This Country

Wherever I go in this country, I'm surprised by how nice people are. Certain states, cities, or swaths of the country have reputations for being culturally backwards, rude, pushy, or politically polarized, but in general everyone you meet is pretty nice. Yes, there's the occasional jerk, and for some reason we all seem to remember the one jerk better than the dozens of nice folks we talk to (I believe this has been learned through millennia of natural selection, but that's another story), but overall people are nice. At least in person. On the Internet, it's another story. Here people who seem like jerks really are jerks, but we can't stereotype them based on their geographic region. Instead, I generalize between two groups, those who can use "your" and "you're" correctly and those who cannot. It's worked pretty well for me.