Anon notices the "grass is always greener" trope in movies

"Stadtliche luft macht man frei" is an old German saying. City air makes you free. Life in a small town can be stifling. That close-knit family wants you to be just like them. God forbid you want to do or see anything new. The moving-to-a-big-city trope is as old as cinema, and has strong roots in reality.

In the middle-ages in at least in what is now Estonia, if you ecaped to the city and lived there for a year and a day you would be set free from your serfdom. "Linna õhk teeb vabaks" same frase was used for that.
"Stadtluft macht frei" but yes, everything else is spot on.
I agree with the sentiment, but Germans have a horrible track record on what makes you free.
- Came here to try to make this joke. You did better than I could have, I was trying to create a Germanic folk hero named Arvid McFry

Mr green text has no idea what he's talking about.

I grew up on a farm you're telling me that was an idyllic life?

Farmwork is stupidly long days in awful weather, it's either hot, or freezing cold, or raining, or snowing. The pay is effectively abysmal and makes you wish you worked in Starbucks on minimum wage because that would be an improvement. You have all this necessary equipment you've had to "buy", which despite costing more than most houses is about as reliable as a Soviet era tank.

And that's just growing props if you're mad enough to also raise cattle then it's even worse because you've got all them to deal with and sheep in particular are more suicidal than a depressed lemming.

But hey, you get a nice view.

Well, at least a soviet tank can be repaired with a hammer, unlike a deere
- Soviet equipment is much more repairable than any of the modern crap we have nowadays which is designed to be used and tossed in a relatively short timeframe.
- Thick enough wood log works too
There's a reason the kids aren't taking over the farm. Not to mention that a 50 acre returned soldier lot can't provide for a family of six anymore.
- Well it isn't subsistence farming by any stretch of the imagination it's full on industrial farming.
  Most farms these days, at least crop farms, grow only two or three different crops. Mostly dictated by what will fetch the best price and what is currently being subsidised by the government. Often times you will find that farms are not growing any food stuffs at all.
Wait, you got paid? I just got grabbed by the neighbor whenever he needed another hand
I currently work at a farm and it is fucking hard work for $15 an hour. The only reason I stay is because family friends own it and I need money for college. At least I don't have to deal with sheep lmao.
is about as reliable as a Soviet era tank.
Are you praising farming equipment or saying Soviet era tanks are unreliable.
Is green text talking about the specific character in the picture?
- Also less diversity, and rarely any good/interesting restaurants. I ran to the city for 15 years, now I’m in a small town and it’s fun to have private land (a little anyway), but I still miss miss late night outings, once a month brunches, and really good Indian, Mexican, Ethiopian, Chilean, etc food I could get within 20 minutes in the city.
- The incentive being otherwise you die
You are currently depressed lemming

Because movies like that belong on the “Lifetime TV” or “Hallmark Channel”. It’s been done. Maybe yet another “Can’t fix stupid” reductionist country wisdom beats city slicker smarts? Or make fun of city people who don’t know how to ride a horse?

That, or nobody wants to watch movies with people sitting around bonfires drinking cheap beer on your truck tailgate.

I grew up rural. It isn’t that exciting.

I grew up in a place that had more cows than people. Now it has more heroin than cows. I'd be dead if I didn't get out. Real rural life where you're working for a living eats people alive. What you want isn't that, it's this ideal where everything is simple and paid for and you're distant from the things you don't like about actually living in a community with people but all the amenities of that life are still immediately to hand. When someone you love dies because it takes an hour for an ambulance to get to your house, that is the rural life that's actually out there to be had.
- Everything about OP's comment and your response reminds me of every conversation I've ever had with anybody else who grew up in a vacation town.
  3 months of tourists clogging up every service you can think of and talking about how wonderful it must be to live there as they leave after their 3 day weekend of partying on the beach, and 9 months of the local kids doing heroin because alcoholism is more popular with their parents and you need some kind of addiction to cope with the lack of work and things to do outside the tourist season.
  I spent 10 years training kids on how to cut fish, and every single one of them shared the same sentiment. Regardless of whether they wanted to move to the city or farther out into the woods, they all wanted to get as far away from that town as they possibly could.
- When someone you love dies because it takes an hour for an ambulance to get to your house, that is the rural life that's actually out there to be had.
  Or they don't call an ambulance because they cannot afford the $5000 bill.
- Don’t forget your private jet to get back to civilization when you’d like some decent medical treatment, something other than satellite TV, or a dinner of better quality than whatever restaurant is next to the truck stop.
Rural living has its charm sometimes, but I'm so fucking tired of driving 45 minutes to eat taco bell.
- How much do you get paid to do that to yourself?
- Truth. A trip to the hardware store was a significant chunk of the day.
Yeah I was gonna say, the "city boy/girl goes to the country and finds themselves" trope is honestly way more overdone than the "country boy/girl goes to the city to find themselves" variety

surrounded by weird people
Have you ever set foot in a city?
- different flavors of weird for sure. Depends on which type you're more comfortable around.
- Countryside has more weird people per capita.
- Yes, and I'll tell ya what, I ain't yet felt like if I stayed over too long the locals were gonna start raising some planks and rope like I do if I even look like I've so much as thought of walking into the gas station store to get a bottle of water out in the countryside.
  Those rural folks want me dead just for existing and what I believe about the world ain't doing many favors to that inclination.
Can confirm. Grew up in the hellhole that is rural America. Will never go back.
Like you don't find tons of weird people in Cities.
I wish I lived in a place with only 4 miles to the store. It definitely can get obnoxious haha
- Yeah, try a 25 mile drive.

