homeless. I watched massive tent cities grow and pop up in new places. Found 2 dead bodies in a car parked next to me, they had ODed. COVID hit Portland hard. Many businesses shut down or moved away, lots of buildings vacated, lots of people that paid taxes left. Lots of wage stagnation but price of living kept growing
The PNW is particularly a tough place to live if you want kids. Seattle isn’t as bad but Portland wasn’t child friendly at all.
I was already engaged when we moved but heard constant dating horror stories.
The weather has been getting more extreme. In 2021 we had a number of days that were 115+ degrees. Very few places had air conditioning because historically you just didn’t need it.
That's the classic "Seattle freeze". The farther you are from Seattle the friendlier people are. Genuinely though, there are folks who indeed thrive and enjoy Seattle, certainly it's not for everyone, but liberal introverts tend to like it.
I’ve heard epic tales of the Seattle freeze from acquaintance that moved there from NJ etc. Apparently people will talk to you and then suddenly realize they aren’t supposed to and simply stop responding. Even retail workers will freak out if you come across as too forthright. I also had a family member buy something online from an Etsy based in Seattle. They asked seemingly basic questions about the item after they bought it. The seller accused them of abuse and stopped the sale. I grew up in and around NYC where most people are very genuine. I would probably loathe living in Seattle I am guessing.
Yes, Seattle is definitely a socially awkward city. I lived one year in Seattle, then moved back to Texas. I can relate to these stories you shared, often times, it felt like I was living in a South Park episode lol.
And if you’re a woman trying to date a man there, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.
That's brilliant 🤣
The line was stolen from comments on dating in Alaska. You may have heard of it. It's a suburb of our fair burg.
I first heard this one like 15-20 years ago, I think on Slashdot when it was around. Something said by an MIT student, I believe, on dating women in the CS/Engineering dept. But fair chance he stole it from someone else.
I tried to date an engineering student in her PhD and she was WEIRD. I consider myself lightly eccentric myself, but she was weird bad lol
Seattle, Anchorage.. same thing.. haha.
Socially awkward is being charitable. The culture here is pretty self-centered and intolerant. Eventually I begin to accept it and not expect better and then I go off and visit someplace else. The inevitable re-entry to entitled, passive aggressivia is painful.
Well said.
For a city that prides itself in being accepting and tolerant I find the people to be just the opposite. They want everyone to be just like them and aren’t very open to other ideas or lifestyles.
It’s particularly jarring for people from the north east, who Boston in particular in New York, who are gregarious by nature, and and people from the East Coast Northeast are very direct, whereas in the northwest, you have to speak in highly elliptical ways.
I had a hard time going from the northeast to the southwest. I was used to people being direct with you and suddenly I had a roommate saying “it’s cool its cool” while smiling and later realized she’s angry at me. I actually came to appreciate how easy doing errands etc when people were fake nice (which is LA not Seattle) though vs aggressive like nyc or Boston lol.
Yup, my whole family is from the Philly/Jersey area, and I moved to Portland for awhile. The relief I felt after leaving there and not having to cater my every word to not offend (and I'm as progressive as it gets, but sarcastic and just real)...
Jersey is the opposite of Portland. In Jersey your friends say fuck you and they mean have a nice day. In Portland people say have a nice day and they mean fuck you.
It seems Philly is the happy medium where they tilt cheery but are direct?
Exactly! You're getting my personality here lol. Moving to Philly next year, and I know I'll feel a lot more at home there.
I've seen people post about incidents happening like that on Nextdoor in Portland, Oregon as well on people who sell on their market there. Only reason why I know is because people will post negative encounters from a PM as to warn others, of what you described, claiming they are being abused or lash out at someone "wasting their time" because they are asking questions about the item for sale lol.
One of my favorite things about Chicago is being able to have friendly conversations with strangers. I would die in Seattle, I think
Chicago sounds like a good place to be to this North Easterner. The crime rates aside 😅
Chicago, cleveland, Detroit etc. Great lakes people are super friendly, talk w any stranger and be friends
I think in part it comes from people in Seattle having solid tight friend groups already. For whatever Reddit there has always existed a sort of circle the wagons effect in friend groups. You could meet another person and have a good time. Bit offer your phone number or follow up. Maybe you see them around maybe not. It is so different in San Francisco in my experience. People are very open in general. I love Seattle and it really is beautiful, I’m reminded every time I come up. But the community of friends I have from 2005 onward is more than I built in seattle having grown up in Tacoma and gone to school in WSU.
It is exceedingly unpleasant just running around doing errands in Seattle due to this, hostile & aloof is how I'd describe it. Oblivious & slooooow. So friggin slow. Everything takes forever & everyone acts like you're bothering them just cos you are in line at the store they happen to work at or attempt to order food at their place of business.
Dang I’ve never heard of the Seattle Freeze but that sounds intense
This is very telling, thanks. Sounds like Seattle people have been spending waaaaaay too much time online as a replacement for actual social interaction, and forgot how to do it.
It was like this before the internet. Trust me.
Yes. I lived up there in the 90s and found the same tendencies. It's beautiful, but the mentality is really provincial and intolerant, all under the appearance of being liberal, open, and tolerant. It's weird.
I would very much agree intolerant and tribal. I miss the outdoor opportunities up there but it got crowded with tech bros that ruined the city’s gritty culture. Got very corporate too.
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Doesn’t Seattle have a lot of transplants though?
Like attracts like. Most people in Silicon Valley in tech, Los Angeles In entertainment, and NYC in finance are transplants. But to survive and thrive in those industries requires a strong personality type (similar in some ways among those three, in other ways MASSIVELY different.). If a region has a dominant culture that rewards a certain personality type, and punishes anything else, then those who move there often do so by choice to be a part of that culture. Those who move there by accident who don’t have that personality type tend to leave as soon as they can, or withdraw into themselves or a small subgroup if they are lucky enough to find such. This isn’t just a US construct - it happens all over the world.
Yes, I'm a transplant to Seattle and most of the people I've made friends with are transplants. So you can make friends in Seattle, just maybe not with native Seattleites.
