SMALL-TOWN LIFE IS THE ANTI-TWITTER

WHEN I MOVED from New York City to rural northern Arizona, I faced two obstacles: my vocabulary and my manners. Spicy language and brusqueness were normal in the East Village, where I was unlikely to see many faces again. But they were impediments in a sparsely settled place where you run into the same people day after day. Life in a relatively rural area encourages nicer manners, so I learned to rein myself in

- J.D. TUCCILLE

The lesson doesn’t come easily for everybody. “Could you do me a favor?” a Flagstaff bartender once asked me. “Could you go talk to that tourist for me? He’s from New York, like you, and I just… can’t. The beers are on me if you deal with him.” I spoke to the guy, who resembled an exaggerated version of myself from a few years earlier. He wasn’t deliberately rude, but he was in-your-face and sharptongued, reflecting manners shaped by faceless crowds.

“For centuries,” Conor Friedersdorf wrote in 2010 for The Daily Dish, “one reason people have chosen to live in cities is the comparative privacy that they offer: unlike [in] the small town, where everybody knows your business and community ties are pervasive, the city dweller can cultivate strong community ties if he likes, even as he is an anonymous man in the crowd everywhere except his apartment elevator, his weeknight soccer league, and trivia night at the corner pub.” Friedersdorf wondered if the internet would end that anonymity.