26 Comments
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Tatayana's avatar

“or they assume the rest of us rubes and hicks from District 12 breathlessly lap up every drop of lore from the Capitol.” I cackleddddd

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Kaleigh's avatar
8dEdited

it is exactly how it feels!!

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Kristen's avatar

I did too

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Megan's avatar

this is how i feel about LA and podcasters. ohhhh my god please explain the traffic to us again or how weird it is when it rains, i'm dyyyyying to know about silverlake vs santa monica or whatever

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Luisa do Amaral's avatar

plot twist most of the subscribers live in NYC too

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Kaleigh's avatar

So real. When the call for submissions went out I spent some time entertaining the thought "What would I write about for my Hate Read?" And it was close to this—Substacks that claim to be about trends and culture (in general) but end up just reporting on new restaurants that open up in NYC. Please.

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amelia's avatar

the defensive comments from the folks who likely moved to new york to think of themselves as cool, and have nothing more to hang that sense of themselves on than the fact that they are the appreciative audience for exactly the writing that the author is criticizing, are exactly why so many of us roll our eyes at you. the self obsessed provincialism of this certain kind of new yorker is both lazy and dulllllllllllll

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Mar's avatar

as a very biased NYer, I think this is just...what happens when people live in a place? I'm not going to say "I'm taking the New York City subway from Bleecker Street to 33rd, on the green 6 line that comes every 7 minutes and smells like pee" because that's just boring as hell to read when "I took the train" is how people actually talk.

I find it exhausting to try to differentiate LA neighborhoods I don't understand, or London ones. Perhaps the writer's actual issue is that they read too many NYC-based authors, not that people talk about their own city in different terms than they would when talking to people outside of it...get over itttttt

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Jenny Montgomery's avatar

Exactly. Please do not break from a larger train of thought to give me specific directions and the culture implications of the neighborhoods you are traveling between. For any city.

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Sister Trout's avatar

I've had at least five favorite Hate Reads this season, and this is the new champion.

Yes! We should all write NY-lore style pieces about our hometowns.

"The acrid smell of four tire stores at the intersection of Washington and High School..."

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deirdre corley's avatar

Curious to know where you're reading this stuff. Perhaps lay off the NY Mag and things will improve for you.

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Trey S's avatar

def giving Brighton Beach Republican 2nd-gen Russian-American vibes w this

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maren mckenna's avatar

author i think i'm obsessed with you

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The Moonface Kid's avatar

I like this a lot - applause! I wonder if people think they are being Morrissey-esque like how he references places in the UK or people like Daghenham Dave and the only thing you know that it is British somehow?

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Richard Kennedy's avatar

I really enjoy stumbling on new things that I can look up and learn about. It lets me go learn something and come back and reread the thing again with new knowledge, be it appreciation or disdain. Something that I find I feel more often these days, however, is the disdain for others who perceive the burden of learning as being so cumbersome that they reject it completely. I find these people to be idiots, regardless of how well they compile a little argument about how they should be rewarded for their lazy ignorance.

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The Stain's avatar

wonderful wonderful if i read one more novel set in new york city i am going to shoot myself

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yvette's avatar

agree but also like it's easy to avoid them

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BSH's avatar

This is so LES Bathhouse alt lit coded

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Neil Shurley's avatar

THANK YOU

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Lewis Lierbug's avatar

Bad take, I fear.

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