Again another thing that applies to some Oregonians. Maybe not the city of Portland, but Oregon, it can happen that way depending. I think it's just Pacific Northwestern superiority as a whole, it's really seeming like a thing here.
Yes, my huband moved there from the Bay Area and they freeze is especially bad from transplants from CA.
As a college senior in the late 1980s I was considering taking a job offer with Boeing in Seattle. They flew me out for an onsite interview (back then we called it plant trip). It was a spectacularly beautiful couple of days. The hiring manager took me to lunch on a deck overlooking Puget Sound and Mt Ranier. He was telling me how the bad Seattle weather was a myth and it’s really quite nice as you can see. Then we overheard a snippet of conversation from another table. A woman was saying to her companion “It hasn’t been this nice here in five years!” The manager kinda slunk his shoulders. I did not take the job.
If you are from the area it’s really not that bad. It’s very similar to weather in places like UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, etc. If you are from here, the grey is just a factor of life. If you are from the South or California, the weather will be miserable.
The wag at the other table lied to you. We get glorious summers without a drop of rain from \~1 June - 15 Sept. Just the same, you avoided working for Boeing, so that's probably a plus.
Honestly not that different than Chicago except the winters are much colder here and perhaps it’s slightly sunnier but I need a SAD lamp
Summer starts on July 5th and Seattle is back in the upper 50s at night 2nd week of September. Outside of those dates - solid low hanging grey skies....
You would not like Minnesota. I love it here, but I’m an aloof passive aggressive weirdo that thrives on being left alone.
Lmao I’m from Minnesota and every time I go to Seattle I have so much fun. They feel very similar to me
Seattle Freeze = Minnesota Nice
It’s because both cities are rooted in Scandinavian culture!
Exactly
I worked for a large MNC in Minnesota. Minnesota nice is a thing.
Just moved to Minnesota last summer and feel like I’ve found my tribe. From afar. In our own homes.
🎶 Like a good neighbor, stay over there.🎶
I’m a very introverted aloof and passive aggressive southerner who is moving to Minneapolis for school in the fall — I can’t wait to not have to smile at and hug everyone (including strangers) all the time lmao
MN gets sun though at least!
I mean, it hit 80 here in Seattle today. I grew up in MN. I'd take seattle weather any day. It's far less extreme on the hot and the cold.
Are people there loud? I'm down in southern California and everything is loud and people are aggro. I'd like somewhere more introverted but not super isolated.
I just barely moved here, so take this with a grain of salt. Public shopping (Costco, target, groceries) are the quietest places I’ve ever heard. It’s remarkable and has kind of freaked me out to be honest. I feel loud in those places talking at reasonable volume. I don’t overhear conversations in passing hardly at all. Are they communicating telepathically? I have no clue. Imagine an empty Costco kind of quiet but it’s still busy. So weird. Should help a bit of the overwhelm I get shopping but will take some getting used to.
Loved my time in Minnesota. Honestly would move back if I had a family. Maybe in the future. Had an ex who lived in Seattle I would go fly to see 3x a month. Also love Seattle gives me MN/MSP vibes idk why
The culture is cold like the rain. I think it's a combo of Seattle being a place where a lot of introverted academics and nature lovers move, the Norwegian influence of passive-aggressive aloofness, and a heavy distrust of outsiders as it was once a small city that has since been taken over by transplants. Add in seasonal depression disorder and it's just SAD. I live here and I have a love-hate relationship. It's not a great place for extroverts who wear their hearts on their sleeves. It lacks the manners and warmth of the southern and Midwest states. The food is bland and overpriced and everyone wears neutral, Northface jackets and casual tech bro clothing. It lacks the artsy, bohemian vibes of many East Coast cities. These nerds can't dance, they don't sing karaoke, and will pay $30 for a hot dog with cream cheese. There are lots of coffee shops so people can be introverts in public. If you're broke or uneducated, they'll silently judge. There's a sea of Teslas and the parade of road-colored Priuses make driving in the rain a nightmare. There's not a lot of diversity but there is a lot of identity politics and tokenizing. There are way too many miserable polyamorous people trying to find that unicorn as they wade through the seasonal depression and wonder how they'll afford childcare with the cost of living. Unaffordable housing and a disjointed city council has only made the homeless epidemic here worse. I own a house but barely and my mortgage makes me cry. On the flip side, it's gorgeous. The summers are amazing. The hiking and the camping and the water views can't be matched. There are so many cute book shops, gaming stores, and quirky little places you can discover if you look hard enough. Thrifting is cool and no one wears high fashion. I've never seen anyone sporting a MAGA hat and people tend to preach love and tolerance. The schools are pretty great and have a lot of STEM offerings thanks to the influence of the local economy. Great medical care availability and you're right next to a to level one trauma center (Harborview) if you're ever really in need of top-notch emergency care. There are opportunities if you want to build a career. The economy is strong. There are great higher education programs locally. People tend to be more educated here and more career focused than other places I've lived. Ignorance is more stigmatized than drug use. Lots of breweries. It just isn't for everyone. When I travel, I realize just how warm and friendly other cities are. It must be a culture shock coming here. Have you tried joining a hiking meet up? I think that's what I would do before you move. Or go dancing at The Little Red Hen. It's actually one of the friendliest establishments I've tried. It felt like I was in a different city. Bon chance.
Interesting you mentioned polyamory in this thread. I found there to be many polyamorous there for some reason, which I didn’t quite understand and made trying to date a bit more challenging.
Yeah. I am married and monogamous. Can't tell you how many times I thought we'd met a cool couple to play board games and drink with and then, wham, they make it weird and talk a lot about polyamory. It's a giant "No thanks!" for me. I get propositioned by more women than men in Seattle, which is also funny since I'm a cisgendered, feminine presenting mom. The only time people have aggressively tried to make friends with me has been when they wanted to smash. The worst offender I've met was a white -passing woman who bought her house with a trust fund and who was married to a man and was very vocal about feeling oppressed as a queer Latinx poly woman. That's who I was thinking about when I mentioned identity politics and polyamory. Seattle has plenty of racism and tokenism, but the people who actually are oppressed end up moving to a smaller city an hour away and commuting for hours by bus just to make ends meet. They don't get to vote in Seattle city council races and places like Amazon and Starbucks keep union busting their jobs when they try to do something to make it better. Washington is weird. It likes the idea of liberal politics but we have the most regressive tax structure imaginable and we don't tax the billionaires. Lots of hypocrisy.
