{"id":33316,"date":"2015-10-24T03:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-10-24T07:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33316"},"modified":"2015-10-22T07:53:47","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T11:53:47","slug":"is-it-just-me-or-are-minnesotans-total-assholes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/10\/24\/is-it-just-me-or-are-minnesotans-total-assholes\/","title":{"rendered":"“Is it just me? Or are Minnesotans total assholes?”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Swap out “the Twin Cities\/Minnesotans” for “Toronto\/Canadians” and this article could run in any of Toronto’s alternative newspapers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Twin Cities has never been the sort of place where hordes of starry-eyed young people move for fame and fortune. But as it climbs the ranks of every “top 10” list for quality of life, it\u2019s becoming a harder pitch to ignore.<\/p>\n

What those lists don\u2019t mention is the frequent insecurity these transplants know well, whispered with confessional despair in wood-panel dive bars after months of missed connections: \u201cIs it just me? Or are Minnesotans total assholes?\u201d<\/p>\n

The second-guessing is a common trait. Small-town settlers wonder if they\u2019re just misreading urban chic for frigidity. Transplants alighting from megalopolises like Buenos Aires and Berlin chalk it up to small-city small-mindedness. Folks from the South are quick to blame the isolating cold of northern winters, but that doesn\u2019t explain how those hailing from other Midwest cities have a hard time cracking the icy Nordic shells of native Minnesotans too.<\/p>\n

Those born and bred here don’t always see it, but to newcomers we’re not very friendly, at least in a deep friendship way. <\/p>\n

It took Jade Ross of Colman, South Dakota, no more than one college party to catch on that “Minnesota Nice” is a trademark best used sarcastically. At 18, when she reported for school at St. Cloud State, everybody talked up the Minnesota Nice phenomena ad nauseum<\/em>, she says. “I’d never heard of that before, and I didn’t understand why you needed to talk about it,” Ross says. “In South Dakota, we were just nice, and we didn’t need to brag about it.” <\/p>\n

At parties she’d describe home as a small farming town of 500. She got responses like, “So do you have … Internet? Do you ride a buffalo to go to school?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Swap out “the Twin Cities\/Minnesotans” for “Toronto\/Canadians” and this article could run in any of Toronto’s alternative newspapers: The Twin Cities has never been the sort of place where hordes of starry-eyed young people move for fame and fortune. But as it climbs the ranks of every “top 10” list for quality of life, it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,13],"tags":[489],"class_list":["post-33316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-randomness","category-usa","tag-minnesota"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Fm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33317,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33316\/revisions\/33317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}