Illinois appears to totally hate loners to death!

[traveller]

As someone who was born and raised in the Chicagoland area, I can tell from personal experience that Illinoisans tend to avoid people who are by themselves as though they were those isolated tall trees in a lightning storm. And apparently, it gets a lot worse in the outer suburbs; when I used to take classes at College of DuPage, extremely few students at all worked with me, many students rejected me outright, and eventually I was reduced to sitting in the farthest corner possible every time I went to class, and to no surprise, the female students especially didn't care a single bit! Once, I took a Floral Design class at College of DuPage, and on the last day, I asked a few of my classmates if they'd like my phone number to maybe hang out over the summer, not only was I declined, but I also got a "D" in the class, and when I tried to retake it for a higher grade, the teacher threatened to call the police if I had interactions with any students or asked for any phone numbers. So I ended up dropping the class and signing up for the second floral design class. And obviously of course, back in 2004, I found out that even fewer people were nice to me at all farther west in the Sycamore/DeKalb area. Many in the Sycamore/DeKalb area were downright cold and hateful towards me. In the meantime, Chicago's west suburb of Berwyn, over the course of the late 1990s and 2000s, where I went to high school, had completely lost all of it's social atmosphere as the nice people, as well as people I went to high school with, all moved away and started their own lives, selfish snobs moved in, and I became less and ever less comfortable going out into the community. I used to have lots of fun in the summer going to Berwyn's Pavek Pool because so many of my high school friends worked there as lifeguards. But all that changed when the nice people began really moving out in droves, each summer after high school I went there less and less often, I went there only maybe twice in 2002, and then in 2003, I stopped going there alltogether because of the kinds of people that were moving into Berwyn.

It got especially a lot worse when I began posting on public forums that Illinoisans are rude, selfish, anti social, and should not be approached, and when I not only got flamed, but also banned. Especially the city-data forum which is totally the worst forum I ever encountered! From the way that city-data forum would ban me and ban me all the time, I wouldn't doubt it if the city-data forum were based in North Korea.

[Bane]

I find the same things happen in the NYC area. I don't think it's just an Illinois thing.

[traveller]

I find the same things happen in the NYC area. I don't think it's just an Illinois thing.

I have once been to New York City in March of 2006. I was on a snorkelling class from College of DuPage to the Florida Keys. We had a 6 hour stopover at Newark Liberty International Airport and decided to take a little field trip right into Midtown Manhattan. We walked around for a while and then hung out for a bit at Times Square, and the people in New York City, even in Manhattan, were actually pretty social with me. Only one person gave me the rude stare. I even had a couple conversations with a couple of people, too. My experience was such that, when my class and I were headed back to Newark Airport, I was thinking; well, I guess Illinois is now the rude/antisocial capital of America! And in fact, right after I got back from that trip, I began giving New York City more positive reviews, and Chicago the Mother of All Negative Reviews.