Asklemmy

It absolutely has a lot to do with Right wing/Republican propaganda, California, Chicago, and New York represent everything they hate so they constantly use both states and that city as negative talking points.

One point they constantly make is that New York City is a crime riddled hellhole, meanwhile NYC has one of the lowest crime rates in the entire country, and one of the lowest murder rates, it's just a massive city with a massive population and everyone there has cameras so when stuff happens it goes viral. Also the Red States tend to have much higher crime and murder rates.

All in all this is usual conservative/right wing tactics, they constantly want to isolate and segregate themselves from other ideas, and aren't afraid to take over where other people live to exclude the people already living there. This is why Idaho, Texas, Florida, and Utah have similar campaigns about "don't California my state" and by "California" they mean don't bring your "liberal/socialist/Communist/woke/progressive/democratic" outlook to their states, because they don't want to be responsible for cleaning up the racism and various other problems that the red states seem to have adopted as their identities.

Also I know quite a few conservative Californians and New Yorkers that recently moved to Texas and Florida, and as conservative as they thought they were they actually talk about moving back to where they came from because of how it is in their new states, except for the fact that they moved to the new states because they can afford so much more than what they could in California.

Overall my point is, if you consume right wing media then you are conditioned to hate blue states, and particularly those blue states are Cali, NY, and the city of Chicago as well as DC, I'm not saying these places are without flaws, but I am saying that the propaganda and disinformation about those places has amplified the hate towards those places and their residents.

California gets trotted out in the conservative media sphere as "liberalism run wild", a place where being what they consider to be a "real American" is illegal but crime is subsidized by the state, where everything is expensive and dangerous, and homeless people have gay sex in the street. There's an entire industry focused on filtering for the most extremely awful news they can find in a state of almost 40 million people, packaging that news as though it's the typical experience everyone there goes through, and then blasting that news into the brains of Americans 24/7. That image, carefully crafted to be as extremely negative as possible, is the only experience most people have with California.

California is the target of conservative fear mongering.

There’s a large amount of perceived haughtiness from the residents of California. They have a lot to be proud of though - it’s a great state in a lot of regards.

Full disclosure, I’m Canadian but travel to San Diego often for work.

Downtown San Diego is not as I remember it from before the pandemic. It’s quite clear to me that California is struggling with a massive mental health and addiction issue. The cost of living compounds these issues and amplifies the worst in people. Even “normal” working class folk are quick to anger and explode at the slightest inconvenience and people just do not give a shit about each other. I pin it to everyone being stressed out because they live paycheck to paycheck and the future is always uncertain.

Things that I think could help: universal healthcare, increased public housing, and the execution of the sackler family.

It's a left-leaning, progressive state. Everyone who talks shit about this state in anything other than the cost of living generally doesn't have an answer because their actual reason for disliking the state is that it's not a republican state.

california is the largest "sub-national" economy in the world. if california was a country, it would have the fifth largest economy. bigger than the uk, or bigger than india.

if i had to guess, the answer is "success breeds jealousy"

Because its a right-wing dogwhistle.

I think this is mostly due to the highly polarized political climate. California is the most populous state and it's policies frequently end up spreading to other states and therefore is frequently focused on because if it's major influence. This is similar to how Texas and Florida are in the news a lot for their more conservative policies. While there are people out there who take the time to inform themselves and make their own decisions most people are only able to parrot back talking points they hear from the news or their friends. I suspect your coworker is one of those people and probably leans conservative so all he hears all day is how California's policies are making housing too expensive and it's too "woke" etc.

Funny enough for the right wingers that don't like the gun control in California, it was first brought in because Reagan was fearful of the Black Panthers who were openly carrying fully legal assault rifles and those white politicians couldn't handle that second amendment applying to black gun owners.

As a very left leaning individual who does not like California my reasons basically come down to all the benign neglect of the homeless (leaving people to rot in the streets with their fentanyl addictions isn't progressive, assholes) the militant oppositions to building housing anywhere (progress is being made but it's like pulling teeth) and the huge focus on performative laws that effect 0 actual change.

... Notably these are all problems in other states too. Most of them just use police to lock them up instead. Not better.

But California rubs me the wrong way because they act smug about it.

Poor republicans are butthurt

I live here and it's all propaganda. From my lefty perspective there are no shortage of things to criticize about California, but most of the criticism in the mainstream comes from the right and more or less 90% of it is made up.

Example: last year San Francisco elected a DA who said that they wanted to reform the justice department, used Black Lives Matter rhetoric, etc, and the conservative media sphere drummed up a propaganda campaign against them and against San Francisco generally that convinced everyone that a spike in crime had occurred even though there was no actual evidence that crime had gone up (and even if it had the new DA hadn't been in nearly long enough to be the cause of it). This resulted in that DA getting recalled and replaced and everyone outside the state thinking that San Francisco is Mad Max, even though statistically things are basically exactly the way they've been for the past couple of decades.

The real problems are what other people said, things are expensive and the cities have a lot of inefficient sprawl which makes the cost of living worse and starves the city governments of funds for social services. We've been staring down the barrel of a water crisis for like two decades and the state government is seemingly incapable of taking any action on it, we spend way too much money on cops, the government is completely captured by the local industries, the only thing we seem capable of doing to homeless people is systematically brutalizing them - but none of those problems are unique to California.

Most people out of the state who complain about California, never lived here, they are just repeating what they heard on conservative media.