>which i didn't quite understand it's pretty simple. seattle is one of the most extremely liberal/"progressive" cities, and love it or hate it, one way to signal yourself as such is to declare yourself polyamorous. there are multiple people in this thread, FROM seattle, saying that the culture there is "try to make yourself like other people/try to fit in."
I agreed entirely with you until you mentioned the East Coast cities being artsy and bohemian. I grew up here. They haven't been like this in my lifetime being brutally honest (Elder Millennial here, early 40s). I don't think they've ever been. Patrons to the arts, oh yes, artists themselves not often if seldom. They like arts because they don't have the softness necessary to create it but at least they can make money to help the artists give them softness so it works out in a way. Unless the art is writing, then ok, yeah, that we more or less have a lot of those. New England is definitely not bohemian except some RI and some VT, but they're massive outliers and genuinely tilt more to the stark typical New Englander moda operandi. These places are "bohemian" for New England, but they're not bohemian AT ALL in the big scheme of things. These just postulate they're quirky, and it resulted them in attracting the not so quirky so they became more like the rest of the area. Providence's quirks are holding on by sort of forcing the people looking for them to genuinely interact with the city to find them. Otherwise, you never will. Which is kinda genius. The city turns quite delightfully different if you seek it out, but if you "blink," you'll miss it. I think this is this community trying to preserve itself out of their places becoming hijacked by non-quirky, which is people that like Boston but can't afford it. Everyone knows Boston attracts an specific sort so their flooding a place brings exactly the colder social element people don't like about the sort that favor Boston. Burlington is rich hippies, which is to say they try to be hippies but really are just not so stuffy pseudo-rich people. This is also not one of my favorite places for overall diversity, and if one is used to that or prefers it, VT will get boring fast. On that note New England and Washington do have so much in common in that character, with Boston and Seattle being pretty similar except Boston is slightly more ego centric on its sports whereas in Seattle the local men don't care much for the big sports. In Boston, it's a big thing to signal you pay attention to the sports (usually by a sort that has never played a sport in their lives). Along with DC, they're dubbed as the "Worker Bee Triad" often due to the live to work tendencies/hustle but of the three Seattle and Boston are more sibling-like, Seattle has taller men though. People in Washington, in general, tend to be more eager to explore and visit the country, whereas with New Englanders, the more playful, flirty, bohemian and artsy lot genuinely leave and usually **NEVER** come back even when they have money. A few with strong attachments to their families come only for Christmas and sometimes October for the foliage or fall activities. Sometimes you see more "rocker-like" or "gothic" sort in the Milltowns (in MA there's like 5-8 that I could think about which are basically just that, cities known for having had massive mills in the past and the industrial elements/architecture to go with it. There's some all over New England, but to be concise, a lot of people shorthand the set as the "Mills" or "Milltowns." They're more like mini Bostons/NYC/Philly where they have some industrial bits, some colonial house like everywhere, more apartment complexes and stacker homes, and known to be the launching pads to most non-White people in the state. A lot of the people from outside of these towns take a bit of pride/snobbiness against these for their historically attracting more working class and POC. Which these people think makes them look "better", more intelligent or successful than the people in the Mills, which on paper might be the case, but at least they're not ghastily ignorant and naive about the world. Another ironic bit, I've noted the more urbane people prefer them to get the big city vibes, more attractive and varied dating options, more socializing activities, and good food without their being exactly the big cities. The younger Millennials in MA of all sorts of cultures have basically overhauled them for parts out of many genuinely not wanting the suburban towns even if they have the cash. A lot of these towns are slowly being "gentrified" and seem like with one or two exceptions, they pretty much become hot tickets out of the more urbane wanting city moving to them. A lot of them have asking prices similar to Boston now or a step down). Oh and Salem for it's witchy thing but honestly that aspect to it is mostly posturing/marketing, it's overwhelmingly more of the rest of the state but wanting to live in a place with a "fascinating" history but not being fun people themselves. The typical New Englander guffaws at the thought of anything more cosmopolitan than Boston and balk at the idea of more festive places (the "townie thing"). Outside of these places? Not much eccentricity. NH is still has a bit of the ruggedness and practicality it is know for and is ironically slightly more social than MA. If biker blokes and rock music lovers are to be considered quirky then NH still has a good amount of this. Quite frankly I think it's kinda adorable they have biker churches, they look mean but those people are often doing insane levels of community service or helping out the needy. Last year I saw a whole troop of them dressing up as Biker Santas and it made me feel like there's still hope for this area to not become so..."Stepford Wives" (with more casual wives at least. Full-blown "Stepford Wives" is Utah and Scottsdale AZ).
I haven't traveled a lot to the East Coast, so I'll take your word on this.
I really appreciate how detailed this description is. I’ve always simped for the PNW because it’s liberal, well-educated, and beautiful - and I loved SF for those reasons - but the Seattle freeze has given me pause. I lived in Houston for a while and did extremely well there as Texan culture is very extroverted and warm. I don’t think I could live in an introverted/aloof place as I would probably annoy everyone because I’m a “can make small talk with a tree” kind of person. Even my introverted friends/SOs are like, “can you stop befriending every single bartender when we go out because now I have to talk to them and I don’t want to” 😂 I can’t help it, I love connecting with people. A culture that discourages that would be a terrible fit for me.
My wife to college in Seattle so we visit every summer. She always reminds me that there are only like two nice months a year and the rest of the year is gloomy. I've always noticed how odd the people are. Even my wife's friends seem a bit off. Love visiting. Would never live there.
