Too true. It is definitely possible to meet people and have a sense of community with myriad fun things to do.

One of the factors mentioned in the Salon article linked in another comment is right wing media propaganda that paints big cities as a hellscape with various ills directly attributable to Democratic leadership. So the right wing mom has a completely distorted picture of big city life.

Cities can definitely be lonely places without community, especially if you move to a big one as an adult. Seattle has a phrase, The Seattle Freeze, and it's not related to the weather. It's really just going to depend on the person, and their situation. Being in an expensive city without money can be really depressing. Being in a high culture city with a lot of money can be really amazing. And of course there are a million degrees in-between.

I live in a rural "city," and I feel far more connected to the people around me in big cities when I travel than I ever have at home. Rural people only want to talk to people they already know and have connections with (which as mentioned are primarily location based,) while city people LOVE chatting with folks, finding common ground, and discussing differences.

I like visiting DC and someone practically offers me a job almost every time I go, 😂

This is nothing new. It's been happening for decades, it's just reached the point it's more noticable now.

I graduated high school in a small rural Ohio town in the late 2000s. The kind of country school where k-12 are all in the same building. My graduating class was less than 100 people. Some kids drove tractors to school if they were feeling ornery. Lots of Confederate flags (in Ohio).

Of that class, according to Facebook, around 10 of them still live in or around that town. The rest of us got the fuck out. And this has been the trend in every small town from the Midwest to the South to the West.

You know what happens when you invest in education for young people in these small backwater towns? They leave, and take their progressive votes with them. Hence why it doesn't seem like education tends to work in these areas. It's working, it's just helping kids gain the knowledge that they don't want to stay living in a conservative backwater, and providing them the skills so they don't have to. And off they go.

Unfortunately there's a problem with this. The Senate. Red State brain drain is going to continue to fuck the Senate up worse than it already has. It doesn't matter how many people flee those red states, they will always get two Senators. Ironically, as they flee for better blue states, they are damaging the national government's ability to function properly and making it more red.

That happens in microcosm with gerrymandered congressional districts, too. "Sure, leave your small town, go to the cities, were your voting power is suppressed."

Are you to tell me the infinitely reused plotline of "moves from big city to small town and leaves a white collar worker for a blue collar worker" has a conservative appeal??

Always have been