The biggest downside is you live in bum fucking nowhere. You’re stuck in a social circle you can’t escape from and the only escape is to get on Starlink and tal

The biggest downside is you live in bum fucking nowhere. You’re stuck in a social circle you can’t escape from and the only escape is to get on Starlink and talk to people about the good old days when we used to sit in traffic and huff exhaust fumes, but at least we had options. There’s only 2 grocery stores in town and they’re full of the lowest denominator crap because nobody in your town has any good taste. The kids your kid grows up with have stupid parents and are stupid themselves, so your smart kid grows up feeling isolated and like there’s something wrong with them because they’re different. Maybe your kid pulls through it all or maybe tries to numb out with drugs and ODs. Maybe you develop a bad reputation around town for your differences (maybe your an atheist in a town of Christians, I don’t know) and get blackballed from social events. Maybe you go to the bar and everyone’s in a relationship except for you. Or maybe you’re gay but there’s nowhere to be out. The movie theater only has 2 screens and only runs G and PG movies. The biggest music act you saw this year was a cover of “My heart will go on” played by an 8 year old on the Clarinet at the Little Miss Chokecherry Festival. You tried to expose the town to the culture you’re into but everyone just thinks you’re weird. The traveling salesman problem gets a million times harder. Basically unless everyone is plugged into the net all the time in some massively fulfilling way or rearranges perfectly every generation to avoid cultural bubbles, small towns suck and people leave them for a reason. They head to cities and those cities become thriving multicultural hubs of new ideas that slowly make their way back to the smaller towns.