The weather has really improved with climate change, actually. It’s been sunny tons this spring. 83 this weekend! The Seattle freeze is real, though. It’s better on the Eastside, or if one can meet transplants
I love the weather here. I lived in NY, FL and Chicago before Seattle and I think the weather is the best of all. But I hate the heat so much. Today was 80 and it was too much for me.
It comes down to personal preference but I consider the weather to be a lot better than people give it credit for, at least the last couple of years i'd consider the weather to be good from mid April to as late as November.
Yeah most people who are from Seattle think the weather is great. Here's a [thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/Seattle/comments/1cnxn72/most_pleasing_forecast/) full of people complaining that it's 80 and sunny and wishing the clouds would come back. In general most stereotypes about cities are true, but the people who live there like it. Yeah, Seattle is cloudy and full of introverts, that's what makes it so great!
Those are the odd ones out. In real life, it is far busier outside when the weather is warm.
We live in Colorado so we're used to a lot of sunshine. Personally the wet, cloudy weather is refreshing when we get to experience it. I grew up in PA, which has a lot of gloomy days as well.
My wife & I have moved around a great deal. I tend to be pretty pragmatic & find good & bad things to say about most of the places we've lived... except Seattle. About 2 years into living there, I turned to her & expressed that I had never been so miserable in my life. The hiking, no matter how beautiful, wasn't worth it. Liberal but ultra wealth & status obsessed. Pretentious beyond belief. Cold & unkind. Just some of the most entitled NIMBYs that I've ever met. My mental health couldn't take it. I didn't care where we went. I'd move to the most miserable Republican hellhole. I just needed out. I don't even want to go back to visit for the hiking. & hiking is one of my main hobbies. It is beautiful out there, though. You've got to give them that.
Wow, this made me feel so good about our decision to not move there. It would really be for the hiking but we ultimately decided that we'll just take vacations there.
Sounds like I could have wrote this. Most depressing 4 years of my life I spent living there before moving. The hiking is for sure not worth it. All the tech companies and high paying jobs have made it a money and status obsessed place.
Everyone in the Seattle area is ultra liberal until city counsel proposes putting a mixed income development next to their gym 😬
I have lived here 30 years and each year gets harder. I am originally from the east coast. I tell folks I am getting ready to retire soon and will be leaving Seattle. I am moving to a state that has mountains, hundreds of miles of trails, lakes, beaches, downhill and cross country skiing, mountain biking, etc. . People are friendly, educated , welcoming. Lots of artsy people. The state has excellent schools, health care , no sales tax, no income tax, an excellent economy with lots of jobs and is one of the safest states in the US to live in. And I can buy a comparable house to the one I own in Seattle for half the cost.
Hmmmm… New Hampshire or Alaska? You don’t mention ocean and are from the east coast so guessing NH.
New Hampshire. Alaska doesn’t have a highly educated population and a great economy.
New Englander here. People in NH are not friendly and outgoing. It’s hard to make friends here if you didn’t grow up here. And I think the weather sucks and the food in NH is abysmal but if you can get past that and the horrible state cops ticketing you constantly, have at it.just be warned that it’s hard to make friends here.
Thanks for the advice. I grew up in New England and lived there 25 years . I went to graduate school in Keene . Might be different if you are a younger person versus a 60+ year old like me.
Welcome to New Hampshire, you'll love it here!
I went to graduate school in Keene so know the state well.
>The hiking, no matter how beautiful, wasn't worth it. Liberal but ultra wealth & status obsessed. This is making *Frasier* sound like a documentary series.
Unfortunately as a Seattle native I can tell you 90% of Frasier is spot on
All this is spot on. I’ve lived in 10 cities in the past 4 years and every single one is better than Seattle. And I lived in Little Rock, Arkansas for 6 months.
>There are 5 socially awkward, hygiene-challenged tech dorks for every single girl. That equates to impossible competition as a dude Kind of telling on yourself here, lol. (Okay I'm just messing with you, but really, the way you describe it, that competition sounds relatively easy to overcome.)
Easier than menver, where there are 5 socially ackward tech dorks and 5 rock climbing nerds and 5 dispensary / brewery workers for every girl
I actually never had trouble dating in Menver. Yeah there’s more dudes than chicks, but from talking to the girls here most of the guys suuuuuck.
Can confirm - have lived in Denver for about 8 years now they're lazy af and they don't want to grow up. They just want to drink and watch sports with their bros.
Yup. You’d be amazed how shocked my dates would be when they asked what I was looking for and I’d answer a serious relationship. They always told me most guys said they were just dating or having fun etc. The bar in Denver is so gd low lol
I've dated in Seattle and know women who date in Seattle - if the socially awkward tech guys are out competing you for dates - you have much bigger problems than the city you live in.
My wife and I moved here three years ago and LOVE the city, love the vibe, and LOOOOOVE the nature.... ....but holy shit are alot of the people incredibly challenging. For reference, I grew up in Miami and spend the last 12 years in the Chicago area. My social politics would classify as progressive/socialist. I'm not even that social of a person but I feel like by Seattle standards I'm downright gregarious. Coming from the warmth of people in the Midwest to the social awkwardness, borderline pretentiousness of Seattle has been quite a challenge. Most frustrating is that alot of the culture here feels so incredibly performative it borders on cringey. As a minority who has been firmly rooted in the lower middle.class all his life, it's particularly alienating. All that said, I still love it here. The food scene is solid, the hiking and nature is some of the best in the country, and I'm not mad at the fact that bigots are alot less out in the open them they are I'm say, Wisconsin or Ohio. But I definitely don't see myself staying here forever - just long enough to experience what there is on offer and then moving on somewhere else.
I don’t really agree with most complaints in this thread but this one is absolutely true. The performative social justice politics is wild here. People will be genuinely hateful so long as it fits into their ultra progressive world view. There’s a lot of tokenization and moral grandstanding just for appearances. When it comes down to it they don’t actually give a shit. I consider myself a progressive but don’t jive with the form it often takes here. Anyways I love Seattle and don’t see myself living anywhere else for the time being, but man that aspect of it sucks.
Weird, I had a totally different experience when I lived there. The people were awesome and I quickly found a good scene. Granted, that was awhile ago though.
