Going to the west coast - it is weird. People arent genuinely empathetic or rather, its a foreign concept to them. Empathy is always done through some indirect means, through hobbies for instance. I do feel people on the west coast and midwest arent really used to community collaboration either near as much as the east coast either. Also they are not used to openly expressing themselves, I suspect this has to do with fear of being negatively judged
I also just went to LA. It is such a foreign concept to me how black and white everything is. A lot of people will believe there are truly evil or good people - its such a weird thing for me to hear coming from the east coast - we just think of people as like people.
I think at least on the west coast, alot of this artificial niceness has to do with rising CoL, asian influence, and homeless problems
Mid west is more so like less exposure to international culture compared to east coast
Conformity is like rewarded a lot more in the midwest and west coast, people imo struggle to be individualistic and most resort to some sort of pseudonym to express themselves
I do feel people on the east coast are just in general, simpler people used to simpler things and overall just happier people
I have some friends that moved from seattle, they do tend to express themselves better in text then verbally