Cognitive dissonance on MN

[Wondermule]

...is getting worse.

Here is an example I see all the time

Moving from central London to a rural village for the ‘slower pace of life’, then complaining that the village has ‘no culture or diversity’ and a ‘lack of things to do’. Although the villagers are smiley and polite, they ‘haven’t made any lifelong friends’ in the twenty minutes they have been there, and it’s got to the point where they believe the village Illuminati is plotting to ostracise them. They are skint as there is a lack of job variety within a ten minute walk of their house, so they can’t afford to do up the crumbling Victorian wreck they decided to buy. Posters then pile in with ‘omg poor u’ ‘they sound awful’ ‘really feel for you this is me at the moment.’

Well what did you expect? 😂😂

Is it me? 😬

@StellaWol

Ah yes. I live in a historic area (17th century, cobblestones everywhere) and get pissed off with incomers complaining about car parking and tourists. Erm, you could clearly see that everyone parks at the sides of the roads, oddly builders in the 1600s didn’t think to build double garages into housing plans. You also probably visited our village when you were out sightseeing or you saw it on Outlander.

This is annoying too! Don't go there if the lovely old cobbled streets and narrow roads are an inconvenience!

@Ethelswith

It's also not allowing for how long it takes to become a 'belonger' in a proper village. You're looking at decades, and incomers don't realise that.

I was accepted staightaway as the funny foreign bride (from the next county!) of a proper villager. Others who had moved there a mere decade before were still newbies

This. ^ Me and DH and DD who lived at home then, moved to our village almost a decade ago, and although several people spoke straight away, and were pleasant, many did not make much effort.

We went for lots of walks, and helped with litter picks arranged by the vicar, and went to the pub once a week, and planted lots of flowers, and made our garden look lovely.(Previous occupiers had left it an overgrown dump,) and we sent Christmas cards to everyone in our little cul de sac (around 20.)

Within a year, we were starting to be treated like people who were born there. People were courteous and friendly and smiley, and we got invited to BBQs and parties, and the New Year's Eve party at the pub the year after we moved in.

I now have half a dozen good friends in the village, and my neighbours are lovely. Everyone we meet on our village walks says hello to us, and chats for a few minutes, and we are now firmly part of the village community.

Basically, you have to make an effort yourself. To go into a small close-knit community of people (in a village) some who have been there 50-60 years (or all their life,) and expect them to fall over to be super-friendly and welcoming with you, when you can't be arsed - as the NEWCOMER - to make any effort, is unacceptable.

And moving in and saying they're all miserable fuckers who are rude and hostile, because they aren't all over you, trying to be your BFF as soon as you move in, just makes you look like an obnoxious twat really. YOU are the newcomer - YOU make the effort to integrate. These people don't owe you a thing.

As for the moaning about muddy footpaths and 'farm machinery noise' and Church bells... As a few others have said, what did you expect when you moved to a village in the countryside, that had a Church?!

@teentipans

Quite. I see lots of posts asking after ‘diverse/cultured/vibrant’ areas of London to live in, but when suggestions are made, they are dismissed as ‘rough’. So what they mean is they want to live next to a diverse area so they can swan in once a week and feel cultured/vibrant, but not in the place itself.

This. ^ Typical of some PC, liberal-leftie MN posters. They like to gabble on about how much they love a diverse area with lots of varying cultures, but don't want to actually live in the same street as said 'diverse communities' and 'varying cultures...'

Yep they mean the diversity & vibrancy of being able to buy the authentic humous in the bijou deli or the greengrocers with "exotic" veg.

I'm in this exact situation, and I have to say, it's pretty fantastic. No cognitive dissonance, because it's exactly what I wanted when I moved here.

Yes but they’re often asking for the impossible.

It was years ago now, but I always remember an episode of Location, Location, Location, which featured a brother and sister who were looking for a house together and clearly hadn't understood at least one of the words in the programme's title! They were early twenties and were looking to move out of the very nice family home and get somewhere for just the two of them. They wanted/needed to move to within commuting distance of London - ideally to the west for easier travel to see family.

