“I’m going to drive through Appalachia, should I be scared of the inbred hill folk and the cryptids? 😱😱😱😱” no bitch, be scared of sliding off a mountain into a valley and not being found for months or years.
they’re going to be insinuating Bigfoot got you in YouTube docs while your Ford Taurus is upside down at the bottom of a mountain
The Western US has guard rails everywhere they could possibly be needed, but in Appalachia, guard rails are for sissies
I think a lot of us would like to have guard rails. It’s not a matter of pride but a matter of infamously shitty and neglected civil infrastructure in Appalachia as a product of local corruption and perpetual state underfunding.
In 1977, the mayor of Vulcan West Virginia wrote to the Soviet Union and East Germany requesting foreign aid to replace the only bridge leading into town, an old swinging footbridge that had collapsed. This was the final straw that forced the West Virginia Legislature to cough up $1.3 million dollars to replace the bridge. Not the fact residents had been fording the river or using unsecured crossings to get to their homes for two years, the bad press generated by a Soviet journalist visiting the area to assess the situation.
It’s been almost 50 years since that and to be honest not much has changed. A lot of the bridges that would have been considered unsound at that time are still up and being driven over everyday.
Driving on poorly maintained roads over flat land is scary enough but driving on a poorly maintained, cracked, potholed, far too narrow road up the side of a mountain with a sheer drop and no guard rail is enough to give anyone a panic attack. Driving over 125+ year old, narrow, rusty one lane bridges that span rushing rocky rivers is something you SHOULD be scared of in Appalachia.
I love that mayor. He’s my new hero. The BALLS you’d need to do that during the Cold War.
I totally understand why the infrastructure issues are dominating the comments but can we also talk about the stereotype that this hypothetical person believes about the PEOPLE and called them “inbred hill folk” like WTF 🙄🙄🙄
In my experience, the hill folk are often quite nice and not significantly more inbred than the average person.
Actually, the inbred hill folk stereotype has its roots in bigoted negative beliefs about West Virginia specifically, which is especially odd because West Virginia actually has stricter anti-consanguinity laws than many other US states. A lot of Americans would sooner believe a whole state suffers from dysgenic illness than consider the possibility of structural causes.
I’m Appalachian and there is a great degree of consanguinity in my bloodline and inherited genetic illness, not because we enjoy cousinfucking heartily but because my family lived in the same isolated area for 250 years and married into the same 6 nearby families. This is, of course, improving in the modern day. When you live in an area of rough terrain in a small rural community and you’re dirt poor with no way out, your only marital prospect may be your 3rd cousin and this may go on long enough for it to become a problem genetically speaking. This occurs in a lot of isolated communities, due to geographical isolation or social isolation due to bigotry. It’s not a mark of failing morals or backwardsness, it was born out of survival.
Also, this stereotype makes it really, really hard for survivors of incest to get help. Appalachian people are afraid of conforming to a stereotype. Plenty of Black people are convinced incest is a white person thing and that it doesn’t happen to Black people, which makes it harder to find a therapist or get sympathy.
Incest can occur in any group and isn’t more common in any demographic.
It’s really traumatic for the survivors and their families.
Please, please stop making incest jokes. It’s objectively, provably harmful.