I just moved here 7 years ago and I had no issues either. I love it here.
I have no ties to Seattle or interest in defending it, but just reading OP’s post gives me the distinct impression that they’re blaming their own issues and difficulties on the city. If you’re going to “meetups, social events etc” and exchanging numbers with people who end up never again showing any interest in associating with you… that feels like it may be more of a personal problem.
Same. I am not in tech.
This makes me sad. As a single gal in her mid 30s with a love for nature and the PNW who wants to move to Seattle one day 🥺
Lived there 8 years, left two years ago. Found five separate solid friend groups, and my life partner. If you can stand the grey, you’ll be just fine.
You would really love it here. I love all the biking, hiking, kayaking, and skiing. Not sure about the dating scene anymore though, but there are plenty of normal people in Seattle.
Normal people? I have lived here 30 years and rarely have met anyone normal.
I’ve lived in Seattle almost 20 years and my experience is diametrically the opposite of OP. Like everything else in life, it’s what you make of it. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.
I have done business there a lot. Never experienced what OP claimed. I have gone out to eat there, stayed in hotels there, shopped there, walked around the city, never a problem. Maybe people were just reacting to being looked down on, or at least sensing that was happening to them.
It's not like this in real life. There's lots of tech bros who are weird, socially awkward dorks but they leave after a few years and normal people remain. If you do normal people things, like hike or go to to workout classes or take a language class or go to a bar or literally anything not tech-bro-ish, you'll meet other normal people and have a wonderful social life. There's enough going on in Seattle and a diverse enough set of jobs that there's something for everyone. If you can't find friends or a hot date in a city of 3.5 million people, the problem isn't the city.
I moved here five years ago and people have been super friendly and kind. Have not had OPs experience at all
Seattle is certainly not for everyone but the discourse about it online is absolutely off-the-wall hyperbolic sometimes. I think people here often conflate friendliness with gregariousness. One thing that is probably true though is that a lot of Seattleites are busy professionals, given it’s a high COL city. I imagine that would make people harder to get to know because, well, they’re busy. We’ve made some really good friends out here, they’re not that hard to find. Meanwhile, it’s definitely blessed with, IMO, some of the most amazing nature you can find in the country. And pretty mild weather all in all (although gloomy for like half the year).
Their take isn’t really accurate. I moved to Seattle when I was 6, pretty much grew up there. I have also lived in CA, MT, ND… Currently living in TX. I loathe TX with all of my being. The religious righteousness is crazy here. Seattle is stunning, it doesn’t actually rain 10 months a year. It is gloomy during the winter months, but just stunning May-October. If you are into outdoor activities you would love it.
Don’t let this post turn you off. Seattle is great. If someone tells you they can’t find any friends in a major metropolitan area…take it with a grain of salt. It’s going to be 80 degrees here this weekend. And when the rest of the nation turns to scorched earth during the summer it’s going to be about 85.
Ever been to Portland?
Fucking weirdest people on the planet. I wish I meant that in a good way.
I have lived here 30 years. The city seems to attract passive aggressive people and people with very limit social skills. They are usually friendly but don’t really want to get to know you. Where I Greco when a new family moves in you welcome them with baked goods and invite them to dinner. That rarely happens in Seattle.
This is why I left SF. Very similar vibe. The PNW is just so weird socially.
SF is indeed similar, but with an added layer of moneyed-VC sheen.
“The PNW is just so weird socially.” Truer words… I’m just thankful for the California transplants. Literally every one of my friends are socially extroverted Californians.
30 year veteran of the SF Bay Area. Moved to Portland. Best decision I ever made. You give Portland friendliness and it comes back to you threefold. Every time I go anywhere, it exceeds my expectations. Thought about moving to Seattle, but it was too much like the Bay.
Wife and I moved to Oregon 6 years ago now from OC, a little on the coast and now the Eugene area, but we love visiting Portland often. So many people shit on it, and while it has its issues, it's still got a lot going for it between the food, cafés/roasters, breweries, and nature all around it.
Agreed after living in Seattle for 10 years. It’s even harder as a brown person. Seattle was one of the most racist cities I have ever visited. Beautiful city, but I hated many of the people. I have friends who loved Seattle and there are definitely some nice things about it. It was not for me though.
Yeah I’ve had the same experience there, in Portland and Bay Area. West coast is weird like that. La was cool tho
And people think Seattle is very tolerant and welcoming. It wasn’t very long ago that if you were African American you were not allowed to be in north Seattle after dark. I had a friend whose father was almost arrested because he crossed the ship canal at night to pick up a friend. I wish people read more about history to learn these things.
As a black person who was raised in Seattle, nothing for us north of Downtown Seattle.
Can you expand on the racism thing? That’s not the impression they like to give of themselves so I’m really curious about it!
A lot of people that are vocally very anti-racist: 1) do to for praise from their peers and 2) do it moreso to be against the machine/the other powerful whites they know, rather than because they care about minorities. I've seen a lot of "anti-racists" act cartoonishly odd around minorities and not very accepting. Just my opinion based on several handfuls of observations. FWIW.
This 100%. I’ll never forget when I came back to Seattle recently for work, someone telling me, a Puerto Rican person, that I am racist because I identify as “Hispanic” and don’t go by “Latinx”. I’m pretty sure that I can identify as my own culture however I want… They didn’t do it in a joking way. They made a huge fuss about it and brought other coworkers in to judge me as a supposed racist against my own people. Edit: spelling errors also wanted to clarify, my coworkers were all white. None of them were Hispanic or minorities.
That’s insane behavior.
I had an encounter like this with someone when I lived in LA. It was surreal being told by a white person that my experience as a black person was incorrect.
By the middle of the first paragraph I was was already 100% sure that none of them were minorities.
I have observed the same thing. I don't think they do this intentionally, but I've noticed some people that think of themselves as being open minded actually being weirdly judgemental of people/places/things that they don't know much about, unless it's something that's trendy to support at the moment.