IIRC they had a reasonable deposit and decent-ish jobs for their age and Kirstie and Phil were showing them a tiny flat in central Windsor and then a nice-sized 3-bedroom house in somewhere like Slough, and they just couldn't get it into their heads that they could have either Windsor or a family-sized house, but not both for their budget.

As if property prices in the two were the same and thousands of people in Slough had just never thought of moving to an identical house in a much more desirable town at no extra cost!

Doesn't 'looney liberal' Jeremy Clarkson also live in/near to Chipping Norton....? Along with some big business moguls and previous advisors to Cameron?

Moving from central London to a rural village for the ‘slower pace of life’, then complaining that the village has ‘no culture or diversity’ and a ‘lack of things to do’. Although the villagers are smiley and polite, they ‘haven’t made any lifelong friends’ in the twenty minutes they have been there, and it’s got to the point where they believe the village Illuminati is plotting to ostracise them.

I live in the highlands and this is exactly what happens in villages here! People move here to 'escape the rat race' then complain there's not enough to do and try to convince locals that we should have a mini-city type village, then say people are unwelcoming or 'stuck in the dark ages' when they make it's made clear that no one else wants that. Or when people move in and expect to be welcomed like returning life-long friends, we all have our own lives and families. Of course it's nice to be nice but we're not obliged to become your new best friends just because you've moved here.

@TheDoctorDances

Move to a nice rural community then complain that the farms smell of shit, I know the type. I take complaints from them at work and have to keep a straight face.

Ha! We lived in one of those. Tiny hamlet, 3 dairy farms. Shit all over the roads, milk lorries, oil lorries, no pavement, no amenities. Utter bliss.

Neighbours moved in and started trying to energise everyone to stop the shoot, get the cows moved off the roads, divert lorries around the hamlet and, best of all, to protect the country way of life.

No amount of explanation could get them to understand that the shoot, the cheese making (that stinks, by the way), the backyard chickens, manure heaps, cows and sheep in the roads, muck spreading,late night harvesting and on and on, was the country way of life! They wanted silence, the crack of leather on willow, without a flat space to call a village green.

Now we live in a small market town and still people moan about market day causing traffc issues and muck spreading round town ebing a disgusting stink! Well, we do live in a rural are, the kind that grows food!

And they keep adding houses to it. Each new build development starts a new wave of complaints. Apparently the brochure promised a quiet bucolic life!

@WeBuiltThisBuffetOnSausageRoll

Yes but they’re often asking for the impossible.

It was years ago now, but I always remember an episode of Location, Location, Location, which featured a brother and sister who were looking for a house together and clearly hadn't understood at least one of the words in the programme's title! They were early twenties and were looking to move out of the very nice family home and get somewhere for just the two of them. They wanted/needed to move to within commuting distance of London - ideally to the west for easier travel to see family.

IIRC they had a reasonable deposit and decent-ish jobs for their age and Kirstie and Phil were showing them a tiny flat in central Windsor and then a nice-sized 3-bedroom house in somewhere like Slough, and they just couldn't get it into their heads that they could have either Windsor or a family-sized house, but not both for their budget.

As if property prices in the two were the same and thousands of people in Slough had just never thought of moving to an identical house in a much more desirable town at no extra cost!

Somewhere just for the two of them?! Brother and sister?! Am I the only one to find that odd...

Reminds me of the threads you get where posters ‘don’t understand why they can’t afford nice things’ on 50K, but say it isn’t due to their ridiculously large mortgage and very high outgoings.

The assumption by some that anywhere outside of London is just a vast nothingness, I once saw a poster wanting to move from London and was asking for suggestions of different areas ,and one poster seriously til them not to move ,because they had moved somewhere very rural ,where everything shut down after 5 ,one bus a week etc ,as though everywhere outside of London is like that 🙄

Cog what?

@changi

Cog what?

Having two conflicting beliefs but not being able to see it.

I lived in London for years, knew nobody except my nextdoor neighbours and found it hard to make friends.

Moved to my village - parish magazine was delivered every month full of village news, vicar was round in minutes to introduce herself whether I was a church goer or not, people introduced themselves when I was out in the garden, went to a couple of social events - job done.

@merryhouse

Yeah, nobody needs to be out because we can get everything delivered.

