Ask Lemmy

I don't have any money and I have a great life. And I live in the US. All my neighbors seem pretty happy too.

I don't have tons of money and I grew up with even less and my life is great dude.

You don't need tons of money. What you need is to be smart with your money and way too many people aren't. You don't need a Lexus to be happy, but way too many Americans think if you don't have a stupidly expensive car, you must be miserable.

That’s interesting to me, as I’d always assumed that if you were poor in the US you were kinda screwed.

The US is huge in a way most people outside don't fully grasp.

Lemmy pushes a lot of negativity, but let's put the numbers in perspective. Lemmy has about 1.366 million registered users worldwide (with monthly active users way lower, around 48,000–50,000). That's less than 0.0004% of the US population of roughly 343 million. And the portion actually from and living in the US is even smaller. On big instances like lemmy.world, only about 36% of traffic comes from the United States, with the rest scattered across Europe, the UK, and elsewhere.

So the voices you see are a tiny, often city-heavy or niche slice that doesn't reflect most Americans at all.

The country covers about 3.8 million square miles (nearly 9.8 million square kilometers). With 343 million people spread across that, most of the land is quiet, rural, and empty. News almost always comes from 10–15 big cities where drama happens and gets amplified.

You rarely hear about the rest because... there's nothing dramatic to report.

I didn't see a homeless person in real life until I was 27 and moved to a big California city. I hated California and moved to different state just 3 years later.

Just last week I drove 16 hours through Kansas; 12 of those hours were straight fields of grass and corn, with a solid 5-hour stretch seeing zero people or cars.

I stopped in a town of about 500 people: doors unlocked, bikes left on porches, everyone friendly, and the big topic was the weather. That's normal in huge swaths of the US. But you won't hear that because it's boring and "boring" doesn't get clicks.

Social sites like Lemmy and Reddit are full of urban posters. How often do you see someone post, "I live in a town of 200 people, went fishing, then came back and watched the high school football game, shared homemade food with everyone, had a great time, then came back to the house with my wife and watched NCIS on Netflix!"?

Guess what? That's my reality. And the reality of about 70 million people in the US. Not very interesting news though.

The quiet, safe majority just isn't loud online or in the news.

Social services differ drastically from state to state. It's possible to be happy and poor in a state run by the democrats. Probably not in a state run by republicans.

Honestly I don't know why people call this a country when basic shit isn't the same anywhere.