4d ago

Bugs sounding a little tasty tho, ngl

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There's something deeply unsettling about American suburbs, rows of identical houses, and not a human being in sight, no noises, just this artifical maze, my Uber took a detour though one once and I looked up from my phone and saw that I didn't realize where I am and it all looked so identical it was disorienting and I freaked out a bit, had to open Google maps to realize where I was. The movie Vivarium captures this feeling well. Why don't y'all get out and go for a walk and talk to your neighbors.
- The suburbs are bad enough but what really gets me when play Geoguessr type games is how much of towns are just a highway with a strip mall and parking lots. Gives me a weird dread-like feeling, kinda like being inside a dying mall right before it's closing.
  
  Yeah separating commercial and residential zones so much creates such dead zones, and a huge car dependency. Where I grew up everything I needed was in walking distance, from the optometrist to the bodega, never needed a car and my neighborhood felt so lively.
- I am an American, and I once found myself far from home traveling through what I later learned was a ‘bedroom community’ in New Jersey just trying to find a place where we could all pull over and eat something, but apparently “restaurants” were just supremely exotic anywhere within in those, Idk, 300 sq miles.
  It was EXTREMELY unsettling… even for an American!
- No noises sound like heaven.
- Even in the deepest suburbs it's not that hard to form community and connection with your neighbors. Hold a few yard sales, make small talk, greet people walking their dogs, get to know who lives where. That's literally all it takes, that and actually going out.
  We complain endlessly, particularly on sites like Lemmy, about the US's lack of "walkable cities" and other systemic obstacles to having better sense of community and social contact, but we hardly ever see people doing something about it.
  I get that it's less "fun" to go out and make friends if you don't got a riverwalk and cafes, but the most important ingredient is still there, which is other people you just need to step up and make things happen.
  
  Even in the deepest suburbs it’s not that hard to form community and connection with your neighbors.
  I get that it’s less “fun” to go out and make friends if you don’t got a riverwalk and cafes, but the most important ingredient is still there, which is other people you just need to step up and make things happen.
  There are so many angles to why isolated people don't "just go out and talk to people", though I will spare the rant as I live in an area likely much less densely populated than a suburb so I'm not sure how well my experience would map to what you're saying.
  Well, other than it's a lot easier for some people than others due to many aspects (like the bit you mention about dogs will work better for someone who also has a dog) but those are already the sort of things that are the difference between someone with some sort of social life vs someone with none.
  
  Don't police stop people that are walking? I heard this from multiple people. It's so unusual to not be in a car they investigate.
  
  I've had people in cars shout at me as they pass by and I've had a cop drive up to me and ask me where I'm headed, dependes from location to location, but walking is just seen as an odd activity in this country for some reason lol
  
  This kind of "societal pressure" for lack of a better term is probably discouraging people. At least for me it would be.
  
  People in cars do sometimes shout nonsense as they pass pedestrians, but that's just noise. Never respond to it, never think about it, never let it bother you. It's the same as leaf-litter. You walk through it, you don't let it even impact your stride. Purge from your memory as it happens like so much ballast.
  Now for police, that can vary a LOT depending on where you live and what your skin color is, but there aren't many places where people just can't walk around for fear of police intervention, because at least in America, despite all the media horror and fear, there are millions and millions of people walking their dogs, walking to the store, picking up their kids at the bus stop, carrying groceries, exercising, and so on. The chances of having a serious encounter with law-enforcement isn't zero, but it's probably significantly lower than the chances of developing type-2 diabetes from not going out and exercising.
  
  I have darker skin color so I avoid cops like the plague. I was walking home at 1 am in the rain and a single cop drove up to me and asked me where I was going and I wanted a lift, I picked a random apartment complex and said that's my home and just pretended to go in there till he drove away
  
  I've never heard of this as an arbitrary thing that just "happens." Yes there are neighborhoods that are overly policed and have racial tensions, but if you're in that kind of environment, you go out and stay with groups, you work within the system the best you can, you make planned events working with community organizers. It takes more planning and care, but even in those hostile urban environments, people go out and do things all the time. There is almost no place where you can't just go out and walk somewhere, unless it's such a dangerous area that a curfew is in effect. And really, if you live somewhere like that, you got bigger concerns.
  There is a LOT of overhyped media about American neighborhoods, they hype it in both directions. Depending on what side of the political spectrum you connect with best, the algorithm will attempt to make you afraid of going out because you should be scared of police, or scared of the citizens.
  In the vast majority of suburban neighborhoods and urban higher-density areas, there are always people walking around, walking their dogs, going to the convenience store, etc. The only time I've EVER been hassled by police was one time many years ago I was taking trash out in my own yard, but I was carrying a big black flashlight, carrying a trash bag and had a dark hoodie, and from a distance I looked just like a potential burglar. The cops asked me what I was up to, I said taking out the trash and they were kinda assholes but then left.
- the aetheric monotonous nightmare of commie blocks, with absolutely zero advantages, high cost, and HOA control
- talk to your neighbors
  That shit is WOKE.
- You ever seen Vivarium?
  
  Yeah I mentioned it in my original comment, nice movies
  
  Oh word. My bad.
- These types of identical house suburban hellholes are the exception, not the norm. Mostly it's the newer developments being built out in the middle of nowhere that look like this, and presumably so the builders can skimp out on construction costs by making (or attempting to make...) everything the same for each one. Plus the HOA, "but muh resale value!" factor.
  I live in an American suburb. All the houses in my neighborhood, and all the others in town, are different. We don't have an insane HOA and I can paint my house whatever color I want. We have quite a few services, shops, and various eateries (to be fair, three of them are fast food joints) well within walking distance. With sidewalks. And in some places, even a bike lane.
  This area was built up in the 1940's through the late 1950's in the post-war boom.
- little boxes
- Most places don't actually look like this. You see stuff like this when a single developer buys up a bunch of land and stamps down a bunch of houses with the same 2-3 layouts. It's pretty shitty and I'd eager most people don't actually like it.
  Most suburbs here are much more heterogenous as the houses are added incrementally over time.
- Do they not change them over time in the US?
  It looks like a new build estate here, but over the decades people redecorate, some might paint them differently or get an extension. Add a driveway, convert garage into a home office, plant a tree or hedge. After several decades the houses start to show their different unique traits. If you look closely (we saw 5 houses in the same area before buying) you can see how each was originally the same but has been changed over years.
  
  HOAs prevent it with all their micromanagement of how your property should look, and how modifications should be done. Most new build communities come with an HOA now.
  
  Why are HOA so common? I only read about how annoying and sometimes borderline illegal they act
  
  Also houses with an HOA are worth less money.
  
  I think because for most Americans their home is their single largest asset - usually their only one with any resale value. So they jealousy guard against anything that might reduce the value, like a neighbor who does anything out of the blandest, most ordinary things.
  
  ... or a neighbor who does something that actually reduces resale value in the neighborhood.
  
  I think we're agreeing. I mean, if your neighbor paints their mailbox with a rainbow then that's something that will make your house harder to sell.
  
  Ah, freedom!
  
  So glad that we don't have those here, its your house, you should be able to decorate it as you wish as long as it doesn't get to a point of harming others. Generally that would be health risks or blocking out the sun for others. So no 2m pile of fish guts allowed.

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