less venomous hatred towards it because california is really beautiful, but i'm still feeling extremely alienated and out of step culturally. if you're in your 20s / 30s but not really in ~the industry~ or exactly on the wavelength of the alt sorts of people in highland park and other east side neighborhoods, LA can feel like a very weird, poser-y place that attracts very different young people than nyc. in my experience people are generally not very internationally curious... it's true that they're very image-obsessed across the political and cultural spectrum, I think in even more homogeneous and vapid ways than you'll find in nyc. it all just feels very flat in every direction, plus LA feels bizarrely removed from time and history on a spatial / architectural level which I absolutely hate. it is also a very ideologically conservative city in many ways. and lastly, idc who fights me on this, but in my experience, it is a worse place to even attempt dating than the 9th circle of hell, especially if you'd like to date jews but you're not ok with being a tradwife. granted it also doesn't help my situation that most of my life rn is circumscribed by cursed immigrant enclave shit, and a lot of this has to do with the fact that I don't fit neatly into that world or the transplant-y worlds outside of it here. so i totally acknowledge that other people might feel differently than me. but whatever at least there's the beach and the mountains