TaggartRE: https://hachyderm.io/@skinnylatte/116325795881403391
This is a specific poverty of American-brand ultraprocessed white culture that has always bothered me. I have never known community like this. It was basically Church or GTFO.
I dunno, I just have felt culturally impoverished for a long time. If you're a certain flavor of white, it's literally religion and work and...that's it. Sports I guess? What a non-nourishing culture.
And planting roots is pretty tough when you are forced to fling yourself across the country for school and work, which is the situation for many of my contemporaries. To leave home is to give up many of those built-in connections and support systems.
Eric McCorkleI seem to have the most social harmony and shared experiences with expats, and I do often describe myself that way ("southern expat").
The experience of rejecting the culture I grew up in, moving a long distance, erasing an accent, the lack of a fear on loneliness, the almost fear of having "roots", the phase where I dreaded being associated with where I came from and mortally terrified of being pulled back there... All very, very familiar.