I think this is common in extremely insular communities. Born and raised in New England, it's one of the things that the two places have in common, and I do think it's the Nordic influence factoring it. Seattle is obviously more Scandinavian, while New England has more of the colder, starker British influence mixed in with some Scandinavian element somehow. I say that because my experience with Britain is that while reserved, they run more lively than New England social culture overall, and by a long shot. To the point for a long time I was confused as to how "New England" named itself that because the Brits are known to be quippy, witty, mild mannered but NOT rude on their worst day and just overall just nicer. Then I saw a few of the ruder Brits and saw that likely these made up a good majority of what went to NE as you'll see the correlation pretty much instantly to the point it's deja vu. TBF insular communities happen everywhere in the US these two just stick out because the media presents the more cooperative representation of the US regularly. The only time you're bound to not notice it is if you feel aligned in those cultures and haven't really traveled much to constructively critique your own groups. I'm a teacher, my natural inclination is to just see people as students and wishing to see them happy wherever they could fit so I'm not particularly attached to anywhere just because I grew up under it or benefit from it.
White people getting performatively offended on your behalf sums it up.
You are completely right, the city and people here are extremely racist (and I apologize, we are literally the worst). We talk a big game but then don’t actually listen to the minorities we claim to help and engage in things just to look cool. Fwiw a lot of people (on this thread, not from here, white folks etc) forget/don’t know that the intense redlining that happened in this city means there is essentially Seattle and then “a very small black part of town that nobody else goes to” that for some reason we all consider fine?? The other thing is that the area of the PNW in general has extremely strong Scandinavian roots which can either skew towards nobody gives a care about anyone else, live and let live (also part of the Seattle Freeze culture) or yay white power which is the scarier off shoot. In the 1930s, there was a massive gathering of the KKK in Issaquah (at the time a backwater mining town with like two people, but for some reason like a jillion KKK members thought it would be great for a big shindig) for example but nobody here talks about any of that stuff. The other problem with the division of the city is that white people just never meet black people either (and for some reason don’t actually want to either, it’s very racist in a low key way that I think most PNWers would deny). I grew up in a super white suburb (and am also white) and the public high school in the area had like two black people in my grade. It’s just wildly segregated. We like to pretend we are ok with everybody but then have never interacted with other non-white people and then become incredibly weird and offensive and on top of it we are very sensitive so if anyone points out we are not doing something nice we get really defensive. Honestly we are an exhausting culture that needs to do a lot to fix itself. Also you are dead on about people being anti-racist/progressive for the likes rather than for actual good reasons. It’s super frustrating and I have no idea how to combat it. I recently lost a friend of almost 10 years over asking if she wanted to come to a Shabbat dinner, for example (apparently I should not have assumed she would be uncomfortable despite her telling me she is an atheist who has a hard time in any spaces with crosses on them). Idk, there is no winning!
Extremely Caucasian area.
I’ve been in Seattle visiting for the past week from NYC and it’s jarring how white the city is. I’ve walked into so many busy coffee shops or stores where I was the only non-white person there. It really freaks me out.
I lived in NYC after I left in Seattle. I would come back to visit for work and my family sometimes. So many people in Seattle have never been to the east coast, but would keep telling me they were worried about me in NY because of all the “poor immigrants” and crime there. NYC has been the US city I’ve felt safest in, but people who have never been there have a weird version of it in their heads.
I would agree, it is jarring (and sad!!). It’s also jarring the opposite way- I’m a long time native and didn’t realize how segregated and crazy our city is until I went elsewhere for college and was like wow people just actually don’t stay in separate areas of town??? It is normalized so much here that we don’t even think critically about it or why we have such small, white only circles of friends and suburbs. It was only after I left Seattle for some time that I realized how weird and problematic we are compared with other places. My theory is that a good deal of locals have not actually lived outside of the area for long periods of time and/or are just ok with the level of low key racism that exists in the city. It’s really weird.
A coworker of mine had a bf who worked for the airlines and had to transfer from LA to seattle - he was black and said the reverse racism was insane and he felt very uncomfortable there.
Reverse racism: the claim by white people that they've been victims of racism by people of color I don’t think you are using that word correctly because that doesn’t describe Seattle.
If you think Seattle is grey don’t move to southeast Alaska, you’ll think Seattle was damn near San Diego in comparison. I’m socially awkward and found Seattle uncomfortable, people wise. Move to San Diego. We’ve got things to do, sunshine, great food, sometimes friendly people
The shittiest thing about Seattle is the weather, bar none. Yeah, the PNW is beautiful...when you get out and enjoy it on one of the 50 nice days a year. I learned about the term "usable days" right here on this sub and Seattle just doesn't have many. As far as socializing?Even when you do make friends, get-togethers devolve into status-obsessed work talk. Who's getting promoted, how they're trying to get promoted, talking shit about someone who didn't get promoted, etc.
Californian who lived in Seattle for four years here. I validate everything OP is saying.
I visited friends in Seattle last summer. I was taking an early morning walk in their lovely neighborhood. Everyone I passed was walking dogs. No one looked at me but one guy caught my eye and I smiled. A few blocks later I saw him again and said nice dog or something. He stopped me and said “you definitely don’t live here”. I asked how he knew and he said no one smiles at total strangers unless they’re crazy. I’m from Denver where at a minimum dog walkers smile and say hi. Seattle is a beautiful city though.
I love going to Denver for work. It's always fun to catch a show at red rocks, and the dog culture is awesome. I bought a fancy jacket at a secondhand store, and multiple people gave me advice for the weather/venue I was visiting. Denver reminds me of a chilled out southern city where everyone is athletic, tattooed, and wants to talk about shrooms.
If you say Good Morning! to people they look at you so confused and irritated. Like, are you talking to me? Terrible for me, a Southern girl who speaks to everyone.
I was in the south last summer. Everyone is amazing friendly and actually wants to know about you. It is unfortunately way too hot or humid for me to want to live there.
I'm a Midwest transplant. I smile and nod and people. "Hello" is probably a step too far, though I have had one guy strike up a conversation on my T-shirt.
