It's kind of interesting how long it takes people to update their perceptions of places. When talking to poorly-traveled Americans about what they think is going on in different states, their ideas are often decades old. Like, no -- it's not 1985 in Montana anymore. You'll get a ticket if you don't mow your grass in Kalispell. Backyard chickens are banned in Havre. Tons of the state has been developed with condos, five-lane strip mall roads, etc. Plenty of rainbow flags around (even in smaller towns). They've even got a transgender member of the Montana House of Representatives. Same with Vermont. People who haven't been talk like it is still some kind of "stuck in time" hippie shire zone. Instead large swaths of the state are infested with Airbnb's. There are Somalians wandering around Winooski. The state has wrestled with a nightmarish fentanyl problem and locals can't afford housing in half the state, as they're competing with quaint-seeking out-of-staters. Some older people even talk like South Boston is still a slum run by the Irish Mafia -- or like Times Square in NYC is still dotted with XXX stores and junkie prostitutes. They don't seem to know that half the South is now a giant sprawl of subdivisions rather than a drawling sweet-tea-and-blues-BBQ-shack kind of place. I suspect that people are resistant to updating their perceptions because it's all actually kind of a bummer to look at how things are going. Tons of this country is running on fumes culturally, and once the memories of 1985 start to die with the older generation, things are gonna feel really weird -- as the chasm between perception and reality will widen to untenable levels.