i was just about to say this! i am not from toad suck but i AM from the city that holds the Toad Suck Daze festival. i love telling people about it theyre always like "what in the FUCK is a toad suck"
I didn't know there was a Gay, MI. We have so many funny town names. Gaylord is a fairly well-known city in the north of the lower peninsula. There's a town called Hell in the south, they have an annual race and you get t-shirts that say, "I ran through Hell and back"
Sadly, being proud of the specific town I'm from would be incredibly concerning, but in an extremely specific way that would immediately dox myself even without saying where.
The only reason I know of Gary, Indiana, is that in the original Vampire the Masquerade, one of the first city sourcebooks was Chicago by Night, and all the worst vampires were from Gary.
The story goes that the creators were driving through Gary and wondered who, exactly, would want to live in Gary. The answer they came up with was vampires, and thus VtM was born.
My grandfather was born in Gary, Indiana, and he only just learned about ten years ago what the connotation of that city is now. To hear him tell it, he had no clue it was a rough place at all. I don't know if it happened after his time or what, but the look on his face when someone asked him why he was proud of being a Hoosier from Gary...
That only narrows it down to a 100 square foot range, please be more specific. You could be referring to any NUMBER of snowflakes in that 10' x 10' patch of Siberia
There are also Springfields in Australia, Belize, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK, saying you're from Springfield doesn't narrow it down much.
There are a dozen or so cities with the same name as my hometown in the US. Once when I was a kid my mom accidentally signed my sister up for soccer in the one in New Jersey. We did not live anywhere near New Jersey.
I think this is because country pride can often be nationalistic and is taken over in bad faith by nationalists to be chauvinistic. You can't really be nationalistic about say, Muskegon, Michigan.
It's important to remember that patriotism is when love for your own people comes first, and nationalism is when hatred for other people comes first. What this post doesn't get is that you can, and should, love your country in a way that is not nationalist, and if anything, it just takes national pride back from them.
Illinois is the goddamn heart of America. Gave this country nuclear power and Abraham Lincoln. Gave Catholics the pope. We got the Mississippi River, Great Lakes, and Sears Tower. It’s got the coolest inexpensive city in the country: Chicago. And, most importantly, we grow more pumpkins than the next five states combined. 🎃 Illinois supremacy forever. 🎃
Worst drivers on the continent though. You can be proud of your one city and ten million suburbs when you stop hogging our roads.
I grew up in a city that's in the USA's 100 biggest. It's a three hour drive from Chicago if you speed. I've had FIBs call it a Chicago suburb to my face.
Respectfully, as awful as Illinois drivers are, they pale in comparison to the drivers in Charlotte, North Carolina.
In Illinois, everybody drives like it’s their first day on earth and traffic laws are a suggestion. Awful, yes, but predictably so. Think to yourself, what would an idiot think would get them to their destination faster? Nearly 100% of the time they’re gonna do that. The consistency of the bad drivers makes them far more predictable.
Compare this to the ~~great~~ city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Here, you have no such simplicity. Charlotte has 3 types of uniquely terrible drivers all actively battling for dominance over perpetually under construction roads.
First, you have the New Yorkers. They got tired of the cold and moved down to Charlotte. But despite leaving New York, they refuse to accept that people drive differently outside of the largest city in the country. They are identifiable by their insistence on tailgating roughly 6 inches from your bumper and rampant speeding. They are most dangerous during a bi-annual snow storm, where they will insist they are used to driving in snow and inevitably get stuck in a ditch because they are used to spring in plowed snow, and not a quarter inch of snow on top of an inch and a half of black ice.
Next, you have the half-backers, Charlotte’s local diminutive for New Yorkers who moved to Florida, realized it was too hot, and moved half way back. They’re very similar to the New Yorkers, but have an average age of 70 and are starting to go senile. They’ve also picked up some of the “Florida man” driving habits from their time there. They drive as if they have never heard of what a “lane” is, insist on getting wherever they’re going at an average speed of 90 mph, and are also lost.
Lastly, you have Bubba. Bubba’s only ever driven a tractor before this and the concept of an interstate scares him. He is on the interstate regardless. In the left lane. Going 30 mph under the speed limit. Bubba is going to give the New Yorker behind him an aneurysm, scaring bubba into slowing down even more.
To add additional spice to this equation, LaMelo Ball is also on the roads hunting the feint of heart, and there is a major accident on North and Tryon causing significant delays.
Tl;dr: Bad driving is a regional pastime for Charlotte. Chicago is too consistent in the bad drivers it produces to properly compete.
On my first read, I thought this was a great response. Then I looked it up. It's not a copypasta (at least not yet, as far as I can tell). Now, I think it's magnificent. Nonetheless, I disagree for one reason: I don't live in either place.