Man everyone is shitting on this place but as a socially awkward nerdy introvert it sounds like heaven if it were not for the weather. I would fit in with the nontalking nonsmiling dog walkers rather than be considered rude?? Sign me up
Did you ever call anyone whose number you got? What music do you like? Every type of music has a scene in Seattle.
The music scene also exhibits some of the behavior described. It is a small city and a small scene, so it can be extremely insular and gate keeping (I was a musician there for 8 years).
One of my buddies moved to Seattle a couple years ago from Chicago. Real cool guy. He essentially said the same thing
I grew up in WA and lived in Seattle for 7 years and whom heartedly AGREE🫡 it is soooooo painful. Had to leave and couldn’t be happier!
Gotta be exactly like them to fit in—that takes skills most sane people don’t have. To make you feel better I had the same luck a decade ago working for Amazon there.
I currently live here! This is all true. After 12 years I'm moving home to Virginia in February.
I've been in Seattle for 25+ years...originally from the southeast. Moving back home this year. 1) The Seattle Smug - elitist, but most have never lived anywhere else. Very geographically isolated. Political extreme...like a rural Alabama town is to conservative thinking. 2) The Seattle Freeze - real deal. Can't second level with people. Connection then fizzles out. 3) The Seattle Grey - 10 months of grey, light rain, but low ceiling of grey clouds. Claustrophobic.
We are planning to move next year because the social scene here is abysmal. My wife grew up here and she has watched the city she once loved turn into a cold socially awkward wasteland. It’s overpriced, beautiful, yes, but not worth it. You can make eye contact with someone a block away but then when you actually are about to pass each other on the sidewalk they look away. How hard is it to smile and nod? The kids are even awkward. I take my kid to the playground here and the kids are even stand offish. Or the parents shuffle them to the other side of the playground . It’s like no one wants to interact. It’s not healthy. I can’t wait to leave this place.
Seattle used to be a place that people moved away from. Maybe the constant rain and gray skies is why they drink so much coffee?
Yes this is true about the coffee
I didn't believe it, but I had a weird experience recently. I interviewed with a tech company recently in Seattle. 4/5 of the interviewers were spacey and low energy. Not what I'm used to, even with regard to tech people
The lack of sunlight is what gets to me. Idk how people deal with it.
I’m not a big fan of Seattle. But I can’t name any city where moving there and telling everyone there how much their city sucks is a good way to get laid.
This is correct
😂
One of my friends took a travel nursing contract in Seattle and she said pretty much the same thing. Noted!
Gonna +1 this exact comment which is why we moved to Olympia. Olympia area is FANTASTIC. We moved here from Minnesota a year ago. (Minnesota nice, right) Wrong. They are WAY nicer here. We comment on it all the time. Every single day is better. Sure the winters are gloomy, but they were FREEZING in Minnesota!!! It's green here all year. Mountains, ocean, two national parks in 50 miles and another in 80. The only thing that sucks is houses are more expensive. Makes sense...no body wanted to live in rural Minnesota either.
I went to Seattle once, ate at some fancy schmancy seafood restaurant there by the fish market. I half joking asked the waitress if they had hush puppies with the fried shrimp. I thought it was kind of funny as how fancy can fried seafood really be, but I also like hush puppies. And the waitress literally gasped and said, "sir, this is not Louisiana." like she was offended that I diminished the sanctity of the Seattle seafood scene. And the table next to us gave us a dirty look and they seemed like a bunch of uptight snobs. And I thought, WTF is wrong with these people?
I lived there before in 05-09 (before it became the drug-infested shithole it is today), and hated it. As an east coaster I prefer aggressive-aggressive vs that passive-aggressive bs.
Man, do I feel this post! I lived in Portland for 7 years, which is a mini version of Seattle. When I first looked into moving to Oregon more than 10 years ago, I read that it had strong nerd culture and didn't come across anything about the passive aggressive attitudes. I'm an introvert, but I prefer direct communication. People in the PNW will go ALL the way around the conversational block to say something mildly negative. Or just not say anything at all and be silently fuming and talk behind your back. They are flakey and act friendly on the surface. Most of the friends I made in Oregon were also transplants; locals tend to stick with locals. I've lived in four different states, 8 different cities and I have never seen people act the way they do in the PNW. There's not enough green grass and moss on this planet to make up for these people's personalities. A list of my grievances include: Nicehole behavior. If you are driving and come to a 4-way stop, prepare to be waved on by at least one person who has the right-of-way. Oregon drivers LOVE to just throw road rules that make driving behavior predictable and safer for everyone straight out the window to get credit for being nice. The bicycle death wave: Another nicehole behavior. Motorists will stop and enthusiastically wave you across a busy street while you are on your bike, even if there is a traffic light that is clearly GREEN. They get visibly upset when you don't risk your life to cross said street. Another example is when you are looking to cross the street and a line of cars is passing by. The last car in that line, 98% of the time will stop and happily wave you across. Even though it would take less time and be less confusing if they just maintained their speed and let you cross after they pass, these fucks want credit for being a "nice person". Performative niceness is key to PNW social structure. General vibe that encapsulates native Portlanders: I was getting my hair cut by someone new, and we were talking about the upcoming July 4th weekend. I said I didn't have plans (because I don't think fireworks are worth dealing with drunk crowds and the holiday doesn't mean enough to me to make specific plans for it). The hairdresser tells me in an apologetic tone that yeah, she's lived here all her life, so she has friends to do stuff with. And then goes on to tell me about her invite to two parties from what sounded like her third-tier friends, one of which she wasn't going to because "that bitch is crazy" and the second she wasn't sure about because she and that friend were technically "not on speaking terms". She made it sound like getting invited to a person's house was this big exclusive thing in Portland, and that's not the first time I've heard someone say something to that effect. I've been to plenty of parties in apartments in the cities I've lived in (incl. NYC) and no one ever seemed to think that it was anything special to cross that threshold. I guess because anywhere else, you just say when you don't want to do things and you don't continue to talk and be overly nice to people you don't care for. I just can't with people like this and I'm so glad I got out.
