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Everyone in the country consumes the same media, but that media is not produced by everyone. Most mass media is developed by urbanites in large urban centers (L

Everyone in the country consumes the same media, but that media is not produced by everyone. Most mass media is developed by urbanites in large urban centers (LA and NYC). They have a very sheltered lifestyle that leads to anything outside of it looking alien and absurd. Folks in rural and suburban areas having lawns and needing to spend an hour a week on lawncare is already infinitely more time than folk in urban centers spend on such tasks. To the urbanite, what the rest of the country considers "lawn obsessed" is only a difference of degree, not kind. For the media producer--who, again, is almost universally an urbanite--to communicate this feeling to the rest of the country, they have to exaggerate the effort spent.

JohnBooty 5y ago
This is all true, and is definitely a primary factor. It's also true that LA and NY draw people from all over the country. Have you ever been to LA or Manhattan? Nobody that lives there is from there. Those places are alternate-reality bubbles, for sure, but lots (most?) of those people were born somewhere else and likely grew up in a more representative part of the country. So, I think there's also an element of "artist" types rebelling against what they felt were stifling suburban upbringings? Totally unproveable of course. Just a feeling I've always gotten.