This post has content warnings for: racism, poverty, urban centers, prejudice, capitalism.
*moth noises*
- she/they
- explorermoo.carrd.co/
Illustrator & Concept Artist. | Full-time space moth 🦋🌌 | 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️ NB (she/they) | 🇧🇷
You must log in to comment.
in reply to @explorermoo's post:
I don't usually write this much but I needed to get it off my chest
And disclaimer: the picture is of Hong Kong not São Paulo, I just felt like it illustrated the feeling better
This is interesting because I've lived in "big cities" most of my life and I love them... but Sao Paulo is the only city I've lived in where... the vibes were off. Hated my time there. Something about how it's built, how it's organized, how it's run is hostile. I wasn't as observant back then so I'm not sure I could pinpoint why. But I hated it. Had the hardest time interacting with people even.
Every other big city I've lived in (including Buenos Aires, an even more populous city) I've loved. I've had a great time, I've been able to "sink into" the fabric of the city, finding cool people, moving with freedom, making myself a space to belong.
So in general I disagree that big urban centers lead to alienation, in my experience, the opposite is true. Except Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo had bad vibes.
Thank you for taking the time to read my little ramble!
It's very refreshing (and honestly kind of hopeful) to hear your take regarding big cities! In my experience they're also not so insulating as São Paulo proved to be. It might be that it's an outlier, or there's some kind of metric that once it's extrapolated it leads to... whatever the hell is going there!
Something about how it's built, how it's organized, how it's run is hostile.
Of all of those, as a brazillian, I can tell you it is notoriously run in a hostile manner. The rest is up to conjecture I guess...
Still, glad to hear your take on this! Ever since I got back my experience there has ben stewing in the back of my mind trying to make some sense of it.
Sao Paulo is the only place I've travelled outside of the United States--my Dad's company sent him on a business trip some fifteen years ago now, and I was able to come along. And even then it felt unfriendly. It wasn't open Nazi symbol unfriendly yet, but it was big city unfriendly. I don't know how much of that to attribute to being an awkward kid in a country where I only knew a few words of the language, but I definitely felt the urge to make myself small and invisible.
I love living in my little city. I like visiting bigger cities and exploring. But yeah, this rings true about Sao Paulo.
Big cities do tend to “scare” folks who aren’t used to them into a feeling of just wanting to disappear. You don’t wanna draw attention to yourself, after all there’s so many people.
But I find that in most cases, it’s really hard to draw attention to yourself, especially in a coty as large and populous as São Paulo! So that’s a positive hehe
Small cities are good! Though, as a trans person, the “everybody knows everyone” energy can be scary (and dangerous sometimes), so the big cities where you can “become invisible” is at times more attractive
Pinned Tags