An enlightening example is to consider people's perceptions of New York City. The popular perception / comedian's perspective I remember of the 2000s was that N

An enlightening example is to consider people's perceptions of New York City. The popular perception / comedian's perspective I remember of the 2000s was that NYC was also a shithole, where you would be mugged at the drop of a hat and everyone was murdered. Of course, things were bad for a long time between early 80s and early 90s, but that wasn't the case by the time I moved there in 2003. I lived there for 4 years and never saw anything exciting, despite doing some dumb things. However, I had cousins, living in in New Jersey, who refused to take the subway or bus "'cause bad stuff happens there." Actual anthropologists must surely have better ways of quantifying this, but it sure seems like negative popular perceptions of places lag at least 10 years behind reality.