My favourite is the people who in one breath tell you that no normal healthy average woman can lose weight on more than 1200 calories, and in the next breath that starvation mode is a myth.

I would give the example of the woman who said she'd given up simple carbs and that a good snack is a curly-wurly, but I suspect that's less cognitive dissonance and more ignorance of facts

No that's slimming world/weight watchers fault. Part of their "syn" bullshit. 5 chocolate bars a day is OK if its part of the syns. Sure sweetie...

Partner went to Slimming World, where they were told 'eat as much plain pasta as you like'.

Am lol-ing at the 'we want a diverse area in London...oh no not there it's too rough'!

They mean 'we want a beautiful Edwardian property bordering on a rough area...no nearer than two roads to any council housing...with one or two people of colour/working class children at the local school that our kids can fraternise with for virtue signalling purposes'. I actually personally have met soooo many of these people in London, it's unreal.

@sixthtimelucky

Am lol-ing at the 'we want a diverse area in London...oh no not there it's too rough'!

They mean 'we want a beautiful Edwardian property bordering on a rough area...no nearer than two roads to any council housing...with one or two people of colour/working class children at the local school that our kids can fraternise with for virtue signalling purposes'. I actually personally have met soooo many of these people in London, it's unreal.

They are called racists. Just because they are trying to be subtle doesn't make it any less true. They are too stupid for words.

Having two conflicting beliefs but not being able to see it.

Thanks. I must admit that I had to Google it.

Having moved from Central London to a village I would say:-

1. Culture shock is real
2. People underestimate that it might take 20 years to be accepted
3. There is some wariness/ hostility among locals to Londoners buying up houses and pushing up prices and also expecting everyone to adapt to them rather than adapting to the new surroundings to fit in.
4. The first winter can be very tough, long, cold boring and a test of their resilience. You can only look at the landscape so long. Unless you have hobbies that can be done inside or don’t mind the cold, the reality will hit fast. As will the heating bill.

All in all if you are prepared to try hard to fit in, adapt to the new surroundings and behave people might even say hello to you after five years or so.

No that's slimming world/weight watchers fault. Part of their "syn" bullshit. 5 chocolate bars a day is OK if its part of the syns. Sure sweetie...

Swimming world is for people that want to lose weight but not eat healthily or diet.

*slimming. Maybe if it was swimming it would work

@sixthtimelucky

Am lol-ing at the 'we want a diverse area in London...oh no not there it's too rough'!

They mean 'we want a beautiful Edwardian property bordering on a rough area...no nearer than two roads to any council housing...with one or two people of colour/working class children at the local school that our kids can fraternise with for virtue signalling purposes'. I actually personally have met soooo many of these people in London, it's unreal.

Yet they’re the first in the virtue signalling queue

Then comes the inevitable move to somewhere even less diverse because ‘I realllllllly wanted my child to attend a diverse school, but the local school was such a shit hole’.

My DH is like this about holidays. He wants to go somewhere where there is lots to do, sightseeing, nice bars restaurants etc.
However he wants it to be really quiet with very few other people around.
He can’t seem to understand that the restaurants would close if no one went.

This is a good thread - a lot of posters with little self-awareness and general snobbery displayed for all to see. One particular wind up is posters with huge housing budgets saying ooh shall I move to A or B, but will £800k be enough, and is it a decent 'family' area? Well yes, lots of families live there but are they the families you would fraternise with? And dismissing huge swathes of London as not having 'good schools'. Honestly I don't think some of these people have been socialised properly.

There used to regularly be moaning-faced folk on the local news, complaining that they'd moved to the highlands and islands from the home counties, and were outraged that DC was ill and couldn't get to hospital in Inverness because the ferries don't run on a Sunday.

Personally, I have a lot more sympathy for the local-born people who had to move away, because they simply can not afford property in their home towns and villages because of transplants artificially inflating prices.

Slightly off topic but I'm always amused by the retired couples appearing on escape to the country who want to downsize and are getting on in years, but then go for seven bedroom piles with lots of stairs to climb and huge gardens to maintain. Because you couldn't possibly put up your grown up children in a b&b the one time a year that everyone wants to visit at the same time.