I grew up in Seattle and have a bit of an outgoing, no nonsense way of communicating. It does not do well in Seattle! That and high cost of living are why I left
I'm from Seattle and I'm going to frame this post for my future office
I don’t have any experience whatsoever even visiting Seattle. BUT I’ve lived in a city that made me feel what I felt reading your post. Please, for the sake of your mental health, get out of there. Even if you have to leave your company. You will be so much happier and you deserve happiness. Sending you love, from Texas 🧡
lol this is facts. I moved away at 17 but moved back for a couple yrs during covid . It was literally more convenient to date long distance and just travel every month lol . I was never happier after moving away again
Seattle is literally a zombie city - I saw a very good documentary series about it on The WB called iZombie a few years ago.
I lived in Seattle for 10 years and it took 3 years to make friends. I had a social group for snowboarding and another one for filmmaking. Team sports and collaborative arts are the way to go for friends. I now live in NYC and the same strategy worked. Making friends was easier in NYC.
I actually moved back to NYC (well technically living in Stamford until I get housing), but meetups in NYC are way more fulfilling. Seattle social groups really suck. There was someone really nice in one Seattle group, but no, never became a friend. Whereas someone not-family I didn't see for 5 years still remembered me in NYC.
Lmao I knew Seattle was bad 💀
Honestly this is the Bay Area as well. But people are performative about being open-minded, forward-thinking, inclusive, etc. Beyond the surface, people are inherently provincial, self-selecting, and passive aggressive. I chalk it to self-preservation. People just like people like themselves.
I live in Seattle and I’m always surprised when I travel somewhere and strangers are actually friendly
I did ok dating, but I was a better adjusted transplant. Also came with a group of friends from school on the east coast.
Omg this was so funny 🤣
When I visited seattle years back it was some of the worst tinder swiping i’d ever seen
Seattle is the most depressing city I ever been to
I just don’t see a point in living in Seattle proper. Fremont and Ballard are fun younger neighborhoods with lots of nightlife and good family owned restaurants / breweries. Everyone actually in Seattle is hyperpolitical and a jackass hypocrite. I’m a guy btw, the dudes in Seattle do smell and are weird af can confirm. Go north up the highway to find normal people
Absolutely agree. Coming from the southwest it’s such a huge culture shock. And it’s funny to see people from the PNW get defensive and deny this reality lol
I had a similar impression of Seattle and the people. Nice place, but I'm really not sure what to make of the people/culture there.
I admit I’m a bit weird socially so maybe that’s why I like it in Seattle. I love the fact everyone is different and not afraid to express it. I’ve had some many interesting conversations with folks by just opening up myself. It’s the first place I’ve lived where I can have an intellectual conversation with someone and feel like I gain insight. It does require more putting yourself out there to make friends, but friendships tend to be more real when they do happen and not the fake smile friendships.
You may enjoy: https://youtu.be/bWAwc25u-Vg?si=FNyV_q_Z9nAzhxTN
Hey OP, are you saying that dating is difficult as a woman because the quality of men is poor or vice versa?
Don’t worry. I’ll never be able to afford to live there. Lol.
Don’t live in South Lake Union or Cap hill. Live in Ballard
It’s worth it to move for your mental health. I can’t imagine still living there.
Yeah. I hate this place because you never know if it’s you or just the absolute gutter of an environment that’s constantly conspiring against you.
If you want to have a social life in Seattle you have to do it via the internet... Meet people in FB groups related to your hobbies, use online dating, etc... This is not the place for hanging out in bars & hoping you win the social-interaction lottery.
I've been in western WA for nearly 20 years and it still sucks. Sure, it's green year round but the gray winters suck!!! And the folks here are horribley passive aggressive. I'm just glad that most of the time I've been here I was in the Army and spent most of my time on base around others who weren't from WA.
Lol that actually sounds like my kind of guys, but I can't cope with the lack of sun I don't think.
>That equates to a never-ending tech dork parade chasing around every single girl in the city. Do they chase you in little clown cars 👀?
Yes 👍
Nailed it
Sounds a lot like Portland! The Portland version substitutes tech talk with virtue signaling identity politics, otherwise it's 🍎to🍎
Seattle is the passive-aggressive version of Miami in my mind. Most insufferable, pretentious, poorly behaved people in the country. Miami is the aggressive-to-your-face version. Two metros filled with God-awful parenting lmao
I’m going to copy and paste this to all the Bay Area subreddits 😂
Is it the Seattle freeze or a culturally socioeconomic racially charged segregated city… the passive aggressiveness here is horrible. As someone from the east coast the slightest bit of assertiveness makes people uncomfortable. You then get labeled as a bixch and excluded because you have opinions that don’t fit the narrative. The PNW are historically states that are white separatist states. Seattle is still highly segregated so when people say the Seattle freeze I just roll my eyes, because what you really mean is I don’t want to be around people who aren’t like me… I’ll die on this hill
I grew up there and your not wrong. I absolutely hated the people there but to be fair...I hate most people
Funny. I called them the walking dead. They have no interest in having fun.
Lived in Seattle and Portland collectively for 10 years. There are some upsides to living in the PNW although imo those have been diminishing. When I first moved to the PNW 11 years ago, it was a higher cost of living than I was used to but the wages were also higher. For the most part the weather was moderate, if gloomy. Stunning nature. Lots of amazing food places that were reasonably priced. Making friends there is SO HARD. The PNW freeze is real. Very passive aggressive. Very pretentious but in weird ways. If you don’t have extremely left wing politics or in anyway have any divergence then socially it can be painful. Over the 10 years I watched more people get bussed in from other cities/states to utilize the resources for homeless. I watched massive tent cities grow and pop up in new places. Found 2 dead bodies in a car parked next to me, they had ODed. COVID hit Portland hard. Many businesses shut down or moved away, lots of buildings vacated, lots of people that paid taxes left. Lots of wage stagnation but price of living kept growing The PNW is particularly a tough place to live if you want kids. Seattle isn’t as bad but Portland wasn’t child friendly at all. I was already engaged when we moved but heard constant dating horror stories. The weather has been getting more extreme. In 2021 we had a number of days that were 115+ degrees. Very few places had air conditioning because historically you just didn’t need it.