> 8. The people are nice...but there's something else there. It feels polite but not genuinely warm or something. I always felt like an outsider. Maybe because I wasn't from the south? Could have been my imagination, but what definitely isn't my imagination is that "southern charm" is generally reserved for straight white christians. Not always, but more than I'd like.

Coming from the Midwest, this statement is almost exactly my impression. Everyone is wearing a mask made of their own skin. Seems like everyone is afraid of being judged and excommunicated for saying or doing the wrong thing. The famed "Southern charm" comes across as bad acting, after knowing people who are genuinely nice and unguarded in their behavior. It might work on other Southerners, but it's very unctuous and unpleasant to me, especially when there's contrived familiarity in it. The only people that seem actually friendly are the other transplants.

> 9. Speaking of which, it's uber-christian, in a way that's hard to understand unless you've been there. It just permeates the ground you walk on somehow. Not that everyone is christian, but a lot of people are, and people will ask you if / where you go to church, and my daughter's non-religious preschool taught her a bunch of christian songs, etc. And it's ironic because I was christian (my wife is even a minister), but I don't love living around it like that. Especially since my views on the intersection of faith and politics have radically evolved over the last few years.

As a non-religious person, this is the sand in my knickers. The spouse is "cafeteria" Catholic, so we don't really go to church that much. And I wouldn't call the atmosphere uber-Christian, either. It feels more like a ubiquitous cult that has appropriated and subverted Christian symbology to control people's relationships and behavior. Churches around here, or at least the white-people churches and black-people churches, are the social clubs and public meeting spaces. People don't just do the obligatory once-a-week church, but go back at additional times during the week, for extra credit, I guess. At first look, it seems like segregation is alive and well, by pushing civic life into private spaces that can legally exclude the xenos. In this sense, the Catholic churches are actually on the progressive side of the spectrum, because you can actually see people of different colors in the same room. But then they bore you to tears, and ask for money all the time.

The other annoying cultural browbeater is asking what football team you support. If I were to say that I'm boycotting the NFL because of concussions and Kaepernick, but also that I didn't watch before because football is a boring game to watch, anyway, I would become an untouchable pariah overnight.

The "Jesus is my quarterback" vibe around here is pervasive, and a constant irritant. It's like other religions and sports don't even exist, and it creates a kind of bland groupthink that makes everyone you meet seem like cloned pod people. I didn't even realize it explicitly until seeing a guy with piercings and tattoos, and feeling an invisible cloud of tension dissipate. I thought, "Finally! Someone who's different!" And it all fell into place. The society creates forced conformity, and the price for individuality is to be excluded from the dense core of society, banished to the periphery.