How to Hate on Boston
People troll us because we always take the bait. But isn’t that part of what makes Boston, well, Boston?
Boston might be the easiest city in America to mock.
You can come at us for many different things and from many different angles. We end insults with “your mother,’’ we say we went to “school in Cambridge’’ when everybody knows we mean “college at Harvard,’’ and many of us are emotionally repressed. We wear cargo shorts and flat-brim hats but never heels, because have you tried walking on cobblestone in stilettos? We have many lawyers, bankers, and professors, and very little fun. We drink too much and our bars close too early. You could say we’re simultaneously hot-headed, knee-jerk liberal, have a history of racism, and dabble in pretention, and you wouldn’t be totally wrong.
But our most marked characteristic might be that we are faster to defend our city than Tom Brady is to get rid of the ball.
This means that we often can’t even tell whether someone is mocking us just to get a rise out of us or because they have a legitimate point. Which in turn means that of course people are going to try to mock us to get a rise out of us. Because they know they can.
Some have even made a career out of it. Hamilton Nolan, an editor at Gawker, wrote an article in 2013 called “Fuck Boston.’’ The entire piece was just him swearing and saying things he hated about Boston. He didn’t even make a case.
“Yes, that was the key to the approach,’’ Nolan told me. “The whole article didn’t actually make any arguments.’’
The article went viral and people here went nuts. The piece got 1494 comments, which—even for the folks at Gawker, notorious pushers of buttons—is impressive. Many of the comments echo Nolan’s sentiments. But most of them are from angry, righteous Bostonians with “how dare you!?’’ responses.
“The fact that it got the reaction it got—well, to me, it made Boston look even worse,’’ Nolan said. “Because there was no argument contained in whole thing. So my amateur diagnosis is that Boston has a big inferiority complex.’’
Okay, Nolan, you can go fu—wait, sorry. Getting defensive over here.
Nolan also wrote an article about Boston this year, when we got the Olympic bid for 2024. He once again comes out swinging: “If you go to Boston the first thing you want to do is leave. Try it and see.’’
But the angry and mean tone Nolan has perfected isn’t the only way to make fun of us here in the city on a hill. You can also do a great job being patronizing. The Onion nailed this approach with their 2013 article, “Pretty Cute Watching Boston Residents Play Daily Game Of ‘Big City.’’’
According to enchanted onlookers who live in actual metropolitan areas, Boston residents are particularly endearing when they get all dressed up for a night at the theater; eat a big, fancy dinner at the Prudential Center’s top-floor restaurant; and read The Boston Globe, whose reporters get to play a game of Big-City Journalist each and every day.
As one of those reporters who pretends to be a “Big-City Journalist’’ daily, I think it’s brilliant (although it’s worth noting that The Boston Globe and Boston.com are separate entities now, something Boston.com writers constantly have to explain to people we meet at our pretend Big-City parties).
The Onion piece is brilliant because it’s mostly true. Boston is a small city. If you grew up here or went to college here and stuck around, you know what you’ve gotten yourself into. It’s nearly impossible to go anywhere without seeing someone you know. One-night stands invariably end up being related to your mom’s best friend, and you will proceed to see him or her when you have to make command performances at family parties. You see your high school teachers at bars and you feel weird about it.
The article is also brilliant because it’s not all true. If it were, it would just be mean, like picking on a kid who can’t defend herself. But Boston does have a lot going for it, enough to make a case that it’s a pretty great place to live. We’re home to some of the best universities in the world. We’ve got a burgeoning tech scene. We have some wonderful museums, lots of storied financial institutions, and a whole lot of history. And sure, maybe I’m being defensive (again), but it’s for these reasons that many of us choose to stay here, despite knowing that we could move to other cities that may have better weather or be sexier. At the very least, they’d be bigger.
Since staying here can be more of a deliberate choice than it is to live in larger, more popular places, being a Bostonian becomes a large part of one’s identity.
Loyalty can lead to passionate and angry responses when identity is slighted. Our defensiveness comes from a lifetime of standing up for ourselves. We’re like the little sister whom everyone thinks is kind of annoying and less accomplished than her older brothers and sisters, but actually isn’t quite so bad once you get to know her.
We defend with a fervor that is often wild and unfocused. 30 Rock did a great send up of those knee-jerk reactions in an episode where some Patriots fans think that Tracy Morgan is speaking badly about the team when he actually isn’t:
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It’s a visceral reaction. I read a piece the other day by Luke O’Neil (who, in the interest of full disclosure, writes for Boston.com from time to time), in which he spends a lot of time saying bad things about the lobster rolls at Fenway, where he’d gone to try to find some sense of belonging and patriotism in the aftermath of the two-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings.
O’Neill writes: “The lobster roll may have been over-priced, cold, and mayonnaise-flavored, but isn’t that a pretty good description of Boston itself?’’
I immediately bristled, and my Boston defense radar turned on. I started to fume. How dare O’Neil speak badly of these narrow streets, and how dare he choose Fenway as his punching bag? Did he watch the 2004 World Series?
I then took a deep breath and remind myself that I was reading not as a defensive Bostonian but as an objective—albeit pretend—Big-City, journalist. Did he have a point?
Ultimately, I disagreed with his conclusions because I didn’t think he brought the piece home.
But perhaps that was the point. Perhaps it was written for the same reason that Nolan’s pieces are written: To troll us.
Because what makes Nolan’s pieces impressive is that he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s tapped into the indignant Bostonian vein, which is what made his “Fuck Boston’’ article funny. He knew he didn’t have to have an argument. He knew that he could basically write gibberish about our city, toss in some profanity, and he’d get a reaction from the tribal defenders of the Boston faith. He tricked us into doing exactly what he knew we’d do.
I ran my hypothesis by him: That be choosing to stay here, Boston becomes a much larger part of your identity than bigger cities would, and an attack on the place therefore feels somewhat like an attack on you. He didn’t disagree.
“Maybe that’s to justify the pain of the winters you’re going through,’’ he said. “There has to be some underlying pride in a place.’’
The only way the younger sister ultimately wins is when she gets made fun of and—rather than starting to scream and throw punches of her own—shrugs her shoulders and continues to play her adorable game of Big City in her small sandbox.
So maybe it’s time to start shrugging our shoulders. But then we wouldn’t really be Boston, would we? That “How do you like them apples?’’ mentality kind of makes this city what it is.
Or, in Nolan’s words: “If you get too wounded about it, you’ve already lost the game.’’
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