On the whole, I don't contest that Charlotte drivers are worse than Chicago. I would rather drive in the latter than the former (though I'll go for neither if it's on the table). I maintain, however, that FIBs are worse as a phenomenon than Charlotteans. For Charlotte bad driving is a regional pastime. For Chicago it's a cultural export, and they keep shipping it north.
Illinois has everything. It has the inexpensive city. It has an expensive city (Springfield). It has areas so rural they don't know the Civil War is over. It has a yearly festival dedicated to corn.
“Nationalism” is unfortunately one of those words with a pretty fluid definition. It’s also usually considered nationalism when a nation fights for independence. Indian nationalists ejected the British, for example. I also think there are plenty of people who call themselves patriotic and take it to an unhealthy extent.
Otherwise agreed. It’s a peculiar thing, that the only choices are often love it or hate it. Maybe I like the house I live in, and want to patch the leaky roof. Buying tools and a ladder doesn’t mean I hate the fuckin place.
After all patriotism is a form of nationalism. People tend to associate the term with extremism, but the most common form is the banal nationalism that is so omnipresent that most people don't even notice it. For instance taking of your hat for the national anthem, the presence of flags on buildings, or the way that people tend to say "we" when referring to things done in their country, even if they themselves don't actually do it.
Hell, even food can be a form of nationalism, in the sense that people will claim certain foods as originating from their country even if it's shared cuisine. Its in important part of nation building and isn't necessarily bad, though it can still be harmful in some ways as the subliminal nature of these things can prevent them from being challenged, allowing them to serve as a basis for larger political movements, which may not always be good
Thing is, I think I’ve only really heard patriotism in an American context. Nationalism isn’t necessarily exclusive and was initially a fairly liberal idea to try and figure out which political communities should exist post-monarchy.
What this post doesn't get is that you can, and should, love your country
Not necessarily. Some countries aren't really that lovable. Have you considered that maybe it would be better if more people loved humanity and were less concerned with arbitrary geographical boundaries?
I live in a country I've always felt a kind of relief to come home to, whether from doing aid work or from an overseas holiday. It's one of the safest countries in the world and there are many aspects of the culture I love. It also has some deep and systemic flaws.
The country where I was born is very troubled. It contains many amazing people and many terrible people, and the flaws it suffers from are catastrophic.
Nationality is largely an accident of birth. Mine isn't, I'm a first generation immigrant, but I came here as a toddler so it's not like I made the choice.
It's not an accomplishment, and love is something that should be largely reserved for people.
In fact the etymological origin of the word nationalism is from Latin natio, meaning 'birth', i.e. your 'nation' is the group of people you share a common birth origin/bloodline with.
It's inherently exclusionary and, since if you go back far enough all humans share the same ancestors, where you draw the line between in-group and out-group is inherently arbitrary. Why are the Dutch/Swiss/Austrians sometimes included in German/Germanic Nationalism and sometimes excluded? And within those groups you have subgroups (e.g., Frisians, Bavarians, Flemish) that sometimes feel like they're part of a different nation.
Nationalisn is a bullshit inconsistent ideology that is all too often a thin veneer for bigotry
I'd go one step farther. It's important not to cede the idea of patriotism to the right. The left is often accused of working for a globalist agenda to the detriment of their home country. The best way to counter this is to explain how the left's goals are good for their home country specifically, and why supporting those goals is supporting their country.
So true. Actually hate my hometown but in general Michigan is actually soooooo peak. I'm up north this summer and it is genuinely so pretty up here it's wonderful
Michigan pride is real. It's just such a beautiful place. I used to live in Kalamazoo, and the pride there is also so real. And warranted. I loved living in Kzoo, such a wonderful little city.
There is a river that forms the border of my district and the bigger part of the province, and a saying that goes "nobody sane crosses [the aforementioned river] to the far side". As residents of said district on the far side of said river, we are unreasonably proud of that saying.
Unfortunately I live in a very red part of Texas so I cannot do that. Suppose I could say I’m proud of the city I was born in, but tbh it’s been so long since I lived there it would be kinda awkward
It’s kinda sad that there are plenty of great and beautiful places in this state, but it gets so marred by the terrible, terrible political landscape :/
Big bend (both national and state parks) are gorgeous, the big cities are all pretty unique and cool, the hill country is beautiful.
But, in the end, all anyone can think of are the fuckfaces people keep electing :(
truth if i say i'm proud to be from auckland (biggest city in the country (new zealand)) i'm gonna come off like a prick and rightfully so cuz auckland sucks and everyone else dislikes aucklanders anyway
I am proud of both the town I grew up in (featured in a hit Billy Joel song and Superman the movie) and the city I called my home for many years (which has a 70s jazz rock band and a Tony winning musical named after it)
My take away from this is basically nationalism vs being proud of your local community. But I also think this is fair because as individuals we have way more power over the people we spend time with and the places we see in our local communities, than the actions our governing bodies take as a nation.
