Maybe that's one of the reason people in small towns are so different, the social dynamic is stricter because there's just not enough people around to form groups of people that are different. City people like me, if we don't fit in we'll just find another place to go so we're more aligned. We can choose our community because a city isn't a community, it's a big box of lots of different ones. If you live in a small town you don't get to do that (not as much anyway)
But the idea that there's no community there at all is not correct. I live in a big city but I keep running into the same people :)
Ps I don't think one is better than the other, just more suitable to some people than others. I'm a city guy and I moved to the town of my girlfriend for a decade but I couldn't stick it. She couldn't stick the city with me, not for more than a holiday. That's ok too. Just meant we had to go our separate ways.
Edit: But yes when I said "Nobody wants to conform" I was just talking about myself. I guess there are people that want that. Thanks for the correction.
There is absolutely no such club for many people who are even slightly out of the normal expected range of behavior
[0] https://plausiblydeniable.com/five-geek-social-fallacies/
I've seen it at typical geek places too like makerspaces but it's certainly not limited to the geek communities.
They're not neurodivergent-focused groups but there's just a (much) larger percentage of us attracted to events that stray a bit further from the mainstream.
That's certainly part of it, although I think the bigger factor is that people who are different just leave. Small towns are conformist because of survivorship bias.
