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[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 148 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Illinoisan here, Pennsylvania and Idaho need to get their heads checked. I wouldn’t consider anything west of Kansas or east of Ohio(being generous there) as Midwest. Also just about anything south of the Missouri Compromise Line is a southern state, the Midwest is not the home of traitors.

Edit: correct mason Dixon to Missouri compromise

[-] cave@lemmy.world 84 points 1 year ago

Wait until you see the Confederate flags in PA. Ya know, where the battle of Gettysburg happened. Very much not a southern state. It's wild seeing this shit in my neighborhood.

[-] JJROKCZ@lemmy.world 89 points 1 year ago

Confederate flags are in canada and California, it’s just a flag for racists to roleplay with, the confederacy won’t rise again anywhere.

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[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 24 points 1 year ago

So much not a southern state that its bottom border is literally the Mason-Dixon line. Some people are, indeed, whack.

I have seen Confederate battle flags flying on trucks and houses in and around Gettysburg, no less. I get the impression that people are not doing this for historical reenactment purposes...

[-] chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 25 points 1 year ago

It's the racism. That's why.

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[-] Piogre314@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

South of the Mason-Dixon Line includes almost half of your own state of Illinois, and multiple other states that remained loyal to the union.

Did you perhaps mean to refer to the 36°30′ parallel that was used in the Missouri Compromise?

Personally I'm more worried about the 3% of Iowa who doesn't consider itself the Midwest.

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[-] TonyToniToneOfficial@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 year ago

Well, Pittsburgh is culturally midwest even if they aren't geographically so.

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[-] DirkMcCallahan@lemmy.world 78 points 1 year ago

Disappointed they didn't survey the whole nation. It'd be funny to see figures like "0.1%" for Florida or Hawaii.

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[-] AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world 64 points 1 year ago

Why is "west" in "midwest"? Can't we just call these states mid?

[-] Something_Complex@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago
[-] kirby@discuss.tchncs.de 23 points 1 year ago

So living on the line would be living in the Midmid?

[-] Whimsical@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

"Middle of nowhere" is the accepted term for that region

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[-] Perfide@reddthat.com 40 points 1 year ago

Because the US expanded from the east coast towards the west. The midwest is west of the OG colonies, but not as far west as, well, the west.

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[-] raynethackery@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago

I'm a little concerned about Pennsylvania.

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 51 points 1 year ago

Is your house surrounded on all sides by corn?

Does Napoleon Dynamite seem like a documentary about your town?

Then you live in the Midwest.

[-] LastYearsPumpkin@feddit.ch 27 points 1 year ago

Napoleon dynamite takes peace in Idaho. It has a very rural theme to it, but it's not Midwest.

[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 25 points 1 year ago

Exactly. It's not geographically midwest, but it embodies an idea of the midwest.

An endless patchwork of green and yellow squares. Countryside but not natural.

[-] guyrocket@kbin.social 49 points 1 year ago

There are people in TN and AR that think they're Midwestern?

"Y'all" talk too funny for that, now.

(I kid, I kid!)

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[-] ApexHunter@lemmy.ml 45 points 1 year ago

TIL that 25% of people living in Idaho are even dumber than I previously thought they were ...

[-] modifier@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 year ago

They are roughly in the middle of the west, as a whole country. I think our Midwest is fairly far east, due in part to the fact that the western edge of the USA was once much further east, and many conventions have survived from that time.

I am from Illinois, which fits most folks idea of what is midwest, but it's really and truly just...middle

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[-] Got_Bent@lemmy.world 43 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I never have figured out how to categorize Oklahoma, but Midwest has never been on my Oklahoma bingo card. It's more like a less affluent extension of Texas that is full of bogus slot machines and smells like weed everywhere.

There is some surprisingly pretty land up there though. Growing up I always thought of it as a barren dust bowl wasteland. Lots and lots of trees in reality, at least in the eastern half. Don't know what's in the panhandle. I'm not sure anybody does.

Edit: Just as I finished typing this, a commercial came on the TV. To quote, and no I'm not kidding, "Live the flyover life. Move to Oklahoma."

[-] The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

That part of the country is like part midwestern, part southern, part western.

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[-] c0mbatbag3l@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

Still blows my mind that Midwest apparently means "slightly not easy coast."

Like in my mind it would be Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah. That kind of area. Considering it's midway through the west half of the country.

[-] s_s@lemmy.one 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Well, it used to be called the Northwest Territory.

Then we expanded even further west and it became the "old west".

Then the "old west" came to mean the Southwest region pre-statehood.

So then they became the "Midwest".

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[-] Buffaloaf@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago

I'm from Wyoming and I'm calling bullshit on that number. Unless they talked to people living in the town of Midwest.

[-] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 47 points 1 year ago

Not only is Wyoming solidly in the west, Wyoming arguably defines the west. Cowboys, sagebrush, the Rockies... If any part of Wyoming is "the midwest," so is the moon.

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[-] dmention7@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

According to google the town of Midwest, WY has 283 people, which is damn near half of the state's population. So add in a few more confused cowboys and that checks out.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago

Who are the 8.4% of my fellow Hoosiers who don't think they live in the midwest and where do they think they live?

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[-] CycloneWolf@midwest.social 35 points 1 year ago

Iowans calling themselves "midwest" while voting like southerners. You hate to see it.

[-] WoahWoah@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

Most of the Midwest votes like southerners, what are you on about?

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[-] WestHej@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So North-Central. Got it. (Am not American and don't know American history very well)

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[-] Hildegarde@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

Most of y'all are east of the centerline.

You're the middle east, not midwest.

[-] Gingerlegs@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think you’re joking but the name comes from the migration of the incorporation of the states into the union. Not really geographically a reference

Edit: geographically, not geologically

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[-] rwhitisissle@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

10% of Tennessee is so high on hillbilly heroin they don't know which question they got asked and just said "yes" on the off chance it was "would you like some free oxy?"

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[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 27 points 1 year ago

"where is the middle-of-the-west?"

(American points north-by-north east)

[-] Ultraviolet@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

It's because the US started on the east coast and expanded westward, it was named back when it actually was the middle of the west and just never changed it. Same way we still refer to the art movement that began in the late 1800s as "modern art".

[-] funkless_eck@sh.itjust.works 18 points 1 year ago

I'm just being a smartass. Although, Americans do have trouble renaming things.

This message sent from a Robert E. Lee phone

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[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

What the fuck are they smoking in Wyoming and Montana and Idaho?

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[-] Hegar@kbin.social 26 points 1 year ago

This just in: 10% of Tennesseeans forgot what state they live in.

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[-] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 24 points 1 year ago

Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana are Rocky Mountain West, not the MidWest. Good grief.

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[-] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 23 points 1 year ago

Very surprised 42 percent of Coloradans and 25 percent of Idahoans would say they live in the Midwest.

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[-] HeavyDogFeet@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

I lived in the States for five years and I still don't really get what Americans mean when they say the midwest. I guess that's partly because Americans also don't know, so you never get the same explanation twice.

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[-] DrChickenbeer@artemis.camp 18 points 1 year ago

As someone born and raised in the Midwest (Ohio and Illinois) and is currently a resident on the West Coast (Oregon), the way I define it is as such: if there is corn, it's the Midwest. If there are cowboys on horses, it's the west or southwest. Does your state touch the Atlantic or Pacific? That's what coast you are on (Hawaii and Alaska excepted).

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[-] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Ok Colorado and Wyoming thinking they’re Midwest is new to me. As is Ohioans thinking we arent

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[-] Etterra@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Looks legit. As a Chicagoan I can confirm that Iowa is the middlest-west there is.

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this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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