Anon has never heard of the term "target audience".

See "every Hallmark TV movie". High powered female executive from the big city ends up in a rural town because of family/friend/work, falls in love with local stud and small town life, quits and moves to small town, cut and wrap.
This is 3/4 of their production and it works because it draws in the urban women who actually dream of this and the rural women who want to believe they're living a dream and all city folk are jealous of them.

She had 275 siblings. Getting away from that farm was the smartest thing she's ever done. She has no hope of any kind of meaningful inheritance. I'm honestly surprised a farm could support that many rabbits and still turn any kind of profit. It must have been subsidized out the wazoo. The last thing it needs is her hanging around, getting hitched to some redneck just out of high school, popping out a couple hundred hungry mouths of her own right before the inevitable foreclosure and declaration of martial law as the farmpocalypse occurs when her parents finally kick it and the tens-of-thousands of children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren raze the countryside in search of fodder. Just ask an Australian what rabbits are capable of.

Also the explicit reason stated that she went away was because of basic empathy for others and duty to others for a positive impact on the world. I just realized that the entire plot of zootopia would be lost on a lot of people purely out of apathy.

Being clear, living in the sticks for 42 years of my life wasn't ideal. That is unless you like living in a dry county surrounded by narrow-minded, puritanical shitbirds that were working OT to make sure people either went to church, or publicly shame them if they weren't. There was also the in crowds that held people back or elevated them, depending on which family you were related to.

I do miss the hunting and fishing, though I can head back any time I want to do that. Meanwhile, I'll stay where I can maintain my chill by having copious resources readily available when I want them, and enough anonymity to enjoy them without anyone asking me where I was last Sunday.

Your spiel reminds me of Dylan Moran's stand-up bit about country life.

Why do we accept that urban life is worse than rural life?

Cars ruin cities. There's more we can do to make cities better but that's the big one
- I mean, do you think cars aren't a thing in rural areas or something? You think us country bumpkins are riding our horses around?
- A lot of things that people cite as benefits of small old towns are just benefits of not requiring massive amounts of parking and huge roads.
Ignorance plain and simple. Most people nowadays live their whole lives in big urban centers, they have an idealistic view of country life and take the conveniences of city life for granted. City life can suck, I won't deny it, but living in bumfuck nowhere also has it's major drawbacks.
- Eh, I've lived both, now in the city, it's got its advantages but I'd be lying if I said I don't dream of going back from time to time.
In some cases it is.
I live on an acre about 100 miles from the nearest sizable city. I've got a workshop, pecan trees, a pool, a smoker trailer, a bonfire pit fifteen feet across, and lots of peace and quiet. No HOA, no city ordinances, no traffic, and the only loud neighbor is a donkey that brays a few times a day.
That would cost me at least half a million in the city. The little apartment I used to rent Pre-COVID cost me nearly as much as the house payment I pay now.
Is it for everyone? No. There's no excitement, limited shopping and dining options, and anywhere I want to go is at least a twenty minute drive. But it's great for me. My job sends me all over the world so I get my fill of the city while living in hotels. Going home is a breath of fresh air.
- The key is to live in the countryside but not actually work in the countryside.
- Having a decent income and wealth makes living on a rural location idyllic. Someone with a low income farming job and an acre in a rural location won't see the exact same house the same way because they will be struggling financially.

Wow, good call. The highlight there is:
Urban consumers (may) spend more money.

Lives my ideal life

Ftfy

She wasn't bigoted enough to become a small town cop so she had to become a city cop.

Despite that most incidents of racial profiling occur within the city where a multi-racial ecosystem is more prevalent and the cops don't even live in the city they police. But sure.

Because these characters are usually young and cities are exciting. Wanting to get away from people tends to happen later in life. That said, I know plenty of people in their 40s/50s who love city living.

It's not even that complicated....... the vast majority of people that make up the consumer market live in urban environments.
Yeah people want excitement from movies and TV and country life is usually quiet and might be considered boring for movies or TV programs or just wouldn't be considered interesting by most younger people.

You know, after leaving the country: I really don't mind losing connection with my racist family members joking about how "dropped nickels stay on the ground since picking them up is worthless."

And I certainly don't miss them and others bashing my gay friends for being different.

The open country has a lot of potential, but unfortunately a lot of people outside of the metropolitan are dumb and shit and stay prejudiced out of comfort and having no reason to learn.

I've lived in high urban, low urban, suburban, and rural. They all have pros and cons.