If it was a hell hole like they say, the property prices would be cheap, no one would want them.

Most people that are leaving, are leaving because they got priced out and cannot afford to stay.

Same reason people don't like Florida. Lots of targeted negative media coverage. Conservatives think California is a shithole where homeless people are everywhere and people don't get arrested for robbing a store at gunpoint. Non-conservatives think Florida is full of hard-core Trumpers who want to ban all gay people from existing and is like a redneck 1984.

Reality is more nuanced. Both states are very large populations with a diverse makeup. But nuance is hard to convey in headlines. I personally live in Florida and love it, even though I hate DeSantis with a passion. The people here make up for the shitty politics. And the pendulum will inevitably swing back to the other side.

Went to San Francisco and California in general for the first time this past May. I've grown up in the suburbs on the East Coast with a very conservative family.

They were all losing their minds when I told them I was going to go. They were convinced I was going to get 16 times a day.

The city and state as a whole was absolutely beautiful (visited Yosemite and got engaged). There was so much to do that I had never experienced as someone who grew up in the suburbs. There was only one time we felt a bit uncomfortable but we were aware of the situation and had plans to get out if need be.

We rode public transportation (the horrors!) the whole time without any problem.

I know it's not perfect by any means but to me the problem is fear mongering by the likes of Fox

From what I've observed it has to do with the fact most people do not know how to party, something California knoes how to do very well.

Republican deflection and propaganda. Next questions.

It's all nonsense created by right wing extremists. California is an amazing state for a huge, long list of reasons.

The people here are amazing (not you, LA) and we have some of the most beautiful beaches, coasts and forests in the world.

They watch a lot of Fox Entertainment.

From my small sample size experience as a customer service rep for an internet and cable TV company, California customers are some of the most obnoxious ever. People in LA seem like some of the angriest people ever. The slightest inconvenience and it's like you killed their fucking dog.

Okay, let's start with the environment: most of California doesn't have enough water, and they're not doing anything to directly remediate that. Environmentally, a lot of the farming is going to be a disaster when the consequences of climate change really set in. Most of SoCal is a desert, but you wouldn't know it from the expanses of lawns that you see in wealthy enclaves. (...But you'll figure it out really fast when you try to go mountain biking without puncture-resistant tires.)

The gun control policy is awful, and likely illegal in light of the last few SCOTUS rulings. But here's the kicker: California has a Democratic supermajority, and they could do things about the underlying conditions that lead to violence in general, and don't. They've consistently failed to seriously address the economic issues that are closely tied to violent crime, things like economic inequality and poverty, criminal justice reform, systemic racism, and so on and so forth. Instead they've opted for policies that make wealthy white people happy without fixing the issues.

Housing; this is where wealthy "liberals" are directly to blame. Dems say that they believe in housing that's affordable, but wealthy elites--which are overwhelmingly Democratic in California--oppose zoning changes that would allow for high density, affordable housing. The result is shithole houses that can cost over a million dollars, studio apartments in sketchy parts of town (see point #2, above) are thousands of dollars a month, an exploding homeless population, and fuckin' awful sprawl.

Taxation: California has long had the chance to show that it's progressive with taxation, and to institute wealth taxes. They don't.

Education: California still relies on funding largely through property taxes, which ensures that school districts with a poorer tax base will have less funding. Again, this is the product of wealth elites--who are overwhelmingly Democratic in California--working to oppose funding changes that would have the effect of making schools in super-rich neighborhoods less desirable, but would also improve schools everywhere else.

Public transit: California barely has it, and it's consistently underfunded. Combined with point #3, it leads to traffic gridlock that's famously awful in major metro areas.

Most of these problems can be solved. The problem is that Dems are being hypocritical; they have a NIMBY attitude that means that, even though they say the right things, they don't do shit.

Right now, it's because Californians are moving to [insert right wing state] and turning it left wing.

Homelessness problem, too hot, too idolised and too full of rich assholes

As a tourist from Canada, my wife and I drove through parts of the US for about three weeks in 2018, and we absolutely hated California. It was our least favourite part of the trip. It is clear that LA is struggling with massive homelessness. The roads were the worst ones we encountered on our road trip. The beaches were littered with garbage, to an amount that we just found disgusting. They were also incredibly overcrowded, though that is what happens in heavily populated places. We went to Disneyland, and that was nice. However, we did cut our California stay short and moved on.

Now, I don't have many places to compare California to, as we were only in about four states. However, we have travelled extensively in Canada, where we have been to most of the provinces. We enjoyed the states and provinces we have visited. However, California is definitely in our no-no zone for vacations.

Again, this is a tourist perspective. I do not really know what it's like to live there.

We moved to California from across the pond and love it. Socal weather can't be beat. Great food, great outdoor exercise and playtime options. The people are nice. Yeah theres issues but all told we really like it. I don't get the hate from other states and seems to be simply sour grapes

Politics wise, it is seen as a hub of liberals. That means you have conservatives doing their best to knock California down the same way that liberals will do the same for Texas and Florida.

That said, there is a cost of living crisis that is caused a lot in part by the wealthy blocking increased density while locking in low property taxes due to date of purchase. So, a lot of coverage gets portrayed as rich liberals say they want these things, except near them.

It is also easier to film homeless in California since the weather makes it easier for them to live outside and the state is failing bad at providing housing for them.