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Notes -
Disclaimer: I am generally not a city fan, and probably coming at this from a place of motivated reasoning. Nevertheless.
There's some sense in this, if you're talking like Boston or SF, but cities have normies too, a fucking ton of them. Plus an enormous number of underclass people who are even less nerdy than normies. If you just want a large enough total number of like-minded people, and you're willing to search out the diamonds in the rough in a massive, alienating metroplex, I guess? I have friends who commute 40-60 minutes out from the local major city for D&D night. Traversing NYC might take just as long, and you'll spend all of it packed in a subway with normies instead of isolated in a nice, normie-proof car. If you can't find a dozen friends in a 500k county, your odds don't seem much better in a 5M city unless you're looking for something super niche; the problem is more likely with you.
I think this sort of thing is usually projection, and indicates the sort of "I think attending cultural events means I have a personality" hipster whose whining about cities is tiresome.
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