Just the title
Seen lots of people moving to big places , but im from a small town and id go back there in a heartbeat if i had WFH option (not possible with current job)
To clarify, im a European and its a question for everyone , not just americans!
Remember when American tax payers gave billions to telecoms to install fiber in rural America?
Don’t worry they conveniently forgot too.
That plus other services like rural hospitals and education are huge drawbacks to living in most of rural America.
Also a bunch of other issues with small town living like lack of privacy/anonymity, entertainment, restaurants, government services, etc… And these problems get more severe the smaller the community.
But people really did spread out to smaller towns during COVID. Property values went crazy in a lot of small towns around me.
I live in a small mountain town, and property values went apeshit. Like a house/cabin that was $150-250k is now $4-500k. It’s insane.
Privacy and anonymity is definitely still a thing as long as you keep you business to yourself, because as I’m guessing you’re alluding to, people are pretty chatty as it is and a smaller population makes it more difficult. It also helps to not be an asshole and give people even more to talk about, especially when most everyone knows each other.
Even without direct interaction, it’s easier to know someone as “the guy in the cabin on hillside road with the blue Honda CRV and the beard”. I assume that’s what the comment meant since they tied privacy to anonymity
I mean yeah, it’s not uncommon to know where each other live, there’s also that unspoken respect of leave people alone. Also yet another reason to not be an asshole in a small town lol.
It’s actually happened multiple times…
I remember two off the top of my head, but it’s possible there was a couple more