" I don't think liking country music in the Bay Area will cause any sane, reasonable person to treat you differently or not be your friend."

It absolutely will.

If you hunt, or own a gun or into 'gun sports' it will 100% affect who your friends are. Did you hear about the employee outrage when Zuck killed is own lamb for passover (or whichever festival it was, I'm not knowledgable). Do you really think that being a 'hunter' won't affect your status at 'WeWork' - a company that enforces vegetarianism? Among a whole bunch of other values?

Listening to Country Music and driving a pickup? Not cool in the Bay - unless it's hipster/ironic. If you are 'openly' Christian, it will likely affect who your friends are as well.

These are not so much conscious thoughts people make, or outright judgements (in some cases they are) - but it will lose you a lot of points on the spectrum of social hierarchy.

I interviewed at a FANG once and the interviewer was interested in the band that I played in and asked what kind of music we played. It was a very long time ago ... and I suppose my answers were not hip enough for him because he obviously was not impressed.

Social circles, companies/startups, clubs, interests - these are all very intermixed as sad as it may be, we make judgements on these thing in life and in business.

""the Bay Area is not very liberal" may be changing slowly from an attitudinal perspective, but certainly that statement does not bear out in the polls""

I mean liberal by classical definition. You seem to be referring to the American pop-culture political definition of 'Liberal' - which frankly has very little meaning, or more like 'left wing'.

So yes, of course the Valley and Cali are fairly 'Liberal' in the pop-culture political sense and will be forever, but they are not very 'liberal' in the classical sense (though the valley has a history of being a little libertarian, which is a little more like classical liberalism, but still different).

In Texas, they really don't care who you are overall. But if you are gay, or effete, or a little weird, you might not be in the cool club. If you were the QB on your high school team, you get bonus points. If you 'never miss Church' it might get you a few bonus points in some places.

In Cali, sure, you can do or be as you please, pretty much. If you drive a big truck, speak with a twang, talk about football or fishing a lot ... you're not going to be in the cool club. Being a vegan, or having a really humbling 'rags-to-riches ethnic minority from another country story' ... will give you big empathetic bonus points. If you belong to a 'Social Justice Cause', or 'attend burning man' - it might get you some bonus points.

In both Cali and Texas - people feel a weird need to push those behaviours on others, maybe as a function of virtue signalling, and to also shame a little bit people that don't follow suit, i.e. 'if you don't support my SJW cause/attend Church you must be immoral'.

Everywhere in the world is like this to some extent, but this is slightly more common in America I think than the rest of the world, particularly bolder, more aspirational regions that are a little 'newer' and have a stronger sense of ideological identity - like Texas and Cali!