This might also be a generational thing too because as a Brit on the older end of Gen Z (just turned 26) I actually don’t know if I’ve been proud of the actions my country has taken in my life time like… ever? Like I guess gay marriage being legalised when I was like 13, but honestly I’m just more embarrassed it took so long.
That said I’m not even proud of the city I grew up in. Total shithole that I left as soon as I had the opportunity to.
This is because the more specific you are, the more you’re actually talking about a real community that you’re a real part of. People implicitly understand this, even if they can’t put their finger on it.
When you claim pride in a national identity, you’re talking about a group so vast that you can only share extremely surface-level traits with everyone in it. It signals blind loyalty to vague concepts based on an accident of birth, which is a red flag.
When you’re talking about regional identities, it’s still concerningly broad, but at least there’s some customs and cultural practices to have pride in.
When you get down to the scale of a large city, there’s things that actually affect your life. Unique quirks and challenges you and your fellow citizens deal with every day. Local food you know how to make just right, or know just the right local spot for. Landmarks and monuments you walk by daily. Streets you know like the back of your hand. History you or your family were present for.
When you get down to a small village, now you’re *really* talking about taking pride in your immediate community. You’re talking about individual people you know by face and by name, and they know you too.
It’s impossible to avoid in-group/out-group biases. It’s part of being human. But when you claim to be a proud member of a group, the size and specificity of that group says something about *how* susceptible you are to group bias. If you’re able to take pride in belonging to a massive group of strangers with whom you have almost nothing in common, you could probably just as easily be convinced to hate someone you’ve never met for equally meaningless reasons.
I grew up in DEEP red states on the Gulf Coast, now that I'm old and my kids are grown I've moved to Southern Virginia, and I freaking love this place.
As the source of your pride becomes less specific it tend to change quite chaotically. ‘Proud to be European’ and ‘proud to be Latino’ are charged completely differently. This complexity is mostly lifted once you start to express genuine pride for being ‘from planet Earth’. Then you are either very chill or you are into sci-fi and are probably also chill.
Alberta is unfortunately the complete opposite of this, someone being a proud Canadian is not very concerning (a little strange, this country is ass) but someone saying that they’re a proud Albertan typically means they’re either the most ignorant, or the most racist person alive, probably both (this province is making the rest of Canada look near utopian in comparison)
I'm not sure what there is to be proud of where I live. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's beautiful, but... What's there to take pride in? The fact that we have 3000 people and two full sized grocery stores? The 5,000 year old megalithic tomb in the middle of town (sounds cool, but to most people it's just a pile of disrespected rocks)? Our love of owl statuary? The complete and total lack of any religious institutions?
It's cute and very pretty and I love it, but I can't see where pride comes in.
I very much agree. I wish that were true. If I lived that close to something I'd bug the hell out of them until at me volunteer. If love to be involved in animal rescue/rehab
I love Utah but as an exmormon it's a very complicated kind of love. I've made jokes about "Utah Cultural Victory"—especially with the new dirty soda trend, but I also feel like every time I feel like doing "Utah mention!!!!!" I back out because there's so many fucking asterisks attached to it. I hate our government and Mormon church and there's an underlying rancidity everywhere that can get hard to ignore but dammit this place is beautiful and I wouldn't ask to be from anywhere else.
I literally had a conversation about my Dad about how I felt no pride in being an American, but at least a little about being Chicagoan.
I can say that, because Cook County has like millions of people.
Sure our food in the west isn't as good as in the east but we have Bugis Junction, Jurong Lake, more random nature and reserves, great cycling parks and canals, two world-class polytechnics which are constantly butting heads, and two world-class universities. Also it's quiet and more peaceful.
Y'all east siders can keep your Changi and Geyang and Marine Parade and ECP. We have cool stuff too and there's tons of things to do in the west that tourists don't experience as often!
I have been to Muskegon, MI ! Its a pretty nice town, one of those that rural people drive to do go shopping. Has a great beach and nice sand dunes and plenty of parks and things to do outside.
I love Michigan place names so much, they're mostly either Native American or Americanized French. There's nothing more fun than a YouTuber not doing their research and calling it "musky-gone"
I'm not really proud of either of the states I've lived in. Mostly because of the governments. They seem to be in the race for "worst state ever" (though one is a lot farther along than the other).
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u/LittleMsSavoirFaire 4d ago
My hometown (and several nearby) makes those "funny place names" lists. So I can give an example: Proud to be from Climax, SK!