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'Cottagecore' and the rise of the modern rural fantasy

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

#101

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

giantg2 wrote: post #53

I dream of quitting my job and living on some land. My wife refuses to "live in the middle of nowhere, where there's nothing to do". I guess I shall continue to work a job I hate in order to live in this expensive area.

Maybe your wife is onto something? I mean, I live on some land in the middle of nowhere, where there's nothing to do, but we both want to live here. Some people really don't. It can sound nice, but if you're the kind of person who wants to be near restaurants other than McDonald's, or to have playmates for your kids nearby, or doesn't want to get in the car for a minimum half-hour round trip every time you need a gallon of milk, it might not be for you.

Being out in the country where you can do whatever you want also means that your neighbors can do whatever they want. So some idiot setting off cherry bombs, or another one shooting skeet/target practice in his backyard, or heating a house with wood and smoking out the entire neighborhood when there's a temperature inversion is just as valid a use of property as your gardening. And when the various hunting seasons start, well, gunshots carry a pretty long distance at 6AM.

On a good day, I think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. On a bad day, I just want to shoot everyone else, but that's me.

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

#102

Post by asdff »

davidw wrote: 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.

One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. We haven't gotten past that sentiment towards apartment living to this day. Even what we do build in terms of apartments is only really studios or 1 or 2 bedroom units. If you want to have a family, there's nothing like that on the market like there is in other countries with dense family housing.

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

#103

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

knownjorbist wrote: post #48
mothsonasloth wrote: post #38

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

...while ignoring the reasons people headed in that direction in the first place.

heh. Truer words were never spoken.

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

#104

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

dls2016 wrote: post #17
zwieback wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and fighting off deer, literally sent by Satan to devour my tender green shoots

Six foot fence keeps the deer moving along... but those fat groundhogs climb right over.

Run a wire around the perimeter near the top with a fence charger attached and you'll solve that one quickly.

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

#105

Post by ashleyn »

0des wrote: post #7

What does the -core suffix mean in this context? I get that it is a mix of words, like hardcore, nerdcore, etc.. but why? I figured that was reserved for fringe extreme genres. Does anybody have any info on this?

-core suffix, at its most brief, indicates an aesthetic of some type. In this case, "cottagecore" is a rural, traditional, "Little House on the Prarie" aesthetic.

There's an entire wiki of -cores: https://aesthetics.fandom.com/wiki/Cottagecore

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

#106

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

AngryData wrote: post #35
jtsiskin wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Wouldn’t centralized larger farms be more efficient?

You can't actually compare them very well because commercial food production uses fossil fuel derived fertilizer to feed its yields. Small subsidence farms often don't use any fossil fuel derived fertilizer, and is thus infinity sustainable, but also low yield. Big commercial farms rely almost entirely on fossil fuel derived fertilizer, which is unsustainable unless we pull ass tons of clean renewable energy out of o…

> Small subsidence farms often don't use any fossil fuel derived fertilizer

Where are you getting this from? I mean, chickenshit, etc., can be good fertilizer, but the stuff in a bag is far more predictable.

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

#107

Post by ramesh31 »

asdff wrote: post #102
davidw wrote: 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.

One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. We haven't gotten past that sentiment towards apartment living to this day. Even what we do build in terms of apartments is only really studios or 1 or 2 bedroom units. If you want to have a family, th…

>One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed.

How many large apartment blocs have you lived in? It's not a very enjoyable way to live, particularly with a family.

People want houses, garages, yards, and cars. Don't try to paint the selfish reality of human nature as being corrupted by some propagandistic force against collectivism.

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

#108

Post by fsckboy »

giantg2 wrote: post #63
xnyan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes some effort, but you can have it (mostly) both ways. I live in a little rural town (Hillsborough, NC) that has farms in the woods and a great tiny downtown with several really good restaurants, pubs, and even a tiny art scene and it's only 15 minutes away from Duke/Durham, NC with tons of great dining, shopping, events and so on. I'm sure there are plenty of other situations like this, nice semi-rural/rural…

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.

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

#109

Post by codezero »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #92
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #89

My grandparents and great grandparents all lived on 4+ acre properties in rural Louisiana. Not quite cottages, but a similar concept. They had 1100 - 1300sq foot homes but lived along the river and you could get to all of their houses without ever leaving River Road. They lived about 1 hour from the nearest city and were about halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and had a gigantic community social group. They…

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.

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!

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

#110

Post by maxerickson »

asdff wrote: post #102
davidw wrote: 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.

One of the worst things we did in the past century is paint the idea of an apartment high rise full of decent sized family apartments overlooking a green shady courtyard as some communist evil, to be actively outlawed. We haven't gotten past that sentiment towards apartment living to this day. Even what we do build in terms of apartments is only really studios or 1 or 2 bedroom units. If you want to have a family, th…

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