Why is it so cool to trash talk your hometown?
26th June 2015
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I consider myself to have two hometowns.
The first is Stafford, the West Midland’s county town in which I was born and raised. (And no, before you say it, not Shakespeare’s town, that’s Stratford.)
The second is Birmingham, the UK’s second city. Although I have only lived here for a couple of years since coming to the University of Birmingham, I consider it home because it was home to both my parents and grandparents; it is where my roots lie.
In my recent attempts at travel journalism, I have written a few articles that promote the culture of Birmingham, and I will tell anyone that asks that I am proud to live here. However, it seems that being proud of your hometown is most definitely not in fashion.
Time and time again I have seen whiney, complaining tweets or Facebook statuses such as ‘I can’t wait to get out of this place’ or the rather less polite, ‘This town is such a shithole.’
I even apparently offended someone on a night out because I said I liked living in Birmingham; he claimed that I have not lived here long enough to have an opinion, and if I had, I would have certainly realised by now that it is “a crap city and a horrible place to live.”
Then I thought to myself, have I really ever heard someone say something nice about where they live? It seems so normal for someone to say, “I come from [insert place name], yeah it’s just a [derogatory description] near [another place name].”
It definitely seems that the majority of people think it is super-trendy to moan about where they live, but let me tell you something, it’s just boring. As people of Britain, we hear enough complaints; complaining about school, work, money, politics, the weather - I think anyone would rather listen to someone that has something nice to say about where they live, it’s much more interesting!

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