Like Peter Thiel, Tech Workers Feel Alienated by Silicon Valley ‘Echo Chamber’

I recently moved (fled) from downtown San Francisco to Nashville TN and couldn't be happier. I lived in SF for over 5 years, and there is absolutely a mass exodus of people and engineers leaving the bay area because of extreme ideology, hypocrisy, constant outrage, and the echo chamber that engulfs everything. Downtown San Francisco is a great place to visit for a few days but no place to start and raise a family.

See, and I left NYC for Nashville in 2015, and I’m moving back to NYC next week. Nashville itself is pretty purple, but the ideology of the south is just as homogeneous as SF, and I find it much, much more offensive (Roy Moore).

There is not a (net) mass exodus from the Bay Area, hence the ridiculous prices. I moved to SF in 2006 and there were always people claiming it was on the verge of collapse because everyone was fed up with the high prices and crowding and was fleeing. Funny to see that nothing has changed.

“No one goes to that bar anymore, it’s too crowded!”

Nashville as you know is actually pretty liberal, but the biggest difference is that people here live their lives, are friendly to others, and that southern charm is a real thing. People in San Francisco are always so outraged and angry (mainly since Trump took office) and the media constantly feeds them things to be outraged about that they are perpetually angry. People in Nashville for the most part don't let politics engulf and polarize them (I'd even say radicalize some) like the bay area.

We do not live in the same Nashville.

Not only is it not “pretty liberal” by any definition, people here aren’t any less political than people on the coasts, and they don’t “live their lives” any more, whatever that even means.

However, people here are less angry about Trump and the Republicans because they’re much more likely to have voted for him and support what he’s doing. They were plenty angry when Obama was in office.

Also, “southern charm” is real and nice at first, but in my experience it’s actually pretty shallow, cheap, and discriminatory. It’s mainly surface-level and primarily extended to non-poor white Christian conservatives. Minorities, immigrants, gays, liberals, non-Christians, and poor people are treated differently.