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'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

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251–260 of 274 posts

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of recent TV paints living in a large apartment building as a completely normal thing to do.

Living as a SINK/DINK? Yeah sure. Look at just about any show about raising children at or above the replacement rate and the vast majority are all in homes. Even the family in shameless had a home. The only counter example I can even think of is smilf.

Your very language belies the ingrained attitudes we have. A single family unit is a "home". An apartment is ... something else.

In reality, both are homes.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#252
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the have Stardew Valley either tapped into this or caused some of this trend.

Stardew Valley disturbs me, because it makes farming and even gardening seem too easy. There's too little substance between planting and harvest; playing it feels like eating candy for dinner for a week.

Having played neither, is the simulation better or worse than something like Farmville back in the day?

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#253
post #87

This is, in reality, probably less 'green' than living in a city. Multi-family homes tend to require less energy to heat and cool, because you share walls. You can also walk to many things, bike, or take transit. My bet is that most of the people living in these rural places aren't so into the 'rural lifestyle' that they don't own a couple of cars that they use for ... pretty much everything in life.

Making large life decisions based on your own personal GHG emissions is living as though you are already dead. I moved out to the country. Bought a big diesel. Started a farm. My GHGs went way up. And yet, my lifestyle change has zero impact on climate change. It's like voting--if you know game theory at all, you know it's a waste of time, just like it's a waste of a life to spend your time calculating and optimizing…

It's all about aggregate actions and incentives. I have no problem if people want to live that kind of lifestyle - I think they should be free to do so. I do think we should have a carbon tax so that some of the externalities it creates are priced in. At the margin, perhaps some people would decide not to choose more carbon intensive activities, or work harder to find ways to mitigate them (buy a Ford electric truck instead of the diesel, say).

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#254

Just another manifestation of people realising their life of metropolitan decadence is wrong, lacks meaning and is damaging to the human spirit.

>metropolitan decadence New band name!

Is "urban elites" already taken? because this sounds like the exact same thing.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#255
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people on this site have plenty of resources to buy into a lifestyle like the one you are describing. But for some reason they don't. To me, it seems likely that there are some serious drawbacks to that lifestyle that you're leaving our, which if further probed would change the equation.

That lifestyle does take a lot of experience your average knowledge worker just doesn't have. People back then knew how to farm their land, they knew went to till and when to harvest, what to plant when and where. They were handy, they were carpenters, but also plumbers, roofers, painters, tailors, mechanics, menders of all things. Skills acquired by being a young child and holding the tools for an adult doing the ta…

Youtube-sensei has massively improved the situation though, especially if you're not playing around with dangerous stuff.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to guess, it's the choice of community HNers want to engage with on a regular basis. It's not other people who live in the country, it's other nerds who live in the country, which once you leave a city starts to have very low density!

I don't remember nerds being the ones worried about what's socially popular and fitting in.

Socializing with people/a community is different from socializing with in-groups vying for popularity.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#257
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although there is a lot of data to suggest that per capita green house gas (GHG) emissions from urban residents are less than rural counterparts this is not the entire story. Absolute GHG emissions and impact are higher for higher incomes. GHG emissions are a function of wealth not geography. Urban areas have much higher concentraions of wealth. They also outsource much of their GHG creation to rural areas but are st…

Sounds like you're throwing a bunch of arguments at the wall and hoping some of them stick rather than trying to figure out what's true. Wealth is presumably fixed at first-order, so comparing equally wealthy rural or urban residents seems fairest (unless you're trying to argue that cities are bad because they increase economic growth?); if the argument is something like "emissions are only higher in rural areas beca…

> if the argument is something like "emissions are only higher in rural areas because rural residents are more likely to own cars because they're wealthier", that doesn't really refute the notion that rural is worse for the planet, it just means that poor people can't afford rural lives

They don't clearly state their argument, so maybe I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure they're arguing an inverse correlation. IE: Urban areas produce less because urbanites are on the whole a wealthier population.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#258
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Van lifers feel your pain. The instagram influencer skinny young cute blonde girl with painted toenails and backdoors open to reveal the grand canyon is a far cry from the reality that's 90% pooping in a composting toilet in a walmart parking lot and spending your entire weekend trying to install a water tank to supply a shower.

Motorcycle travel seems fortunately impervious to it. Nobody's cool in full mismatched gear on a bike that's peppered with dead insects and mud. Except Ewan McGregor, you sexy bastard. That, the average age of adventure motorcyclists, and the cost of this seasonal vehicle are enough to keep influencers out.

There are "hot chick" moto vloggers out there trolling for likes with enticing thumbnails.

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#259
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Motorcycle travel seems fortunately impervious to it. Nobody's cool in full mismatched gear on a bike that's peppered with dead insects and mud. Except Ewan McGregor, you sexy bastard. That, the average age of adventure motorcyclists, and the cost of this seasonal vehicle are enough to keep influencers out.

There are "hot chick" moto vloggers out there trolling for likes with enticing thumbnails.

Like this? https://thumbnailsandpolish.blogspot.com/

Re: 'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

#260
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, most places I was looking at would be 30-60 minutes outside of large city, and only a short 10 or so minute drive to the local town. She told me one day that she never wanted to leave the current county (her home county). Now she is also determined to move into her old school district (much more expensive and more developed), even though the school scores aren't much higher than the current one and just with th…

I'm guessing she wants the status of the more expensive neighborhood, and the better schools are just a lever to get there.

just to add on, not that anybody's still reading :)

and a ritzy private school not only would not get her into the higher status neighborhood, it would potentially expose the family to more scorn for not living there

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