That's a cultural difference that makes it hard for me to like certain areas of the US (L.A. and Silicon Valley specifically, can't say if the whole US is like

That's a cultural difference that makes it hard for me to like certain areas of the US (L.A. and Silicon Valley specifically, can't say if the whole US is like that). Lot's of the people I talk there feel very shallow, measuring each other by what they did and who they know (Silicon Valley people love name dropping so much!). In contrast in most of Latin America or Europe I feel there is a more deep interaction between people. Conversations seem more real and people seem much more interesting. My guess is that in these cities people (generally) feel the need to create and cultivate a fictitious persona and hide their idiosyncrasies to meet the cookie-cuter expectations of a successful human being (which must be very tiring).