If you're dating tho, the city is way better, but good luck finding practice space - if you're into that sort of thing.

There are dating practise spaces?
- Haha, yeah, it's called the bar.

Her dream was to be a cop. Having it be a low paying career, living in a small apartment, and being away from friends and family are things we call sacrifices.

We already have that, it's called the Hallmark channel and exists entirely to aggressively propagandize to rural stay at home moms to remind them that they made the good choice staying behind while everyone else went out looking for careers and how those city slickers are stupid because they can't ride a horse, nevermind how Karen hasn't even touched a horse, nevermind learned to ride, evaluation based on real facts is for those liberals and their critical gender theory!

Into the Wild was kind of the inverse of this. Obviously it didn't work out for the guy, but why does it have to? He had an idea he wanted to achieve and followed his dreams

Nothing works out on a long enough time line.
- Lol, wtf

Because those "loving family members" IRL are usually nosy dickheads, and there is no dating scene in small towns. So it's either marry your cousin, or move to the city.

Not to mention job opportunities...

I personally think a good life should have both: A place where you can rest, be free and enjoy the beauty of nature to the fullest and a place that makes you realize how fucked up society is and how important it is to fight the good fight.

I pity people who never make it out of the city. And i think people hiding away from the harsh reality of cities are being selfish. but not in an evil way.

I my experience I am seeing how the trend goes on the other direction and more and more people around me actively choose to leave the city and go to rural areas. I think that this tends to happens around the mid 30s,!not exclusively, and might be also related to an specific location. I am central Europe based. It's just my personal experience tough.

Often the suburbs than strictly rural areas in America, but people moving to rural (especially scenic) locales isn’t uncommon.
I feel this too. I want space and quiet.

There is a good amount of evidence that the US government contracts some of the bigger studios and makes deals with them so that they portray things how the government wants them to be.

A big example is any movie involving the US military. They'll rent out all the military equipment for free as long as they get final say over the movie.

Not sure if something like this would fall under that, but I wouldn't be shocked.

I love the common American boogeyman known as "government". I like to imagine the president or any other of the fuckers in high positions going to the film studios and explaining to them what the government has chosen and what they're gonna show in the movie. Instead of their more common leisure time - coke, hookers and moralizing.
Some military movies are sponsored by the military (not the government), but as much as you'd like there to be some conspiracy, it's dead simple - the marketing guys decided it's a great opportunity to recruit people and the director got to make an expensive movie for cheap.
Isn't that a good strategy though if you're trying to project soft power by using your domestic film industry to your advantage?
American culture is one of its big exports, and you can gain a lot more cultural influence around the world by making cool movies with multimillion weapons systems by cooperating with filmmakers when they'd otherwise be sitting at the ready or in storage.
- But also, the US government didn't have a hand in Zootopia's plot.

What about both?
Go watch Kiminonawa

rural life can not be austainable.

move out of city for cheap house etc - than complain about no wifi, no doctors etc - force government to have fiber internet - yadda yadda

people who advocate rural areas are just big egoists and ignorant

rural life can not be sustainable.
Cities need farms to feed the inhabitants of the cites, farms can't exist without farmers (yet) and there's plenty of types of businesses farmers need to visit fairly frequently in order to live. This creates and sustains the small farm communities the dot the rural landscape between large cities
move out of city for cheap house etc - than complain about no wifi, no doctors etc - force government to have fiber internet - yadda yadda
Farmers need services too. Are you just saying everyone unlucky enough to be born outside of a major metropolis must go without medical care or access to modern services?
Also fiber is literally cheaper in the long term. It has effectively infinite bandwidth, requires no maintenance except repairing damage by excavation/natural disasters/wildlife (which any kind of utility line requires) and can run literally hundreds of kilometers without any repeaters or anything else to maintain the signal inbetween.
ISPs were (and still are in many places) utilizing worn out, sometimes over a century old telephone and cable television infrastructure to deliver internet to places that hadn't yet gotten fiber, and it perpetuates a digital divide that prevents kids growing up on farms from accessing services that might help them be the most productive members of society that they can be
people who advocate rural areas are just big egoists and ignorant
I think you're the ignorant one in this case
- assumptions assumptions.
  look at the facts.
  co2 -> rural homes cause way more emissions
  ...so does their commute.
  they cost, we pay
  internet...extremely expensive to get fibre everywhere. ...so is public transport.
  the cost, we pay
  i do not see how a planet with growing numbers of ppl could allow rural areas really
Also housing in cities is artificially expensive because it's illegal to.built dense housing in.most of it.because of suburbanites who wanna play pretend farmhouse
- paris.
  dense enough? considered worth living? because if all ppl would live i a terrible terrible city like paris, we'd have a shitload of nature back.
  anyone who thinks one deserves to live rural just says his/her personal choice of lifestyle is more important than a future for the kids. rural areas destroy so much nature and take up way too much land.
- it.because of suburbanites who wanna play pretend farmhouse
  And don't pay for it

how does anon quite literally live in ancapistan?